Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Vol. 1, by Alvin Schwartz

No book title evokes more millennial Halloween nostalgia than Alvin Schwartz’ Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. There’s probably no use reviewing this book because we all know it so well. But these stories have staying power all these years later, thanks in part to the books’ iconic macabre illustrations and the variety of stories, poems, and songs inside the book.

I have fond memories of this book. My elementary school teachers always read a story or two in our classroom Halloween parties (with the lights turned out, of course), and my little sister and I read aloud from it on dark stormy days. I remember one Halloween party, we played the Dead Man’s Brains game from this book, where you stick your hand into a bucket to touch a dead man’s body parts. I was so grossed out that I refused to play, so imagine my embarrassment when my teacher revealed we were not touching actual dead body parts: just tomatoes and grapes and other things that would feel like eyes and brains and such. 

As for my sister and I, we would tie the comforters around our bunk bed to make a dark space, and we would read from the book by flashlight. I vividly remember reading “The Haunted House,” and the illustration of the dead woman scared my sister so much that she screamed and threw the book away from her. When I saw the illustration for myself, I could not blame her for being startled, because it gave me a fright too. I’m pretty sure most people consider it one of the more iconic drawings in the trilogy.

I probably remember “The Big Toe”, “High Beams”, and “Me-Tie-Doughty-Walker” the best from this book because they were such strange and uncomfortable stories. I remember my sisters and I trying out this book together, my big sister reading the line “Where is my toe?” as I got more and more scared. But more so, the sing-song phrase “Me-Tie-Doughty-Walker” rings through my head every spooky season, picturing the head falling down the chimney and shrieking like the dead.

The less scary stories, like the one about the babysitter getting scary calls from inside the house, or zombies returning to their loved ones, are still entertaining. They’re simple, even cliched, stories at this point, but they still bring the spooky vibes perfect for Halloween. 

Better than those, though, are the stories about close calls and unexpected endings. For example, a young girl is dared to stand on a grave after midnight. She stabs a knife into a grave to prove that she was there, and she winds up dying of fright when she thinks a corpse has grabbed her…except, she stabbed her knife through her skirt and it grabbed her, not a corpse. In another story, a man is invited to hop on an elevator since “there’s room for one more”, but the moment the door closes, the elevator plummets and everyone on board dies. 

Again, while these stories are memorable, everyone remembers how the Stephen Gammell illustrations would make us gasp and shriek and then linger in our nightmares when we tried to sleep. The dead woman is still an impressive drawing, and sums up my experience with these stories: a gasp, a shriek, a brief moment of terror before you move onto the next story. Every other illustration from this book is definitely creepy, though I’d say this drawing is the scariest of all.

The book series is apparently the most challenged series of the 1990s and seventh most challenged of the 2000s. I’m not surprised that the series continues to face challenges even today (looking at you prissy religious nuts and overprotective parents), but I’m very glad these books exist, because they are a terrific early example for learning how to face fear. Many adults underestimate how matter-of-fact children can be about darker themes, like murder, violence, and death, and these books show these things at a surface level. I could go on a whole tangent about the harm of book-banning, but that’s a rant for another day.

In any case, it’s officially October, the spooky season has begun, and I say give this book another read, not just for comforting spooky nostalgia, but to remind you that a little fear is healthy.