The Scarecrow, and Other Stories

In Short

G. Ranger Wormser’s The Scarecrow, and Other Stories is a haunting anthology of American short fiction that navigates the uneasy border between psychological breakdown and supernatural intervention. Across varied landscapes—from wind-swept cornfields and fog-drenched chalk cliffs to quiet suburban homes, war-torn crossroads, and oppressive, silent rooms—these stories trace characters unraveling under the weight of guilt, isolation, terror, and grief. Wormser uses dense atmospheric writing and sharp emotional tension to turn everyday spaces into sites of spectral dread. The collection endures for its uncanny ability to ground the fantastic in raw, visceral human vulnerability.

The Story

The arc of The Scarecrow, and Other Stories moves steadily from rural horror toward intimate, psychological, and spiritual encounters with the unknown. In the title story, a impoverished mother on a desolate farm puts an old, ragged military uniform on a wooden stake to serve as a scarecrow. Her fragile, quiet son, Benny, becomes hypnotized by the figure, insisting that it sways its arms against the wind and beckons to him. As a suffocating heat settles over the cornfield, the mother watches in horror through the night as the moonlit figure begins to twist, dance, and motion toward their doorway. Paralyzed by fear, she prays her son will not awaken to see it, but morning arrives to reveal an empty house and Benny gone without a trace.

The narrative scope then widens to explore different facets of spectral intrusion and emotional obsession. In one tale, two old friends, Kurz and Charlie, sit together debating the boundaries of life, death, and belief while shadowy figures stir in the dark garden outside, culminating in the sudden, impossible arrival of a beloved figure from their past. In another, a man stands on the lip of a fog-bound chalk cliff near a roaring sea, exchanging tense, cryptic words with a young girl whose deep fear of the water foreshadows an impending, inescapable tragedy.

Elsewhere, the collection turns inward to examine domestic and artistic manias. A man harboring an intense, unnatural hatred of flowers confronts his companion as she walks down a path of lilies; the heavy, suffocating scent of blossoms ultimately pursues him beyond the room, driving him toward a dark, inevitable surrender. In "The Shadow," a vain suburban writer named Jasper Wald sits in his square living room on Peach Tree Road, obsessively drafting work whose dark, underlying thoughts he does not truly comprehend, while his long-suffering wife, Ellen, moves silently through the gloom. Other stories delve into domestic tyranny and revenge: a abused woman living among kennels withstands her husband's violence until she finds an unexpected ally in a savage, captive chow named China-Ching, turning the dog's menacing presence back onto her abuser before walking away into the night.

The collection culminates in tales of wartime horror and crushing psychological silence. Soldiers and wanderers lost in pitch-black landscapes huddle near ruined crucifixes, seeking warmth and guidance while fearing the dark shadows hanging over the wooden beams. In the final, claustrophobic narrative, a man trapped in a heavy, deadening silence feels his sanity slipping. Desperate to break the suffocating quiet with human speech, he attempts to confess a secret to his companion, only to discover in a blinding, agonizing flash that the old man is deaf—leaving him trapped inside his own silent, twisting despair.

How It Unfolds

The beckoning in the corn A mother dresses a field scarecrow in her father's old military uniform to ward off birds. Her son Benny becomes obsessed with the figure, claiming it moves against the wind and beckons him to leave.

A night of unnatural motion During an oppressively hot, windless night, the mother watches the figure dance and reach its arms toward the house. She hides under her covers in terror, only to find Benny missing when dawn breaks.

Conversations on the threshold Kurz and Charlie sit in a shadowed room debating the nature of faith, life, and death. Footsteps ascend the stairs, bringing an unexpected apparition of their old acquaintance, Mutter Schwegel, into the open doorway.

Mist over the chalk cliffs A man and a young girl stand in a blinding coastal fog above the ocean. As the sea roars below, the girl confesses her terror of the water taking her family, while the fog slowly lifts over the flat salt marshes.

The suffocating garden A man tortured by a lifelong hatred of flowers confronts his partner as she gathers lilies. Despite her attempts to discard them, the overwhelming scent of blossoms permeates the darkness, drawing him out into the night.

Rebellion in the kennels A woman who has endured years of cruelty from her husband decides to leave him. Using his fear of a fierce, chained chow named China-Ching, she forces him to stand back while she and the dog walk away down the moonlit road.

