Hoo-Ha's is the prologue to More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It gives a brief summary of the kinds of stories that the book has to offer. Inspired by the T.S. Elliot poem "Fragment of an Agon" from Sweeney Agonistes.
The Story
These scary stories will take you on a strange and fearsome journey, where darkness or fog or mist or the sound of a person screaming or a dog howling turns ordinary places into nightmarish places, where nothing is what you expect. People have been telling scary stories for as long as anyone knows. From the first, they were tales of supernatural creatures that people feared would harm them - bogeymen, monsters, demons, ghosts, and evil spirits lurking in the dark, waiting for a chance to strike.
We still tell stories about creatures we fear, but not all of them are about bogeymen and demons. Quite a few are about living people. You'll meet some of them - a fat and jolly butcher, a friendly girl who plays a drum, a neighbor, and others who, at best, are not to be trusted.
They may warn young people of the dangers that await them when they set out in the world on their own. But for the most part, we tell scary stories to have fun. We turn out the lights, or we leave just a candle burning. Then we sit close together and tell the scariest stories we know. Often these include some that have been passed down over hundreds of years. If a story is scary enough, your flesh begins to creep. You get a shivery, shaky, screamy feeling. You imagine hearing and seeing things. You hold your breath as you wait to learn how it all ends. If something startling happens, everyone GASPS! or JUMPS! or SCREAMS! Some people call those shivery, shaky, screamy feelings the "heebee jeebies". The poet T. S. Eliot called them the "hoo-ha's."
You'd better read the stories in this book while you are still feeling brave and before it gets dark. Then, when the moon is up, tell them to your friends and relatives. You'll probably give them the "hoo-ha's." But they'll have fun, and so will you.
Princeton, New Jersey - Alvin Schwartz