Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Author	Alvin Schwartz
Illustrator	Stephen Gammell
Cover artist	Stephen Gammell
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Horror, Children's
Publisher	Harper & Row
Published	1981-1991

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is a series of three children's books written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. The scary stories of the title are pieces of folklore and urban legends collected and adapted by Schwartz. The titles of the books are Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (1981), More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (1984), and Scary Stories 3 : More Tales To Chill Your Bones (1991).

Overview

The first volume was published in 1981, and the books have subsequently been collected in both a box set and a single volume. There is also an audiobook version of each book, read by George S. Irving. The audiobooks are presented in unabridged format with the exception of a handful of missing stories from the first book.
This series is listed as being the most challenged series of books from 1990–1999^[1] and seventh most challenged from 2000-2009 ^[2] by the American Library Association for its violence. The surreal and nightmarish illustrations contained within are also a frequently challenged component of the original books.
To celebrate the books' 30th anniversary in 2011, Scholastic re-released them with new illustrations from Brett Helquist, the illustrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events. This has come under severe criticism from fans of Gammell's illustrations, citing that they are not as effective or as scary as the originals.^[3]

Books

#	Title	Original published date	Pages	ISBN
1	Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark	October 14, 1981	128	ISBN 0-397-31970-1
Stories include: 1. The Big Toe, 2. The Walk, 3. "What Do You Come For?", 4. Me Tie Dough-ty Walker!, 5. A Man Who Lived in Leeds, 6. Old Woman All Skin and Bone, 7. The Thing, 8. Cold as Clay, 9. The White Wolf, 10. The Haunted House, 11. The Guests, 12. The Hearse Song, 13. The Girl Who Stood on a Grave, 14. A New Horse, 15. Alligators, 16. Room for One More, 17. The Wendigo, 18. The Dead Man's Brains, 19. "May I Carry Your Basket?", 20. The Hook, 21. The White Satin Evening Gown, 22. High Beams, 23. The Babysitter, 24. The Viper, 25. The Attic, 26. The Slithery-Dee, 27. Aaron Kelly's Bones, 28. Wait til Martin Comes, 29. The Ghost with the Bloody Fingers.
2	More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark	October 31, 1984	112	ISBN 0-812-44914-3
Stories include: 1. Something was Wrong, 2. The Wreck, 3. One Sunday Morning, 4. Sounds, 5. A Weird Blue Light, 6. Somebody Fell From Aloft, 7. The Little Black Dog, 8. Clinkity-Clink, 9. The Bride, 10. Rings on Her Fingers 11. The Drum, 12. The Window, 13. Wonderful Sausage, 14. The Cat's Paw, 15. The Voice, 16. "Oh, Susannah!", 17. The Man in the Middle, 18. Cat in a Shopping Bag, 19. The Bed by the Window, 20. The Dead Man's Hand, 21. A Ghost in the Mirror, 22. The Curse, 23. The Church, 24. The Bad News, 25. Cemetery Soup, 26. The Brown Suit, 27. BA-ROOOM!, 28. Thumpity-Thump.
3	Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones	September 1, 1991	128	ISBN 0-590-13589-4
Stories include: 1. The Appointment, 2. The Bus Stop, 3. Faster and Faster, 4. Just Delicious, 5. Hello, Kate!, 6. The Black Dog, 7. Footsteps, 8. Like Cat's Eyes, 9. Bess, 10. Harold, 11. The Dead Hand, 12. Such Things Happen, 13. The Wolf Girl, 14. The Dream, 15. Sam's New Pet, 16. Maybe You Will Remember, 17. The Red Spot, 18. No, Thanks, 19. The Trouble, 20. Strangers, 21. The Hog, 22. Is Something Wrong?, 23. It's Him!, 24. T-H-U-P-P-P-P-P-P-P!, 25. You May Be Next...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The World's Most Haunted Places

 

Many places you might not have heard of.

New Page Books

 

If you have the good fortune to be able to travel around the U.S., Canada, and even abroad, you would be wise to help satisfy your craving for the paranormal by bringing along Jeff Belanger's great reference work, The World's Most Haunted Places.
Jeff is the founder of the Internet's GhostVillage.com and he has written several other books about ghosts, haunted places, and the supernatural. He brings to this book his extensive knowledge of these places where ghosts have been felt, heard, seen, and documented. In fact, he's investigated many of these creepy houses, hotels, castles, and institutions personally.
In this new revised edition of the book, Jeff gives us all the details on such far-flung places as: The Catacomb Museum in Paris, France; Big Nose Kate's Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona; Ordsall Hall in Salford, England; and the Alaskan Hotel in Juneau, Alaska -- among many others.
You'll be brought face-to-face with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at the White House; Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire; Resurrection Mary at Resurrection Cemetery; and The White Witch of Rose Hall Great House -- and lots more.
Jeff has done a great job of presenting all of the folklore, haunted history, as well as the personal experiences of the people he has interviewed who have worked at, lived in, or visited these ghost-infested locations.

