The Scariest Scary Story

by Alexandra Molotkow

In my humble experience, the daddy-mommy-mommy-daddy fathermother motherfather of all scares is THE TEETH.

…anthologized in Alvin Schwartz’s In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories, which also includes “The Green Ribbon,” about the girl whose mysterious green ribbon is — spoiler warning! — the only thing holding her head to her body, as well as wonderful illustrations by Dirk Zimmer that now form the bedrock of my unconscious mind.

Here’s the gist: boy walks home at night, asks a strange man for the time, man has giant teeth! Boy runs away, tells another man about it — this man has even gianter teeth! And so on. “The Teeth” spawned my first-ever nightmare, at least the first nightmare I remember having. It was pretty simple: I walked up to a strange woman and asked, “Do you have giant teeth with big red spots?” She shouted YES! and bared them and I woke up screaming.

Schwartz, of course, was the children’s author best known for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, featuring even scarier illustrations by one Stephen Gammell. In a Dark, Dark Room was the kiddie ride, but it did the trick of a bungee jump and taught me a valuable lesson: everyone has at least one terrifying secret.

Perhaps one day I would have my own.