Friday 10 February 2012

Creative Media Directions: Emotional Ties, More scary Stories

I've been researching scary stories for children again and I found three more potential ones...



Family Portraits


A long time ago, there was a man who went out hunting in the woods. As night fell, he found himself in an unfamiliar part of the forest. He walked and walked, but he couldn't find his way home. Wandering aimlessly in the dark, he eventually came to a small clearing where an old, ramshackle cabin stood. Tired and weary, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night.
When he came close to the cabin, he saw that the door was standing ajar. Poking his head inside, he could see that the little cabin was completely empty, but there was a bed and a fire burning in the fireplace. The hunter threw himself on the bed and decided to sleep there for the night. If the owner came back, he would ask for permission in the morning.
Lying on the bed, half asleep, he looked around and was surprised to see the walls were covered with paintings. They appeared to be family portraits, all framed and painted in incredible detail. They seemed very life-like and, without exception each family portrait was uglier than the next. The hideous faces in the paintings made him incredibly uneasy. The way they were painted made it seem as if the eyes were staring directly at him. It was incredibly unnerving.
He decided that the only way he was going to get any sleep was to ignore the hideous faces staring at him. So he turned on his side, facing the wall, pulled the blanket over his head and drifted off to sleep. 
In the morning, the hunter woke up to find the cabin bathed in sunlight. When he looked up, he discovered there were no family portraits on the walls of the cabin, only windows.




Tell Me The Way

One dark night, a 15 year old girl named Lydia was walking home from her friend's house. She turned down a narrow street to take a short cut and was startled by the sight of an old man standing in her path. When she stopped, the old man turned to her and in hoarse voice said "Tell me the way!"
His face was disgusting, his skin covered in scars and boils, his hair stringy and unkempt, his eyes bulging horribly, almost popping out of his sockets. Lydia was terrified. She was alone in the dark and narrow alleyway with a strange and disturbing person. Her heart began pounding and it took her a few seconds to catch her breath. 
"Tell me the way!", the old man demanded. 
"Ok...Ok...uh...Where are you going?", asked Lydia, nervously.
When the old man told her the address he was searching for, a chill ran down her spine. It was her house.
"I don't know where that is", she replied curtly as she pushed past the old man and ran down the alleyway. Glancing back, she could see him standing in the alley, watching her flee. 
Lydia was so freaked put by the incident that she didn't stop running until she got back to her house. Breathing a sigh of relief, she took her keys out. She looked up and down the street to make sure the old man hadn't followed her. It was empty. 
She turned the key, unlocked the door and pushed it open. From the darkness inside her house, a hoarse voice said "Tell me the way!"





The Twin Girls

There was a married couple who lived in a rural area of Spain. Their house was a modest little cottage, located on the edge of a busy main road. They had two daughters who were both twin girls. 
As they grew up, the twin girls were very well behaved. They never fought or argued. They lived happily together and hated to be separated.
One day, the mother had to go to the shop and buy some milk and bread. She didn't want to leave the girls on their own so she brought them with her. Grasping both girls by the hand, the mother led them across the busy road.
Unfortunately, the mother had forgotten to look both ways before she crossed the street. Just as they neared the other side, she heard a loud screech and then a horrible crunching sound as her daughters' tiny hands were torn out of her grasp. 
When the mother twirled around to look, she screamed in horror at what she saw and collapsed on the sidewalk. The twin girls had been run over by a huge truck. The bloody remains of the twin girls were splattered across the road. 
The mother began crying and sobbing hysterically. Try as she might, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the two big streaks of red that stained the road. 
At the funeral the father tried to comfort his wife, but she was inconsolable. Over and over, she screamed "This is all my fault! This is all my fault!"
Four years later, the mother and father still lived in the same house beside the road where their daughters perished. The woman became pregnant again. The couple were surprised when the doctors told them that they would be having twins again.
The parents rejoiced when their two little girls were born. This happy event caused the mother to forget the tragedy of the past. As the twin girls grew up, their mother and father were careful never to mention the previous children. They acted as if the deceased girls had never existed.
Oneday, the two little twin girls were playing in the garden. Their mother came out and told them to come with her to the shop. As they stood at the edge of the road, the mother took hold of the hands of the two girls and held them tightly.
Suddenly, as the mother began walking across the road, the girls began to struggle and tried to slip out of their mothers grasp.
"No, Mommy! Don't hold us!", cried the twin girls in unison. "We don't want to die again!"



This thing I'm finding hard is knowing just how scary I can make the stories and how much gore is acceptable, whether it is acceptable at all. For example I know that in children's programmes if a cartoon character gets hurt there is never any blood shown.

I posted a link to this post on facebook and a forum that my course uses to communicate and help each other to see which story people most liked and found the scariest. It was a very clear result with the first story, 'Family Portraits' being the most popular and scariest and so from that I have decided that I am going to use that story. 





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