If you grew up in the 1990s, you knew them. They were elementary school hot commodities; usually you had to sign up on the library’s waiting list just to get your hands on a copy. Alvin Schwartz’s “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark” series was, at its heart, a repackaging of folk tales, urban legends, and campfire ghost stories — but to the wide-eyed gaze of a child in the days before the internet, these books were the holy grail of scaring yourself shitless.
Whether it was the open-endedness of a tale that really got you or the drippy, gruesome illustrations by Stephen Gammell, “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark” left all the other ’90s kids horror in the dust. “Are You Afraid Of The Dark”? Creepy, but you could still sleep with the lights off. “Goosebumps”? Good for a few scares (and occasionally a few laughs) but…
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“A Chameleon”
by
Anton Chekhov
The police superintendent Otchumyelov is walking across the market square wearing a new overcoat and carrying a parcel under his arm. A red-haired policeman strides after him with a sieve full of confiscated gooseberries in his hands. There is silence all around. Not a soul in the square. . . . The open doors of the shops and taverns look out upon God’s world disconsolately, like hungry mouths; there is not even a beggar near them.
“So you bite, you damned brute?” Otchumyelov hears suddenly. “Lads, don’t let him go! Biting is prohibited nowadays! Hold him! ah . . . ah!”
There is the sound of a dog yelping. Otchumyelov looks in the direction of the sound and sees a dog, hopping on three legs and looking about her, run out of Pitchugin’s timber-yard. A man in a starched cotton shirt, with his waistcoat unbuttoned…
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~ (cincylibrary:)
As night advanced he crouched down under the altar, which supported a dusty image of Buddha. He saw nothing strange and heard no sound till after midnight. Then there came a goblin, having but half a body and one-eye, and said: “Hitokusai!” (There is the smell of a man). But the samurai did not move. The goblin went away.
And more from Lafcadio Hearn – In Ghostly Japan:
http://virtuallibrary.cincinnatilibrary.org/virtuallibrary/vl_oldrare.aspx?ResID=338
Want to read some wonderful short stories? Take a trip from the comfort of your own living room? If yes, then click the link below:
http://www.onlineclasses.org/resources/the-50-best-short-stories-of-all-time/
