Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-4849011-20150322002931/@comment-25326117-20150327011737

Raidra wrote: I have a few books of urban legends, and one of them is the pretentiously-titled The 500 Best Urban Legends Ever! by Yorick Brown and Mike Flynn. While it has some good ones, I don't care very much for it, partly due to the fact that it has several legends of an especially graphic nature (sex, violence, etc.) My older brother, who had read the book before, saw that I had a copy and told me, "I went to a library and that was in the children's section." I was as appalled as he was because, like I said, it had some very inappropriate content in places. He brought this to the attention of a librarian. After he showed her a couple examples, she quickly agreed that that was one book that belonged in the Adult section! I have a similar story. The libraries in my county (Montgomery County in Ohio) have separate sections for graphic novels in both the Adult and Children's sections. I was browsing a local library when I saw that someone had put a copy of Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison in the graphic novel section of the Children's section. Those of you familiar with modern Batman and/or the work of Grant Morrison will immediately see the problem there. It wasn't that it had been improperly labelled; someone had just plain put it in the wrong section. I moved it to its proper place in the Adult graphic novels section.

That first story alone (using your one's body to try to find a corpse) makes it sound like a scary book. I don't remember what it was called, but I used to have a book of scary stories (I also donated it). It had what looked like a black-and-white ink drawing of a werewolf on the cover, and I'm pretty sure all the stories were by the same author. Some of the stories were "Meh," such as a story in which industrial waste caused water to form itself into tentacles and kill people (Yeah) and others were creepy, but nothing special. However, there were two that I felt were good horror stories. One involved three girls who died after seeing a ghostly woman (The ghost was only seen by those about to die). The last girl died when she went to her house, which was having a power failure, and gulped down what she thought was cough syrup. SPOILER ALERT She immediately became ill, and before she died the power turned back on, revealing that she had accidentally drunken hair dye instead. END SPOILER ALERT Creepy stuff! The other was the last story in the book. It involved this teenage boy who was the sole survivor of a plane crash. It was just him and his parents on the flight because the parents wanted to rent a plane and go on a family trip. One parent was killed immediately and the other survived at first, but died shortly after the crash. The boy got some supplies from the plane and walked through the desert to try to find help. After wandering for two or three days, he discovered that he had gone in a circle, arriving back to the plane wreckage. SPOILER ALERT He then realized why the plane had crashed in the first place. He hadn't wanted to go on the trip. When his dad had told him to check the gas tank, he angrily removed the gas cap to inspect it and then put it back on without turning it to make sure it was stuck on firmly. The cap came off in mid-flight and caused the plane to run out of fuel. For the rest of his short and miserable life, he'd have to live with the fact that his thoughtless action had killed his family. END OF SPOILER ALERT If all the stories had been that good, I'd still have that book! Yeah, the protagonist with the spirit from what I recalled. I think he dived into shallow water and hit his head on a rock or something. I think the boy became unconscious and his friend was frantically looking for him by feeling the bottom. I think he also swam under water, but because of the murkiness of the water, he couldn't see his friend.

I think that's one reason why I have a fear of swimming in water, that's probably stupid.

I think the book had a purplish-blue tint to it. I think there was also a mining story with some friends that decided to investigate a supposed haunted coal mine. They probably died in that place, that's probably what those things were. They were all screaming. This is the book that I donated to the library at my school, I was in eighth or nineth grade at the time. So, getting scared by a bunch of inanimate objects that look like they are part of some sort of plumbing system and with human faces, is probably still scary.

I would probably see the book again. I can't even recall the possible mining incident with those teenagers that most likely died. I think the stories included cliff-hangers.