“We contacted Alvin Schwartz’s son Peter, who ended up being very supportive of the project and even bought two copies,” Shane says. In a world where beloved franchises are attracting audiences and original IP has a tough time breaking through, it makes sense that Tuckfield and Hunt are exploring a franchise they’ve loved since kids (and the 2019 film based on the anthologies doesn’t hurt, either). In the end, it created a very deep well to draw ideas from.” But I also grew up in a house that was considered to be haunted, was plagued by nightmares as a child, exposed to local native American folklore as a Boy Scout, and experienced decades of all sorts of strange and scary things. I feel nostalgia for things from my childhood and project back to that world of the past, then suddenly I’m imagining Twilight-Zonish scenarios taking place within those parameters. The stories, first published from 1981 to 1991, might be less frightening as kids grow up, but the illustrations can still send a shiver down a spine.
#Scary stories to tell in the dark illustrations series
The series of three books, written by Alvin Schwartz with illustrations by Stephen Gammell, is a starter block that can lead to Goosebumps, Richard Matheson, and Stephen King. When I take my now-adult intellect and level of experience and momentarily combine it with a perspective of being a child, somehow ideas begin sprouting up all over the place. For a lot of kids, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is their first foray into horror. I have an ability to remember basically everything that happened back then and exactly how it felt.
“A lot of very interesting things happened to me when I was a child growing up in the 80s and 90s. “The main way I generate ideas is by going back to my childhood,” Tuckfield says.