Literature / Dare to Be Scared

Dare to Be Scared is a quartet of 2000s children's horror anthologies written by the late Robert D. San Souci and illustrated by David Ouimet. Unlike San Souci's previous horror series, Short and Shivery, which collected folklore from around the world, these stories tend to be contemporary, set in America (although plenty of worldwide cultures are represented), more fleshed-out, and often more gruesome, starring child protagonists who often don't make it out alive (or worse). The four volumes are:

1. Dare to Be Scared: Thirteen Stories to Chill and Thrill (2003)
2. Double-Dare to Be Scared: Another Thirteen Chilling Tales (2004)
3. Triple-Dare to Be Scared: Thirteen Further Freaky Tales (2007)
4. Dare to Be Scared 4: Thirteen More Tales of Terror (2009)

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These books provide examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Amanda's grandfather in "Lich Gate" was said to physically abuse his daughter (Amanda's mother), and even after passing away, tricks Amanda into taking his place at the graveyard so he can come back to life.
  • At first, Lois Gaddis in "Fairy Godmother" is cold at best to her adoptive Korean daughter Su-mi. She later sets Su-mi up to be taken by her malevolent "fairy godmother" painting, which is sentient and will willingly spirit away children into the world of the painting in exchange for riches. She's also confirmed to have done this to another Korean child she adopted years beforehand.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Maria Luisa of "Mrs. Moonlight (Señora Claro de Luna)" is abducted by the titular spirit and taken to the Moon, where she's forced to clean Mrs. M's house until the end of time.
  • Daniel of "Second Childhood" is trapped in Leonard the ghost boy's decaying house, doomed to play games with him and keep him company forever.
• Asshole Victim: Some protagonists are so loathsome that the fates befalling them are more cathartic than scary (and often involve Laser-Guided Karma). Examples include Keesha from "The Halloween Spirit," who spends all of Halloween bullying her sister and is ripped to shreds by a witch impersonating said sister; Brenda and LeeAnne from "Rain," who manipulate a rich but unpopular classmate to take them to the mall, don't save her from drowning, and are then haunted by her waterlogged, vengeful ghost; and Connor from "Snow Day," who steals his Native American friend's medicine pouch to bring a snowstorm that causes his body to rapidly melt.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Plenty. Any story involving a monster will almost always end in the monster eating or killing the protagonist.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Witch," it's easy to assume Annabelle will be tricked by Hazel Starworthy, the witch she's working for, who seems rather sinister. However, Hazel never does anything malicious and even warns Annabelle about what not to do, and Annabelle's fate is brought on by ignoring her.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Alec in "Playland" goes to his favorite theme park, which is about to close, and wishes to a mechanical fortune-teller that he could ride his favorite haunted-house ride again and again. He gets his wish when he's trapped on it and can't escape until it kills him and sends him into the ride's graveyard.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: "Woody" is a Bigfoot-esque creature who also has birdlike features, such as a beak and wings.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • "Smoke": Katie realizes she's been Dead All Along, but gets to ascend to "the Blessed Place" with her grandparents, while her parents survive and are able to see their daughter one last time before she moves on.
  • "Green Thumb": Bernice, the kindly old witch lady, dies, but comes back as a ghost to protect her gardening protégée Lateesha from bullies with her plant-based magic.
  • "Smoke Hands": Natalie is abducted by her childhood nemesis, Mr. Peek-a-Boo, but her sister Kirsten (who had previously suffered the same fate) is returned to the family, and the story ends with Natalie determined to defeat Mr. Peek-a-Boo and return home.
• Body Horror:
  • Kyle in "Ants" is eaten alive by the titular insects, while Donald in "Bookworm" suffers a similar fate but with stranger implications (see Gainax Ending).
  • Dean in "Red Rain," and presumably the other boys, are mangled and mutated by acid rain on a camping trip.
• Breather Episode: Every so often comes a light-hearted, goofy story with low stakes and no horrific child deaths, such as "Space is the Place," a campy tale about aliens where the sci-fi fanatic protagonist is excited rather than terrified, and "Field of Nightmares," about a baseball team playing a game against gigantic, hammy Kaiju-esque monsters.
• Bully Hunter: Anthony is bullied by his entire school in "Class Cootie." When he flees from the school and is fatally hit by a car, his loving Nana Olga (who is rumored to be a witch) curses the entire school to be eaten alive by killer bugs.
