Of the many iconic characters brought to life by artist Stephen Gammell in Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Harold the scarecrow is truly one of the most haunting. It's an extra thrill (and chill), then, that ahead of the August 9th theatrical release of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, we've been provided with an exclusive featurette that goes behind the scenes of the cinematic version of Harold, which certainly does Gammell's drawing justice.

You can watch Harold come to life one Halloween night in our exclusive featurette below, and check here to catch up on all of our Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark coverage, including highlights from the movie's Comic-Con panel!

Directed by André Øvredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Trollhunter) from a screenplay written by Daniel Hageman & Kevin Hageman and Guillermo del Toro, and based on the popular book trilogy written by Alvin Schwartz’s and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark stars Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur, and Natalie Ganzhorn.

The new Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie is produced by Sean Daniel, Elizabeth Grave, Guillermo del Toro, Jason F. Brown, and J. Miles Dale. The film will be released in theaters on August 9th.

Synopsis: "It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind...but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home."

  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.