Not too long ago there was announcement that was made that stated Alvin Schwartz’s [god bless his soul] Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark would be making it’s debut on the big screen. Growing up, I am sure many of you may have seen these books in your local library or bookstore. One cannot simply forget the chain smoking pipe skull.

Sadly, I was told that these books were also removed from libraries because of the “offending” artwork that is portrayed by Mr. Stephen Gammell. However, that hardly stopped us kids from clamoring over these stories.

The collection of short stories are still amazing today as they were yesterday, and as many of these stories weren’t particularly horrifying, the tales still seem to hold their own in the current horror genre.

Here are some of my favorites.

The White Satin Evening Gown

Quite possibly one of my favorite stories because I beg the question, “Who wears an evening gown to their funeral?”

A young lady gets invited by a boy to attend a formal dance. But the problem is she is very poor and can’t afford a dress. So instead, she opts to rent a dress at a local pawnshop. She looks dashing in it and to her excitement, it costs very little to rent. This dress is a head turner and everybody wants to meet this gorgeous girl in the amazing dress. She dances the whole entire night with her beau and is having such an amazing time. Then all of a sudden she begins to feel rather weak and dizzy, she chucks it up to be a dancing queen and goes home.

The next morning she is dead.

The doctor can’t figure out what could have caused this girl to die so young. An autopsy is performed and poison is the culprit. The satin evening gown she amazed everyone at her school with had traces of embalming fluid in it. Basically it made her heart stop.

Apparently some hot chick had rocked the same dress at her own funeral, however that sick son of a bitch, The Undertaker’s helper had stolen it before she was buried. He then sold it to the pawnbroker.

The thought that comes to mind, I hope the gal got an equally amazing satin evening dress in replacement of the one that was stripped off of her.

High Beams

This is a pretty short story, but I kid you not, I swear this happens to me every time someone pulls behind me with their high beams on.

A young girl [the ill-fated are always young huh?] is driving home late at night when a truck driver pulls behind her. That would be all fine and dandy, but he keeps on flashing his high beams. The girl does everything in her might to get rid of him, but he stays on her ass and flashes his high beam every so often. The girl panics and right when she turns into her driveway, she skips out and her parents call the police.

Turns out that the driver seen a man get into her car and every time he would get up to stab/kill/mutilate the girl, he would flash his high beams.

My thing is, if I was a robber/killer, I would not try to “overpower” the person driving the vehicle that I was in. I mean come on, she could lose control of the vehicle and kill you both!

Just Delicious

George Flint was a food enthusiast. That man loved to eat. Every day he would close shop to enjoy a large lunch made by his wife. But that George, he was also a bully.

One day he brought home a pound of liver and his wife cooked it for him. While George forks down his food, his wife Mina tells him that an old woman has died and she was in the church next door. And it was open coffin. George could give two shits and leaves to work.

Mina prepares the decadent liver and upon tasting it realizes what a fantastic cook she is. She pulls a George and inhales the whole pound of liver. Uh, oh, George was going to be pissed.

But that woman next door with the open casket…..

It’s the best liver George has had in his whole life, but Mina can’t get past the fact of where it came from. Late that night the old woman comes looking for her liver and Mina tells her that George has it.

The lights go out and only the screaming of George can be heard in the night.

I am pretty sure George, being the womanizer he is, deserved whatever that old lady did to him in the darkness.

Bad News

I love this tale because of the drawing. It is so- how do you say it- I just can’t.

Leon and Todd are two baseball doting brothers. When they were younger they played for the town baseball team with Leon as the pitcher and Todd played second base. Now that they were older, they spend a lot of their free time speaking and watching baseball.

They both make a pact that whoever gets to Heaven first has to let the other one know if there is baseball in Heaven. Todd drops the ball first.

One day Leon finds Todd sitting in his living room and Todd tells him that there is good news and bad news. The good news is that there is baseball in Heaven.

The bad news is that Leon is scheduled to pitch the next day.

Once again, the illustration people! So awesome!

Cemetery Soup

I love how some people are referred to as “the man” or the “woman” while others have full fledged names with careers.

In this particular tale, a woman takes a shortcut through the cemetery where she finds a big bone sticking out of the ground. She promptly picks it up and takes it home and drops the bone in her soup.

But the owner wants the bone back.

It cries relentlessly until the woman is fed up and throws the bone out of the window.

The “It” hurriedly takes the bone and scurries away toward the cemetery while the woman helps herself to seconds.

This story is not particularly scary, however it does give a little chuckle as to the adverse effect a “ghost” takes on an individual.

The Man In The Middle

I went to New York not too long ago and rode the subway for the first time. New York people are interesting in all sorts of aspects. A lot of people sleep on the subway and I couldn’t help recall this certain tale…

Sally is taking the subway at midnight all by herself, but her Mother assures her that the subway is safe.

Good thing Sally brought her book as a distraction because 3 thugs walk in, with 2 of them holding a drunk one up.

Sally feels that he is staring at her and tries not to notice. One man gets up and tells “Jim” a.k.a. drunk guy to take it easy and takes the first stop. A few stops later, the other man gets up and tells Jim he is fine.

Now only Sally and Jim are left in the car and as the subway makes a sharp turn, Jim falls over onto Sally’s feet.

And this is when she notices the blood on the back of his head right below a bullet hole.

The Thing

Ted Martin and Sam Miller were besties. One day, they seen something crawl out of a turnip field and stand up. It appeared a few more times and by now Ted and Sam were becoming a bit afraid.

But curiosity sparked Sam and he wanted to touch it. Also, It was wearing black pants, a white shirt, and black suspenders. When is the last time you someone wearing suspenders that scared you?

The Thing had sunken eye sockets and looked like a skeleton. Ted took one look and screamed. Both him and Sam took off running but this time The Thing followed them. The Thing eventually went away.

A year later, Ted got sick and died. Sam stayed up with him every night and the night that Ted died, he looked exactly like the skeleton.

I just don’t know how Sam stayed up with him if he looked just like The Thing.