• Cannot Cross Running Water: Gabe in “Heading Home” successfully escapes the headless ghost that’s chasing him by crossing a river, remembering a bit of folklore his great-aunt taught him.
• Cassandra Truth: A vast amount of these stories involve a character warning the protagonist about some dangerous/mystical local folklore, with the protagonist shrugging it off or making fun of it, eventually realizing it's true, then paying the ultimate price. "The Halloween Spirit" actually names the warning character Cassandra.
• Creepy Basement: The basement in "John Mouldy" is overrun with mold, which turns out to be inhabiting the spirit of the house's murderous former owner.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If a character dies, it will generally be in this fashion. A few examples: the boys in "Gulp!" are eaten by a literal haunted house, Shaun in "Laughter" is magically decapitated by fair folk, and Connor and Sozap in "Snow Day" melt a la the Wicked Witch of the West.
• Dead All Along: Katie in "Smoke" believes she's the only survivor of a house fire that killed her parents, however, it turns out her parents survived and she's the ghost.
• Death of a Child: These stories are geared toward children and star children, which means they'll also often end in children dying, often disturbingly.
• Downer Ending: Sometimes, when the protagonists are likable instead of obnoxious, the grisly endings can just come off as depressing.
  • Daniel in "Mountain Childers" is followed home and eaten by the titular cannibal children, just as he thinks he's in the clear.
  • Anna in "The Double" is haunted by her mirror-image doppelganger and eventually tricked into switching lives with her, unbeknownst to her family.
  • Su-mi in "Fairy Godmother" finds out too late that her adoptive mother, Lois, sacrificed her first (also Korean) daughter to the titular painting in her mansion in exchange for money and success, and is then attacked by the monster inside the painting and sucked in to replace the first daughter.
• Evil Matriarch: Again, Lois from “Fairy Godmother,” of the adoptive mother variety.
• Evil Old Folks: Grandpa and Grandma Bowen in “Lich Gate” and Lucia and C.J. in “Cabin 13,” all of whom are looking to regain their youth in nefarious ways.
• Evil Principal: Appears in "Principal's Office," naturally. He seems to be an all-powerful ruler in the story's vaguely dystopian/futuristic setting and punishes kids who are sent to his office by vaporizing them with lasers.
• The Fair Folk: The classic Irish version star in "Laughter," where they teach Shaun a lesson not to laugh at their evening rituals by cursing him to literally laugh his head off.
• Family-Unfriendly Death:
  • Keesha in "The Halloween Spirit" is torn to shreds by a witch in front of her mother and younger sister.
  • Both Brian and Alec in "Playland": the former spins out of a rollercoaster car and is killed when his body is trapped in the ride's machinery, while the latter's neck snaps after the ride gets faster and faster.
• Folk Horror: "Mountain Childers" leans fully into this, being set in the Appalachian Mountains and heavily involving an ominous old folk song about the titular monsters.
• Forced Transformation: Peter in “Moonrise” realizes he’s a werewolf on his 13th birthday and finds out his parents are werewolves too. The story ends with him crying, as he had previously planned to escape his tiny Northern Michigan town and make something out of his life.
• Gainax Ending: "Bookworm" ends with the titular worms digging holes into the protagonist's skin that eventually turn into wormholes (the space portal kind) and suck him into space, another dimension, or somewhere else completely unexplained.
• Genius Loci: The haunted house in "Gulp!", i.e. the house itself is haunted, sentient, and eats anyone who enters.
• The Girl Who Fits This Slipper: A twisted echo of this trope. Sam in "Half-Past Midnight" is jealous that Lucille got the lead role of Cinderella in the school play instead of her. Eventually, Lucille turns into a werewolf and devours her, leaving nothing but her severed foot stuck in a slipper.
• Grand Theft Me:
  • "Hungry Ghosts": Michael's body is hijacked by his starving immigrant ancestor, Li Wei, after he visits a museum and learns about his family history.
  • "The Double": Anna's mirror reflection ends up taking over her body and life and trapping the real Anna in a shard of glass.
  • "Lich Gate": Amanda is tricked into bringing her cantankerous, abusive grandfather back to life and gets the life sucked out of her, as her now young and healthy grandpa replaces her with a doppelganger.
