Scary Stories Complete Set

by Alvin Schwartz

  Harold: Several tales in folklore and fiction tell of a doll or some other figure a person creates that comes to life. In the Jewish legend of the golem, a rabbi uses a charm to give life to a clay statue. When it goes out of control, he destroys it. In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, a Swiss student discovers how to bring lifeless matter alive and is destroyed by the monster he creates.

  In the Greek fairy tale “The Gentleman Made of Groats,” or “Mr. Simigaldi,” a princess cannot find herself a good husband. So she creates one by mixing a kilo of almonds, a kilo of sugar, and a kilo of groats, which is similar to grits, and gives the mixture the shape of a man. In answer to her prayers, God gives the figure life. After many adventures, the two live happily.

  The story “Harold” is retold from an Austrian-Swiss legend. See Lüthi, Once Upon a Time, pp. 83–87.

  The Dead Hand: This legend was told in Lincolnshire in eastern England in the nineteenth century. It takes place in the Lincolnshire Cars, then a vast marshland on the North Sea that local people believed was a home to evil spirits. The story is shortened and adapted from M.C. Balfour, pp. 271–78.

  Such Things Happen: This is a traditional American legend in which a person believes he is being tormented by a witch and tries to stop her. In some stories the person tries to kill the witch by drawing her picture and firing a silver bullet into it or by hammering a nail into it. I adapted and expanded this theme to point up the conflict between education and superstition that may arise when an educated person feels that events are out of control. See in Thompson, “Granny Frone,” Folk Tales and Legends, pp. 650–52; Cox, pp. 208–9; Randolph, Ozark Magic, pp. 288–90; Yarborough, p. 97.

  Running Wild

  The Wolf Girl: This legend from southwest Texas about a child who grew up wild is similar to stories found in many cultures. Some are described below.

  I first heard about the Texas wolf girl in 1975 while in El Paso doing research for another book. A retired laborer then in his eighties, Juan de la Cruz Machuca, told me the story as he knew it. His version overlaps the account in “The Lobo Girl of Devil’s River,” an article on the history of the incident by L. D. Bertillion, that appeared in 1937. See Bertillion, pp. 79–85. My retelling is drawn from oral accounts and that article.

  Bertillion begins his story when the trapper Dent falls in love with Mollie Pertul in Georgia, then soon after kills his partner in a trapping business and escapes. A year later he returns for Mollie and the two steal away to Texas and settle on Devil’s River. There Mollie gives birth to their child who, in legend, became known as the wolf girl.

  Sections of Devil’s River and the Rio Grande where the wolf girl is said to have roamed have in modern times been flooded for a reservoir and recreation area.

  One of the oldest legends of children who are raised by wolves is the famous story of the newborn twins Romulus and Remus, whose mother was said to have set them afloat in a basket on the Tiber River in ancient Latium. When the basket washed ashore, the boys were suckled by a she-wolf until a shepherd came upon them and raised them. In legend, Romulus founded Rome where the twins had been rescued from the Tiber.

  In the story “Mowgli’s Brother,” Rudyard Kipling writes of a baby boy in India who walked into a den of wolves and was raised by them. See Kipling, pp. 1–43.

  A modern legend from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas tells of a five-month-old boy who disappeared when his mother placed him on the ground while she was hoeing corn with her husband. Years later some person or animal began stealing chickens from their farm, but the couple could not put a stop to it. One night the husband saw a naked boy run off with a chicken. When he followed the boy to a cave, he found him with an old, sick she-wolf that was eating the chicken. The boy growled at the farmer like a wolf, but the farmer managed to carry him off. It was, of course, his son. See Parler, p. 4.

  There also are stories about young people who grew up wild after their parents had abandoned them, or after they had gotten lost or had been cast away. One is the true story of the wild boy of Aveyron who lived on his own in the wilderness in southern France from about 1795 to 1800, when he was captured. See Shattuck.

