My son is young and doesn’t watch much of the spooky stuff. He likes some of the classic Universal Monsters and a few of the Goosebumps books. He does, however, enjoy telling highly imaginative scary stories of his own creation. And I love them. He really gets into it, it’s performance art like all the best campfire tales.
Whether you hold a flashlight under your chin in a darkened room or sit around the fire pit in the backyard, it’s a longstanding tradition to scare friends and family with tales of hook-handed maniacs on lovers lane or phantom hitchhikers pursuing lone drivers on desolate stretches of road. Just as the bogeyman attacks, you let out a loud yell (or have assistance from an equally eager accomplice) and your audience jumps out of their socks with fright.
It feels All-American, but it’s a global custom. I’m sure the cavemen did it, too, in their own way.
Lower the lights or build a bonfire in the north forty, it’s time to roast some freakin’ marshmallows and tell some creepy stories. Make up your own or take a few cues from folklorist Alvin Schwartz’s legendary Scary Stories series.
The family that scares together, stays together.
Curio Macabre 