 For Christmas 2007, my grandparents bought me the scary stories to tell in the dark book series. I'd always been a spooky kid starting off with goosebumps and then going ham over Halloween. That gift to this day still boggles my mind. If you knew my grandparents, you would be confused why they'd look at these book covers and say yes, let's buy these for our eight-year-old grandson. The thing is, I've been reading quote-unquote scary children's books for quite some time. I ate that stuff up. The only problem was I never felt like the books were scary enough. There were never any gruesome deaths and goosebumps. There were never any serious stakes in the books that I'd borrow from the school library. Everything kind of just felt watered down. Listen, I wasn't looking for anything hardcore traumatic. I just wanted something to get me interested, you know? That's where the scary stories books came into play. I remember cuddling up into bed that night, cracking one of the books open, and immediately feeling like I was crossing one of my own lines. These stories were dark. This stuff was heavy and serious. People were decapitated, skinned, mulched up, and stalked by serial killers. Folks died for once in a children's book. That's what was weird. I could read these stories. I could comprehend and understand them at eight years old. But I never felt like these books were patronizing like the other books were. The author Alvin Schwartz never held your hand while you were reading these. You got your money's worth and the book delivered on what it promised. I remember in the second grade after lunch every afternoon, my classmates would take turns reading a story to the classes like some reading exercise. I really wanted to read something from the second book, the one with the cover that looks like I don't know what's a wet bat, enthusiastically saying hi. My teacher took one look at the book cover, her face kind of squished up with hesitant disapproval. She handed the book back to me and said, why don't you go pick something else from a bookshelf, please? I think this will definitely scare your friends. While on one hand I was disappointed I wouldn't get to read these to my classmates, I was pumped that I felt that I could handle stories that were too frightening for everyone else. It made me feel hardened and cool. These books were like a power trip for me at eight years old. Turns out there were copies in my school library and I told my friends about them. Soon afterwards the books were darn near impossible to check out because they were in such high demand. Scary stories to tell in the dark almost felt like an urban legend on the playground. Kids whispered about it in the horrible drawings inside stuff like this, this, this. It became almost like a dare situation to take these books home and read them in the dark. The books cast a dark shadow over my class and I felt like I was the king sitting at top of them. I remember the following summer I took the books camping with me. I read me, Tai, Do, T, Walker and my tent with my little brother and I wound up freaking us both out. I could barely sleep that night and I imagined every single sound outside to be some severed head rolling through the woods to, I don't know, bite my ankle or something. I remember inviting kids from my neighborhood over and we would try to do the Bloody Mary challenge like it was described in the book. Kids in my class would tell me that they tried it and Bloody Mary actually appeared. One kid told me that blood came out of his walls. Other girls said Bloody Mary came and killed their dog. I read online about it and I wound up scaring myself to not doing it anymore. I remember singing the hearse song to my mom one day. She asked me to stop singing because she was feeling sick and the lyrics were making her gag. All that to say I had a ton of fun with these books. They not only scared the crap out of me as a kid but they also shaped a lot of real life adventures that I went on. They gave me a very specific eye for Halloween aesthetics that I still love to this day. I'm talking dead trees, a mid-western fog, dilapidated homesteads, Americana folklore. In fact you can see in a lot of other spooky season videos on my channel. I love all of this stuff and I'm pretty sure that this eye that I've developed came from these books. So I grew up, became a teenager and the books wound up gathering dust on my shelf. Every now and then I'd see someone reference them online and I'd smile but they kind of just went on the back burner of my mind. I moved on to more gruesome and terrifying murder stuff but folklore always had a special place in my heart. Bands, music, like the marshmallow ghost in Harley-Poe felt nostalgic to me even the first time I heard them. They didn't need overt references to these books. I could feel their influence seep into their music. In fact I kind of have a Spotify playlist in the description if anyone is interested. Fast forward to Superbowl February 2019. I'm chilling on the couch in my grandma's house playing ukulele, watching commercials in between the boring game. