Scary Stories From Different Cultures

Scary stories have been told for centuries, and there are many different varieties.  There are those really creepy ones that make you paranoid for a week. There are gory ones that hurt you just from reading them. Then there are those scary stories that are just so not scary, that you end up laughing. These variations usually come from where the story originated.  Even though these stories have way different backgrounds, they all have something in common: They are supposed to be scary.

In the (Pennsylvania) story Axe Murder Hollow , retold by S.E. Schlosser, a couple is driving on a highway, when the car suddenly slides off the road. The husband gets out to go look for help, while the wife sits in the car terrified of what could be out in the woods. She hears a shriek, a loud thump, and a strange gurgling noise. The she starts to hear a periodic bumping sound, and gets out of the car and to her horror, finds her husband dead, hanging from a tree branch.  The gruesome sound she kept hearing was the bumping of his body against the tree. The woman screams and tries to run away, but the Axe Murderer is waiting for her. The last thing she sees is the glint of the axe blade in the eerie, incandescent light.  The theme of this story is to be very careful about where you are when your car breaks down, and to stay out of Axe Murder Hollow.

In the (Maryland) story Hairy Toe, also retold by S.E. Schlosser, an elderly woman decides she wants some roots for dinner, and goes outside to dig them up. While digging, she comes across a big hairy toe. The woman brings the toe home, cooks it in her soup, then eats it. That night, she goes to bed and hears a mysterious voice saying, “I want my hairy toe! Give me my toe!” A giant missing his left big toe comes to her house and orders her to give the toe back. After she tells him she ate it, she is never seen again. Just like in Axe Murder hollow, this story has a man vs. man conflict, takes place in the woods, and has an unhappy ending. The theme is to never eat scary giants’ big toes.

In the (Texas) story Suicide, once again retold by S.E. Schlosser, a man hears a suspicious rumbling of a car running in a neighbor’s garage all day long. The man calls the police, and they discover the neighbor had committed suicide. The car had been running all day, and poisoned a small child in the house with CO. The little girl ends up in a coma. The man visits the little girl in the hospital, feels a chilling breeze, and sees the girl’s hair on her head been flattened as though a hand was patting it. The girl wakes up from the coma, and the man wonders if the breeze had been the ghost of her father. This story, unlike the others, has a man vs. self conflict because the man committed suicide, and also a man vs. technology conflict because the CO poisoned the daughter. This story is also different because it had a happy ending. The theme is to be conscience of how your own actions will affect your loved ones.

All three stories involve people being scared, and people dying. Each of them sound somewhat similar culture-wise because they all take place in the United States. Hairy Toe most likely took place a while back, because not many people today dig up roots for supper (or eat random toes from the ground).  Suicide and Axe Murder Hollow are written so that they could’ve taken place recently.