What came first, the chicken or the egg? As long as I can remember I have always been attracted to creepy, eerie, macabre type things. When I was younger living in North Carolina my mom made me watch “Return of the Living Dead” because they nuked our hometown of Louisville, Kentucky which she thought was “neat” which was odd because she didn’t like scary movies. Even before that though I can remember being read this wonderful ghost story by my third grade teacher. The story was “The Big Toe” from the collected stories retold by Alvin Schwartz. She read some other stories from the book but that one stuck out because I can remember her doing the voice, “Where’s my big toe”. The Book was “Scary Stories” and I just had to read more.

My third grade teacher let me barrow her copy. When she had read the stories to the class and showed us the illustrations in that quick panning pass teachers do at story time. I was only able to catch a quick glance but In barrowing the books I was able to see all of the amazing artwork by Stephen Gammell.  His style and the way he envisioned the stories really added to that atmosphere of the book series. It was his illustrations that actually got the books banned in several schools. There was nothing overtly grotesque about them but they just made you feel uneasy.