“‘The scarecrow walks at midnight,’ he uttered in a low voice” (5).
The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is a surprisingly eerie, atmospheric, fall-themed Goosebumps book. This one just might give young readers the chills! It follows twelve-year-old Jodie and her younger brother Mark who are sent off to spend a month on their grandparents’ remote farm. It is a fairly isolated place, located two miles from town, with limited television access, and surrounded by tall cornfields filled with scarecrows. To make matters worse, Jodie suffers from allergies thanks to all the blossoms in the air, and as for Mark, he doesn’t want to be there at all. He only wants to watch television and play video games on his GameBoy (there are lots of references to ‘90s nostalgia in this book, like GameBoys, Walkmans, comics, MTV, Nirvana T-shirts, and so on).
Upon arrival, the kids are greeted by Stanley, their grandparents’ forty-five-year-old farm helper who is a bit of an oddball, perhaps not unlike Lennie in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Stanley has a teenage son named “Sticks” who hangs around the farm. But when Jodie and Mark reconnect with their grandparents, Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam, something seems off. Both have a dead-eyed smile and they seem utterly deferential toward Stanley. Despite always being fond of telling scary stories, Grandpa Kurt claims he doesn’t remember any to tell, and Grandma Miriam decides not to make her trademark chocolate pancakes in the morning (instead she offers to serve Stanley’s favorite breakfast: cornflakes). “Grandma Miriam always serves my favorite,” says Stanley ominously. Clearly something is not right in this household.
To make matters more suspicious, keeping in mind Jodie’s previous visit to the farm last year, she notices there are now many more scarecrows than there were before. When she tries to ask her grandparents about it, they quickly change the subject. During the day, Stanley keeps muttering to himself about a mysterious “book” he has been reading aloud. Apparently, it made all the scarecrows come to life and walk at midnight. Jodie pays it little mind, however, though she is frightened by all the dark shadowy scarecrows looming over the fields, rustling in the breeze, and swaying and creaking in the moonlight. For a brief moment, she wonders if they might be watching her.
“The stalks creaked and groaned as we passed by them. It was kind of an eerie sound… Suddenly, a shadow fell over me. One of the dark scarecrows rose up in front of us. It wore a tattered black coat, stuffed with straw. Its arms stretched stiffly out at its sides… The scarecrow was tall, towering over my head. Tall enough to stand over the high cornstalks… Its head was a faded burlap bag, filled with straw. Evil black eyes and a menacing frown had been painted on thickly in black paint. A battered old-fashioned hat rested on its head” (15).
In the middle of the night, Jodie looks out over the cornfields and thinks she sees the scarecrows twitching, wriggling their hay-filled bodies almost as if in unison. Terrified, she tries to tell her grandparents about it in the morning, but they simply brush aside her concerns and quickly change the subject. They maintain their same dead-eyed smile, frozen like the painted faces of the scarecrows out in the field. Then when they go out fishing in the creek, Jodie thinks she sees a scarecrow arm filled with hay reaching up to grab her. Later, she spots the distant visage of a scarecrow peering at her through the trees. She rushes back to the barn thinking she will run into Sticks, but instead she finds a pile of scarecrow outfits as well as a collection of torches. She then pauses and hears the disturbing sound of hay sliding around on the floor. Slowly, the sliding sound approaches her, closer and closer. The door is slammed shut, closing her inside the dark, dingy barn. Jodie only narrowly escapes out a window. And later when she goes horseback riding, a scarecrow suddenly falls onto the path in front of her. Just for a moment, she wonders if it is leering up at her, smiling (elsewhere another scarecrow nearly gives Mark a broken wrist).
Jodie starts to believe this is all just a giant practical joke being played on them by Sticks. She devises a plan of her own. She dresses Mark up like a scarecrow and sends him out into the field to really scare Sticks… but shortly thereafter Jodie is attacked by a real scarecrow. Then Sticks shows up and finally tells her the truth. About a week ago, Stanley chanted some cryptic words from his superstitious book and it made all the scarecrows miraculously come to life. And when the scarecrows climbed down from their perches, they believed Stanley was their master. A terrified Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam then decided to appease Stanley with whatever he wanted in order to stop the madness. Stanley then tried to reverse the spell but it didn’t work on all the scarecrows. And now some are inexplicably coming to life again.
In the end, Stanley decides to reawaken the scarecrows, but when he reads the incantations from his book, this time the scarecrows do not heed his words. Instead they charge at everyone!
“In the silvery moonlight, I saw Stanley and Sticks. They were running hard, leaning forward as they ran… Behind them came the scarecrows. They were moving awkwardly, staggering, lurching silently forward… Their straw arms stretched straight forward, as if reaching to grab Stanley and Sticks. Their round black eyes glowed blankly in the moonlight… Staggering, tumbling, falling, they came after Stanley and Sticks. A dozen twisted figures in black coats and hats. Leaving clumps of straw as they pulled themselves forward… Grandma Miriam grabbed my arm and squeezed in terror. Her hand was as cold as ice… We watched Stanley fall, then scramble to his feet. Sticks helped pull him up, and the two of them continued to run toward us in terror… The silent scarecrows lurched and staggered closer. Closer” (108-109).
The scarecrows briefly decide to respond to Mark (still dressed as a scarecrow) because they believe he is their leader. But this short-lived moment curiously passes when Mark makes the mistake of shedding his scarecrow garb. In the end, the only way the scarecrows are stopped is when Sticks brings out the torches and burns all the scarecrows to a crisp, finally closing the chapter on this long nightmare. As the novel concludes, there is a trademark Goosebumps twist in which Jodie listens as Stanley reads from a book again and she watches as her grandparents’ taxidermy bear on the wall suddenly comes to life (she nervously wonders what book Stanley might be reading now…)
My Thoughts on The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight
The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is perhaps one of the more under-appreciated gems in the Goosebumps canon. This creepy, sinister book is filled with just the right amount of horror tropes and spooky atmosphere. The aesthetic is reminiscent of any number of slasher films and the effect is surprisingly enticing –an isolated farm located far away from the comforts of civilization where two “city kids” start having superstitious fears. Plus the way Jodie’s grandparents handle Stanley and his wayward command of supernatural forces reminded me a bit of Bill Mumy in The Twilight Zone episode “It’s A Good Life.” Still, why wouldn’t either Sticks or Jodie’s grandparents simply torch the scarecrows from the get-go? Or why not simply take the book away from Stanley? Or still, once the scarecrows were finally placated the first time, why not simply banish Stanley from the farm? Regardless, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is top notch, at least for a Goosebumps book.
Stine, R.L. The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1994.