CRP's Blog

“I have never been a fan of ghost stories…” “I don’t generally enjoy horror…” “I tend to stay far away from scary stories.” Despite a seemingly staff-wide aversion to horror tales, we scrounged up a few contenders for Scariest Story. Consider this post to be your reminder to start thinking of Halloween costumes! #CRPreads

When I was a child, the original Stephen Gammell illustrations for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (and More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) so terrified me that I could barely stand to hold the book in my hands. But I also couldn’t put it down. Remember this one? Yeah, nightmares for days. Strangely, I don’t remember details from the stories themselves, but the images have haunted my nightmares ever since. —Ellen Hornor, project editor

I have never been a fan of ghost stories, but I was obsessed with the book Wait Till Helen Comes when I was a kid. I can’t remember a specific scary scene, but just looking at the cover was (and kind of still is!) enough to get my heart rate up.  —Meaghan Miller, senior publicist and social media coordinator

I don’t generally enjoy horror, but two books spring to mind: First, Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child, which a friend lent me last year and which I found so disturbing that I couldn’t finish it and instead looked up the ending online. The other is a scene from the book I’m currently reading: P. D. James’s unfortunately titled but superbly written Devices and Desires. The book as a whole isn’t especially frightening, but a scene at the beginning from the perspective of a serial killer’s next victim scared me so much as I read it before bed that I had to play Candy Crush on my phone for a half hour to try to forget it about it before I went to sleep! (There’s a reason I usually avoid horror.)  —Lindsey Schauer, project editor

I tend to stay far far away from scary stories so my chosen scene isn’t from a typical horror novel. But in The Yellow Wallpaper when the woman fully descends into madness and begins creeping around her room, pulling off the wallpaper, I was so creeped out. That image has always stuck in my mind. In my younger years, Grover’s Sesame Street classic The Monster at the End of This Book terrified me. There wasn’t a specific scene that scared me, but rather the anticipation of the final scene at the end.  —Emily Lewis, editorial and marketing assistant