Dawn at the crucifix A lost traveller wakes a sleeping man beside a wooden cross on a pitch-black night, terrified of enemy lines and hidden documents. As dawn breaks, the shadows on the cross take on a terrifying, sacred clarity before the kneeling survivors.

The trap of absolute silence A man suffering under a smothering, deadening quiet tries frantically to speak to his companion to break the stillness. He realizes too late that the old man cannot hear him, leaving him mute and unraveling in the malignant quiet.

The People

• Benny wants to escape the bleak, isolated life of his mother's farm. Entranced by the strange motion of the military scarecrow in the cornfield, he yields to its silent summons and vanishes into the night.
• Benny's Mother wants to protect her son and keep their impoverished home intact. Driven by guilt over putting the old uniform on the scarecrow, she endures a night of paralyzing horror only to lose the child she tried to shelter.
• Jasper Wald wants recognition as a literary genius and lives in vain satisfaction in his suburban house on Peach Tree Road. Blocked by a deep lack of understanding regarding his own dark writings, he treats his wife Ellen with callous impatience.
• Ellen wants respect and light in her dim home, carrying lamps into Jasper's study while quietly enduring his arrogance and outbursts.
• Jenny wants to break free from the overwhelming influence of her powerful, ruthless father, Daniel Drare, and the weak husband, Ernest, whom he forced upon her. Driven to desperation, she strikes directly at the heart of her father's painted portrait.
• The Abused Wife wants to escape her husband James's beatings and reclaim her spirit. Standing up to his threats, she secures her freedom by pairing her fate with China-Ching, a savage chow dog whose spirit she refuses to let James break.
• James wants total dominance over his wife and his kennels through violence and intimidation. His cruelty boomeranging back on him, he ends up cowed, trembling, and helpless in the moonlight as his wife leaves him behind.
• The Silent Man wants desperately to hear human speech to shatter an agonizing, claustrophobic silence. Blocked by his own tightening throat and his companion's deafness, he succumbs to terror and physical paralysis.

In Its Own Voice

"I was watching, maw. I seen it wave and wave. S'pose it should beckon--; s'pose it should beckon to me. I'd be going, then, maw."

A son stands rigid on the threshold of his home, quietly explaining to his mother why he cannot look away from the military scarecrow standing waist-deep in the evening corn.

"I know that life is meant to live fully and understandingly and that death is meant to live on; fully and understandingly."

Sitting in a dark room bordered by thick boxwood hedges, a man offers his quiet resolution on mortality to a friend who spent his life questioning and critiquing from the outside.

"I've stood for it all because I knowed that any time--Any time, mind you,--I could clear out. Whenever I likes I can get up and,--go!"

A weary woman stands in the doorway of a dog kennel, confronting her husband's threats with the sudden, fierce realization of her own autonomy.

What It's Really About

The Scarecrow, and Other Stories is fundamentally concerned with the thinness of the barrier between ordinary human routine and inner collapse. Wormser uses the supernatural not merely as a device for external frights, but as an amplification of internal states—grief, domestic captivity, artistic vanity, and sensory isolation.

The collection asks how long a mind can endure unspoken trauma or physical neglect before the surrounding world begins to warp. The scarecrow that dances, the flowers that suffocatingly track a man's presence, and the quiet room that robs a speaker of his voice are all physical manifestations of trapped emotions breaking through. Wormser argues that true horror rarely comes from foreign monsters; it emerges when the familiar structures of daily life—a cornfield, a marriage, a garden path—turn hostile and refuse to offer comfort.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate atmospheric, psychological horror in the tradition of Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman will find much to admire in this obscure gem. Wormser writes with a deliberate, rhythmic focus on sensory detail: the heavy weight of air before a storm, the scraping of bird-like fingers on a wrist, and the choking smell of night-blooming flowers.

`` +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | "A tremendous dizziness came over her. She closed her eyes for | | a second and then she stumbled back to the bed... Whatever | | happened, Benny mustn't hear her." | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ ``

The collection does carry the distinct hallmarks of its era. Modern readers will encounter period-specific phonetic dialects—such as the truncated speech of the rural farmhands or the broken English of immigrant and foreign figures—which can occasionally slow the reading cadence. Additionally, the stories rely on moody, slow-building atmosphere rather than fast-paced action or explicit gore. Yet for those willing to lean into its quiet, suffocating pacing, the book offers an extraordinary masterclass in mood. Wormser’s ability to turn simple silence or a swaying sleeve in a dark field into an unforgettable image of dread makes this a collection that lingers long after the final page.