My boys claim to like creepy stuff (ghosts, zombies, etc.), but...

My boys claim to like creepy stuff (ghosts, zombies, etc.), but when afforded the opportunity to experience them in a film or story, they usually back out. The skeletal crew in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is about as far as they can go into the realm of scary.

For a while, they were obsessed with the Headless Horseman. I told them, “Well, you know the actual story is supposed to be funny.” They didn’t believe me. So, over the course of a week or two, before bed each night, I read them Washington Irving’s original The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

I stopped every paragraph to make sure they understood the dense language, what was happening, and was sure to point out that not everything was as it seemed in the story. (If you don’t remember, Ichabod is not only an opportunist, a glutton, and lazy, but he also beats schoolchildren. Makes you root for ol’ Brom Bones, don’t it?)

They loved it, so then we moved on to the H.G. Wells classic The Invisible Man. Again, I stopped every once in a while to make sure the boys knew what was happening. I’d ask things like, "Who do you think has the books?” and they’d reply, “Mr. Marvel.”

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is fairly innocent—it is, after all, simply the retelling of an epic prank. There’s no blood, no murder, just a few creepy moments. The Invisible Man, however, does feature some violence. Fights and injuries are described in detail. Plus, Griffin (aka the titular Invisible Man) does actually kill someone. But, since they’ve seen British enlisted men fall at the hands of cursed pirates, I figured they could handle it. And they did. [The only downside: There’s some… um… bigoted language in each story that I had to edit on the fly as I read.]

So, we’re now making classic creepy stories our go-to bedtime reading.