• Hell Hotel: The Mountain View Motel in "Cabin 13" is run by vaguely-vampiric senior citizens who lure tenants into the unlucky thirteenth cabin to drain their life and become young again.
• Here We Go Again!: "Field of Nightmares" ends with the kids beating the monsters in the baseball game, avoiding being eaten, then watching as a group of bigger monsters appear, eat the first group of monsters, and challenge the kids to a new game.
• Hope Spot: Daniel seems to successfully escape the "Mountain Childers" when he and his family return from vacation... until a week later, on the first day of school, when they show up at his door and lead him to his doom.
• Hulk Speak: The Kaiju in "Field of Nightmares" (one of whom is even called "Gojira") talk like this.
• Humanoid Abomination:
  • The "Mountain Childers" look mostly like normal human children, except they've been around for generations, have dead eyes and sharp teeth, and are cannibals.
  • The titular "Fairy Godmother" is described as looking like a woman from afar, but has clawed lion's feet, fangs, bat/dragon-like wings, and reality-warping abilities.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The "Mountain Childers" devour their alleged relatives Joe and Ruth and are implied to do the same to the protagonist at the end.
• Informed Attribute: In "Circus Dreams," we're repeatedly told Chaz is bullied, but we never see any traits of his that would explain why, making the whole story come off as rather harsh.
• Karma Houdini: Lois in "Fairy Godmother" twice gets away with adopting Korean children and sacrificing them to her evil, sentient painting in exchange for money and power, passing them off as sickness and/or kidnappings.
• Karmic Death: Andy's brothers in "Daddy Boogey," who tell him spooky stories about the eponymous scarecrow and throw rocks at it, are suffocated with hay and hoisted onto the scarecrow pole themselves.
• Karmic Transformation: The boys who bully Greg in "The Double-Dare" and inadvertently turn him into a monster are turned into monsters themselves when monster-Greg spreads sticky sap on them.
• Kid Hero: All the stories star children, usually around ages 10-13. Special mention goes to Andy from “Daddy Boogey,” who successfully fights off the titular scarecrow at only age seven.
• Life Drinker: The elderly Lucia and C.J. in “Cabin 13” operate a motel where they ambush victims at night and suck up their life with faux-hospitality and spiked lemonade. They show up at the end of the story with new names and youthful appearances, and photos on their wall imply they’ve done this countless times already.
• Mind Screw: Even for this series, "Bookworm" is all over the place. It juggles numerous ideas that have little to do with each other: actual bookworms invading a bookstore, old-school "magick" and grimoires, chiggers and larvae burrowing into people's skin, and eventually black holes, leading to the bizarre Gainax Ending mentioned above.
• No Ending: Certain stories, particular those with Mind Screws, end right at a pivotal point with zero resolution. Of note is "Space is the Place," which ends with a bus turning into a UFO and flying up to God-knows-where.
• One-Steve Limit: Defied - San Souci repeats names throughout the series. Both "Mountain Childers" and "Second Childhood" star a Daniel, "The Dark, Dark House" and "Moonrise" are both about a Peter, etc.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The rock stars in "Tour De Force" seem to be a type of energy vampire (not that kind) who use their music to hypnotize their victims before draining their life force.
• Our Witches Are Different:
  • "The Halloween Spirit" has a ghostly, shapeshifting witch who's summoned via a pentagram and poses as the protagonist's five-year-old sister to trick her.
  • "The Quilt" involves the spirit of thirteen witches who enshrined their souls in a quilt to avoid a Witch Hunt, and end up coming back to life and recruiting the protagonist (who has purchased the quilt) to join their coven.
  • Nana Olga in "Class Cootie" and Bernice in "Green Thumb" are benevolent witches who care deeply for the child protagonists they look after and are willing to curse and/or kill anyone who stands in their way.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: “Space is the Place” and “Underwater” are science fiction rather than horror, as is “Grey” (although that one keeps the horror elements), while “Principal’s Office” is a piece of dystopian satire in the vein of Ray Bradbury or Kurt Vonnegut.
• Poltergeist: The titular "Rosalie" is one, the spirit of a troublemaking ghost girl who once lived in the protagonists' house and is searching for a new playmate.
• Prejudice Aesop: Multiple stories feature bigoted characters getting their comeuppance. Marty and his buddies in "Bakotahl" repeatedly harass a pair of Native American twins, soon accidentally kill one of them, and are cursed by the surviving twin to die in freak accidents, while Joe in "Violet" successfully defeats the ghost of a Civil War-era slaveowner.
