The Monsters in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Ranked by How Scary They Actually Are

CBS Films
CBS Films

I walked into a recent screening of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark with few expectations — I loved Alvin Schwartz's books as a kid, but I wasn't sure how stories like "The Big Toe" would translate on the big screen. Would it be too juvenile? Or silly? Well, dear reader, let me be the first to tell you that while director André Øvredal's film, produced by Guillermo del Toro, might not offer us anything original, it knows how to dole out grisly scares (and have fun while doing it).

The film brings several individual stories to the big screen, anchored by an overarching story like 1998's Urban Legend. The story opens on Halloween in the small community of Mill Valley, a town in Pennsylvania, in 1968, and soon introduces us to a small group of misfits: Stella (an aspiring horror writer), Chuck (a prankster), Augie (an intellectual), and Ramón (a handsome outsider with a secret). By nightfall, the group finds themselves seeking refuge in the long-abandoned mansion of the Bellows family on the outskirts of town to escape from Tommy, a high school bully.

"Sarah Bellows, tell me a story."

Legend has it that Sarah Bellows, the ostracized daughter of the Bellows family, held terrible secrets and poisoned any child that stepped foot on the family's land. It doesn't take long for Stella to stumble across a book in the basement filled with stories written in blood, which, for some reason, prompts her to recite the creepy words from the town's popular myth about Sarah: "Sarah Bellows, tell me a story."

Sarah's spirit is then unleashed, going after everyone who was in the house when Stella uttered those fateful words: Stella, Chuckie, Augie, Ramón, Tommy, and Ruth, Chuckie's sister. They're haunted by everything from baby spiders to monsters that look like if beluga whales had long, greasy black hair, providing plenty of nightmare fuel. Ahead, see what you're in for. Just be warned: BIG spoilers for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to follow.

07
The Ghost of Sarah Bellows
CBS Films

The Ghost of Sarah Bellows

The story it's based on: "Haunted House"

How scary it actually is: Sarah Bellows might be the twisted architect of every horrific thing that happens in this movie, but in the end, the story takes the easy way out with her, so to speak: Stella is able to "defeat" Sarah by simply promising to tell the vengeful ghost's story (the real story), putting a rest to the legends about her being a child killer. There isn't even the overdone horror twist that by "setting her soul free," she actually just gave her unlimited power (à la The Ring). Sarah seems very eager to shed her anger and disappear for good.

Physically, she's not very intimidating, either — most often she appears only as black shadows creeping along walls and ceilings, until finally taking the form of a near-translucent ghost with wispy long hair and a floor-length dress. Sure, her face flickers into a skull from time to time, but in the grand scheme of things, she's not going to be haunting anyone in real life anytime soon. Sorry, Sarah. (Please don't kill me.)

06
The Blind Ghost
CBS Films

The Blind Ghost

The story it's based on: "Haunted House"

How scary it actually is: Edging out Sarah just slightly is another ghost from the Bellows house, who we see only twice. The first is the scariest by far, when Chuck, one of Stella's friends, glimpses her through a crack in the door of a bedroom in the old, haunted mansion. Sitting on the edge of an ornate bed and dressed in a black lace gown and veil, she's instantly creepy as hell, and guarded by a massive doberman to boot. When she turns her head towards Chuck, sensing his presence, it's revealed that she's blind and very clearly evil, judging from her twisted expression. (*shudders*)

She proceeds to zoom over towards Chuck in a jump scare, and later nearly gets Stella killed during a creepy haunted house hallucination. Despite knowing essentially nothing about her other than the fact that she was related to Sarah and helped keep her hostage, the movie shows how deep her malevolence is rooted.

05
Harold
CBS Films

Harold

The story it's based on: "Harold"

How scary it actually is: Oh, Harold. I feel for the guy, I really do. Not only does he literally have a stick up his ass day in and day out, but no one even bothers to brush all the cockroaches from his face. Oh, and he's routinely put through the abuse of Tommy Milner, the bully whose parents own the farm where he resides. So, Harold is primed and ready to get revenge when Sarah animates him and sicks him on Tommy on Halloween.

To be fair, who in their right mind would construct a scarecrow with a mottled, lifelike face (and greasy, stringy hair trailing out the back of his skull) and not expect it to come alive one day and murder you in a cornfield by stuffing your body with hay?! He looks like me the morning after a night drinking 10 too many tequila shots (if the bar I was at was located in hell). Harold is terrifying with or without Sarah's curse, and I fully blame the Milners for putting him on their property to begin with.

That being said, I definitely had a nightmare about Harold and his jerky, frenetic murder of Tommy yesterday, and would likely expire on the spot if I ever saw him in real life. Hence his spot on this list.

04
The Spiders
CBS Films

The Spiders

The story it's based on: "The Red Spot"

How scary it actually is: Anyone with arachnophobia will likely disagree with me here, thinking that this scene deserves to be closer to number one. But I don't have arachnophobia! And also I really enjoy watching Dr. Pimple Popper videos, so personally I didn't find this to be nearly as traumatizing as the others on the list. However, let's not gloss over the fact that it still is very traumatizing — the idea of something secretly burrowing deep inside you, essentially taking over your body without your consent, is stomach-turning no matter how you look at it.

