History NightmareFuel / ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark

* "The Bed By The Window". It's one of the more mundane stories, and that to some makes it even more disturbing. In the story, two bed-bound old men, Richard and George, live in a nursing home. George has a bed near the window, and he constantly describes in detail what he sees to Richard. [[HumansAreBastards Eventually, Richard gets jealous and secretly hides George's heart medication, with the intent to have him die of a heart attack. All for the bed by the window!]] [[KarmicTwistEnding It works, and he finally gets the bed in front of the window]], only to look out and see a blank brick wall. He killed his best friend for ''nothing''. And now he has nobody left to keep him company, so he's going to spend the rest of his life alone, living with the guilt. It gets worse when you read the original story's ending: George is later revealed to be ''blind'' and he told Richard the things he saw outside the window to ''cheer him up''. Ouch! It says a lot when in a book full of ghosts and monsters, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters one of the more profoundly disturbing stories has no supernatural elements at all.]]

** The story itself:an arrogant boy journeys into the swamp surrounding his village to disprove stories of monsters lurking there. The boy gets dragged away by a moldy, rotting hand before his friends' eyes, and is found weeks later missing an arm, ''his mind completely shattered.'' And it gets worse if you really think about it. Whatever grabbed the boy not only [[AnArmAndALeg ripped his arm off,]] but [[MindRape tortured him to insanity]] and [[CruelMercy left him alive,]] [[KickTheDog possibly as a warning to anyone else thinking of entering its domain.]] This thing might be the most horrific, sadistic entity in all three books, and unless you count the illustration, [[NothingIsScarier we never actually see it.]]

** The story itself:an arrogant boy journeys into the swamp surrounding his village to disprove stories of monsters lurking there. The boy gets dragged away by a moldy, rotting hand before his friends' eyes, and is found weeks later missing an arm, ''his mind completely shattered.'' And it gets worse if you really think about it. Whatever grabbed the boy not only [[AnArmAndALeg ripped his arm off,]] but[[MindRape tortured him to insanity]] and [[CruelMercy left him alive,]] [[KickTheDog possibly as a warning to anyone else thinking of entering it's domain.]] This thing might be the most horrific, sadistic entity in all three books, and unless you count the illustration, [[NothingIsScarier we never actually see it.]]

* "The Bed By The Window". It's one of the more mundane stories, and that to some makes it even more disturbing. In the story, two bed-bound old men, Richard and George, live in a nursing home. George has a bed near the window, and he constantly describes in detail what he sees to Richard. [[HumansAreBastards Eventually, Richard gets jealous and secretly hides George's heart medication, with the intent to have him die of a heart attack. All for the bed by the window!]] [[KarmicTwistEnding It works, and he finally gets the bed in front of the window]], only to look out and see a blank brick wall. He killed his best friend for ''nothing''. And now he has nobody left to keep him company, so he's going to spend the rest of his life alone, living with the guilt. It gets worse when you read the original story's ending: George is later revealed to be ''blind'' and told Richard the things he saw outside the window to ''cheer him up''. Ouch! It says a lot when in a book full of ghosts and monsters, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters one of the more profoundly disturbing stories has no supernatural elements at all.]]

** Oddly, the horror of the illustration comes not so much from the spiders as from the girl's extremely pained face, namely how Gammell draws it. Her screaming face is stretched into a ''[[UncannyValley horrible]]'' [[UncannyValley caricature]] of terror and agony, staring ''directly'' at the viewer.

* "Sam's New Pet". A boy's parents find a scruffy little stray dog while on vacation in Mexico and decide to bring it home for him. A few days later the dog starts foaming at the mouth, so they take it to the vet. He tells them that it's ''a sewer rat with rabies''. And [[https://i.imgur.com/GnxJ0g7.jpg the illustration]]'s even worse, resembling a tumorous mutant iguana more than anything.

* The fate of Alice in the ending of "The Dead Man's Hand". All because a bunch of college students hated her for being too perfect and wanted to find a weakness. [[GoneHorriblyRight "The joke had worked but nobody was laughing."]]

* See that illustration up there? That's 'The Thing'. It's fairly tame (ha!) by Gammell's standards, but the story is one of the bad ones. Two best friends are sitting on a fence by a field on a hot summer night when they see something in the field. Its silhouette is described as only ''vaguely'' human, and slips eerily in and out of perception. Suddenly, it appears behind the boys, reveals itself as a horrible animated corpse, and digs its fingernails into one of the boy's arms. They manage to escape-- except they don't. The cuts in the boy's arm become infected, and his family (and best friend) can do nothing as they watch him literally rot away. On the day of his death, the boy's friend comes to visit him... and his horrified to see his friend ''[[AndThenJohnWasAZombie looking exactly like the zombie]]''.

