More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvis Schwartz (illustrated by Stephen Gammell).
Title: More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Author: Alvin Schwartz (collected from folklore and retold).
Artist: Stephen Gammell.
Genre: Fiction, literature, short stories, horror, mystery.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1984.
Summary: A collection of 27 stories and 1 song, all adapted from folklore, retold for children, and illustrated. In Something Was Wrong, a man slowly realizes something is wrong when he finds himself in the middle of a street with no memories of how he got there. In The Wreck, Fred meets a great girl at a school dance, but she's not exactly what she seems. In One Sunday Morning, a lady who thinks she's attending her weekly Sunday morning mass suddenly realizes she has attended the (very) wrong service. Sounds is a story about a haunted house where a group of fishermen hear a chilling reenactment of violence one stormy night. In a Weird Blue Light, a bunch of blockade runners in the end of the 19th century encounter a ghost pirate ship. In Somebody Fell From Aloft, a dark story of murder unfolds on a ship when a mysterious man falls out of the sky, dead. In The Little Black Dog, when a man kills another in cold blood, followed by his dog, he begins to see the little black dog everywhere he goes. In Clinkity-Clink, a grave-digger sorely regrets his actions of stealing two silver dollars used to keep a dead old woman's eyes closed, when night comes. In The Bride, a wedding-day hide-and-seek game has tragic consequences. In Rings on Her Fingers, a grave-robber is in for a nasty surprise when he violates a recent grave of a young woman. In The Drum, two young girls get a cruel joke played on them by a gypsy girl when she tells them she will give them an extraordinary toy, but only if they're very bad to deserve it. In The Window, a young woman named Margaret is terrified when she spies a horror coming to her through her window. In The Wonderful Sausage, a butcher discovers a perfect, though hard-to-come-by, ingredient for his new "special sausage." In The Cat's Paw, a butcher laying in wait in his smoke-house to catch a regular thief gets an unexpected surprise. In The Voice, Ellen begins to hear a terrifying voice during the night, fast approaching. In "Oh, Susanna!", a young woman makes a terrifying mistake when she attributes the humming of a familiar tune to her roommate. In The Man in the Middle, Sally has a chilling midnight subway ride when the only other passengers are helping along a man who seems decidedly off. In The Cat in a Shopping Bag, a present thief gets her just desserts when she grabs the very wrong bag. In The Bed by the Window, three elderly men in a nursing home wait their turn to get the bed by the window and have a connection to the outside world, but when one gets greedy, he makes a devastating discovery. In The Dead Man's Hand, when a group of medical students decide to play a practical joke on one of their own, it goes unexpectedly awry. The Ghost in the Mirror describes a few variations of the legend of summoning a ghost from a mirror in the dark. In The Curse, a fraternity initiation goes horribly wrong when the new initiates are taken to a murder scene and asked to stay there along in the dark for an hour. In The Church, a man seeking shelter from a thunder storm in an abandoned church suddenly discovers he's not alone. In The Bad News two men make a pact that whichever gets to Heaven first will find a way to let the other know whether they play baseball there. In Cemetery Soup, an old woman makes a mistake when she takes a bone she finds in the cemetery home to make soup with. BA-ROOOM! is a song about two people in bed unaware they're both dead. In Thumpity-Thump, when a new family moves into a haunted house, they discover the very first night the house has secrets it wants them to uncover.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥
~~Hoo-Ha's (Introduction).
♥
~~Somebody Fell From Aloft.
♥
~~The Little Black Dog.
♥
~~Clinkity-Clink.
♥
~~The Bride.
♥
~~Rings on Her Fingers.
♥
~~The Drum.
♥
~~The Window.
♥
~~"Oh, Susannah!"
♥
~~The Church.
♥
O'Leary is dead,
and O'Riley don't know it.
O'Riley is dead,
and O'Leary don't know it.
They both are dead
in the very same bed,
and neither one knows
that the other one's dead.
BA-ROOOM! BA-ROOOM!
~~BA-ROOOM!