5 BEDTIME BOOKS THAT SCAR(R)ED ME AS A CHILD
I once described an ex-girlfriend of mine as having the pathology of an Alfred Hitchcock box set. But as I examine my childhood past I can see where some of my own internal demons arose from and they most certainly weren't to be found in the evergreen classics 'The Wind In The Willows, 'The Railway Children or 'The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe' that I so routinely enjoyed as a young boy. No, the stories that prompted the fear triggers may seem banal, almost ridiculous, but make a lot of sense to me.
And so whittling down the top 5 bedtime books that traumatised me as a child felt like an interesting and useful challenge. I've also included a scare rating out of 10 just for the hell (pun intended) of it.
- Garth Pig And The Ice Cream Lady/Mr And Mrs Pig's Evening Out
Perhaps, like Ari Aster's 2019 film "Midsommar' which Martin Scorsese praised for being a horror film that plays out in full daylight, the terror I felt reading 'Garth Pig And The Ice Cream Lady' by Mary Rayner was more pronounced than other more obviously creepy stories because it takes place on a hot summer's day where the tinkling of an ice cream van was the epitome of childhood and the carefree innocence of those happy times.
The predatory wolf that drives around in a 'Lupino's Ice Creams' Volfswagon van waiting to bundle an unsuspecting Garth Pig into the back of his vehicle is possibly the scariest villain I've yet to encounter in fiction. Something perhaps to do with the way he so transparently exploits a child's love of ice cream to act as a sort of honey trap. Later, comparisons with the Ice Cream serial killer Richard Kuklinski came to mind as well as certain episodes from season one of Showtime's creepy show 'Dexter'.
If it wasn't enough to scare the wits out of our love of ice cream and ice cream vans, Mary Rayner decided to infiltrate the sanctity of our homes with her sequel "Mr And Mrs Pig's Night Out' in which Madame Lupino (who we dared to hope was dead) returns to babysit Garth Pig and his brothers and sisters. What on earth were Mr and Mrs Pig thinking?!
Matching "Garth Pig & The Ice Cream Lady" in terror, both books have left me scarred in their way and perhaps the anxiety I have eating ice cream is less to do with the calories I'm consuming but the threat of Madame Lupino lurking close by to gobble me up.
2. Would You Rather?
In Buddhism, it is believed that reincarnation is more of a threat than a blessing. Perhaps in my young head, I understood some part of this concept whilst reading John Burmingham's 'Would You Rather ...' which provided endless scenarios to choose from that to me represented entirely different lives. So much choice and such vivid contrast from one spooky scenario to one happy one. The options were often overwhelming and frightening.
There was something existential about the choices that John Burmingham provided the young reader as for instance ...
"Would you rather be lost ... in the fog, at sea, in a desert, in a forest, or in a crowd."
To the more gross ...
"Would you rather be made to eat ... spider stew, slug dumplings, mashed worms or drink snail squash."
And the even more terrifying ...
"Would you rather be ... crushed by a snake, swallowed by a fish, eaten by a crocodile, or sat on by a rhinoceros."
Yet there were happier options that balanced out the more psychologically distressing choices offered such as ...
Would you rather have ... supper in a castle, breakfast in a balloon, or tea on the river."
And ...
"Would you rather help ... a fairy make magic, gnomes dig for treasure, an imp be naughty, a witch make a stew or Santa Claus deliver presents."
The overall effect of reading this book was one of the daunting choices that overwhelmed my young mind and created complexity where before there was just simplicity.
These days I find it's hard enough choosing what type of coffee to order from the local cafe let alone whether you'd rather ... "jump in the nettles for £5, swallow a dead frog for £10 or stay all night in a creepy house for £50."
3. Jorinde and Joringel
This, perhaps lesser-known of the Grimms' fairy tales, haunted me as a child due to the soft, naive drawings by Bernadette Watt that seemed eerie in their evocation of a dream-like, somnambulistic atmosphere of dread on a summer's night. Strangely, the nocturnal forest depicted has always reminded me of the European Smoketree (Cotinus) in its fuzzy illustrations which I only mention as there is an especially large bush of the stuff towering on the opposite side of the road from my house. Clearly, it's a trigger for me that takes me back to my childhood trauma of reading 'Jorinde und Joringel' as a young boy.
But what truly scared me back then, and still scares me now, is the creepy shape-shifting witch that turns Jorinde into a bird which she keeps in an iron cage and casts a spell that prevents Joringel from entering her dungeon-like castle to rescue his love.
She seemed part dragon, part goblin with orange-red hair and a mouth that could almost be related to H.R Geiger's inspired 'Alien'. Perhaps not as terrifying as Madame Lupino but damn close in second place of my childhood terrors.
4. Nightmares: Poems To Trouble Your Sleep
If ever a book was designed to ruin a child's sense of innocence and serenity then it has to be 'Nightmares: 'Poems To Trouble Your Sleep' by Jack Prelutsky with illustrations by Arnold Lobel. Among the many horrors awaiting me inside the book were 'The Bogeyman', 'The Vampire', 'The Troll', 'The Werewolf' and 'The Ogre'. Each was assigned their very own poem, accompanied by black and white illustrations so scary they should have come with a health warning.
But the absolute worst of them all was 'The Ghoul' who sat patiently on the climbing frame outside a classroom waiting for the children to leave school at home time.
Any chance of sweet dreams for me back then were quickly vanquished after reading this awful poem before bedtime.
5. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
It was the audiobook of Rudyard Kipling's 'Rikki Tikki Tavi' that upset me as a child rather than the reading of the story in the 'Jungle Book Stories' book. There was just something about the sitar music that introduced the story and the way Ian Richardson read the tale that unsettled me, especially his voice for both Nag and Nagaina, the two black cobras that threaten to eat the courageous mongoose protagonist of the story, Rikki Tikki Tavi. Perhaps it was that fear of the exotic that concerned me back then as it sounded so unfamiliar to my natural environment. There was no security of knowing what I was dealing with as snakes and mongooses were far out of my frame of reference. Mind you, so were Orcs and Nazguls but somehow the threat of two large Indian cobras was simply too much for my sensitive nerves back then.
Still is.