  There are two California legends of such cases. One involves a two-year-old girl who washed ashore on an island off Santa Barbara after a sailboat swamped in the early 1900s. Years later men hunting wild goats on the island came upon a young woman who bounded away like a goat. They found her cowering at the back of a cave filled with bones of animals she had eaten. As the story goes, they took her to the mainland, where she was identified as the missing girl. There is no record of what happened to her. See Fife, p. 150.

  The other legend is of a Native American girl who was left behind when her tribe abandoned San Nicholas Island seventy miles off Santa Barbara in 1835. She is said to have lived alone for eighteen years until she was rescued. The novel by Scott O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins, is based on the story. See Ellison, pp. 36–38, 77–89; O’Dell.

  Five Nightmares

  The Dream: Some dreams come true because it is logical that they do so. For examples see Schwartz, Telling Fortunes, pp. 57–64. But this dream is a puzzle. The story is based on an experience reported by Augustus Hare in his autobiography, p. 302.

  Sam’s New Pet: I heard this story in Portland, Oregon, in 1987. It was one of many versions being told in that period. Folklorist Jan Brunvand entitled one of his collections of modern legends The Mexican Pet. In it he reprints a 1984 variant of this story from Newport Beach, California, as well as other versions. See pp. 21–23.

  Folklorist Gary Alan Fine suggests that this legend reflects anger over Mexican workers who entered the United States illegally and competed for jobs held by Americans. The Mexicans are represented by a pet that turns out to be a rat. He cites a similar legend in France based on the arrival of workers from Africa and the Near East. See Fine, pp. 158–59.

  Maybe You Will Remember: How the Story Ends.

  What happened to Rosemary’s mother?

  When the hotel doctor saw Mrs. Gibbs, he knew at once that she was about to die. She had a form of the plague, a dread disease that killed quickly and caused frightening epidemics.

  If the word got out that a woman had died of the plague in the heart of Paris, there would be panic. People in the hotel and elsewhere would rush to escape. The doctor knew what the hotel’s owners expected. He was to keep the case a secret. Otherwise, they would lose lots of money.

  To get Rosemary out of the way, the doctor sent her to the other side of Paris for some worthless medicine. As he expected, Mrs. Gibbs died soon after she left. Her body was smuggled out of the hotel to a cemetery, where it was buried. A team of workmen quickly repainted the room and replaced everything in it.

  The desk clerks were ordered to tell Rosemary that she was in the wrong hotel. When she insisted on seeing her room, it had become a different place, and, of course, her mother had vanished. All those involved were warned that they would lose their jobs if they gave away the secret.

  To avoid panic in the city, the police and the newspapers agreed to say nothing of the death. No police reports were filed; no news stories appeared. It was as if Rosemary’s mother and her room had never existed.

  In another version of the story, Rosemary and her mother had separate rooms. Mrs. Gibbs died during the night while Rosemary was asleep. Her body was removed. Then her room was repainted and refurnished. When Rosemary could not find her mother the next morning, she was told that her mother was not with her when she checked in.

  After many months of searching, a friend, a relative, or the young woman herself finds someone who works in the hotel and, for a bribe, reveals what happened.

  This legend was the basis of a movie, So Long at the Fair, that appeared in 1950. The story also inspired two novels, one published as early as 1913. But the story was old even then. The writer Alexander Woollcott discovered that it had been reported as a true story in England in 1911 in the London Daily Mail and i
n America in 1889 in the Detroit Free Press. It became known throughout America and Europe. See Woollcott, pp. 87–94; Briggs and Tongue, p. 98; Burnham, pp. 94–95.

  The Red Spot: There are several versions of this legend in America and Great Britain. Spiders actually lay their eggs in cocoons or egg sacs that they spin from silk and leave in secluded places. Folklorist Brunvand suggests that stories like these grow from a common fear of having our bodies invaded by such creatures. See Brunvand, The Mexican Pet, pp. 76–77.

  No, Thanks: This story is based loosely on one reported in The New York Times, March 2, 1983, p. C2.

  What Is Going On Here?

  The Trouble: When no cause could be found for the strange events in this story, many people wondered if a noisy, mischief-making ghost called a poltergeist was responsible. Stories of poltergeist hauntings have been common in our folklore for centuries. It was said that these poltergeists caused objects to fly and furniture to dance, pulled sheets and blankets from beds, made rapping and groaning sounds and other mischief.

