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Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination, A Formative Read

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I have a lot of books that played a role in my literacy voyage. These include Roald Dahl’s Young Adult/Adult novels to R.L. Stine’s Goosebump series and others. But there are a few that really got me rolling on loving horror and the occult. One of which was Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Alex Hamer.

This was a book that I read many, many times. I can remember reading this book as a kid at my parents’ house. In fact, one of my middle school teachers let me read a few chapters from this book to the class one afternoon. What a memory!

We are going to talk about this book today because it is an excellent collection of folklore and mythology. It also spans the gamut of gruesome to horrific. Hopefully this inspires you to pick up a copy wherever you can find one. While formative for me, it can be inspiring for you!

Synopsis of Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Ghosts and Madness

Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a clever book. It comes from the author’s ability to play with myth and folklore. There are truly horrific tales that come from the annals of world history. Yet, it is clever in construction. Each chapter begins with a short history lesson or synopsis that pulls the reader into the story. It’s also clever in scope, spanning the world through stories most of us have heard and new ones that we won’t soon forget.

To get a good example of how this book operates, we need to look no further than the first chapter, which is titled “The Bleeding House Mystery.”

It begins:

“The strange disappearance of Buford and Ellen Penrose was a haunting, unsolved mystery for eight years…until the awful night when blood began dripping from the ceiling of their home, sending the gathering of fashionable dinner guests fleeing in horror.”

Now, if that doesn’t intrigue you in the least then I am not sure how else to pique your interest. The author packed this book with memorable haunts. And they page after page is laden with exciting narratives.

Buried Alive

The stories in Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination continue in grisly entertainment in the proceeding chapters. “Ghostly Escorts” tells the tale of lost ships at sea. Ships that are filled with phantoms. Meanwhile, “The Pleading Ghost” presents perhaps the scariest way to expire—premature burial. It spares nothing in its revelation of a poor young woman suffering her last moments on Earth. She is confined in a coffin six-feet under. Though her struggle is never revealed–she fought until her last breath.

It reads:

“The hair that remained on the skull was disheveled and the knees were bent as if in an effort to force open the coffin lid. Worse, much worse, there were bloody, parallel scratches on the wood of the inside coffin lid, and a single fingernail was still imbedded in the soft pine.”

Additionally, there are stories of the occult in Egypt and psychics predicting their own deaths. There is also one of my favorites: the story of the bloodthirsty Sawney Beane family. They were a family so grim that they terrorized and cannibalized the Irish hills of Galloway for years. Eventually, King James’ army came to the hills and arrested the family.

Final Thoughts on These Strange Tales

I love hearing stories about ghosts and monsters because there is a rawness and realness to what humans believe they have experienced. Oral storytelling is excellent as well. That realness extends itself to Strange Tales of Mystery and Imagination, because there is something conversational that likens each story to homespun horror, as if the author is in the same room next to a roaring fire regaling an audience with the macabre.

While it may sound dark–and it is dark–it’s actually a really fun book that filled many of my days with delightful fright. Regardless, if you can imagine a young Michigander weened on Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, then you might understand why this book is important to me and my reading journey. Even these days, I will absent-mindedly pluck it off the bookshelf and flip through the pages. The stories are just that intriguing.

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An Analysis of a Haunting Poem: “The Hearse Song”

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Much like learning about the multiple stories behind “London Bridge is Falling Down,” the equally unsettling “The Hearse Song” had a grisly impact on me as a kid. I guess mortality is a weird thing to think about when you are young. I remember purposefully stepping on a caterpillar when I was a child and then running to my room in tears because of what I had done.

The origins of “The Hearse Song” are unclear, but historians indicate its appearance as a tune that American and British soldiers would sing during WWI. This makes sense because soldiers of WWI met excessive violence in the trenches from both combatants and disease. Perhaps it was a cathartic song for soldiers to sing because of the ubiquity of death. Moreover, “The Hearse Song” encapsulates the mulchy nothingness that we become after death and reminds us that we come to be one with the Earth—even though it is in a macabre and grotesque way.

As the poem tells us: “The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out, / The worms play pinochle on your snout.”

If you haven’t recited it in your head in a while, here’s a popular version of the gothic poem.

“The Hearse Song“ by Unknown

Don’t ever laugh when a hearse goes by,
Or you may be the next to die.

They wrap you up in a bloody sheet
|And bury you under about six feet.

All goes well for a couple of weeks,
But then your coffin begins to leak.

The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout.

Your stomach turns a slimy green,
And pus comes out of you like whipped cream.

You lap it up with a piece of bread,
And that’s what you eat when you are dead.

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‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’: Disturbing Imagery and Delightful Tales

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There are foundational books that shape the way we think about the world around us when we are kids. Some of those books are childish, such as Clifford or Amelia Bedelia. Meanwhile, some of those books are far more adult, like Goosebumps or the book we are analyzing today, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

All we really have to do is point out the illustrations of this book. No doubt, they are why most people remember the book fondly. Though, if we take a closer look, the stories are also designed in a way to be quickly consumed and universally shared. Join us as we delve into this strikingly dark collection of folklore.

About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Schwartz was a journalist and author of more than 50 books, and he drew a great deal of inspiration from folklore and urban legends. He also wrote about folk tales and legends aside from this sinister collection. Likewise, he wrote poetry about similar subjects.

This was a controversial collection when it was published in Oct. of 1981. Considering this, advocacy groups frequently challenged this book for its disturbing imagery and dark content.

For instance, in an article written for The Argus-Press, an “enraged” mother shares her concern about the content in More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

“This was way past being scary,” she said. “There were two stories in there that were really objectionable. One was really disgusting. It was about a man who murders his wife, chops her up, puts her through a meat grinder and sells her as sausage” (The Argus-Press)

The woman above is angry at the story titled “Wonderful Sausage,” which, is an excellently wicked little story. Certainly, the graphic depictions within the book caused some alarm, as well as the artwork.

As such, the true selling point of this book outside of Schwartz’s excellent storytelling is Stephen Gammell’s drawings. Gammell has worked on many different projects and won the Caldecott Medal for US picture book illustration in 1989. In all three collections of scary stories, Gammell’s illustrations are truly something to marvel at because they are ungodly scary and so completely original. This is exactly what you want out of horror art.

Here is an article comparing Brett Helquist’s more modern drawings compared to Stephen Gammell’s bleak, esoteric ones. You can see the difference in visual impact almost immediately.

Contents

The original book was published on Oct. 14, 1981 and features 29 stories, including:

  • The Big Toe
  • Me Tie Dough-ty Walker!
  • Alligators
  • Room for One More
  • The Wendigo
  • The Hook
  • High Beams

The ones listed are certainly highlights. However, a book so wrapped up in nostalgia has endless highlights. The stories range from horror to comedy to just plain strange. There is a great variety in this collection and they have that “folkloric” quality, which borders on urban legend.

They are just astonishingly spooky all around.

Conclusion

Horror gives us insight into our own fears, anxieties, and humanity. This is important for us to understand so we can make better sense of the world around us. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a great example of a book that does just that. It puts the reader in the face of murder, mortality, and all things that go bump in the night.