The History of Horror

Coming in April, Scary True goes back to its roots with The History of Horror featuring four stories of hoary horrors from long, long ago. Check this page for a complete list of stories.

The Scholomance

Some kids think their teachers are real monsters and, when school lets out for the summer, you can almost hear a collective sigh of relief escape their lips. But there’s one school that never lets out, where the teacher puts mere monsters to shame, where some students must bear their lessons for an eternity.

Jeff writes to tell me about the old school in his hometown in North Carolina. Whereas Jeff attended high school in a relatively new building built in the 1970s, his parents had gone to the old Ninth Street School.

Built in the 1920s and condemned fifty years later, the Ninth Street School was cramped, leaky, beat-up, and according to Jeff and his friends, haunted. “There were all sorts of stories about it,” Jeff tells me. “Some of them were real wild.”

Whatever the stories, the Ninth Street School projected an air of imposing gloom, squatting at the dead-end of a street where the lights had long-ago gone out. “When you passed by and looked down the street,” Jeff recalls, “it looked like a building made out of a shadow.”

Shadow in the Sky

In the eighteenth century, the legendary Mother Meade gave birth to thirteen wicked children. All thirteen were born into the world as terrifying monsters. The children of Mother Meade either lived lives long enough to survive the centuries or had children of their own, producing new generations of horror.

Mother Meade’s children are said to haunt the vast stretch of Pennsylvania wilderness known locally as Broome’s Quarter. Every day, people live and play in the Quarter; by daylight, the towering pines and majestic oaks stand as a testament to the marvels of nature.

At night, however, locals know not to wander from the well-worn trails and to always listen closely for the strange and loathsome sounds that might signal the presence of the Quarter’s unnatural residents.

Allie writes to share with me the story of the time she was unlucky enough to spend a night in Broome’s Quarter. Allie grew up a few counties over from the Quarter, so when her friends were looking for a place to spend a weekend camping, they didn’t know they were choosing a forest with such a troubling history.

The Midnighters: Shadow of Midnight

For over thirty years, Jerry worked as a police officer in Pittsburgh. In his time on the force, Jerry had seen some bad things, some worse things, and some downright evil things. Cleaning up when people got mad or got crazy was part of the job, but there were other things that Jerry saw, things that most people never see, things that prowl the night, things that refuse to die.

I interviewed Jerry several times in 2002. The following incident is just one of the many stories Jerry shared in hours of audio recordings. I have transcribed them just as they were told to me by Jerry.

“Back in the 60s, the rivers were lined with steel mills and they was chugging away, you know, making steel all day and night. Now, this was before they started closing ‘em up, just before they closed, in fact. Frank and me, we were having a coffee in the car and it was a quiet night, you know, as quiet as it was gonna get, I guess.

“It was just after midnight, I’m thinking, and we get a call over the radio about a problem at one of them mills. Frank and I aren’t too straight about the call and the dispatcher doesn’t seem to want to say too much, but they called us, right? So, we know it’s one of those calls.

“We get to the mill and these things are big, big buildings. Heck, I don’t know where one of them mills ends and the city begins sometimes. It’s spooky, these mills, they’re real loud, you know, but it’s real peaceful at the same time, too.

“The night shift foreman comes out to bring us down to the hot end where they got the furnaces running all the time. He’s an okay guy, but he looks like he seen a ghost, right? Not far from the truth of the thing, but he doesn't want to talk in front of the other guys working up top.

“So, we go down enough stairs that I don’t know where I am no more, and we see this big room like a cave, and there’s the furnaces cranking away, making it hot as hell in there, and it’s real dark even with the fires. I can see a crowd of guys standing around in the shadows.

Family of Shadows

Every family has its secrets, things they don’t want outsiders to know. In some families, however, those secrets stretch on and on through the years, refusing to be buried. Jake writes to tell me about his family’s secrets and the day they finally emerged from the shadows and came into the light.

Jake’s Great-Aunt Betty lived in a house that, to Jake and his cousins, seemed less like a home and more like a museum. Jake spent many happy hours of his childhood playing in the fields and woods surrounding the house in upstate New York, but once inside, children were required to be quiet and respectful.

In one particular room, Great-Aunt Betty’s rules were always in force: the living room was stuffed with family heirlooms, old photographs, and other delicate things that children shouldn’t be left alone around. “I don’t think I ever saw anyone in that room,” Jake tells me. “Ever.”