The World's Creepiest Places

We go from the "world's most haunted" to the "world's creepiest"... and surprisingly there isn't much overlap. That's because author Bob Curran has really scoured the planet to find the creep factor in really out-of-the-way places and remote areas, many of which you probably haven't heard of before. In The World's Creepiest Places, he has really found amazing places and stories of their specters from all over the world.
For example:

• The Capuchin Cemetery in Palermo, Sicily, which has been described as "the realm of the living dead"
• Csejthe Castle in Csejthe, Hungary, where the ghost of Countess Elizabeth Bathory -- alleged to be a vampire and blood drinker -- still roams
• Eilean Mor in The Flannan Isles, Scotland, an isolated spot from which the lighthouse keepers mysteriously vanished
• Houska Castle in Blatce, Czech Repubic, thought to be one of the most haunted such structures in Europe, where a bloody, headless horse has been seen
• Mortemer Abbey in Normandy, France, where the ghost of the White Lady drifts through the ruins
• ...and many more exotic places.

Curran provides remarkably detailed accounts of these locations' dreary histories as well as the various phenomena that have been reported there. It's fascinating reading.


Full Article: http://paranormal.about.com/

Book Review: Ghosts, Spirits & Hauntings

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Written By: Paranormal News

Ghosts, Spirits & Hauntings is a new collection of original essays published by New Page Books which includes both stories of local folklore as well as opinions and suggestions for ghost hunters and parapsychological researchers in the field of paranormal enquiry. It also covers poltergeists, apparitions, spirits of the dead, unusual animals, spirit possessions, bioelectric fields, alternate dimensions, quantum physics, life after death, table tipping, and seances. Quite a list, but considering most of the things which have been alive on this planet throughout time are now dead and no one really knows, the number of competing opinions by the more creative amongst us are not really surprising. Every author included in this book has his or her own flavor of explanation, and most of them were fun to read through and consider.

Ironically, one thing I generally do not tend to enjoy in many of these ghost books are the actual ghost stories themselves. They do not creep me out and often bore me to tears simply because there are so many of them which are impossible to substantiate. Collating a few famous cases and wrapping a binder around it seems to me to be a waste of tree. Thankfully, although this book does include some worn out ghost stories, there are quite a few interesting chapters that are still worth review.

One of the most interesting bits of information presented in this book occurred in the last chapter, which presents a criticism of television ghost hunters as well as the ’groups’ which have formed around the country who gathered their knowledge and declared themselves experts by watching these same shows instead of attending classes in parapsychology. The author considers these paranormal groups ’gangs’ who are more interested in defending their paranormal turf than contributing to science itself. If they were interested in science, they would probably not so readily dismiss the research done in parapsychology over the past 130 years. In my mind, however, if they were really interested in the science, it would make much less interesting television for most people and the series would be cancelled.

In this same chapter, the author also discussed how investigators themselves can actually affect their own equipment through their own psychic forces as opposed to being caused by disembodied spirits. For example, it has been proven in the laboratory that people can affect random number generators, so it is no stretch of the imagination to realize that the expectations of the investigators, as well as the stories of the eye witnesses, can both affect the readings on their paranormal gadgetry. On TV, when a group records something like an EVP or a temperature spike or an EMF fluctuation, they will declare a place haunted when, if they were really being ’scientific’ they would not discount other potential forces which are, in all honesty, just as mysterious. These same TV groups discount psychic mediums, but it is the field of psi research which has yielded the most comprehensive theories. If ghosts, for instance, do not have arms, how do they move things? Psi. If ghosts have no vocal cords, how can they speak? Psi. If ghosts do not have bodies, how can they create a digital imprints on a camera? Psi. As such, it makes no sense to the author for these pseudo-scientific groups to dismiss psi altogether as a possible explanation.

In all, an interesting read. Hypotheses are always the most fascinating elements to these books, and thankfully, this collection presents a few interesting ones. Check it out when you get a chance.

And read my book too, goddammit.

Read More:  http://www.paranormalnews.com/article.aspx?id=1476