From the 1973 vinyl record "Scary Spooky Stories"
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00:00Sometimes if somebody dares you to do something, don't. You never know where a
00:19dare can take you or what can happen. Especially if you take a dare on a dark
00:25night around midnight. As a matter of fact, I dare you to listen to the story
00:32I'm going to tell. Double dare you to listen to it at midnight.
00:39Well, maybe you can because it starts this way. Just a bunch of boys sitting
00:46around and talking and telling ghost stories, trying to scare each other. And
00:53they just happened to talk about an old man who had just died and been buried
00:58just that day. The old man never liked the boys and the boys never liked him.
01:05And so they talked. One of the boys said the old man was so mean that if any of
01:13them sat on his grave, the old man would probably reach up and grab him. And one
01:22of the boys, his name was Jim, said that was just a lot of nothing. Even if
01:29someone sat on the grave at midnight, nothing. One of the boys dared him to do
01:35just that. And Jim said it was silly. And then they all dared him. And what else
01:43could he do? He said he didn't believe in ghosts or anything like that, so he took
01:50the dare. And to prove that he would do what they wanted him to do, he said he'd
01:57leave his jackknife sticking in the grave for proof. And that was that until,
02:05until that night. At 1130, a half hour away from midnight, Jim got out of bed,
02:15dressed, remembered to take his penknife, and carefully left his house. He didn't
02:25want to wake his parents because they wouldn't understand about going to a
02:28graveyard at midnight. And then when he was outside, he remembered he had
02:36forgotten his flashlight. But it didn't matter. It was a bright, moonlit night.
02:43Just the sort of night to visit a grave, if you didn't want to be frightened.
02:52Even so, even if it was pretty light outside, Jim was afraid. After all, he
03:01didn't really know too much about ghosts. He just didn't believe in them. But maybe
03:07that wasn't enough. Maybe there were ghosts. And he began to wish he hadn't
03:14taken the dare. But a dare was a dare. And he came to the graveyard. He opened the
03:26iron gate of the graveyard. The moon shone on the gravestones all around him.
03:35And they stood white, looking like ghosts. And he looked for the old man's grave.
03:52And just at midnight, he found it. He opened his jackknife, knelt down, and
04:02plunged it into the old man's grave. Nothing happened. It was after midnight.
04:14He'd gone through with the dare, and he started to get up. But he couldn't. He
04:26couldn't move. Something was keeping him there on the grave. The old man? He
04:37didn't know. All he knew was that he couldn't move.
04:56The next day, Jim didn't show up at school. His friends wondered where he was.
05:03Probably out too late. They laughed about that. But after school, they walked over
05:09to the graveyard to see if Jim had left his knife where he said it would be. They
05:14found the knife. And they found Jim lying on top of the old man's grave. He had
05:23plunged the knife through his own coat, and had pinned himself to the ground. He
05:31couldn't move. He had died of fright.
05:44Now that's not very scary, is it? Or is it?