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I remember reading a compilation of children’s/bedtime/scary stories as a child, one of which was about a girl and a boy who eventually got married. Throughout the short story, she had a black ribbon tied around her neck, but refuses to tell her (eventual) husband what it is. On her deathbed she shows him what it's for; she pulls the bow loose and her head falls off.
What is the title of this book?
The story is The Green Ribbon, from the book In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories
You can listen to an audio version of it on Youtube here. There's also probably some different versions of the story that change the colour of the ribbon, depending on a few things.
This story makes the rounds of regional and children's ghost story collections in multiple versions featuring many different colored ribbons. The original version is probably Washington Irving's "Adventure of a German Student" in which the band is black. Trust your memory if you remember a different color, you undoubtably read a varient that did in fact feature the color you remember- tracking that specific version down, however, is a whole other issue. Tales for the Midnight Hour by J. B. Stamper and Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are two other children's collections with other versions.