* One of the most boring stories in the book gets one of the most terrifying illustrations: "The Haunted House". Building is haunted. PreacherMan is called in to exorcise. He meets the ghost. The ghost tells him where some treasure is and leaves her finger bone with him. Preacher Man digs up the treasure and uses the ghost's finger bone to out the guy who killed her. The ghost's killer is punished and she is put at peace. They all lived happily ever after. Now, the [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUnjDDao20Q/T423CnjcIMI/AAAAAAAAHyU/2YFum7tYjcQ/s1600/001.gif illustration]], on the other hand, shows the heavily detailed face of a rotting corpse woman with empty eye sockets and a decaying mouth that weakly hangs open. Even worse, one collection put the offending illustation '''RIGHT. ON. THE COVER.'''

* "What Do You Come For?" has one of the grimmest examples of [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor a wish backfiring]]. A nice old lady wishes she had some company to ease her loneliness, and then... [[spoiler:a corpse's feet fall out of the chimney. They're soon joined by a pair of legs, a torso, two arms, and a head, who combine together into a tall, gangling man. He dances around the room for a while, faster and faster, then stops and looks directly into the old lady's eyes. She timidly asks, "What do you come for?" His reply? "What do I come for? I come... ''for you!''" [[NoEnding The story ends there]], but he probably kills her.]]

* "The Bed By The Window". It's one of the more mundane stories, and that to some makes it even more disturbing. In the story, two bed-bound old men, Richard and George, live in a nursing home. George has a bed near the window, and he constantly describes in detail what he sees to Richard. [[HumansAreBastards Eventually, Richard gets jealous and secretly hides George's heart medication, with the intent to have him die of a heart attack. All for the bed by the window!]] [[KarmicTwistEnding It works, and he finally gets the bed in front of the window]], only to look out and see [[spoiler:a blank brick wall. He killed his best friend for ''nothing''. And now he has nobody left to keep him company, so he's going to spend the rest of his life alone, living with the guilt. It gets worse when you read the original story's ending: George is later revealed to be ''blind'' and told Richard the things he saw outside the window to ''cheer him up''. Ouch!]] It says a lot when in a book full of ghosts and monsters, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters one of the more profoundly disturbing stories has no supernatural elements at all.]]

* "The Slithery-Dee", a song about a sea monster. The Slithery-Dee [[NothingIsScarier is never described or shown in the art.]]
--> The Slithery-Dee
--> He came out of the sea;
--> He ate all the others
--> But he didn't eat-
--> [[KilledMidSentence S-L-U-R-P...]]
** The four accompanying illustrations are just as disturbing. They show three animals standing by the sea with each illustration showing one less animal until the last one just has a tail sticking out of the water.

''Literature/ScaryStoriesToTellInTheDark'', oddly enough, has stories that are fairly tame. The original illustrations however are totally horrifying and turn the most cliché urban legends into something terrifying. These are children's books by the way; they should have just called them ''Scary Illustrations to Traumatize Your Child''.

* "Oh, Susannah!" Not only is the [[https://i.imgur.com/Hu0Mwhl.jpg original illustration]] terrifying, it has little, if anything, to do with the story it accompanies. The story is the classic "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" urban legend, while the illustration depicts... [[MindScrew a withered head with a single arm, glaring down at a man in a rocking chair being pulled through the sky by a flying root?]] (The [[https://i.imgur.com/I5qBODW.jpg new illustration]], depicting an irritated young woman lying in bed, is more literal.)

* "The Slithery Dee, he came out of the sea, he ate all the others, but he didn't eat-" ''[[KilledMidSentence S-L-U-R-P]]''

[[caption-width-right:350:[[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic You know,]] [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids for kids!]]]]

* "The Voice" is a very short story but still loaded with ParanoiaFuel. A girl hears a voice whispering that it's coming for her, first up the stairs and then standing in the hall and then ''standing right next to her bed''. Pause, and...''"I GOT YOU!"'' The girl calls for her parents, who look everywhere in the room for the source of the voice, but they can't find anything. [[NothingIsScarier Nobody knows what the voice is or where it came from]].
* "Footsteps" is another ParanoiaFuel / NothingIsScarier hybrid story. A girl's doing her homework in the dining room when she hears someone walking in. It's not her mother, though, since the footsteps are heavier. She worries that whoever it is will be after her sister, so she checks up on her and is relieved to find her still asleep. Then she tells the owner of the footsteps to "GET OUT!", and the owner promptly leaves.

