Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

If you ask a group of Millennials what they remember about the most-banned book series of the ‘90s, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the answers will come fast and panicky, often in incomplete sentences. The intervening decades haven’t dulled the primal shock these collections of urban legends, regional folk tales, and campfire stories have left on their now-adult readers, a feeling that’s equal parts nostalgic and nightmarish. Love for the series has been sustained by a recent re-issuing of the books (one that restored illustrator Stephen Gammell’s horrifying but beloved illustrations, which were briefly replaced with tamer artwork in 2011), a documentary about the series and author, and now, finally, a big-screen adaptation.