In fact, children catching on fire after playing with matches or falling out of trees and dying were common images in books designed to teach children moral and social lessons into 19th century also, said John Ingram, chairman of the special collections department at the University of Florida libraries, which houses more than 93,000 volumes of children's literature. While today's scary stories are meant to entertain, horror themes were used in the Victorian Age and earlier to teach children etiquette, restraint and responsibility by showing terrifying examples of the price of misbehaving. In this book, the children behave like animals and then slowly turn into animals representing these characteristics, almost like the werewolf or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Such literature was thought to be an effective way of instilling moral lessons and proper behavior.
Nothing is free, and nothing is without consequence.
Frightening elements can also be found in earlier stories, especially fairy tales handed down through the ages. Stories during that time, however, used horror to empower children, said UF English Professor John Cech, author of five children's books. These stories spoke to an older psychological necessity, which was more ancient and, in a sense, more vital than the Victorian stories. We didn't have to sacrifice children to these horrors to get them to learn moral lessons. Part of the violence in children's stories can be attributed to the time period in which they were written, Ingram said.