More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Read online

  Dedication

  To Lauren

  —A. S.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to the girls and boys in many parts of the country who have shared with me their scary stories and told me about stories they would like to see in collections of this kind.

  I am also grateful to the following persons and organizations for their generous help:

  The librarians and library staff at the University of Maine (Orono), the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the Princeton, N.J., Public Library; Professor Edward D. Ives of the University of Maine and Professor Kenneth Goldstein of the University of Pennsylvania; my editors, Nina Ignatowicz and Robert O. Warren; and my wife and colleague, Barbara Carmer Schwartz.

  —A. S.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Hoo-Ha’s

  1. When She Saw Him, She Screamed and Ran

  Something Was Wrong

  The Wreck

  One Sunday Morning

  Sounds

  A Weird Blue Light

  Somebody Fell from Aloft

  The Little Black Dog

  Clinkity-Clink

  2. She Was Spittin’ and Yowlin’ Just Like a Cat

  The Bride

  Rings on Her Fingers

  The Drum

  The Window

  Wonderful Sausage

  The Cat’s Paw

  The Voice

  3. When I Wake Up, Everything Will Be All Right

  “Oh, Susannah!”

  The Man in the Middle

  The Cat in a Shopping Bag

  The Bed by the Window

  The Dead Man’s Hand

  A Ghost in the Mirror

  The Curse

  4. The Last Laugh

  The Church

  The Bad News

  Cemetery Soup

  The Brown Suit

  Ba-Rooom!

  Thumpity-Thump

  Abbreviations

  Notes

  Sources

  Bibliography

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Books by Alvin Schwartz

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Hoo-Ha’s

  These scary stories will take you on a strange and fearsome journey, where darkness or fog or mist or the sound of a person screaming or a dog howling turns ordinary places into nightmarish places, where nothing is what you expect.

  People have been telling scary stories for as long as anyone knows. From the first, they were tales of supernatural creatures that people feared would harm them—bogeymen, monsters, demons, ghosts, and evil spirits lurking in the dark, waiting for a chance to strike.

  We still tell stories about creatures we fear, but not all of them are about bogeymen and demons. Quite a few are about living people. You’ll meet some of them—a fat and jolly butcher, a friendly girl who plays a drum, a neighbor, and others who, at best, are not to be trusted.

  Scary stories of this kind often have a serious purpose. They may warn young people of dangers that await them when they set out in the world on their own.

  But for the most part, we tell scary stories to have fun. We turn out the lights, or we leave just a candle burning. Then we sit close together and tell the scariest stories we know. Often these include some that have been passed down over hundreds of years.

  If a story is scary enough, your flesh begins to creep. You get a shivery, shaky, screamy feeling. You imagine hearing and seeing things. You hold your breath as you wait to learn how it all ends. If something startling happens, everyone GASPS! or JUMPS! or SCREAMS!

  Some people call those shivery, shaky, screamy feelings the “heebee jeebies” or the “screaming meemies.” The poet T. S. Eliot called them the “hoo-ha’s.”

  You’d better read the stories in this book while you are still feeling brave and before it gets dark. Then, when the moon is up, tell them to your friends and relatives. You’ll probably give them the “hoo-ha’s.” But they’ll have fun, and so will you.

  Princeton, New Jersey

  ALVIN SCHWARTZ

  When She Saw Him, She Screamed and Ran

  This chapter is filled with ghost stories. In one, a man has just become a ghost, but doesn’t know it yet. In another, a pirate ship and crew return from a watery grave. And there are other frightful events.

  Something Was Wrong

  One morning John Sullivan found himself walking along a street downtown. He could not explain what he was doing there, or how he got there, or where he had been earlier. He didn’t even know what time it was.

  He saw a woman walking toward him and stopped her. “I’m afraid I forgot my watch,” he said, and smiled. “Can you tell me the time?” When she saw him, she screamed and ran.

  Then John Sullivan noticed that other people were afraid of him. When they saw him coming, they flattened themselves against a building, or ran across the street to stay out of his way.

  “There must be something wrong with me,” John Sullivan thought. “I’d better go home.”

  He hailed a taxi, but the driver took one look at him and sped away.

  John Sullivan did not understand what was going on, and it scared him. “Maybe somebody at home can come and get me,” he thought. He found a telephone and called his wife, but a voice he did not recognize answered.

  “Is Mrs. Sullivan there?” he asked.

  “No, she is at a funeral,” the voice said. “Mr. Sullivan was killed yesterday in an accident downtown.”

  The Wreck

  Fred and Jeanne went to the same high school, but they met for the first time at the Christmas dance. Fred had come by himself, and so had Jeanne. Soon Fred decided that Jeanne was one of the nicest girls he had ever met. They danced together most of the evening.

  At eleven o’clock Jeanne said, “I have to leave now. Can you give me a ride?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ve got to go home, too.”

