Why &x27Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark&x27 Frightened So Many Parents in the 1990s | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine

in november 1991, as halloween pumpkins rotted on piles of leaves on sidewalks and fall days grew shorter, nearly 5.5 inches of rain fell on northwestern washington. damp, cool and dark, it was the perfect setting for telling scary stories. But at John Muir Elementary School in Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle, one of the students’ prized collections of spooky tales suddenly disappeared.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, a three-volume set of haunting folklore collected from around the world, all told by author, Alvin Schwartz, had children crawling under their blankets, reading under the blink of an eye. of their flashlights. Featuring nightmarish illustrations by Caldecott Medal winner Stephen Gammell, Scary Stories tells such tales as “Wonderful Sausage,” where a butcher kills his wife, grinds her into a sausage, and then sells it to his drooling customers.

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Some parents were horrified, even comparing Schwartz to cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. That November, Nancy Allen, a Kirkland mother, stole scary stories from the Muir Elementary library. Sandy Vanderburg, president of the PTA, had about 70 parents and teachers sign a petition demanding the removal of the books. Soon, the story spread.

“Parents and teachers in a Seattle suburb will vote next week on a plan to ban three books from an elementary school library,” reported Connie Chung on the CBS Sunday Evening News. “Those who want to get rid of the books say, ‘They’re just too gruesome for young readers.’”

But “terrifying” wasn’t the only word used to describe Schwartz’s books. “devil,” “spiritualism,” “witchcraft,” and “occultism” were heard at pt meetings across the country. Vanderburg continued to protest him, even appearing on Good Morning America. According to the American Library Association, scary stories were the most questioned books of the 1990s.

“My dad was very proud of that,” says Betsy Johnson (Schwartz), the youngest of Schwartz’s four children. “It meant that the books were relevant. people were paying attention. It was great publicity. She used to joke, “When he dies, I want my New York Times obituary to say that I have some of the most banned books in America.”

on monday march 16, 1992, the new york times said: “alvin schwartz, author of best-selling children’s books, many praised for their wit and folklore, but some criticized for frightening young readers too much, He died Saturday at Princeton Medical Center in Princeton, N.J. He was 64 years old and lived in Princeton.”

schwartz published more than 50 books over three decades, many focusing on folklore, and with scary stories he continued this tradition. Touring college libraries, talking to professors, and listening to ghost stories in towns, barn lofts, and boy scout camps across the country, he spun some of the world’s spookiest lore. In “Harold,” perhaps his most popular story, Schwartz recycled an Austro-Swiss legend to tell the story of a possessed scarecrow. With “the white satin evening dress”, he borrowed from Greek mythology to weave the story of a poisoned young woman. and in “The Black Dog,” he was based on a 1920s French fable about a bloodthirsty ghost dog.

“People often think folklore is shared among people in the hills and hollers of places like West Virginia,” says James Deutsch, Curator of Folklife and Popular Culture at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. “Well, yes. But it’s also shared in the apartments and co-ops of New York City. Different groups adapt folklore to their circumstances.”

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In 1954, folklorist and anthropologist William Bascom wrote a much-cited article, “Four Functions of Folklore,” for the American Folklore Magazine. in explaining the importance of folklore, deutsch often returns to bascom. “First, folklore entertains. second, educate. Third, it validates the culture of a group. and fourth, most importantly, folklore generates solidarity, cohesion, among the members of the group”.

But can’t we fulfill these functions, can’t we satisfy these needs, without wetting our pants out of fear? Why are we attracted to scary stories?

“reading scary stories seems to go against our innate response,” says bianca jones marlin, assistant professor of cell research and principal investigator at columbia university’s zuckerman institute. “We respond to fear by releasing neuromodulators, hormones that tell us to fight or flee. our pupils dilate. we take in more light. our blood vessels are constricted. our hearts beat faster. our sympathetic nervous system doesn’t have the energy to relax. our bodies are saying, ‘let’s get out of this situation’.”

but when we read scary stories, our bodies often don’t say “let’s get out of this situation”, but “turn the page”. Marlin goes on to explain, “If you step back into the biology of fear and look at its psychology, the human brain loves curiosity. when we are reading a scary book, there is a layer of protection. we are able to be curious without putting ourselves in danger. fear is not so binary. It’s not all fight or flight. there is something exciting in fear. Whether it’s an emotion that reminds us that we’re alive, or an emotion of the unknown, fear isn’t just about fighting death. It’s also about enjoying life.”

