“‘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, has limited television access, and is surrounded by tall cornfields filled with scarecrows. To make matters worse, Jodie suffers from allergies amidst all the nearby blossoms and Mark doesn’t want to be there, 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 also has a teenage son named “Sticks.” But when they reconnect with their grandparents, Grandpa Kurt and Grandma Miriam, something is not right. Both have a dead-eyed smile and they seem utterly deferential toward Stanley. Grandpa Kurt now claims he doesn’t remember any good scary stories to tell (even though he always tells stories), and Grandma Miriam decides not to make chocolate pancakes in the morning (instead she offers Stanley’s favorite breakfast: cornflakes). “Grandma Miriam always serves my favorite,” says Stanley. Clearly something is not right.
To make matters more suspicious, since Jodie’s previous visit last year, she notices there are many more scarecrows than there were before. But 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 that has apparently made all the scarecrows come to life and walk at midnight. Jodie pays it little mind, though she is frightened by 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 are 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 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 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 hears the disturbing sound of hay sliding around on the floor. It slowly approaches her, closer and closer, before the door is slammed shutting, closing her inside the dark, dingy barn. She narrowly escapes out a window. And later when she goes horseback riding, a scarecrow suddenly falls onto the path in front of her, apparently leering up at her, smiling, while another scarecrow nearly gives Mark a broken wrist.
Jodie starts to believe this is all just a giant practical joke played by Sticks. Thus 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 before 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. 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, and the only way the scarecrows are stopped is when Sticks brings out the torches and burns all the scarecrows to a crisp, ending the long nightmare caused by the enchanted scarecrows (why didn’t they simply torch the scarecrows from the start?) As the novel concludes, there is a trademark Goosebumps twist in which Jodie listens as Stanley reads from his book and she watches as her grandparents’ taxidermy bear on the wall comes to life (she nervously wonders what book Stanley is reading now…)
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 once the scarecrows are placated, 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.