Nothing scared me more as a child than the following three books:

Terrifying me to the point where my father actually complained to my elementary school over allowing something as psychologically damaging as these books to be checked out by kids, my interest in these books was rekindled when I saw the anthology for sale at Borders one day. The stories, edited and adapted from folklore and urban legends by Alvin Schwartz, were actually the least terrifying aspect of the three books. While the books did possess a few creepy-as-fuck stories, it was the nightmare-inducing illustrations Stephen Gammell that forced me to sleep with the light on for God knows how long. Let’s examine some, shall we?

The look of hydrocephaly is not scary in of itself, but when it looks like you’re missing half your skin, have a sealed ocular cavity, are completely bald, and are rendered in black and white, it’s absolutely terrifying. This image accompanied the introduction of the second book, where Alvin Schwartz used the T. S. Eliot-coined phrase “hoo-ha” to describe the fear elicited from scary stories. A “hoo-ha” is  a euphemism for the vagina. Deduce from that what you will.

What. The. Fuck. is that? According to the story for which it was illustrated, it’s nothing more than a ghost that likes to give “raspberries” to poor, frightened children. To me, it’s the ultimate cure for constipation, because if I saw that thing sitting on a dresser, in the dark, staring at me with those two dark holes where eyes should be, I would shit myself.

The Macy’s Day Parade has been switched to Halloween. Is that thing smiling?

This scared me the most when I was a kid, as it combined my fear of spiders and my tendency to believe everything I read in a convenient little package. It also looks like they capitalized on the “creepy long-black haired girl” thing before the Japanese ever did. This picture is what prompted my dad to chew out the school and my twin brother to call me a wuss. I WAS FUCKING SEVEN! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?!?!

Screenshots of every page of each of the three books can be found at http://www.imgdump.info/, though fair warning: pornographic ads plague the many pages, as does an ad to become a male escort. Coincidentally, if any ladies in the Denver area need a date, I can be reached at http://www.loweredexpectations.com/male-escorts.