SCARY STORIES TO SLASH IN THE DARK

These are so goddamn terrific. The artist known as Watchful Eye has re-imagined the slasher genre's most iconic mass murderers using the infamous drippy artwork style by Stephen Gammell for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. 

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DVD REVIEW: ‘SCARY STORIES’ DOC FANS THE FLAMES OF NOSTALGIA

As someone who has adored the horror genre ever since I was a kid, even weathering the storm when that adoration made me feel like an outcast, there was always something comforting about discovering that I’d traveled the same exact road, and made all the same stops, as other kids had during their formative years. It was a joy to grow older, meet people with the same interests, and realize that we had  shared experiences and interests before ever knowing each other.

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark trilogy was a huge part of that.

I wish I could remember under what circumstances I first came to read Alvin Schwartz’s three-book collection based on urban legends, folklore, and myths. There was never a shortage of books in my house when I was a kid, as my mother had discovered I was an avid reader, and she was willing to exploit my love for all things horror (within reason) so long as it kept me reading. It got to the point where she would have to lovingly but sternly remind me that those monthly Goosebump books by R.L. Stine were somewhat expensive, as she tended to bring home a few at a time, and maybe I should try to read only a few chapters a night to make them last. (She brought home Deep Trouble one day, and with a shark on the cover, I read that book in under two hours. Spoiler alert: it ain’t about sharks.) I’m tempted to believe that my mother had been the one to bring home one of those Scary Stories books (for whatever reason, Scary Stories 3 was the first one I read), but that she’d done so without actually cracking the book and seeing Stephen Gammell’s illustrations. One glimpse at “The Haunted House” or “Me-Tie Doughty Walker” and she never would have left the store with them.

If there ever existed a bible for the horror-loving youth, it was Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Incredibly, horror-loving kids discovered these books on their own, almost like a rite of passage. It felt like childhood destiny. The illustrations were tantamount to pornography—as if they’d slipped through the parental and school library systems on some kind of technicality and were never meant for kids’ eyes, but something glorious had gone wrong, and those lucky kids were going to get their fill. Gammell’s illustrations were often so surreal that sometimes they didn’t seem to complement their stories at all. One story in particular, “Oh Susanna,” was a retelling of the urban legend about the college student who comes home to her dorm at night and doesn’t turn on the light, only to discover the next morning that her roommate had been decapitated. The illustration that accompanies that story sees an old man in a rocking chair grasping a leash tied around a flying Lovecraftian monster and being pulled through the sky of a stormy limbo. How completely inappropriate this illustration is for that story somehow made both even scarier. Was it a happy accident? Was it a one-off illustration Gammell had done that had been arbitrarily assigned to that story? Or was Gammell depicting the instant madness that the story’s terrified girl was suffering upon the discovery of her dead roommate?

On the cusp of release for the first ever adaptation of the book series (produced by Guillermo Del Toro and directed by The Autopsy of Jane Doe’s André Øvredal) comes this low-fi, DIY documentary by Cody Meirick, which explores the history of the books, the controversies that ensued because of their graphic content, and their legacy today. Sadly, the doc lacks the two keyest players – author Alvin Schwartz died of cancer in 1992, and illustrator Stephen Gammell, still alive, is a bit of a recluse and doesn’t grant interviews. (Nerd brag: I wrote to him about ten years ago and sent him a copy of the Scary Stories hardcover treasury edition, which he returned with his signature.)

The doc speaks to Schwartz’s family – his wife, Barbara; son, Peter; and grandson, Daniel – some of which remains surface level, but some of which, notably the segments with the son, touch on unexpectedly deep material, including the strained relationship between himself and his father, and the regrets he still lives with following his death. Wisely, the doc makes use of seemingly the only interview Gammell ever gave, which is years old; resurrecting certain excerpts from that interview not only allows him a presence in the doc, but also puts the viewer directly within his frame of mind. (Despite how perfectly married his illustrations are to Schwartz’s stories, the doc heavily suggests that the two men never actually met.)

