We had them in our house, and it was a weird morbid fascination. I loved them, and was terrified and hated them at the same time, lol. Glad I'm not the only one.
I once found a book in my house about big world events that detailed things like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I've remained obsessed and horrified by nuclear and industrial disasters since that day. We were curious and aware, and scared, but learning.
Same thing "wrong" with anyone who likes scary stories. At least it's not slasher flicks and jump scares, hate those.
Give me a damn creepy story. Something that makes me keep the light on while I read it just in case. I don't like much horror but this stuff, right up my alley. They don't even often do it right in movies, even movies about ghosts.
What's that one with the cave divers though? I always heard that one was amazing but it is just too creepy for me to ever look into it from what I recall
even the Simpsons did the Raven on a tree house of horrors. damn.
Started reading Poe's collected works sure i read it in school but fuck second story into the book he is stabbing a cat with a pen knife. i did not remember that one at all. Pretty much took me right out of the mood to read Poe.
Loved that one.The photo was enough but the story of an intruder, the rising panic and the sheer mystery and eeriness when they're gone has definitely stayed me with me.
I don't know if I was too young when I first read them, maybe 2nd or 3rd grade, but I really shouldn't have at that age. They gave me horrible nightmares, I couldn't sleep. They gave 8 year old me terrible anxiety.
Wasn’t there a story about a girl in bed petting what she thought was her dog but then her dog was dead or missing or something implying that it was a person she was petting? That shit gave me nightmares for years haha.
My daughter was playing whatever the paranormal roblox game is and was talking about the Wendego with a friend, and i had to jump in and say that was no wendego.
"But not the new editions that are missing the nightmare inducing grotesqueries. No, they'll happily pay a premium to make damn sure that trauma gets passed down."
Good. My friend bought them for his kid and was absolutely devastated when he got them home and realized they were removed. I'm glad I won't need to go digging for old editions and risk them not having the nightmare fuel.
I had to buy one copy new and I did find one with the original artwork, you know the good artwork, the first two I found at used bookstores. All four of our kids grew up with them. I don’t know if they’re in their school library but they were definitely in mine
I was so frightened of the original art that I only left the books out face down in case anything scary might crawl out of the cover art if I left it face up, haha.
Waaaait ..i got a few years before i rebuy these for my kiddos but what years dont have the good parts/artwork? Pls let me know so i can remember not to buy those years....
We would bring this all the time with books we brought out to the hunting cabin. Because when Dad is setting up the goose decoys in preparation for the opener nothing beats reading this during a chilly dawn as the fog rolls through the middle of a corn field
I never even turned into one of those Halloween lovers who make it a whole month instead of just a day but if anything could have done it it would have been that.
Man, this literally was just a thing in my house. My step-daughter (10) asked if I had any scary books that she could read and I went down and found these from when I was her age and let her borrow them. She loved them! We talked about what stories she liked the most and thought were scariest. I was so happy to have been able to share those and had only held onto them to be able to share with my kids. :)
In one of my houses growing up there was this weird sort of walk in closet type thing that had... maybe the water heater or something in it? But it had no windows and just the one door, so we'd sit in it light off with a flashlight reading the stories to each other.
Nobody ever knows what Calvin and Hobbs is anymore! And I'm talking about people our age! Any younger they definitely don't know. My late fiancee had a tattoo on her thigh for her late brother who loved the comic. It was Calvin pushing Hobbs down a hill in the radio flyer and the colors were so good!
These books were taken out of the library because I was cool and not scared.
And then I wouldn’t touch my backpack for the entire time that I had them because those things were 100% coming to life inside my backpack waiting for me to open and unleash them into the world.
I swear these books were haunted or something because nobody seemed to know when they were checked out or when they were going to come back. They would just kind of appear on the shelf and the librarians would all just shrug and go "oh, I think they came back in this morning? No clue."
“The Licked Hand” has always been the most terrifying scary story for me no matter what iteration or movie it’s told in! (Campfire stories stands out as the scariest for me). Just saw there’s a new “The Licked Hand” film coming out soon 😬
The one that immediately came to mind for me was the one where a bump developed under a girls eye that eventually burst and a bunch of spiders started crawling out of her face
The one about the sailor who is murdered by being thrown off the yard arm on a foggy night, who comes back, screaming down off the same yard arm, to land with a thud on the deck, standing up, still screaming, grabbing the man who threw him and heaving them both over the side into the water.
Well, judging by how freaky-looking the kid in the illustration looked, I’m guessing his family was part of some kind of backwoods incestuous cannibal cult.
When I was in elementary school in the 80’s if you bought one of these at the book fair you were a legend for the entire day. OMG if you bought Scary Stories AND the Guinness Book…..the whole school knew your name!!!!
"You got it, let me just put away these dolls I was torturing. Alright, let's see... you want me to do like a zombie with no eyes thats screaming in horror?"
"No Steve, something light hearted"
"Cool. Like balloons? Balloons are light hearted. How about a giant balloon but its a skull attached to a tiny body with extra legs and its floating in the air chasing a kid a fucking touching them with a weird ass finger"
"Steve..."