To heighten his young readers’ fear, Schwartz handpicked Stephen Gammell, a little-known, self-taught artist, to illustrate Scary Stories. But by 1981, when the first Scary Stories volume was published, Gammell was rising; by 1989, he won the Caldecott Medal for illustrating Karen Ackerman’s Song and Dance Man. At the Caldecott awards banquet, Gammell, who is known for his colorful socks and refusal to give interviews, gave a strange, rambling speech that confused attendees and is still talked about in the children’s publishing world over 30 years later. (The Association for Library Service to Children, the division of the American Library Association that awards the Caldecott, links to past recipients’ acceptance speeches, though Gammell’s is nowhere to be found).

Caldecott de Gammell’s bizarre acceptance speech, coupled with his seclusion, has made him the subject of folklore, offering a glimpse into the artist’s uniqueness.

“He has very good control over how scary the textures can be,” says paul o. Zelinsky, illustrator and winner of the Caldecott Medal in 1998 for his version of Rapunzel. “draw very carefully, the edges are sharp, mostly. but his work is also indefinite. and then there is the absence. is and is not. when it is, it’s all these murky, ominous, indistinct images that evoke fear: mist, spines, veins, arteries, and insect-like creatures. when it’s not, there are these holes and silhouettes and white areas that contradict the whole scene. two competing spaces that contradict each other. your mind is forced to go back and forth. It’s very disturbing.”

In 1991, when the last book of scary stories was published, Schwartz and Gammell successfully terrorized children around the world. which is why later that year, his work was causing a stir.

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“Spooky stories for kids give parents goosebumps too,” read a headline in the Friday, December 6, 1991 edition of the Seattle Times. vanderburg, the outraged muir elementary school parent, expressed her concern about the stories saying, “this is adding fuel to the fire, giving kids ideas of what to do to scare other kids. there is so much violence in them.”

but not everyone agreed with vanderburg. “I met with the library and the director and asked if we couldn’t come to a compromise,” Vanderburg said Monday, Sept. 2. 20, 1993, chicago tribune edition. “They weren’t willing to compromise.”

betsyhearne, the editor of the scholarly journal the children’s book center newsletter, also protested the vanderburg protest. “These stories help children deal with reality by putting faces to what they fear,” Ella Hearne said in the same Tribune article. “Things that children fear don’t go away just because they can’t read about them. it is a tragic mistake to deprive a child of a book that will allow him to face and discuss the things that frighten him. suppressing those fears only makes them more fearful.” The story ran under the headline, “Who is Alvin Schwartz and why do parents want to ban his books?”

The series of scary stories would be challenged again and again, surpassing Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to become all three. most challenged books of the decade. .

“I recently flipped through a copy and they really are written at a completely kid-friendly level,” Johnson says of his father’s work. “I am a librarian in the children’s room of a public library. Today, parents are very involved in what their children read, the whole helicopter parenting thing. my parents weren’t like that at all. my father was a former journalist, a big supporter of the first amendment. I think he was offended by the notion that parents thought they had a right to tell children, who he believed had a lot of agency, what they could read.”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first volume of Schwartz’s scary stories. In recent years, Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro and director André Øvredal produced a film based on the books, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark; Filmmaker Cody Meirick created a documentary, Scary Stories; and to date, the books have sold more than 7 million copies.

“The books became even more popular, and we were always saddened that my father was never able to reap the full benefits of their success,” Johnson says. “He was very hardworking. I remember going to sleep listening to him type at night – the clicking of his typewriter keys was a very soothing sound.”

alvin schwartz died of lymphoma on march 14, 1992. the author’s death put an end to all the stories he had yet to write. the question of what remains to be said is as real as the howling wind, the answer as elusive as a shadow in the night.

“My father enjoyed his job and the freedom it gave him to explore what interested him,” Johnson says. “I am convinced that if he were alive today, he would still be producing good work.”

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