The doc somewhat struggles to have a “point,” with the backbone being the controversies the book series endured over the years, with one parent in particular (who appears in the doc via archive footage and a newly filmed interview) leading the charge to get them banned from elementary schools. The book-ban segments are smartly intermingled with interviews with artists who grew up reading the Scary Stories trilogy and who discuss in what ways they have informed their work, directly or indirectly. Doing so makes the case that, had these books been banned successfully, these artists might never have stumbled upon them, and hence, never become inspired to do their own creating. The doc also attempts to setup a sort-of squaring off between that parent who led the ban charge and Schwartz’s son as a knock-down/drag-out moment of drama, but in reality, they sit down and share their own differing thoughts on the book, neither of which have changed ever since the initial controversy, all while remaining ever polite toward each other.

Scary Stories also struggles to feel consistently engaging, even at a brisk 85 minutes, with too many scenes of interviewees, or in some really distracting moments, actors engaging in storytelling skits, reiterating some of the books’ most famous stories. Meirick uses these bits sometimes to help transition between points, and including actual text from the stories makes total sense, but a simple voiceover accompanied by Gammell’s original illustrations would’ve accomplished the same goal while removing the incidental corniness that results from watching two young kid actors pretend to be scared by a story about an exploding spider bite.

Still, Scary Story mostly works the way it was meant to: it’s a celebration of the black sheep books that permeated so many of our bookshelves in our youth, examining their long legacy and the mark they’ve made on so many impressionable minds. With the world becoming a bigger, warmer, and angrier pile of shit, the nostalgia machine is operating at an all-time high (the self-serving third season of Stranger Things proves this), and Scary Stories is all part of it. This exploration into the infamous books is likely as thorough as it could’ve been, assuming that Schwartz never spoke candidly about them after having written them—material from which the doc could have mined (as it did with Gammell’s sole interview). Because of this, the doc can sometimes feel like it lacks potency, at times feeling more like you’re sitting around having a lightheaded conversation with friends. It doesn’t ask any tough questions about the dangers of censorship, and it lacks the kind of drama that even documentaries have proven to include from time to time. Scary Stories is more interested in serving as a keepsake—a quasi pre-eulogy for books that, it would seem, will never go away, no matter how much certain parents may want them to.

The special features are as follows:

• Director's Commentary
• Over 20 minutes of bonus footage
• Closed Captions
• Scene Selection
• Trailers   

Scary Stories is now on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing, and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark hits theaters in August.

COUGHING DOG

Kristin had always been the “black sheep” of her family. She came from a rural and very conservative Middle Georgia clan, and had fought constantly with her parents since she was a child. Kristin wanted no part of the settled and routine life her parents had lead – she was an impulsive free-spirit who would travel to the far corners of the earth at a moment’s notice, sometimes not even knowing where she was headed, or why.

So it came as no surprise when, a few weeks shy of her 30th birthday, Kristin announced that she was leaving her high-paying job at a major corporation to fulfill her life’s dream – to become a professional sculptor. She sold her expensive suburban apartment and moved into an abandoned mill in one of the rougher areas of Atlanta. She planned on converting part of the space into a full-time studio and living area.

Her parents were horrified, especially when they learned that her studio was just a few miles down the road from the county jail. And Kristin didn’t see the need to rig her studio with an expensive alarm system, for her neighbors seemed nice enough. But like every other discussion Kristin had with her father, his words of warning went in one ear and out the other.

So on her 30th birthday, her father took matters into his own hands and bought Kristin a guard dog – a Doberman named Bishop from the local humane society. The dog had been abused by his former owners, and had become mean and distrustful of humans. But Kristin always had a strong love for animals, and she took the poor dog into her care. In a matter of weeks, Bishop became very attached to Kristin, and extremely protective whenever anyone else would approach her.

One morning, Kristin came home from a trip to the hardware store to find Bishop lying in the middle of the floor, coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. She immediately rushed him to the local veterinarian, who performed a series of tests. After a while, the vet was satisfied that Bishop wasn’t dangerously sick, but he couldn’t figure out why the dog was still coughing.

“Don’t worry,” he told Kristin in his calm and soothing voice, “Bishop looks perfectly healthy. But I’d like to run some additional tests on him this afternoon. Why don’t you go home and I’ll call you when we know something. There’s no sense in sitting in the waiting room all day.”

