Scary Stories Audio Collection audiobook

Still awesome!These books are filled with short stories written down by the great Alvin Schwartz. These stories are comprised of myths, folklore and urban legends from all over the world. But beware dear reader, these stories may be too scary for you! 😱Wonderfully written sets of little tales of horror. These stories were a beloved part of my childhood. I can still remember my friends and I staying up late at night sitting in a circle with a flashlight and these books and taking turns reading our favorite stories to each other. As we did our best to freak each other out so these stories remain ingrained in my memory. They bring back fond memories and are still delightful to read even as an adult.Stephen Gammell's horrifying illustrations still give me the creeps even as an adult. They are without a doubt the stuff that nightmares are made of.I look forward to seeing what Guillermo del Toro can do to bring these horrorifying images to life on the big screen!As any true lover of horror will tell you, these books are a must to add to your collection. And if you haven't already read them, then you definitely should! Just remember to tell these scary stories... in the dark. 👻Or you can watch my review on YouTube here:https://youtu.be/M0H2gOyFgfU

No voy a hacer una reseña demasiado extensa porque, para quienes conocen mis videos y me han escuchado hablar de esto, sabrán que voy a hacer un especial sobre estos tres libros + la película muy pronto. Pero pueden ver reseñas individuales de los primeros dos libros en sus respectivas ediciones originales. Con este ejemplar pude releer los dos primeros, y leer por primera vez el tercero. Todos me encantaron, y si bien son cuentos que no se destacan por una narrativa perfecta o complejidad en sus tramas, me parece que es importante reivindicar estos libros (y urgente). Pronto haré ese especial, así que los invito a mi canal: https://www.youtube.com/coosburton

"Don't you ever laugh as a hearse goes by,For you may be the next to die..."This book still holds up, I love it just as much now as I did when I first read it as a kid! The Hearse Song is a classic as well as High Beams, The Hook, The Babysitter, & love a good vanishing hitchhiker story. All of creepy folklores greatest hits combined into a great collection!

I had all three of Schwartz's Scary Stories books as a child, and remember reading them over and over. The tales are mostly re-tellings of classic urban legends. The stories are creepy, but what really made this book great were the disturbing images by Stephen Gammell. I remember staying up late reading these stories and staring at the images with a mixture of fascination and horror.Seriously, pretend you're a ten year old girl for a second and just look at these. Now an adult, I went in search of a copy of this book to share with my nephew who loves scary stories. Much to my dismay, I learned that the original version with the images by Stephen Gammell is out of print and has been banned by several institutions! The newer versions have a new illustrator and less-creepy imagery. Stephen Gammell's illustrations MADE this book. If you're looking to buy, try to find an old copy if you can. Make sure the seller's description says the illustrations are by Gammell. It's totally worth it. It will probably freak your kids out, but that's the whole point.

Usually I would've re-read this in October, but since the movie was coming out I had to crack this scary motherfucker open for the hundredth time. When I was a kid I had all three of these books and the illustrations used to scare the shit out of me. Only two of the stories REALLY scared me and those were "Harold" and "Red Spot" and those two stories are heavily featured in the movie. I can't wait to see the movie this Tuesday and film a Book VS Movie video on it, I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

So pumped to see this movie! Review to come.

If you were born in the 80's, there's no way you escaped reading the Scary Stories books when you were young. This edition collects all three books, along with all those illustrations you remember! I found the Treasury edition on sale while waiting for the DC to NY bus, and I had to have it. I've pulled it out at several black outs since then to scare my foreign national room mates who recognize some of the stories from versions in their home countries. And yes, they can still be scary to twenty-somethings. As always, what really makes these books are the strange and oozing illustrations by Gammell. These images were burned into my brain when I was seven, and it's amazing how vivid they've stayed within my memory. The stories are simply told and demand to be retold with your own personal flair. As an adult, I was able to appreciate the Notes and Sources at the end of each book, listing the origin and analysis of the story. After talking with my room mates, I almost wish there was a 4th book going beyond the Western Ghost stories. Buy it. Read it to your children. You know you want to.

Wonderful memories These books meant so much to me as a youth! What better reason to revisit them before I see the film version tomorrow!!!!

Even though they are probably aimed for the 10- to 12-year-old audience, I had a lot of fun reading these tales. They would be perfect around-the-campfire tales with the right storyteller. They also served a dual-purpose for me: spooky reading + banned/challenged books. I also enjoyed the end notes detailing the background & history of the various tales.

