Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

As each evening creeps slightly deeper into the afternoon and bratwurst is back on the menu at Wienerschnitzel, I find autumn on my mind, and in honor of the encroaching Halloween season, I feel the need to give a bit of praise to one of the preeminent old school horror story anthologies. And for once, I’m not referring to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark . No, despite Scary Stories being the king of the hell hill in this particular genre, there was another notable series concurrently haunting the pages of the Scholastic Book Club flyer alongside it. In fact, the first volume of this series even predates the original Scary Stories by several years!      I’m speaking, of course of Tales for the Midnight Hour , J.B. Stamper’s seminal quadrilogy of terror that caused many a juvenile some sleepless nights with its harrowing depictions of murder, monsters and madness. I used to think of Stamper as a bit of an enigma, an author who dropped their magnum opus, followed it up with a lesser-k

Happy October! I'm kicking off Halloween season today by writing about...well, pretty much the same type of stuff I write about the rest of the year. Anyway, as I mentioned in my recent-ish review of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie , a book was released in conjunction with the film called Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: The Haunted Notebook of Sarah Bellows . Given my propensity for writing about anything and everything Scary Stories -related , it's only natural that I'd wanted to discuss this latest creepy collection of terrifying tales. Now, to get the most obvious question out of the way: is this a new Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book in anything other than the most literal, pedantic terms? Frankly, no. The stories are all moviefied versions of material from the original books, enhanced by concept artwork, photos and notes from the film’s production. Yet, oddly, these are exactly the qualities that make this book perfect for wha

        I have to say, it's a pretty great time to be a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark fan. After an ill-advised decision by the publisher years ago to replace the books' iconically eerie Stephen Gammell illustrations with tamer, less disturbing artwork by Brett Helquist, the original versions have been reissued to bookstores everywhere. Hollywood wants a piece of that sweet Scary Stories pie (don't ask what's in it), and there's a major motion picture produced by Guillermo Del Toro on the way which, judging by the teasers, looks amazing . There's even a documentary coming out chronicling the creation of the series and examining its lasting cultural impact. 38 years after Alvin Schwartz's first volume began shocking the senses of countless readers, the series' legacy is still going strong.      Perhaps most unexpectedly, there was a recent announcement that a new volume of the series is coming soon! Well, sort of. New Scary Stories to Tell in t

I feel like closing out October with something classy. And since we're no stranger to Halloween poems around here, let's celebrate the onset of All Hallow's Week with some verse, courtesy of the man himself, Jack Prelutsky. Prelutsky is a distinguished poet whose work tends toward a younger audience. I could give you a full recap of his history, but instead I'll just directly lift this quote from his Wikipedia, which is just...wow: Jack Prelutsky was born on September 8, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York to Charles, an electrician, and Dorothea, a homemaker. While he was still a baby, a fire killed his family and he was saved by his Uncle Charlie, who was a dad of 56 ( Wikipedia ) First of all, this is incredibly tragic and heart-wrenching. Second of all, that 56 has to be a typo, right? Perhaps fittingly given the horrors of his early life, Prelutsky is best known for his dabbling in some darker material. The best example of this is 1976's Nightmares: Poem

In 1981, Alvin Schwartz unleashed his horror classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark upon the world, and it and its two sequels would scar psyches for generations to come. 1984 saw the release of In a Dark, Dark Room , a similar book that Schwartz had tailored to somewhat younger readers. Unlike the Scary Stories books, though, this one never got a sequel...or did it? Ghosts! , published in 1991, is an oft-overlooked installment in Alvin Schwartz's oeuvre that serves in many ways as a spiritual successor to In a Dark, Dark Room . In belongs to the somewhat redundantly named "I Can Read" book series, like Dark Room , so it is targeted at a similarly young audience, and of course it shares the supernatural theme of the aforementioned works. But how does this one stack up against the veritable murderer's row of Schwartz's earlier classics? Let's find out. The first thing that jumps out at you is the artwork. Victoria Chess has a strikingly different st

In a dark, dark mobile home, there was a dark, dark cupboard... And in that dark, dark cupboard, there was a dark, dark shelf... And on that dark, dark shelf, there was a goofy, rainbow-colored record player... And in that goofy, rainbow-colored record player, there was... THIS RECORD! I've spilled a lot of virtual ink in my numerous online missives about scary stories, particularly Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels . But Alvin Schwartz was not the only author to produce collections of scary stories for younger audiences, and he certainly wasn't the first. Maria Leach, for example, had been doing an excellent job laying the groundwork for macabre collections to come in her compendiums of chilling folklore like Whistle in the Graveyard . And then there's this curious little number: 1970's Scholastic release The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales . I was introduced to The Haunted House long before I ever read it. In fact,