  “I accidentally drove my car into a tree on my way over here,” Jeanne said. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

  Fred drove her to the head of Brady Road. It was in a neighborhood he didn’t know very well.

  “Why don’t you drop me off here,” Jeanne said. “The road up ahead is in really bad condition. I can walk from here.”

  Fred stopped the car and held out some tinsel. “Have some,” he said. “I got it at the dance.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll put it in my hair,” and she did.

  “Would you like to go out sometime, to a movie or something?” Fred asked.

  “That would be fun,” Jeanne said.

  After Fred drove off, he realized that he did not know Jeanne’s last name or her telephone number. “I’ll go back,” he thought. “The road can’t be that bad.”

  He drove slowly down Brady Road through a thick woods, but there wasn’t a sign of Jeanne. As he came around a curve, he saw the wreckage of a car ahead. It had crashed into a tree and had caught fire. Smoke was still rising from it.

  As Fred made his way to the car, he could see someone trapped inside, crushed against the steering column.

  It was Jeanne. In her hair was the Christmas tinsel he had given her.

  One Sunday Morning

  Ida always went to the seven o’clock Sunday morning service at her church. Usually she heard the clanging of the church bells while she was eating breakfast. But this morning she heard them while she was still in bed.

  “That means I’m late,” she thought.

  Ida jumped out of bed, quickly dressed and left without eating or looking at t
he clock. It was still dark outside, but it usually was dark at this time of year. Ida was the only one on the street. The only sounds she heard were the clatter of her shoes on the pavement. “Everybody must already be in church,” she thought.

  Ida took a short cut through the cemetery, then she quietly slipped into the church and found a seat. The service had already begun.

  When she caught her breath, Ida looked around. The church was filled with people she had never seen before. But the woman next to her did look familiar. Ida smiled at her. “It’s Josephine Kerr,” she thought. “But she’s dead! She died a month ago.” Suddenly Ida felt uneasy.

  She looked around again. As her eyes began to adjust to the dim light, Ida saw some skeletons in suits and dresses. “This is a service for the dead,” Ida thought. “Everybody here is dead, except me.”

  Ida noticed that some of them were staring at her. They looked angry, as if she had no business there. Josephine Kerr leaned toward her and whispered, “Leave right after the benediction, if you care for your life.”

  When the service came to an end, the minister gave his blessing. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” he said. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you . . .”

  Ida grabbed her coat and walked quickly toward the door. When she heard footsteps behind her, she glanced back. Several of the dead were coming toward her. Others were getting up to join them.

  “The Lord lift up his countenance to you . . .” the minister went on.

  Ida was so frightened she began to run. Out the door she ran, with a pack of shrieking ghosts at her heels.

  “Get out!” one of them screamed. Another shouted, “You don’t belong here!” and ripped her coat away. As Ida ran through the cemetery, a third grabbed the hat from her head. “Don’t come back!” it screamed, and shook its arm at her.

  By the time Ida reached the street, the sun was rising, and the dead had disappeared.

  “Did this really happen?” Ida asked herself, “or have I been dreaming?”

  That afternoon one of Ida’s friends brought over her coat and hat, or what was left of them. They had been found in the cemetery, torn to shreds.

  Sounds

  The house was near the beach. It was a big old place where nobody had lived for years. From time to time somebody would force open a window or a door and spend the night there. But never longer.

  Three fishermen caught in a storm took shelter there one night. With some dry wood they found inside, they made a fire in the fireplace. They lay down on the floor and tried to get some sleep, but none of them slept that night.

  First they heard footsteps upstairs. It sounded like there were several people moving back and forth, back and forth. When one of the fishermen called, “Who’s up there?” the footsteps stopped. Then they heard a woman scream. The scream turned into a groan and died away. Blood began to drip from the ceiling into the room where the fishermen huddled. A small red pool formed on the floor and soaked into the wood.

  A door upstairs crashed shut, and again the woman screamed. “Not me!” she cried. It sounded as if she was running, her high heels tapping wildly down the hall. “I’ll get you!” a man shouted, and the floor shook as he chased her.

  Then silence. There wasn’t a sound until the man who had shouted began to laugh. Long peals of horrible laughter filled the house. It went on and on until the fishermen thought they would go mad.

  When finally it stopped, the fishermen heard someone coming down the stairs dragging something heavy that bumped on each step. They heard him drag it through the front hall and out the front door. The door opened; then it slammed shut. Again, silence.

  Suddenly a flash of lightning filled the house with a green blaze of light. A ghastly face stared at the fishermen from the hallway. Then came a crash of thunder. Terrified, they ran out into the storm.

  A Weird Blue Light

  Late one night in October, 1864, a Confederate blockade runner slipped by some Union gunboats at the entrance to Galveston Bay in Texas and made it safely to port with its cargo of food and other necessities.

  Louis Billings, the master of the small vessel, was getting ready to weigh anchor when he was startled by a shriek from one of the crew.

