So I chose the story because I generally find stories a tad more scary than picture, mainly due to my own imagination. I gave it a two. It was not scary but I was apprehensive maybe, I though as I read through it that it would end differently, I ended up feeling a bit let down though I thought it was cool that the author decided to make the character span centuries. The picture is nothing like I imagined it (sidebar: this happens almost every time I read a book first then watch a movie ) nor was the picture scary in the least. If I had seen the picture first I would have considered it a nice attempt at something awesome, though from the stories perspective I didn't get the claw contraption, until I put together the name of the beast to the actions/picture, because there was no description of it. All in all, not-at-all to mildly scary.