Learnt Offerings: Don’t Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
If you caught the film Scare Me on Shudder over the weekend, chances are the movie made you realize just how much you love a good old school campfire tale and when it comes to campfire tales, you really can't do much better than Alvin Schwartz's iconic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. From their ghoulish illustrations, which provided a gateway into harder-edged horror to the stories themselves, all taken directly from folklore Schwartz had come across in his exhaustive research, the Scary Stories series has been a massive influence on my life in ways I'm not even sure I can measure.
Courtesy of a mass marketing reprinting, which has the books available in every Target and Walmart in the land and the strength of the recent film and even documentary adaptations, the books are now scaring the living shit out of a whole new generation of fans. The only bad part is that there are only three thin volumes in the original series. Clearly, I'm not the only one who's been hungry for more.
Jonathan Maberry is an author whose name is well-known to horror fans. As the editor of Don't Turn Out the Lights, Maberry has assembled a hell of a roster here. Don't Turn Out the Lights is positively packed with the work of many of the best horror and genre writers out there today. From Kami Garcia to Josh Malerman to R.L. Stine, the thirty-five stories here do an honestly pitch-perfect job of capturing the spirit of the original series. There's even a story by Are You Afraid of the Dark creator DJ MacHale. Even the illustrations get the feeling right, capturing all the murk and menace of the stories in a way that calls back to the OGs beautifully.
If you're looking for something short and sweet to spend your October evenings with, this book is a one-stop-shop.