The

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Thing at the Foot of the Bed AND OTHER SCARY TALES

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ILLUSTRATED BY Kurt Werth

COLLINS

The Golden Arn1

ONCE there was a man had a woman for a wife named Elvira, and this woman had a golden arm. She was awful proud

of it. It was solid shining gold from the shoulder clear down to the nail of her little finger. She liked it even better than the real one.

Every night when she went to bed she used to say to her husband, "If I die first, promise to bury me with my golden arm."

"Yes, Elviry, I promise," the man would say, night after night after night.

Well, it happened that the woman got sick and died. The man buried her and her golden arm along with her, just as he had promised.

But after a while he began to think about it. He began to think about what he could do with all that gold. It seemed a shame for it just to lie there in the ground. He began to want the golden arm. And the more he thought about it, the more he wanted it.

So one dark night in the middle of the night he decided to

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go get it. H e put on his long dark coat and he lighted his lantern and he went trudging through the cold dark lanes till he came to the graveyard. And he dug up Elvira and took the golden arm.

H e tucked it under his long coat and started back home. On the way home it started to' rain, hail , snow, and blow. But he didn't think anything of that. H e got home all right.

When he got home he didn't know where to hide the golden arm, so he pushed it under the covers of the bed. Then he jumped into bed himself and shivered and shook. H e couldn't get warm because the golden arm was cold as ice.

And the wind rose and he heard a voice wailing

W - H - E-E - R-E'-S M-Y G-0-0- L - D - E - N A - A - A - R - M ?

The man pulled the covers up over his head so he wouldn't hear it. But he heard it just the same.

He heard it coming down the road. It was crying in the road

W - H -E - E - R -E' -S M - Y - Y

and on the porch

G -0-0- L - D - E -N

and at the door

A - A - A- R -M?

And the wind howled over the top of the door

W- H -E- E-R -E'- S M-Y G-0- L - D-E- A - A - R - M ?

The man shivered and shook under the covers. Then he peeked out.

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And he saw it. It was by the bed.

And- it pounced

YOU'VE GOT IT !

This is one of the most famous scary stories told. It is said

to have been told around every Boy and Girl Scout campfire ever kindled.

This is the story Mark Twain used to tell to scare whole audi­ences. And he explained that it is the timing of the pause just

before the pounce that makes for success or failure in the telling. If you get the pause just right, he said, someone in the audience

will surely scream ! I have told the story here as well as I can remember of the

way it was told to me in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia. It is a windy-night story, they say. Whenever the east wind howls loud and lonesome over a door at night, someone says, "Elvira wants her golden ann."