I. Love.
Halloween.
It’s no secret—I love putting together costumes, I love
dressing up, and I like going out. So of course I would enjoy any activity that
allows me to do all three, and even encourages me to take candy from complete
strangers! Plus, by the end of October the hellscape of Phoenix has finally
cooled down enough to allow me to wander around outside in heavy costumes for
more than a few minutes without dying of exposure (something Phoenix Comicon,
unfortunately, doesn’t allow for as it occurs in the middle of the summer).
Besides going out in costume and buying copious amount of
candy (that I’m totally going to hand out to Trick-or-Treaters, no really), one
of my favorite Halloween activities is reading scary stories. As an adult, I
typically lurk the annals of r/nosleep and r/creepypasta. I’ll also haunt Cracked’s October spook articles about true urban legends. I’ll watch horror
movies on Netflix—the good and the bad. I’ll watch gamers play through scary
games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame on Twitch.
However, I didn’t have access to these as a child. Twitch,
Cracked, Netflix, Reddit—none of these existed yet. Besides an original Game
Boy, I had no way of playing spooky games at home. I doubt my mom would have
let me play them anyway, since I wasn’t even allowed to see anything rated “PG-13”
and above. So how was creepy, awkward, eight-year-old me supposed to get her
horror fix?
Scary Stories to Tell
in the Dark.
Other folks raised in the '90s will recognize this title, and
the series it spawned: More Scary Stories
to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories
3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Like Goosebumps
and Bunnicula, Scary Stories was one of the few places children could get creeped
out with parental permission. But unlike Goosebumps
and Bunnicula, Scary Stories was legitimately
frightening.
But not necessarily because of the content... No, Scary Stories had something the other
scary children’s books didn’t have: truly horrific art.
Oh god!
Those eyes... Why?
I don't... I can't even... That doesn't have anything to do with the story "Oh Susanna!"
I don’t know who approved these pictures to go into a book
approved for children, but I loved every page of them. Some of them even gave
me nightmares.
It’s been a while since I’ve gone through the pages of these
delightful books (and yes, I still own all three), so I think it’s about time I
tried reading them again. It’ll probably take me an afternoon (or an evening)
to hash out all three. Maybe I'll do it in the dark of my room, using a flashlight like in the old days.
Until next time...
~Panda
Sleep well!
