Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark: All References And What They Looked Like In The Books
7. Me Tie Dough-ty Walker
This particular story has one of the sillier names in the collection, and its original illustration isn't even that harrowing compared to some of the others (such as the childhood trauma that is the female corpse in The Haunted House). Despite that, there's something about this story that really sticks with you conceptually.
The story itself involves a man staying at an inn when he hears a voice coming from the chimney chanting the titular words. Though he doesn't respond (the smartest move when it comes to horror stories), he can't stop his dog from suddenly opening its mouth to respond to the voice. Each time his dog responds, the voice gets louder and closer.
Eventually, a head falls out of the chimney, turns to the man, and - like most of the stories in the children's book, this is the part where the storyteller jumpscares the listener.
The film takes it a step further by turning the one head into an entire collection of body parts that come together to form the Jangling Man (played by contortionist Troy James), though that's not part of the original tale.