I must also give props to actress Natalie Ganzhorn here, who effectively drags out Ruth's dermatological predicament. Like someone consumed by picking at a white head that just won't pop, Ruth can't resist poking and prodding at her growing spot in the mirror of her high school bathroom, no matter how painful it is. Finally, when the lone, spindly black leg of an insect pops out, her fear and shock are palpable. I'd be lying if I said I didn't jerk back in my seat as a horde of baby spiders came spilling out of Ruth's face, swarming inside her mouth as she screamed.

But — a very important 'but,' mind you — Ruth doesn't die. Unlike the rest of her cohorts, she's merely driven to the edge of insanity by her experience with Sarah's curse, but retains her life thanks to some quick thinking from her brother, Chuck. The spiders are beyond disgusting and the facial scar she's left with is no small thing, but comparatively, Ruth gets off easy.

03
The Rotting Corpse
CBS Films

The Rotting Corpse

The story it's based on: "The Big Toe"

How scary it actually is: Did I start loudly dry-heaving during the scene when Augie unknowingly starts munching on a stew made of body parts? Maybe. Have I been scarred forever by the idea of a corpse dragging me into a black hole of death under my bed? Definitely.

This sequence is inspired by Alvin Schwartz's "The Big Toe" and does a good job of elevating the original tale into chilling, modern-day horror despite its borderline silly premise (a corpse annoyed that someone accidentally dug up his toe in a garden and ate it for dinner). This time around, Sarah's ghost manipulates things so that Augie finds a pot of stew in his fridge and begins to eat it, thinking his mother left it there for him. Unfortunately it's filled with the slimy eyeballs, toes, and other dismembered body parts of a woman, which he realizes only after he's already ingested some.

That's when the corpse — mangled, dirty, emaciated, and sliced up — begins dragging itself towards Augie's room, groaning about her missing toe. It's a pretty standard sequence, as far as horror movies are concerned (complete with a jump scare), but I must give credit to how downright ghoulish the corpse looks . . . and also the fact that the scene has left me scared of peeking down any dark hallways. Also, the fact that she magically appears under Augie's bed? It makes it seem like he never even had a chance to escape her.

02
The Jangly Man
CBS Films

The Jangly Man

The story it's based on: "Me-Tie-Dough-Ty-Walker"

How scary it actually is: What does "Me-Tie-Dough-Ty-Walker" mean? I don't know. But trust that if I ever hear it again, I'll enter into the nearest witness protection program. That is how scary this creature is. The corpse is your usual freaky zombie fare, but the Jangly Man (as he's known in the film) is a lanky, humanoid jigsaw puzzle of horror.

While no characters in the original books go by the Jangly Man moniker, this monster is a take on the fourth story in the first book, "Me-Tie-Dough-Ty-Walker," which is based on an American folktale. As the story goes, a boy agrees to stay overnight in a haunted house despite legends of a cursed chimney, and brings his dog with him. At midnight, he hears a voice call out "Me tie dough-ty walker," and his dog responds in a similarly creepy language. Eventually a bloody head rolls down the chimney and a tragedy occurs.

In the film, the Jangly Man appears first by only his dismembered, gray, veiny head, which rolls down a chimney in the police station much to the disbelieving surprise of the town's assh*le deputy. Soon the rest of the creature's body plops down, linking together into one powerful freakshow. It promptly snaps the deputy's neck and goes after Ramón, chasing him all over town. (Perhaps "chasing" isn't the right word — inhumanly skittering is more accurate.)

The one thing about this monster that sets it apart from the corpse and the Pale Lady is that the way the creature kills its victims seems final; Augie and Chuckie appear to have been sucked into some parallel universe, but the deputy is straight-up murdered on the spot. There's no hope for him to return the way there is for the others (at least if what Stella says at the conclusion of the film is to be trusted). Facing off with the Jangly Man has real consequences, which makes him scarier on a whole other level.

01
The Pale Lady
CBS Films

The Pale Lady

The story it's based on: "The Dream"

How scary it actually is: This red-tinged scene is a riff on a Schwartz story about obeying warnings in a dream, only to discover they weren't warnings at all — they were a trap. In the film, Chuckie falls directly into it, separating from his friends in a mental asylum and getting sucked into the all-consuming body of the "Pale Lady," who stalks him through the corridors.

This scene isn't necessarily gruesome or gory compared to the others, but what makes it so effectively scary is the suffocating dread that envelopes you while watching the fatal cat-and-mouse game between Chuckie and the Pale Lady slowly play out. Everywhere he turns, she's there — unlike the Jangly Man, which Ramón escapes by hiding, Chuckie is powerless to avoid the Pale Lady's inevitable advancement. For a monster that looks like a powdered doughnut in a wig, this is a wildly unsettling scene that has echoes of It Follows.

Since the ending of the film very obviously sets up a sequel, I have to wonder what other monsters are lurking in our future (if the studio indeed moves forward with another film), or if we'll ever see these nightmarish creatures — and their victims — ever again.