* "The Black Dog" features a ghostly black dog haunting a man's house. It doesn't do anything bad at first, but when the man brings in his [[EvilDetectingDog guard dogs]], things get a bit [[{{Pun}} hairy]]. While barking, one of the dogs gets attacked by the black dog and has its throat ripped out, while the other dog cowers in fear. In the end, the man has no choice but to let the dog be and let it roam around his house every night...

* "Like Cat's Eyes," a short but unnerving tale about [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oNLbQdI4EOg/U4zjf0X2j0I/AAAAAAAAAtg/_F6-EojQ-vE/s1600/SCARYSTORYcatseyes.jpg shadowy little men with glowing, catlike eyes]] who drive up to sick man's home in a hearse, rush in with superhuman speed past his wife, and rush back out carrying something into the hearse with them as they drive away. The wife returns to her husband to find him already dead.

* "Harold". [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/e/e0/Harold.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110310035348 A living scarecrow]] [[FlayingAlive SKINS A MAN ALIVE]] and leaves his skin out to dry in the sun.

* The fate of Alice in the ending of "The Dead Man's Hand". All because a bunch of college students hated her for being too perfect and wanted to find a weakness. [[GoneHorriblyRight "The joke had worked but nobody was laughing.]]

* "The Bed By The Window". It's one of the more mundane stories, and that to some makes it even more disturbing. In the story, two bed-bound old men, Richard and George, live in a nursing home. George has a bed near the window, and he constantly describes in detail what he sees to Richard. [[HumansAreBastards Eventually, Richard gets jealous and secretly hides George's heart medication, with the intent to have him die of a heart attack. All for the bed by the window!]] [[KarmicTwistEnding It works, and he finally gets the bed in front of the window]], only to look out and see [[spoiler:a blank brick wall. He killed his best friend for ''nothing''. And now he has nobody left to keep him company, so he's going to spend the rest of his life alone, living with the guilt.]] It says a lot when in a book full of ghosts and monsters, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters one of the more profoundly disturbing stories has no supernatural elements at all.]]

* "The Drum" is a tale of young sisters who continually misbehave and eventually have their mother replaced by... ''something'' as a punishment.

* "Harold". [[http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1629/sc27zy8.jpg A living scarecrow]] [[FlayingAlive SKINS A MAN ALIVE]] and leaves his skin out to dry in the sun.

* "The Bed By The Window". It's one of the more mundane stories, and that to some makes it even more disturbing. In the story, two bed-bound old men, Richard and George, live in a nursing home. George has a bed near the window, and he constantly describes in detail what he sees to Richard. [[HumansAreBastards Eventually, Richard gets jealous and secretly hides George's heart medication, with the intent to have him die of a heart attack. All for the bed by the window!]]. [[KarmicTwistEnding It works, and he finally gets the bed in front of the window]], only to look out and see [[spoiler:a blank brick wall. He killed his best friend for ''nothing''. And now he has nobody left to keep him company, so he's going to spend the rest of his life alone, living with the guilt.]] It says a lot when in a book full of ghosts and monsters, [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters one of the more profoundly disturbing stories has no supernatural elements at all.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:[[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic You know, for kids!]]]]

* As mentioned before, the illustrations alone are nightmare fuel in and of themselves, but it deserves a second mention because '''''they're just that scary.''''' ''And this is a children's book series.'' {{Moral guardians}} tried to get the books banned because of the illustrations. While they weren't banned, they were re-released with tamer illustrations, which was met with ''huge'' backlash. AwesomeArt though they may be, those drawings are still bound to haunt your dreams for years.

** Oddly, the horror of the illustration comes not so much from the spiders as from the girl's extremely pained face, namely how Gammell draws it. Her screaming face is stretched into a [[UncannyValley ''horrible'' caricature]] of terror and agony, staring ''directly'' at the viewer.

** Oddly, the horror of the illustration comes not so much from the spiders as from the girl's extremely pained face.

* "The Slithery Dee, he came out of the sea, he ate all the others, but he didn't eat-" [[KilledMidSentence ''S-L-U-R-P'']]