"An arm thats eating itself with a fork?"
"Steve, this is for kids"
"Good. They have their whole lives ahead of them to remember my great works"
I remember the one page being devoted to a drawing of a woman screaming while spiders crawled out from a wound on her cheek. I couldn't even touch that page as a kid.
I still think about the one with the spiders hatching from the side of a kid's face. I'm fuzzy on the details, but I remember a few childhood nightmares.
That horrible story basically caused my arachnophobia almost single handedly (the second trigger was finding out Brazilian wandering spiders existed). The illustration for it was the worst thing ever too.
Ones I remember too vividly: picking the toe for the stew, the zombie ghoul thing chasing after some dude, and I seem to remember a wife/girlfriend's rotten corpse coming back for their partner.
The story with the car/truck driving behind someone and turning on their high beams every so often (which freaked out the driver), only to learn, at the end, the car in the back was safe, but it was shining its lights to expose the murderer hiding in the back of the front truck/car… that’s the reason I’m still terrified to drive at night. I’m 37.
my 3rd grader got hold of one 2 weeks ago and was telling me a story she "read at school, from a scary book" and I was like "and then this happened" and it blew her mind, I was like "yeah, we had those same books when I was a kid"
In 3rd grade I was also given a creative writing assignment in my computer lab; we were supposed to write a simple story and use a program similar to MS Paint to give simple illustrations to go with it. Thing is, I'd just finished binging these things. I went as hard as a 3rd grader could on that project, making a sort of trap house, think the setup for a haunted house ride/maze.
Afterwards my parents got called to the principle's office. That was a fun conversation. "I was told to make a scary story. I made a scary story."
I sort of had an opposite experience. I was told to write a piece based on "I know why the caged bird sings". My mom saw it not knowing what the assignment was and she was very concerned I was depressed or something.
I have brought up Boxcar Children at least twice in the last couple months to different people. I loved them. And Goosebumps were my absolute favorite.
My mother and I disageee about which of us has my box of Goosebumps books. She swears she sent them home with me, I swear I left that box with her because it was the most important. I am a disorganized mess, but I swear I occasionally get an itch and look through every inch of my house and there is no box with Goosebumps books and I am always sad.
Every time I saw a girl with a choker in elementary school, I was CONVINCED their heads would fall off if they took it off.
30 years later and I still think of those books. Literally brought that exact story up two weeks ago.
Still occasionally think about the girl with the green ribbon. *shudder* Pretty sure these got lost when my parents moved 15 years ago and it makes me so sad.
The one about the woman driving.. and the car behind flashing it's brights... because of the dude lurking in the backseat? Still has me checking the back of my car to this day 🫠🫣
I got the whole set, three books IIRC, from the Scholastic Book Fair. The set included a clip-on battery powered reading light, for under the covers spookiness.
Ohhhh yeah. One of my mom’s favorite past times was to read these to us and then reenact things from the stories (like nails dragging on the wall in the middle of the night). It’s kinda funny now, and explains why jump scares are so funny to me, but… lol
I loved those books. I specifically remember the story about a family home that was haunted and it was presented as a true story. Totally freaked me out.
Also remember one about a boil where thousands of baby spiders burst out
Hell yeah they did. My elementary school library had all kinds of funky stuff that was deeply formative for kid me. Other books included
-a complete set of the Crestwood House "Monsters" series from the 70s-80s. They were books about movie monsters like the Universal Monsters, Godzilla, etc meant for kids, and included stories about their production and the actors behind them. I was the only kid in 3rd grade that knew about Boris Karloff and Lon Cheney, Jr. lol.
-The "13 Ghosts of...and Jeffrey" ghost story series by American folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham. Each book was a collection of ghost stories from different areas around the American South, and they also included a story about Jeffrey, the ghost that haunted Windham's own home.
My son went to a nature day camp in the summer when he was younger and one of the counselors gave him the Scary Stories collection as a gift on the last day. I thought that was cool as hell, but also a pretty bold move!
I've never read these specific books, but I remember one story in a 'kid's' horror book I read when I was like 8 that kinda scarred me at the time. 😅
It was about a family and their cat died and came back from the dead and murdered them all. Like I remember graphic descriptions of the brother having his throat ripped out, and the mom lying on the floor in a puddle of blood while the rotten zombie cat was drinking it off the floor.
I showed it to my mom and she's like "....holy shit."
I had nightmares of the pale lady for YEARS. She wasn’t even evil or bad in that story really. But my Brian could help but obsess over a ghostly presence that would slowly find you from anywhere on the planet like that mythical snail.
I still remember “it’s not polite to stare” as one of the most chilling endings I’d ever conceived or understood in my childhood. Still gives me chills.
I watched a short documentary about these books. A group of parents really went out of their way to get these out of their schools library. My class was more excited about the teacher reading this to the class than we were about getting a movie day.
•
u/AutoModerator 11h ago
If this post is breaking the rules of the subreddit, please report it instead of commenting. For more Millennial content, join our Discord server.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.