Alvin Schwartz's prose hasn't aged quite as well as one might hope, but the ink-wash illustrations by Stephen Gammell remain some of the most blood-chilling horror art I've ever seen. Just check out some of this:
And these are from books ostensibly for children! No wonder they've been the victims of so many banning attempts, and no wonder we kept crawling back to gaze in awe and terror. The nightmares were worth it.
Sadly, the current editions of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark have been "updated," and Gammell's illustrations are gone, replaced by new art by Brett Helquist. Helquist is a talented illustrator, but his images are nothing compared to the originals, and copies of the older editions now command a premium on the secondary market.
To learn more, and see Gammell's and Helquist's illustrations compared side-by-side, I suggest this blog post, which is also where I found the images above.