So Kristin got back in her car, made a trip to the health food store, then returned home. As she walked through the door, she could hear the phone ringing in her bedroom. Loaded down with shopping bags, she decided to let her voice-mail catch the call. But no sooner had the phone stopped ringing then it started ringing again. Thinking it may be an emergency – or perhaps an annoying telemarketer who needed to be yelled at – Kristin dropped her bags and ran to the phone, catching it on its last ring.

“Hello?” she breathlessly answered.

She was surprised to find her veterinarian on the other end. “Kristin, we have some results on Bishop. We need you to come back to the office.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in an hour or so…”

“…No, Kristin,” interrupted the vet in a barely controlled voice. “We need you to come down now.”

Kristin was taken aback by the sound of his voice. She could hear the tension lurking behind his words. There was something he wasn’t telling her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is Bishop okay?”

“We’ll talk about that when you get here,” answered the vet, his voice growing louder and more agitated. “Just get in the car now.”

“Why can’t you tell me over the phone?” asked Kristin.

The vet suddenly blurted out, “Are you in the house alone?”

A chill ran through Kristin’s blood. She slowly sat on her bed and replied, “Yes. Why?”

She could hear the vet taking a deep breath on the other end of the phone. Then, barely able to contain the tremor in his throat, he said in a hushed voice, “Listen to me carefully. We found out why Bishop was coughing.”

It was then that Kristin noticed her bedroom window. A hole had been punched through the glass, and it was unlocked.

“Kristin, are you there?”

“Yes,” Kristin answered, her voice starting to shake.

She then noticed drops of blood on her carpet. They stretched across the room and underneath her closet door. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but what we found in your dog’s throat were fingers. Human fingers.”

As the vet spoke, Kristin sat frozen as she watched the closet door slowly creak open on its rusted hinges. “Did you hear what I said? He bit the fingers off somebody’s hand!”

Kristin still didn’t answer. In the darkness of the closet, she swore she could see the hand of a large man, blood dripping from where his fingers had been gnawed off. And on his arm was the orange sleeve of a prison uniform.

A CLEVER IDEA

Martin Sheets was a wealthy businessman who lived in Terra Haute, Indiana in the early 1900's. One of his greatest fears was that of a premature burial. He often dreamed of being awake, but unable to move, at the moment the doctor pronounced him dead and then regaining consciousness while trapped in a coffin below the ground. Sheets decided to fight his fears by investing some of his resources in the prevention of his being buried alive.

First of all, he had a casket custom-designed with latches fitted on the inside. In this way, should he be placed inside prematurely, he would be able to open the coffin and escape. He also began construction on a mausoleum so that when he died, or was thought to have died, he would not be imprisoned under six feet of dirt. The mausoleum was well built and attractive but Sheets realized that even if he did manage to escape from his casket, he would still be trapped inside of a stone prison.

He came up with another clever idea. He installed a telephone inside of the tomb with a direct line to the main office of the cemetery. In this way, he could summon help by simply lifting the receiver. The line was fitted with an automatic indicator light so that even if no words were spoken, the light would come on in the office and help would soon be on the way.

Death came for Martin Sheets in 1910 and he was entombed in the mausoleum. I would imagine that for several days afterward, cemetery staff workers kept a close eye on the telephone indicator light in the office. After more time passed though, it was probably forgotten. Years went by and the telephone system in the area changed. Eventually, the direct line to the cemetery office was removed but thanks to very specific instructions in Sheets will, and the money to pay for it, the telephone in the mausoleum remained connected and active.

A number of years later, Sheets widow also passed away. She was discovered one day lying on her bed with the telephone clutched in her hand. In fact, she held the receiver so tightly that it had to be pried from her fingers. It was soon learned that she had experienced a severe stroke and family members assumed that she had been trying to call an ambulance when she finally died. A service was held and after a quiet memorial service, she was taken to the family mausoleum, where she would be interred next to her husband.

When cemetery workers entered the mausoleum, they received the shock of their lives. Nothing there was disturbed, they saw, except for one, very chilling item. Martin Sheets telephone, locked away for all of these years, was hanging from the wall...its receiver inexplicably off the hook.