  “A strange, old-fashioned schooner with a big black flag was rushing down at us,” Billings said later. “She was afire with a sort of weird, pale-blue light that lighted up every nook and cranny of her.

  “The crew was pulling at the ropes and doing other work, and they paid us no attention, didn’t even glance our way. They all had ghastly bleeding wounds, but their faces and eyes were those of dead men.

  “The man who had shrieked had fallen to his knees, his teeth chattering as he gasped out a prayer. Overcoming my own terror, that was chilling the very marrow of my bones, I rushed forward, shouting to the others as I ran. Suddenly the schooner vanished before my eyes.”

  Some say that it was the ghost of Jean Lafitte’s pirate ship Pride that sank off Galveston Island in 1821 or 1822. She was seen again in 1892 in the same waters with the same crew.

  Somebody Fell from Aloft

  I had signed on as an ordinary seaman on the Falls of Ettrick, a merchant ship bound for England. The first time I saw that ship, I knew her right away. She was the old Gertrude Spurshoe. I had sailed on her years before when she was painted brown and gold. Now she was painted black and had a new name, but it was the same ship for sure.

  We had a pretty good crew for that voyage, except for one hard-looking ticket named McLaren. He was a pretty good seaman, but there was something about him that I didn’t trust. He was kind of secretive. Kept mostly to himself.

  One day somebody told him that I had worked on the old Gertrude. For some reason he got all a-tremble over that. Then I ketched him giving me all of these ugly black looks, as if he was itchin’ to knife me in the back. I guessed it had something to do with the Gertrude, but I didn’t know what.

  Well, this one day we was tryin’ to work our way through a drippin’ black fog. You’d scarcely know we had all the lights on. And it was dead calm. There wasn’t a breath of fresh air. The ship just lay there wallowing in a trough, a-rollin’ and a-rollin’, goin’ nowheres.

  I was standing my watch around midships, and McLaren was doin’ his trick at the wheel. The rest of the crew was scattered around one place and another. It was as quiet as could be.

  Then all at once—WHACKO! This thing hits the deck right in front of McLaren! He lets go a screech that turns my blood cold and he falls down in a faint.

  The second mate starts yellin’ that somebody has fallen from aloft. Layin’ out there just forward of the wheel was someone, or something, dressed in oilskins with blood oozin’ out from underneath. The captain ran and fetched a big light from his cabin so we could see who it was.

  They kind of straightened him out to get a good look at his face. He was a big, ugly-lookin’ devil. But nobody knew who he was or what he was doin’ up there. At least nobody was sayin’.

  When McLaren came to from his faint, they tried to get somethin’ out of him. All he did was jabber away and keep rollin’ those big, wild-looking eyes of his.

  Everybody was gettin’ more and more excited. We all wanted to heave the body overboard as quick as we could. There was somethin’ weird about it, as if it wasn’t real.

  But the captain wasn’t so sure about getting rid of it that way. “Could it be a stowaway?” he asked. But the ship was so filled with lumber we were carryin’, there was no space where a livin’ thing could hide for three weeks, which is how long we had been out. Even if it was a stowaway, what was it doing aloft on such a dirty day? There was no reason for anyone to be up there. There was nothin’ to see.

  Finally, the captain gave up and told us to heave him overboard. Then nobody would touch him. The mate ordered us to pick him up, but nobody made a move. Then he tried coaxin’, but that didn’t do any good.

  Suddenly that loony McLaren starts yellin’, “I handled him once, and I can handle him
again!” He picks up the body, and staggers over to the railin’ with it. He is just about to throw it overboard when it wraps its two big, long arms around him, and over they go together! Then on the way down, one of them starts laughin’ in a horrible way.

  The mates are yellin’ to launch a boat, but nobody would get into a boat, not on a night like that. We threw a couple of life preservers after them, but everybody knew they wouldn’t help. So that was that. Or was it?

  The first chance I had to go home after that, I went right over to see old Captain Spurshoe, who was captain when the Gertrude was around.

  “Well,” he says, “one trip these two outlandish men shipped aboard the Gertrude. One was McLaren, the other was a really big fella. The big one was always pickin’ on McLaren and thumpin’ him around. And McLaren was always talkin’ about how he would get back at him.

  “Well, this wet, dirty night the two of them was up there alone, and the big one come flyin’ down, killed himself deader’n a herring.

  “McLaren says the foot rope they were using parted and how he almost fell himself. But everybody who saw that rope knew she didn’t give away on her own. She had been cut through with a knife.

  “After that whenever we came into port, McLaren thought we were goin’ to get the police after him, and he’d get pretty scared. But we couldn’t prove anything, so we didn’t try. In the end, I guess the big fella took care of things in his own way. If he was a ghost that came back, that’s what he was—if there be things like ghosts.”

  The Little Black Dog

  Billy Mansfield said that a little black dog followed him wherever he went. But he was the only one who saw it. So people thought he was kind of crazy. To drive the dog away, Billy was always hollering at it, throwing rocks at it. But the dog always came back.