Scary stories for Halloween: The New Mother by Lucy Clifford

'It really is a most beautiful thing is a peardrum' ... illustration from a Victorian edition of The New Mother

"I came across The New Mother via Alan Garner and Neil Gaiman, a promising route to the uncanny. Garner includes a version of it in his Collected Folk Tales, published last year (with an introduction that states, firmly: "We need to be scared. It is healthy and good for us"). Reviewing the collection, Gaiman explains how Garner strips the story, also known as "The Pear Drum", down to its elements, weaving in a mournful refrain: "Iram, biram, brendon, bo, / Where did all the children go?"
continue reading..... via The Guardian