TRUTH

LONESOME WYATT & THE HOLY SPOOKS

My god do I love this album. It is everything a dark-stuff loving weirdo like me could ever hope for. It is a complete embrace of everything spooky and ghostly and murderous and haunted. Brought to you by Lonesome Wyatt and the Holy Spooks (also responsible for the similarly dark, but more country-flavored Those Poor Bastards), Ghost Ballads is thirteen tracks (naturally) of creepy, atmospheric, and sometimes even graphic music. But not screaming, death-metal graphic, mind you. I've seen this artist's genre described as Gothic Americana or Dark Folk, and both are certainly appropriate. 

The stand-out track is definitely "The Golden Rule," which seems plucked right out of an Edward Gorey tome. The story of Mary Moore, a woman once murdered and brought back to life, who, with the help of two children, ax-slaughter anyone they come across. Other stand-out tracks are "Terror on the Ghost Ship," in which a sailor is thrown overboard and devoured by ocean creatures, and "Curse of the Poltergeist," in which you can use your imagination...

But what made me fall in love, truly, with this album was the inclusion of "Skin and Bone," which should sound familiar to anyone who grew up reading the often-praised Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collections. The lyrics are ever in place as you remember them, now set to the perfect and eerie music. "Old Woman All Skin and Bone"is a traditional song and has been around forever, but it's safe to say Scary Stories popularized the song with young readers. Based on some of the music videos I've watched for Lonesome Wyatt's songs, I'd hazard a guess he was certainly a fan of those ghastly dripping books (as we all were/are).

The full track list as as follows:

1. The Golden Rule 

2. Curse of the Poltergeists 

3. Terror On the Ghost Ship 

4. Dream of You 

5. Skin and Bones 

6. Boy With No Shadow 

7. October 1347  

8. The Mouldering One Returns 

9. Midsummer Fair 

10. Haunted Jamboree 

11. Death of Me  

12. You Cannot Be Saved from the Grave  

13. Bone Orchard Rise

Given its odd-ball subject matter, Lonesome Wyatt's discography won't be found at Walmart, but the usual online retailers have this and the other albums (Heartsick, Sabella, and the first album Moldy Basement Tapes - extremely low-fi recordings made on cassette in a basement). You can also snag them directly from the band's website to support them directly. 

 

 

Lonesome Wyatt is perfect for Halloween, late-night listening, and when the rain is coming down. Though it may sound like I'm pushing it, it's not often when I'm able to find something like this that's not only well-realized and well-executed, but manages to appeal directly to tenets of my personality. This is not something I'd share with casual music fans, but only with those who I feel are...let's call it peculiar...like I am. I have a feeling I'm going to be listening for a long long time.

I leave you with the official video for "The Golden Rule." There's really nothing I can say about it except...wow.

 

DAY FIVE: STICK, MEET MUD

"I think we ought to close Halloween down. Do you want your children to dress up as witches? The Druids used to dress up like this when they were doing human sacrifice... [The children] are acting out Satanic rituals and participating in it, and don't even realize it."

-Pat Robertson

Image source.

SAM'S NEW PET

Sam stayed with his grandmother when his parents went to Mexico for their vacation. “We are going to bring you back something nice,” his mother told him. “It will be a surprise.” Before they came home, Sam’s parents looked for something Sam would like. All they could find was a beautiful sombrero. It cost too much. But that afternoon, while they were eating their lunch in a park, they decided to buy the sombrero after all. Sam’s father threw what was left of their sandwiches to some stray dogs, and they walked back to the marketplace. One of the animals followed them. It was a small, gray creature with short hair, short legs, and a long tail. Wherever they went, it went. “Isn’t he cute!” Sam’s mother said. “He must be one of those Mexican Hairless dogs. Sam would love him.”

“He’s probably somebody’s pet,” Sam’s father said. They asked several people if they knew who its owners were, but no one did. They just smiled and shrugged their shoulders. Finally, Sam’s mother said, “Maybe he’s just a stray. Let’s take him home with us. We can give him a good home, and Sam will love him.”

It is against the law to take a pet across the border, but Sam’s parents hid the animal in a box, and no one saw it. When they got home, they showed it to Sam. “He’s a pretty small dog,” said Sam. “I’m not sure what kind he is,” his father said. “I think it’s called a Mexican Hairless. We’ll find out. But he’s nice, isn’t he?”