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Guillermo del Toro's name pops up on the TV. Okay you have my attention. Some horror movie I'm assuming? A terrified kid in a red room. Oh there's some monster creeping down the hall. This looks cool. Until they give you a closer look. Wait a sec. That can't be. My face melted. To this day I have never had a commercial get me so pumped up over anything ever. Grandma was mortified and I had the pleasure of saying, hey grandma guess what? This movie is based on the books that you bought me as a kid. The wait from February to August was grueling. I kept tabs on news surrounding the movie, brushing up on who the director was, checking on leaks, concept art, anything. There was this online debate on whether or not the movie should be rated R or PG-13. I was on team. I hope this gets an R rating, thinking that it'd be similar to the it movie that came out recently which I was really impressed by. Then the movie's rating was announced. PG-13. I was disappointed. I was sad. I was thinking well most people who grew up with the books are now adults so why not cater the movie to us with an R rating? Shortly afterward in an interview Del Toro commented on this very subject. He said, the anticipated rating is PG-13. The idea is the books are favorite among younger readers and I think that there are two or three generations of parents who know the book as well. So it's gonna be a ride but there needs to be a safety bar in it. I mean I guess I kind of understood that logic but there is still a tinge of disappointment in my soul. So I was recording my album The Denton Weaver by Raccoon Tour coming 2021. Please keep an eye out for it on my channel because it's getting pretty gosh darn close to being done. At the time that the movie was released and I was in Twin Falls, Idaho. On the bus ride from Boise to Twin Falls I showed my studio engineer and good friend Jordan Thornequest the scary stories so that he could be up to date on the lore too. I had them like bookmarked and stuff. He tore through a few of those specially selected stories that I had marked off. He was ready too. Pulling up to the movie theater, I kid you not it was storming outside. I mean like raining sideways kind of storm. Thunder claps every 17 seconds. My heart fluttered. My life was leading up to this one moment. I sat down in the movie theater with all my friends. I mean sure the movie is PG-13 but it's still based on my favorite childhood books. Then something really special happened while I was sitting there. A family sat to my left. Directly sitting next to me was a little 8 year old boy and he was visibly nervous. His mother leaned over next to him and said I grew up on these books and you're gonna get to see the same stories that I read when I was your age. Then the movie started and oh my goodness. I loved every second of it. I smelled from ear to ear from start to finish. I am here to tell you that scary stories to tell in the dark. It has my stamp of approval. It is an excellent adaption of these stories. Very few punches were pulled. I would argue that this movie is more grisly and menacing than most R rated films that are coming out now. I was stunned by how genuinely scary this was. I looked over to my left and that 8 year old boy was curled up in a seat with tears running down his cheeks and his hands covering his eyes. But he was still peeking through to see what was going on. Everything suddenly clicked for me. I was so wrong about the movie's rating. I commended the filmmakers for making something so scary while also keeping that PG-13 rating. You see the spirit of the books was never to display outright explicit content. It was never meant to dive over the edge into exploitative horror. The books existed to scare children respectfully. Reading the stories today they're not nearly as frightening as I remember. And yet I always felt like I was reading something off limits when I was a kid. It was my imagination that was doing most of the work. And for the film to also respect its younger audience enough to terrify them but not go over with visuals, language, etc. that was perfectly fitting. After the movie was over I sat in my seat and I smiled for a few minutes. I took in the moment and I looked to my left. The little boy was terrified and shaken but he was also glowing with pride to the fact that he was able to finish the movie. He high-fived his mom and he laughed as he left the theater. I imagine he felt like he'd been put through the ring or two and that he experienced something more sinister than he was anticipating. And I was so proud of him in that moment. I saw a little bit of myself in him. And that was probably the best part of the night. Not the movie even though it was amazing. Not my friends even though I loved them to pieces. Not the storm outside even though it was beautifully thematic and fitting. It was seeing the legacy of something that I grew up with handled so delicately and so fitting. It was probably one of the most memorable movie theater experiences I'd ever had in my life. Years of memories culminating into a two hour evening. We exited the theater, ran to our van, and drove home under the storming full moon.