Ah, the memories. I recently picked up this omnibus of spooky favorites from childhood, including the three “Scary Stories” books by Alvin Schwartz “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” “More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” and “Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones” and read them for the first time in my adulthood. I really don’t know what about these dark, macabre, downright creepy tales fascinated me so much as a child; normally, I was terrified of anything remotely scary, having to leave the room if a movie showed even the slightest tinge of blood and shying away from even the most innocuous rubber zombie mask. Perhaps because of this, I found these tingly stories all the more attractive. Perhaps, in spite of my fear, I enjoyed a feeling of dark, ghostly unease, and reading about the supernatural allowed me to experience it on my own terms. From then on, I was hooked on reading of ghostly, eerie places and phenomena (both “real” and fantasy) and the spooky atmosphere of these and similar stories filled me with a delicious dread. Even if I still could not bear to walk into the horror section of the video store, I relished “Scary Stories.” Especially around late October, as Halloween (always a favorite holiday) approached and the wind blew the leaves from the trees over the plowed fields and pumpkin patches, I returned to such stories again and again.After so many years have passed, I am still greatly impressed by each of Schwartz's “Scary Stories” entries gathered in this one volume. Despite being short, none more than three pages these stories are still extremely effective, still bringing chills to my sister and me (one particular story my sister could still not sit through). The majority are drawn whole cloth by Schwartz from the deep lake of American and Canadian folklore, which in turn takes aspects from ancient stories from a multitude of cultures. These stories touch the very essence of human fears, desires, and delights. Each remains deceptively simple in its telling, rarely going into detail about the ghostly events they describe but leaving just enough to get across the plot, and they are all the more spooky for it. Interestingly, many don’t really have a point or “moral,” which lends to them an aura of “truth” as if they were an actual recalled experience. Also, it must be said that Stephen Gammell's art that goes along with many of the stories really gives them that extra edge of dread. These drawings have a drippy, macabre, unsettling ambiance that turns even the most mundane object (a chair, a stairway) into a horrifying, unnerving apparition. They are without a doubt the most frightening aspect of the book, and Gammell was an excellent choice to illustrate these scenes. Not all is scary, though. Each book also includes a collection of joke stories that bring humor as a counterpoint to the horror of the unknown. Best of all, in my mind are the copious references, citations, notes, and bibliography that Schwartz includes tracing the provenance and background of each of the tales, and invites the reader to continue their exploration of spooky folklore from North America and elsewhere. For me folklore has a timeless quality that lends itself to telling around a fire in the dark, delighting in imagining all the spooky details.In conclusion, the Scary Stories theory is ideal in my mind for spine tingly storytelling for both adults and children at any time of the year, but particularly around Halloween. I was happy to see that this book remains as memorable now as it had when I was just an easily frightened kid!

Este libro es espeluznante y divertido al mismo tiempo, pero aún más valioso de lo que puede parecer a simple vista. La exhaustiva labor filológica realizada por Alvin Schwartz a lo largo de los años para reunir estas historias, transmitidas fundamentalmente a nivel oral, es fundamental para entender que nuestros miedos son los mismos, independientemente de dónde vengamos y de qué tiempo. Estas historias se han contado, se cuentan y se seguirán contando para hacernos estremecer de terror.

I spent my parents' hard earned money at scholastic book fairs, as an elementary school kid, on all three of the individual "Scary Stories" collections. I was thrilled the other day when I saw this treasury in the bookstore, and couldn't resist bringing it home. It combines all three of the collections, and includes the amazing illustrations by Stephen Gammell that absolutely scared the bejeezus out of me as a child!I have to admit, reading through the stories now, that even as a kid these must have been pretty vanilla. I guess the fact that they have whole chapters dedicated to stories where the last line instructs you to jump at one of your friends yelling "AAAAAAAGHGHGHGH!" should have given it away. Still, there are a lot of stories that honor the old, classic urban legends; you know, phantom hitch-hikers, hook-handed psychopaths on lover's lane, face-nesting spiders, and dog-sized rats from Mexico. The short story, "The Wendigo", pays homage to Algernon Blackwood in a way that was lost on me as a child; it gave me chills for far, far longer than any of the others.The real reason this book has such an unshakable soft-spot in my heart, though?The drawings... For goodness' sake, the drawings! Stephen Gammell's artwork gave me nightmares back then that still make me shiver today. Yet, even as a kid, I was addicted to them. When I was six, I wanted to tattoo myself with them. Today... I just want to paper the walls of my office with them.

Because the movie for this series is coming out soon, I decided to re-visit the source of a few childhood traumas I experienced reading this as a kid lolHonestly though, even when I first read the books in elementary/early middle school; it wasn’t really the stories that bothered me [except the ‘Red Spot’/spider-eggs-in-face story] - it’s the art by Stephen Gammel. That’s what ultimately stuck in my head after all this time, because even know some of the more macabre and surreal art provided for the books are just incredible, and super creepy for children’s stories. Most of the stories are rehashes of urban legends or well known lore, and going back and reading them as an adult really hit me just how simple they are, and keeping to the point. It was also pretty amusing how blunt they are. Essentially; ‘The couple always fought and fought. Then one day the wife had enough. She cut off his head, and that was that.’ It was also amusing to see how many were written with the idea of reading aloud to others, including clues as to how/what sort of voice you should use to do so, and when to jump out and scare the shit out of your friends, lol.It was a nice nostalgia trip, for sure. I hope the movie keeps at least some of the creeps and charm the series does.