Introduction

So what is it exactly that makes people love being scared? I think the suspense of not knowing what happens next is one of the key elements. Another reason is that being scared causes our adrenaline to flow which is a natural feel-good reaction. Also, people are intrigued by the sick twisted scenarios of horrendous deaths that authors come up with. Some of these scary tales can be rather bone-chilling and some of them are even based on true stories. I have always been intrigued by the origin of these stories and how they came about. I am an avid scary movie watcher and Halloween is by far my favorite holiday.

Scary tales and urban legends are one of the things that tie generations together culturally. When I was little, I remember having slumber parties and we would all tell various scary stories around in a circle. We would play "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board” and "Bloody Mary" in the bathroom mirror because of tales that we had heard from my best friend’s older brother. I look back now and think how silly we were because we believed that it might actually work. On the other hand, scary stories and horrific tales are things that I am still as fascinated in as when I was a child. I cannot say that I believe in the myths anymore but they are certainly entertaining and fun to read about.

Many people think that urban myths and scary stories are all false accounts, but in reality they are sometimes based on a true event that has been exaggerated through the telling over time. For my storybook, I have gathered all of my information for the stories I use from the website snopes.com. The snopes website is especially helpful in verifying if the story is true or false because it gives the actual source of the story, unlike many other websites where people add fictitious stories just to scare people.

In my storybook, the tales I chose to recreate are very mysterious and shocking. All of them are also based on true stories which I think makes them even more frightening. They include a live burial, a dead man who calls people, a deadly lake that kills multiple people, and a head in a box. In order to find out more about the events you will have to read on.

Have you ever moved to a new town and wondered about the strange things that have happened there in the past that the ‘locals’ try to keep quiet? I decided to tell my stories using the characters of a new family who might be moving into town but when the local real estate agent is showing them around, they find out a few stories that make them not so sure of the move anymore.

The setting of my storybook is in the fictitious old town of Wiley, Oregon. I decided to use a fake town as the setting because even though the creepy stories are true, they did not all happen in the same region. The main characters are the Johnsons, who are a family of four and are thinking about moving to Wiley. Ray Johnson has been offered the managerial spot of the local motel and the family is visiting for the first time to see if they like the area. Susan Johnson has heard awful rumors from her friends about Wiley and is somewhat skeptical. The kids, Sarah and Ashley, are not exactly looking forward to the move either because Sarah who is fifteen doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend and Ashley who is twelve does not want to have to make new friends. Ray thinks the move is a great idea because he will be making an extra $30,000 a year, which will help put his daughters through college when the time comes. He really hopes the visit goes well because it seems like no one else in his family wants to be there. When they arrive in town, everything looks very beautiful and perfect, but Mrs. Johnson just knows something is not quite right. They pull up to the town’s real estate agency and meet Mr. Sanders who will be showing them around for the day. This is where the story begins…