For all its terrifying illustrations, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark still manages to sneak in a touch of humor every now and then.
- One of the lighter stories is called "The Viper." A woman in a high-rise keeps receiving phone calls about a man who calls himself "The Viper" who is slowly coming up the stairs...Woman: Who are you?!
The Viper: I am the viper. I vish to vash and vipe the vindows.- Also helps that the accompanying illustration of "the viper" bears a shocking resemblance to Danny DeVito.
- The illustration for "The Babysitter." The baby appears to be smirking at the audience.
- The ending to "The Ghost with Bloody Fingers.""Cool it, man! Get yourself a band-aid!"
- "Is Something Wrong?" is about a terrified man is being pursued by a gigantic "horrible thing" with bloody goo pouring from its eyes, a skull for a head and long gnarled arms. When the exhausted man cannot run any further, he finally stops, and turns around upon feeling a tap on his shoulder. The man finds himself face-to-face with the abomination, who politely says...
- The film version
of "The Church", where a man goes into an abandoned church to get out of a thunderstorm. The lightning flashes, he sees the pews full of what appear to be ghosts in white clothing, runs out of the church... and smack into a sheep, which is what the "ghosts" were. - "The Cat In The Shopping Bag", where a Christmas thief gets her comeuppance.Mrs. Briggs: This is hers. It's her Christmas present! She wouldn't want to lose it.
- "Aaron Kelly's Bones." The widow isn't scared of her dead husband hanging around the house, but merely annoyed and exasperated because she can't collect his insurance money until he goes back to his grave. Eventually, the fiddler does manage to make him dance until he falls apart, but is so weirded out he gives up on wooing the widow completely. "Chicken Reel" and "Turkey in the Straw" playing during the narration only make it funnier.
- "The Dead Man's Brains." While in reality this is just the description of a party game, the true humor lies in the audiobook version, where George S. Irving is hamming it up while recounting the story that the game is based around while also clearly trying to compose himself as he describes the "remains" of the old man.
- Adding to that is him flat-out giggling when listing the noodles for the game.
- "The Attic." A man goes into the attic to look for his dog, only to open the door and scream. At this point the audience is supposed to ask, "Why did he scream?" to which the narrator is supposed to respond, "You'd scream too if you stepped on a nail in your bare feet."
- "Cemetery Soup": While walking through the cemetery on the way back from the store, a woman finds a bone and decides to put it in her soup. She prepares the soup with the bone and goes about her business. Then an unknown figure comes to her house to ask - timidly at first - if it can have its bone back, before getting angrier and louder ("I WANT MY BONE BACK!"). The woman at first treats it like nothing, but at the last part, she throws the bone outside, screaming just as loudly, "TAKE IT!" Whatever came to the house scurries off with the bone, and the woman has her soup. Happy ending!
- "Wait Till Martin Comes." An old man takes shelter in an abandoned house during a storm. While there, he sees a black cat before dozing off. When he wakes, he then sees two other black cats, one the size of a wolf, and the other the size of a tiger. On two occasions the bigger cats ask, "Shall we do it now?", to which they're answered with, "No. Let's wait till Martin comes." Finally, the old man just jumps out the window and bolts out of there as fast as he can, yelling, "When Martin comes, you tell him I couldn't wait!"
- "Sam's New Pet." How Sam's parents mistook a rabid sewer rat for a dog, we'll never know.
- "The Slithery Dee" in an almost Black Comedy sort of way. Essentially, a group of people encounter a sea monster, and only one of them manages to survive. Instead of doing the smart thing and getting the hell out of there, he decided to narrate these events to us on the shoreline. Guess what happens next?