• Revenant Zombie: After dying in a car crash, Raffa in "Best Friends" returns to his apartment building to see his best friend DeWayne and presumably take him with him to the afterlife.
• Scary Scarecrows: The eponymous "Daddy Boogey" freaks out Andy at his grandparents’ farm. Turns out he’s alive and gets revenge on Andy’s obnoxious brothers, who had pelted him with rocks.
• Schmuck Bait: Plenty of these protagonists fall for incredibly obvious bait. For one, Patrick in "A Really Scary Story" is given a book of scary stories by a mysterious, elderly neighbor whose house he was caught vandalizing. When he opens it, it turns into a mouth and eats him.
• Self-Plagiarism: Some stories bring back ideas from San Souci's past series, Short & Shivery. "Second Childhood" outright references "Dinkins is Dead," while "Heading Home" is very similar to "Lullaby."
• Shout-Out: Various brands, books, and media of the 2000s are mentioned, possibly to stay "with the times." For example, in "Best Friends," DeWayne defeats his zombified best friend by whacking him with a Harry Potter book that he'd once gifted him, and a stuffed Tigger assists the protagonist in "Fairy Godmother."
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Considering the usual fates of these protagonists, any happy ending here is inherently surprising. Some characters who make it out alive and (relatively) unharmed are DeWayne in "Best Friends," Gabe in "Heading Home," Lateesha in "Green Thumb," and Joe in "Violet."
• Terror-dactyl: “The Bald Mountain Monster” is a carnivorous pterosaur-esque beast lurking around a mountain.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Mr. Peek-a-Boo from "Smoke Hands" is a bogeyman-like figure who haunted Natalie's childhood, was behind her sister's disappearance, and has since returned to take Natalie too.
• 13 Is Unlucky: "Cabin 13" contains a series of motels that go straight from 12 to 14... at least until nighttime, where Noah is lured into the secret Cabin 13 by the sinister owners, C.J. and Lucia, who drain his youth away until he's a tiny pile of bones.
• Tomato in the Mirror:
  • Katie in "Smoke" is a ghost who died in the fire that she believed killed her parents.
  • Owen in "Underwater" is afraid of the water because he's actually an aquatic alien whose parents crash-landed into a lake and orphaned him.
  • Peter in “Moonrise” is a werewolf, and so are his parents.
• Too Dumb to Live: Plenty of these kids' fates are entirely their own doing.
  • Sam in "Half-Past Midnight" repeatedly mocks Lucille's belief in the supernatural and tricks her into staying out past midnight, which everyone knows she is not allowed to do under any circumstances. Lucille turns into a werewolf and eats Sam.
  • Connor in "Snow Day" is warned many, many times not to mess with magic, especially for trivial reasons like canceling school, but steals his friend's magic pouch anyway, which summons a snowstorm that kills him and his friend.
  • Noah in "Cabin 13" leaves his possibly-haunted motel cabin in the middle of the night, sees the creepy owners of the motel outside by Cabin 13, which wasn't there before, and accepts their invitation to come join them.
• Vengeful Ghost:
  • "The Caller": Lindsay's Aunt Margaret returns from the grave to retrieve her expensive ring from her ungrateful niece, who clearly hated her and was waiting for her to die to be willed the ring.
  • "Rain": Mary Beth gets her revenge on manipulative classmates Brenda and LeeAnne after they don't save her from drowning during a rainstorm.
• Villain Protagonist: Lots of the kids who star in these stories are obnoxious, bullying jerks, which makes their eventual comeuppances more earned (see Asshole Victim above).
• Was Once a Man: "The Double-Dare" ends with bullied Greg turning into a tree/Green-Man-esque beast, then turning all his tormentors into one too.
• Witch Classic: Hazel Starworthy in "Witch" is as stereotypical a witch as possible: a wizened crone with a broom, mysterious potions, and an animal familiar (although it's a monkey rather than a cat). However, she's actually rather friendly.
• Wonderful Werewolf: Werewolves star in two stories and are interestingly, in both cases, protagonists. Lucille from "Half-Past Midnight" is a French Canadian loup-garou who eats a popular girl who bullies her, while Peter from "Moonrise" is unaware he's one until his thirteenth birthday, when his parents reveal the whole family is.