Weirdly enough, I had virtually* no problem with these when I was a kid—my school had all three in the library, and I loved them so much that as soon as I brought one back I'd check another one out. I ended up reading a lot more books on urban legends and folklore because of these.
Of course, I ended up running across the one I'd actually bought (the second one, I think, but it seems to have vanished again) when I was eighteenish, and all those fond memories of little-kid ghost story fun scariness came crashing down in flames when I saw those illustrations again. How the hell did little me read these things without giving herself chronic insomnia?
- "Virtually" because that picture from "The Haunted House" filled me with just as much terror in second grade as it does now. Just the thought of that face still makes me have to sleep with the light on, and I won't click on any of the links for the other pictures just in case I see HER, too.
I read It in 6th grade. Does that count?
The goodsebumps books always put me to sleep. Why the hell were they so popular?
When I was in the first and second grade, though, I was much more into Kaiju type monsters, not so much real horror.
So... huh. I'll check it out. It seems novel enough.
edited 1st Jul '10 10:32:37 PM by Roman
| DA Page | Sketchbook |I was always fairly okay with the stories and though unsettled by the pictures, I was able to handre handle it.
Except one. The title was either "What?" or "What is going on Here?", something along those lines. It disturbed me because a) the illustration was this... big, fucking...floating ball of what looked like FLESH... b) because it was said to be a true story, and c) (though this may be facisination more than fear) there are no ghosts or monsters but happenings no one can explain... and they're theorized to be a direct cause of teenagers.
In fact, that one story facinated me for so many years I ended up writing a story inspired by it, the one linked in my signature.
Oh, and there was also the one mystery that had no ghosts or supernatural happenings, but it was argueably the scariest one in the series. The one where a mother is told her sick daughter doesn't exist, and it's impossible to understand what the fuck happened until you read the back of the book. Readers know which one I'm talking about.
edited 2nd Jul '10 10:31:23 AM by Latia
One that really creeped me out was when the kid played hide-and-seek, but hid inside a trunk in the attic that didn't open from the inside. She got stuck in there and died, and wasn't found until many years later.
And Latia, what's the story you're talking about? I don't remember it.
edited 2nd Jul '10 6:55:19 PM by BonsaiForest
Actually if I remember right, it was a bride on her wedding day, not a kid.
But yes, I remember reading all three books as a kid. The stories I remember the most were probably the one with the priest and the zombie chick and the one with the kid in the haunted house and the severed head that chanted "Me Ty Do Ti Walker" or whatever it was.
Scared the crap out of me as a kid.Good times.
edited 2nd Jul '10 7:02:55 PM by Scisless
Man, I really need to go to my library soon and checks those books out again. My brother and I almost bought a copy of the first one at a garage sale, but my parents put the kabash down on that. It was kind of old, it added so much to the creep factor.
I was always kinda freaked out by one I think was called "The Thing" where two boys are hanging out and then they see this creepy guy walk out of a field. He looked like a decayed corpse and the illustration always freaked me out. Later, one of the boys dies and looks exactly like the thing.
Another one I remember pretty well had a girl who buys a quilt made by some witches and becomes obsessed with it.
I remember one where the 8 or 9 year old protaganist is part of a tribe of native-type people that are hunted by monsters from the other side of the forest. These monsters kidnap tribe members and they're never heard from again. At the beginning the kid's uncle gets stolen. Shortly after the kid ends up in the monsters' lair. He snoops around, gets lost, and finds out that the monsters kill the tribesmen and cut up and mutilate the corpses. His uncle finds him in the lair(Uncle broke free before they could kill him) and they try to escape. Uncle kills one of the monsters and skins it. Uncle then escapes by wearing the monster's skin and walking right out with the kid.
The clencher to the story is that it end with the kid's closing statement: "Uncle told me to look away, but I peeked. Under their skin, the monsters look just like us!".
Scary enough for a kiddo reader at face value: The monsters can look like humans!
Then, after a second read and paying closer attention to the descriptions of the monsters and their "skin", I had my first Fridge Horror moment: They weren't monsters at all. The "monsters" were humans in environment suits. Scientists. And they were dissecting the corpses, not just mutilating them.
Brrrrr.
^ Mustn't be Schwartz—he did urban legends, didn't he? Anyways, the American Library Association once made a poster with the hundred most frequently "banned" (their term, generally meaning "removed from library shelves") books and book series in America from the years 1990-2000. This trilogy took the top slot, beating out everything from The Chocolate War to Heather Has Two Mommies—and frankly, of the series I recognized it was the only one that really deserved it. Schwartz got another entry farther down for Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat.
In my personal experience, I found the Scary Stories series more unintentionally comical than horrifying—it's so over-the-top, you know? But it's probably a little much for the intended age bracket. (Schwartz clearly has or had no idea what's appropriate for given ages. His picture book In a Dark, Dark Room wouldn't be scary even to middle schoolers, but as an I Can Read book it was way too much for my kindergarten-attending self.)
edited 3rd Jul '10 1:13:30 AM by feotakahari
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulI never read these (don't know if they were ever translated into Swedish), and having seen some of the illustrations, I'm kind of grateful.
I did read a couple of horror story collections that had the most nightmare-fuelling illustrations, though. Funnily enough, the ones I remember most were both for Edgar Allan Poe stories (in two different collections). One was for The Fall Of The House Of Usher, of Lady Madeline in her shroud, with her face completely in darkness. Another was of the Red Death.
They scared the heck out of me as a kid, and even today, I don't feel comfortable thinking about them...
-shudder-
It was the illustrations that scared me most as a kid, but I have to say, the Body Horror stories just freaked me out. I've always had a distaste for it.
WOOOOOOThe actual stories are pretty much all straightforward retellings of traditional, campfire-style ghost stories and urban legends, but the illustrations really bring them to life. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that the series traumatized an entire generation, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
My favorite, or at least the one that sticks best in my head fifteen or twenty years later, is probably the one about the Wendigo.
I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.Bit of a shaggy dog story: it spends pages building up the ineffable horror around this unseen thing following the protagonist, then the protagonist turns around and sees the above thing, which politely asks him if there's something the matter.
I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.

Rather than hijack the the Goosebumps thread with another, nominally child-oriented horror series, I've set up a thread for Alvin Shcwartz and Stephen Gammell's Scary Stories set. They've got most of the text and illustrations here - http://www.imgdump.info/cat-scary-stories-to-tell-in-the-dark-371.htm
. Sorry about the un-ergonomic set up.
Now, the stories themselves were a pretty good collection of urban legends (even if the embellishments by Alvin Schwartz are a li'l hammy), but the real attraction, as many have stated before, is Stephen Gammell's wondrously creepy imagery. The man illustrates children's books...with these? Perhaps he had a pact going with Morpheus, and earned a dollar for every nightmare he induced.
So anyway, this thread's to recount your own experiences with the books, as well as others like this that sat, like a copy of the Necronomicon For Kindergartners, glowering on your own bookcase.
Oh, and does anyone know if ol' Stevey did anything else like this? Or, y'know, anyone who's worked in a similar vein? I'm a sucker for this kind of thing.
Edit: The site's been shut down recently. I shall see if it's located anywhere else, but I'm not holding out hope.
edited 8th Jul '10 11:20:18 PM by DarkDecapodian
Aww, did I hurt your widdle fee-fees?