Do you remember the boy who finds a big toe in his garden and eats it for dinner, only to be haunted by a nine-toed ghost that very evening? What about the young bride who accidentally locks herself in a trunk during an innocent game of hide-and-seek?
If you’re a child of the ’80s or ’90s, you might remember these tales from the classic collection “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.” Or, more likely, you might remember the horrifying illustrations that accompanied them.
Petra Mayer, an editor at NPR Books, recommends that if you’re looking for scary reads this Halloween season, you should try out Emily Carroll’s new graphic scary story collection “Through the Woods,” Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel “The Haunting of Hill House” or revisit “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.”
Mayer also recommends this Reddit thread on two-sentence horror stories.
Guest
- Petra Mayer, editor at NPR Books. She tweets @Petramatic.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.