fresnelly

Holy Crap! I remember that exact story. Just like Mexicana says, it was in a Horror Short Story complition aimed at young readers. It was a black paperback with blue lettering.

There were two other stories from that book that I remember:

In the first, a beautiful yet creepy woman knocks on peoples front doors and says: "Do you want to see what I can do with my long, long fingernails? She goes from door to door until someone says yes. In very suspensful fashion, she brings a fingernail to her ruby red lips and goes "pblpblpblplblb..."

The other was a babysitter vs serial killer story. At the end, She and the kids are trapped in a bedroom and there's a menacing scratching at the door. They hold the door shut and evenutally it's stops. The next day they open the door to find... the mutilated body of (I think) the babysitter's boyfriend. He had been scratching at the door as a plea for help.

What's weird is that I loved that book for it's graphic shocks and enjoy horror fiction, but I can't stand horror movies.

Edit: I just took a quick look at Amazon and it could very well be
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark: Collected from American Folklore by Alvin Ed. Schwartz

The cover is different, but it was originally published in 1986, which would be about right for me.

/me plans a trip to the library.

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Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life