Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Jim, the doomed young farmhand in “Cold as Clay,” shows that love—as well as vengeance—can survive the grave. Separated from his true love by her snobbish father, Jim soon dies of a “broken heart.” Undaunted, he makes one last date with her, showing up at her door on her father’s best horse. Knowing, perhaps, that her father has concealed the news of his death from her, Jim rides her all the way to her father’s house as a way of revealing the truth to her and shaming her controlling father.

For the dead to play the role of the living is no easy task, and Jim suffers a “terrible” headache during the long ride. Tenderly, his girlfriend ties her handkerchief around his “cold as clay” head, a loving gesture that provides the final proof of his (literally) death-defying act of love. When Jim returns to his grave, he keeps the handkerchief wrapped around his head.

As a rural butcher who, in “The White Wolf,” finds a lucrative side hustle in killing wolves for the bounty, Bill Williams makes himself rich in his predatory new profession. After killing thousands of wolves, Bill feels some pangs of guilt (or perhaps gratitude) and vows never to harm another of the animals who made him so wealthy. Granted, this is not much of a sacrifice: Since he’s almost completely wiped out the wolf population, his profit margin, were he to continue, would be very low.

Not long afterward, Bill decides to break his vow when his “pet cow” falls victim to a (perhaps supernatural) white wolf that seems impervious to bullets. Tying up a lamb to lure the wolf, Bill hides nearby with a rifle, perhaps thinking that his long experience with killing wolves will give him more success than the other hunters. Ironically, his wolf-killing career is what dooms him: After tearing out Bill’s throat, the white wolf vanishes, leaving the lamb unharmed—suggesting that Bill was its target all along.

Hero of “The Haunted House,” the preacher is an elderly but courageous man who selflessly tries to bring peace to a ghost who noisily haunts a nearby house. He suspects that the ghost will not rest easy until some action, perhaps of justice, is done on its behalf, so he asks it repeatedly, “What do you want?” (29). His courage and determination coax an answer out of the female ghost, who tells him how she was murdered for her wealth 10 years before. Finding her remains in the cellar, he gives her a proper burial. Being a preacher, he is also ideally placed to expose her murderer, who, as it happens, belongs to his congregation. The next Sunday, obeying the ghost’s instructions, he places her moldering finger joint in his collection plate and then watches as it glues itself to the murderer’s hand. For his courage and altruism, the ghost rewards the preacher with her hidden wealth, which he donates to his church.

The protagonist of the eponymous story, scoffing at a spooky story told at a party as “superstition,” boldly volunteers to stand on a grave after dark, perhaps tempted by a boy’s offer of a dollar if she does it. Confidently, she even agrees to stick a knife in the soil to leave as proof. However, she lacks the full courage of her convictions, feeling “scared” upon first entering the dark graveyard. Upon planting the knife, the cool rationality that she showed at the party leaves her when she feels an invisible force pulling her downward toward the grave. In her terror, she doesn’t realize that she has simply pinned her dress to the grave with the knife. Hence, the girl dies of fright while trying to prove her courage. Before taking the bet, the girl might have considered the ancient Greek maxim “Know thyself”—since she turned out to be more superstitious, deep down, than she knew.

Trying to help out a friend, the hero of “A New Horse” volunteers to switch beds with him to see why his friend’s nightly sleeps make him feel so exhausted. He learns, to his dismay, that a witch has been changing his friend into a horse every night and taking him for rides. Unlike the girl who stood on a grave, however, he faces this ordeal with clear-headedness and courage, cleverly escaping the magic bridle that tethers him. He also has the presence of mind to memorize the magic spell that the witch used to transform him and uses it on her as revenge, even going so far as to have her shod at a blacksmith’s. Afterward, he returns the “new horse,” complete with new horseshoes, to her husband, who presumably does not know his wife’s true nature. In this, the heroic farmhand altruistically performs the role of marriage counselor.

Joseph Blackwell, the protagonist of “Room for One More,” visits Philadelphia on business and has trouble falling asleep in his new accommodations. Late at night, uncertain whether he is awake or dreaming, he looks out the window and sees a “long, black hearse” full of people, the driver of which calls to him, “There is room for one more” (47). Unsettled by this, Joseph refuses to enter an almost-packed elevator the next day because one of the passengers resembles the hearse driver and calls the same invitation to him. By avoiding the elevator, he escapes a deadly accident that kills all the other passengers.

It is unclear, from the story, whether Joseph’s vision of the hearse is a dream—e.g., an instance of the psychic power of foresight—or if some larger, supernatural force has sent him a warning in order to save him. It also may all be coincidence. In any case, he has the good sense to take the side of caution.

In “The Hook,” a young man named Donald takes his girlfriend to a movie and then drives her to the top of a hill, presumably for a romantic tryst. The radio spoils his fun by announcing that a killer with a hook for a hand has escaped from a nearby prison, which alarms Sarah, who wants to leave. Donald reacts petulantly, with a chauvinistic remark about how “girls always are afraid of something” (62), but finally agrees to drive her home.

Parking outside her house, he peevishly refuses to join her inside for cocoa, claiming that he has to get home despite just telling her on the hill that it was too early to go home. Clearly, Donald wants to punish her for ruining their romantic moment on the hill with her skittishness. However, going around to open her door, he sees shocking evidence of his foolishness and their narrow escape: the killer’s hook dangling from the handle of her door. Schwartz doesn’t state where Donald learned a lesson, but having his girlfriend’s fear proved correct serves as a cautionary tale for the reader.

The female protagonist of “High Beams,” a high school senior driving home one night from a basketball game, is not easily scared. Noticing a truck trailing her closely, she does not become worried until it begins flashing its high beams for no apparent reason and then follows her onto a side road that few vehicles take. When she steps on the accelerator, so does the driver of the truck, still flashing its high beams on and off until she becomes quite frightened. To her credit, she does not panic or huddle in fear. When she finally reaches her house, followed closely by the truck, she runs inside and tells her father to call the police. Then, she finds, to her surprise and horror, that the truck driver’s menacing behavior saved her life: The true marauder was in the backseat of her car all along.