second post

So I'm basically almost done with this scary stories book. The book is compiled from three different books, and I'm on the final one now. This was always my favorite one as a kid, because it has the best stories and the best pictures. I guess by this point, the author had finally figured out how to actually make the stories a little more dragged out and suspenseful, and the drawings are great as always. What makes this one especially different from the first two is that it seems to take a much more serious turn about just how real and violent the subject material is. Before, the stories were mostly folklore from around the world, but in this third book, there are a lot more stories based on actual events, some of which aren't even exaggerated. The first two books had a lot more stories that were just goofy and obvious, but in this one there's actually some really vicious stuff that goes down. For example, one of the stories from the first one just had a man find out his girlfriend had died in a car accident long before they started dating. In the third one, a story features a scarecrow coming to life and skinning a farmer alive, and then hanging out his skin like laundry. There's also this story that recounts exactly what happened in an actual series of paranormal events in a NYC home in the 50's. But to me, the freakiest one is a story about a girl who is on vacation with her mother in Paris. Her mother gets sick in their hotel and the doctor sends the girl to get medicine from his house, but the cab takes her in circles and takes forever for her to get it. She eventually ditches the cab because it keeps taking her off into the country, and she finally makes it back to the hotel, but the staff doesn't recognize her and they have no record of her or her mother ever checking in. The doctor doesn't even know who she is, and when she enters her hotel room, the place is totally different- different color walls, different floor, different furniture, and her mother is gone, along with their belongings. The story really confused me when I discovered that this actually happened in the early 1900's (1913 I think?). In the back of the book, the author explains what really happened. Her mother had a form of the bubonic plague, and the doctor rushed her out and bribed a cab to take her far away to burn time. The mother was quarantined and died within minutes, and the hotel replaced all of the furniture and repainted the room entirely. The hotel staff were forced to act as if they'd never seen her before, and would be fired and jailed otherwise. The city's leaders and hospital agreed never to speak of the incident, or else tourism would plummet, and mass hysteria would break out if word of the plague's revival ever broke out. To me, this is just as scary as a lot of the ghost stories in here (although I'd rather be in the girl's situation than in most of these other ones). I'll be done with this book soon