To ask if anyone remembers this creepy af kids book???

[NameChangeLifeChange]

There was a childrens book that I have vivid memories of and I remember it really scaring me as a child. I can’t remember the details but a tall man/ghoul type thing sneaks out in the nighttime and there’s a picture of him/it licking/nibbling the bristles of a broom.
The image is burned into my head but I can’t find it anywhere. Siblings and my mum claim to have no memory of this.
Please! Anyone else?? Creepy man sneaking around a house..I feel like maybe a child wakes up and sees him??

Jack Pretlutsky's poems. Nightmares: poems to trouble your sleep or the second book?

Was it a black and white drawing?

I'm close in age to you and this rings no bells. It sounds horrible 😅

The long legged scissor man? He cut off your thumbs😱

Following. Live a creepy 70s book mystery.

Love*

The tailypo perhaps?

www.amazon.co.uk/Tailypo-Ghost-Story-Clarion-books/dp/0395300843

Was it In A Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories?
I had that book as a child in the 90s. There was a horrible long haired man carrying around his wife's head 😱

Skellig?

We read it at school and it gave me the absolute creeps.

I don't recognize the book; but could it be one of Edward Gorey's many picture-books? Those that I've read are decidedly creepy, and this sounds like the sort of thing that could happen in one of them.

@ninetieseyebrows Fungus the bogeyman is my guess too - I distinctly remember an image of him licking something gross 🤢

Long Lankin? (Still one of the creepiest books I have ever read, and it’s YA!)

The goosebumps series’ scared me as a kid

Another vote for salad fingers here! He a creepy, skinny old man with long skinny fingers who goes round licking things and is obsessed with spoons, from what I can remember.

Slenderman is also pretty well known, but I've no idea if he licks things.

Could it have been this? The gray lady and the strawberry snatcher. Used to freak me out.

The Adventures of Hugh Barnaby and The Place of Shadows?

Correct, rusty spoons in particular! 😂

Hi,

It's Old Man Try-By-Night from Fantastic Stories by Terry Jones. Got a copy here. My 8 year old is morbidly fascinated by this particular story, as was I as a child!

Wow, I'm very impressed someone got it for you OP. And that someone mentioned Edward Gorey. The Doubtful Guest is so good! Gashly Crumb Tinies is not one I let my 7 year old see though.

A little something to help you sleep! 😂

I was going to suggest maybe the Armada books of ghost stories but you seem pretty certain.

The late great Terry Jones, I loved his Book of Pressed Fairies, illustrated by Brian Froud.

@Mochudubh

I'm positive. The substance he is licking off the broom is in fact chocolate spread! 😂

Thanks 😂😂😂

Struwelpeter is translated as Shock-headed Peter, but it's just one of several story-poems in the book, like Harriwt who played with matches, and Johnny Head-in-the-Air, and Augustus who wouldn't eat and the one who chopped off the thumbs of boys who sucked their thumbs...

Basically, 19th century children's fare, where all the children come to terrible ends because of their poor behaviour. I was both terrified and fascinated by it as a child - my Granny had a copy from her own childhood, which we read every timewe went there.

Some evil person has made it even more scary by animating it - I found it online by accident.

Wouldn't surprise me if it had influenced Terry Jones.

😬
i see why it’s stuck in your head op

Was it a Quentin Blake style illustration?