You know -- for kids!

June 18, 2006 11:21 PM

OK. Here's another question about a book I read as a kid, 25 or 30 years ago. It was a collection of short stories where truly horrible things happened...

All I can remember is that the book had a single illustration for each horror story, the stories were 10 or 20 pages long each, and one of the stories in particular involved a person who was slowly starved to death while being hung from wires in the middle of a locked room as some form of punishment.

I think that there were several similar books by the same author, but I can't be sure. They were extremely popular reading in my school.

Any help?

posted by solid-one-love to media & arts (5 comments total)

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?
posted by lemuria at 12:01 AM on June 19, 2006

I think I may have had a book in the same series, at least it fits the description and the time period. The one I'm remembering was called "The Haunted Planet", the others were "Haunted ____'s" as well I think...

One story had this carnival guy who had a little robot named Mighty Mite that actually had a midget inside, but he didn't take care of the midget or let him out of the robot much, so he (the midget) died. Then the haunted robot killed the other guy.

It also had this one story about this kid wandering into this haunted house where it was all seasons at once and a bunch of dead ghost kids hung out. And they'd all been killed by this Lurch looking monster that was there. That story was the most blatantly surreal thing I had ever read at that age. It was almost lovecraftian, because the horror in it didn't make any sense in the general wrongdoing/poetic justice sense, it was just a kid getting killed by things he didn't understand.
posted by shanevsevil at 12:20 AM on June 19, 2006

Could it be Der Struwwelpeter?
posted by hot soup girl at 4:52 AM on June 19, 2006

It doesn't sound like the tone of stories in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series.

It sounds more like something from Tales to Tremble By, although I only read the sequel, and it's not the sequel.
posted by muddgirl at 5:24 AM on June 19, 2006

I'm pretty sure it's Tales to Tremble By. This has been bugging me for years. Thanks!
posted by solid-one-love at 12:53 PM on June 19, 2006