  At a ranch in Cisco, Texas, in 1881, something or someone threw rocks, opened locked doors without a key, squeezed raw eggs through the cracks in a ceiling, and mewed like a cat. Everything and everyone was checked, just as they were in “The Trouble.” Some of what happened could have been caused by a prankster. But there were no explanations for much of it, except that a poltergeist had been at work. See Lawson and Porter.

  Parapsychologists, such as the two in our story, are concerned with mental powers humans may have that are not yet understood. Psychokinesis (PK) and extrasensory perception (ESP) are examples of these powers.

  “The Trouble” is based on news reports in The New York Times, Life magazine, and other publications. For stories of poltergeists and information on poltergeist research, see Carrington and Fodor, Creighton, Haynes, Hole, and Rogo.

  Whoooooooo?

  Strangers: This brief tale is told in America and Britain. There are many settings for the story, including a turnip field and a museum.

  The Hog: Ghosts are said to appear in many forms: as animals—in our story, a hog; as balls of fire and other lights; as living humans; and as specters. Some ghosts, of course, remain invisible, making their presence known only by their actions and sounds.

  The story of the woman who returns as a hog is adapted and expanded from a Canadian ghost story told on Prince Edward Island. See Creighton, p. 206.

  Is Something Wrong?: This story is expanded from a summary of an Afro-American ghost tale in Jones, “The Ghosts of New York,” p. 240. It is related to a hoax tale about an encounter with a horrible monster. In that story, the monster is an escaped murderous lunatic. When he catches up with the man who is fleeing, he cries, “Tag, you rascal!” See Schwartz, Tomfoolery, p. 93, p. 116.

  It’s Him!: This is a version of the “Man from the Gallows” family of tales. It is adapted from two tellings. One is from the Cumberland Gap region of Kentucky; see Roberts, pp. 32–33. The other is in the University of Pennsylvania folklore archive. It was collected from Etta Kilgore in Wise, Virginia, in 1940, by Emory L. Hamilton. See the note to the story “Just Delicious.”

  T-H-U-P-P-P-P-P-P-P!: This story is an expansion of a joke young children tell.

  You May Be the Next . . .: This parody of the famous “Hearse Song” is from the folklore collection at the University of Massachusetts. It was contributed by Susan Young of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in 1972. For a variant of the traditional song and its background, see Schwartz, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, p. 39, pp. 93–94.

  Bibliography

  Books

  Books that may be of particular interest to young people are marked with an asterisk (*).

  Briggs, Katharine M. A Dictionary of British Folktales. 4 vols. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1967.

  ———, and Ruth L. Tongue. Folktales of England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.

  *Brunvand, Jan H. The Mexican Pet: More New Urban Legends and Some Old Favorites. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986.

  *———. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1981.

  Burnham, Tom. More Misinformation. New York: Lippincott & Crowell, Publishers, 1980.

  Carrington, Hereward, and Nandor Fodor. Haunted People: Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries. New York: New American Library, Inc., 1951.

  Collison-Morley, Lacy. Greek and Roman Ghost Stories. Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1912.

  *Creighton, Helen. Bluenose Ghosts. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1957.

  Curtin, Jeremiah. Tales of the Fairies and the Ghost World: Irish Folktales from Southwest Munster. London: David Nutt, 1895.

  Ellison, William H., ed. The Life and Adventures of George Nidever. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1937.

  Hare, Augustus. The Story of My Life. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. An abridgment of Vols. 4,5, and 6, George Allen, 1900.

  Haynes, Renee. The Hidden Springs: An Enquiry into Extra-Sensory Perception, rev. ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973.

  Hole, Christina. Haunted England: A survey of English Ghost-Lore. London: P.T. Batsford Ltd., 1940.

  *Johnson, Clifton. What They Say in New England and Other American Folklore. Boston: Lee and Shepherd, 1896. Reprint edition, Carl A. Withers, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.

  *Jones, Louis C. Things That go Bump in the Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 1959.

  *Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1893.

