What kind of gathering was this, that the witch needed to arrive riding a man-turned-horse? “They were having a big time inside”: How disturbing is that single sentence description of the goings-on? And who are these people? I think immediately of the “grave and dark-clad company” of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” perhaps now having taken their party inside. Eventually he confesses that “an awful thing happens every night,” saying that “a witch turns me into a horse and rides me all over the countryside.” The farmhands switch beds, and sure enough that night the witch - “an old woman who lived nearby” - enters the room, paralyzes him with “some strange words,” and then slips a bridle over his face, turning him into a horse then riding him cross country to “a house where a party was going on,” with “a lot of music and dancing.” Schwartz writes: “They were having a big time inside.” The story goes on to explain the farmhand’s escape, and his revenge - he returns himself to human form, then goes into the house and bridles the witch, turning her into a horse before having horseshoes nailed to her feet at the local blacksmith - but despite the vengeful ending it’s the farmhand’s undetailed journey into the house I’m most curious about. In “A New Horse,” two farmhands share a room, with one of the farmhands sleeping terribly. Schwartz’s stories have been cut all the way down to the bare essentials, and it creates some additional weirdness, some blankness behind the details that begs the reader to fill in what is not revealed, similar to the kinds of flatness and abstraction you’d find in a fairy tale. MB: One of the first things that strikes me now about most of Schwartz’s stories is how short they are: “A New Horse” is less than two pages, and that’s fairly typical of many of the stories in the collection.
Here, we offer readings of some of our favorite tales from the series, unpacking not just what moved us and scared us as children, but what continues to provoke and maybe terrify even now.Ī New Horse ( Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark):
While there, we discovered our mutual admiration of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, which were foundational reading experiences for both of us, certainly influencing the writers we’d become.
Together, the writer and the artist created one of the most enduring and memorable works of children’s literature published in our lifetime.Īnne Valente and I first met in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University. As skillful as Schwartz’s writing is, the books were also famous for Stephen Gammell’s haunting illustrations which accompanied each story. Skillfully adapted from folklore and urban legends, the stories are gory, disgusting, psychologically complex, and frequently violent, with just enough humor to keep you turning the pages even after you knew reading just one more meant a nightmare or sleeplessness. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.įirst published in 1981, Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels have become a famed rite of passage for many young readers.
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