They gave the new pet some dog food. Then they washed it and brushed it and combed its fur. That night it slept on Sam’s bed. When Sam awakened the next morning, his pet was still there. “Mother,” he called, “the dog has a cold.” The animal’s eyes were running, and there was something white around his mouth. Later that morning Sam’s mother took it to a veterinarian. “Where did you get him?” the vet asked. “In Mexico,” she said. “We think he’s a Mexican Hairless. I was going to ask you about that.”

“He’s not a Hairless,” the vet said. “He’s not even a dog. He’s a sewer rat—and he has rabies.”

Story source.

Sculpture source.

STRANGE AND SCARY THINGS

I'm pretty sure, as a kid, you had these books:

I certainly did. They were as essential to my youth as the Goosebumps series and Wacky Wednesday. 

The stories themselves were pretty basic and well-known urban legends. They were vague, to the point, and sometimes even silly (though trying not to be). And you can only read so many stories that end with "now jump at a nearby friend and scream" before you roll your eyes. Despite these seeming shortcomings, it was an added strength for the book. In most cases, illustrations are in place to serve the story. In the case of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, it was definitely the other way around.

But, at the same time - at a young age, and in the right frame of mind - the stories were chilling, and even sometimes disturbing, due in no small part to the incredibly strange and often surreal illustrations by Stephen Gammell. His approach to illustration was very nontraditional - especially for children's literature. To sound like an elitist hipster douche bag for a second, his work in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection was very reminiscent of Dali, and Bosch before him. His interpretations of any particular story's monsters were horrifying enough, but even human beings depicted normally within the confines of the tale suddenly became misshapen characters born from a nightmare. Occasionally there would be an illustration that had so little to do with the events of the story that it made the happenings that much more off-putting and unnerving.

For instance, in one of the most famous stories not just in the book, but in folklore itself, a girl named Susanna returns home to her college apartment to see that her roommate, Jane (in their shared bedroom), is sleeping. Susanna quietly undresses in the dark and slips into bed, only to be jarred awake several times during the night to someone singing "Oh, Susanna." She repeatedly tells Jane to STFU. Yada yada yada, skip to the morning, and someone is still singing that song. Susanna flips out, jumps out of bed, and tears the covers off her roommate to see that she is dead.

End story.

And the illustration that accompanies this tale?

Yeah. What exactly is that? But...it somehow works. At the very end of this story, when the poor girl is assaulted with the sight of her mutilated friend on a bed only a few feet away, and the impossible sound of singing still fresh in her ears, perhaps Susanna has gone mad. And perhaps what you see is Gammell's interpretation of madness. Or perhaps he is suggesting that we're not in control of our own lives, and are helpless to defend ourselves against the dark forces that look down upon us from unseen places. 

Perhaps he is telling us there is only fate - not free will - that will determine our paths...and that we are doomed.

Either/or - the friggin' creeps.

Flipping through the pages of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the pictures you see before you could very well instead be hanging in a museum - and you would never think twice about their inclusion in artistic history, alongside other famous works by other famous artists. One of my personal favorite illustrations of Stephen Gammell is below - one which accompanies a story called "The Drum," perhaps the eeriest story in any of the three books. Two young children - a brother and sister - become terrible nuisances to their mother, at the behest of a young gypsy girl who possesses a strange drum for which the siblings yearn. Their mother threatens to abandoned them - to leave them with a strange woman, who has glass eyes and a wooden tail. The siblings, though fearful of this threat, continue to misbehave in order to finally possess the strange drum. At story's end, the gypsy girl explains that it was all just a game, and she never had any intention of giving up her drum. The siblings rush home...and see their new mother waiting for them in front of the roaring fireplace - their new mother with glass eyes and a wooden tail that thumps against the floor.

This illustration accompanies the story:

The painting below is entitled "Carnival Night" (1886) by Henri Rousseau.

The similarities, whether intentional or not, show that Gammell has not just a modern illustrator's mind, but a classic artist's.

As of 2011, Gammell still provides illustrations for childrens' books, and though Alvin Schwartz, who compiled the tales for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, has long since passed on, perhaps a fourth book will some day come down the pike under new guidance. And with it will come nightmares for a new generation of dark-seeking children.

"I was four at the time, thinking that I really didn't want to go to school next year... I just want to do this -- just scare other children so bad it gives them nightmares for the rest of their lives."

- Stephen Gammell