  Lüthi, Max. Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1976.

  *O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1960.

  Randolph, Vance. Ozark Superstitions. New York: Columbia University Press, 1947. Reprint edition, Ozark Magic and Superstitions. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1964.

  Roberts, Leonard. Old Greasybeard: Tales from the Cumberland Gap. Detroit: Folklore Associates, 1969. Reprint edition, Pikesville, Ky.: Pikesville College Press, 1980.

  Rogo, D. Scott. The Poltergeist Experience. Harmonds worth, England: Penguin Books Ltd., 1979.

  *Schwartz, Alvin. More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1984.

  *———. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1981.

  *———. Telling Fortunes: Love Magic, Dream Signs, and Other Ways to Tell the Future. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1987.

  *———. Tomfoolery: Trickery and Foolery with Words. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1973.

  Shattuck, Roger. The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1980.

  Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1974.

  Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1977.

  ———, ed. Folk Tales and Legends. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Vol. 1. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1952.

  Tongue, Ruth L. Forgotten Folk-Tales of the English Counties. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1970.

  Van Paassen, Pierre. Days of Our Years. New York: Hillman-Curl, Inc., 1939.

  Widdowson, John. If You Don’t Be Good: Verbal Social Control In Newfoundland. St. John’s, Newfoundland: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977.

  Woollcott, Alexander. While Rome Burns. New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1934.

  Yarborough, Willard, ed. The Best Stories of Bert Vincent. Knoxville, Tenn.: Brazos Press, 1968.

  Articles

  Balfour, M. C. “Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars, Part 2.” Folklore 2 (1891): 271–78.

  Bertillion, L.D. “The Lobo Girl of Devil’s River.” Straight Texas. Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 13 (1937): 79–85.

  Cox, John Harrington. “The Witch Bridle.” South
ern Folklore Quarterly 7 (1943): 203–9.

  Fife, Austin E. “The Wild Girl of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. California Folklore Quarterly 2 (1943): 149–50.

  Fine, Gary Alan. “Mercantile Legends and the World Economy: Dangerous Imports from the Third World.” Western Folklore 48 (1989): 153–62.

  Graves, Robert. “Praise Me and I Will Whistle to You.” The New Republic, Sept. 1, 1958, 10–15.

  Jones, Louis C. “The Ghosts of New York: An Analytical Study.” Journal of American Folklore 57 (1944): 237–54.

  Lawson, O. G., and Kenneth W. Porter. “Texas Poltergeist, 1881.” Journal of American Folklore 64 (1951): 371–82.

  Lüthi, Max. “Parallel Themes in Folk Narrative and in Art Literature.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 6 (1967): 3–16.

  The New York Times. Articles in 1958 regarding incidents described in “The Trouble,” a story in this book: issues of Feb. 3, 6, 7, 9, 20, 22, 24, 25, 27; Mar. 6, 26, 29.

  ———. “Stranger in the Night.” Metropolitan Diary, Mar. 3, 1982, C2.

  Parler, Mary Celestia. “The Wolf Boy.” Arkansas Folklore 6 (1956): 4.

  Wallace, Robert. “House of Flying Objects.” Life, Mar. 17, 1958, 49–58. Regarding incidents in the story “The Trouble.”

  Ward, Donald. “The Return of the Dead Lover: Psychic Unity and Polygenesis Revisited.” Folklore on Two Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Dégh, 310–17. Eds.: Nikolai Burlakoff and Carl Lindahl. Bloomington, Ind.: Trickster Press, 1980.

  Widdowson, John. “The Bogeyman: Some Preliminary Observations on Frightening Figures.” Folklore 82 (1971): 90–115.

  Acknowledgments

  I thank the many boys and girls who asked for this third book of scary stories. I hope it pleases them. I also am grateful to the people who shared their stories with me and to the librarians and folklore archivists at the University of Maine at Orono, at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Princeton University for their help in my research. I thank Joseph Hickerson of the Library of Congress for identifying popular music based on the “vanishing hitchhiker” legend. And I am indebted as always to my wife and colleague Barbara Carmer Schwartz for her many contributions.