The Dead Man's Brains is a story from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. It explains a game that people play in order to be scared for fun. It was featured in "The October Game" by Ray Bradbury.
Plot
This scary story is a scary game that people play at Halloween. But it can be played whenever the spirit moves you.
The players sit in a circle in a darkened room and listen to a storyteller describe the rotting remains of a corpse. Each part is passed around for them to feel.
In one version, a player is out if he or she screams or gasps with fright. In another version, everybody stays to the end, no matter how scared they get.
Here is the story:
Once in this town there lived a man named Brown. It was years ago, on this night, that he was murdered out of spite.
We have here his remains.
First, let's feel his brains. [Which is a wet, squishy tomato]
Now here are his eyes, still frozen with surprise. [Two peeled grapes]
This is his nose. [A chicken bone]
Here is his ear. [A dried apricot]
And here is his hand, rotting flesh and bone. [A rubber glove filled with mud or ice]
But his hair still grows. [A handful of yarn]
And his heart still beats, now and then. [A piece of raw liver]
And his blood still flows. Dip your fingers in it. It's nice and warm. [A bowl of ketchup thinned with warm water]
That's all there is, except for these worms. They are the ones that ate the rest of him. [A handful of wet, cooked spaghetti noodles]