Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Ann McGovern’s spooky story “The Velvet Ribbon.” Like many pre-teens and teens, I played the same records over and over and over again. My poor mother! When I was ten, she had to listen repeatedly to The Beatles’ 1970 collection, The Beatles Again, – and in later years, she was subjected to endless repeats of The Best of Bread, Eric Carmen’s self-titled album, Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt County, and perhaps the album that sticks in her mind most notably, Albert Hammond’s It Never Rains in Southern California. But one recording that still haunts her, I am sure, is “The Velvet Ribbon.” This spoken word track was part of a 1970 Scholastic record, The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales. Read by Carole Danell, this version of “The Velvet Ribbon” was written by Ann McGovern. Like “Bloody Mary” or “Hook Hand” or “The Ghostly Hitchhiker,” it’s an oft-told tale with many variations, especially in the color of the ribbon. Black? Red? Green? It doesn’t really matt