Digital BW, The Print

Just discovered that a couple of hundred rolls of 35mm black and white
negatives I've been carting around for about 25 years (and had been planning
to start working with again, digitially) have become separated from their
contact sheets, perhaps permanently. I'm wondering if it's possible to scan
these in, a roll at a time, to make electronic contact sheets, using an
ordinary flatbed scanner. My first attempts were utter failures -- they
scanned in much too dark, so that when inverted in Photoshop were much too
light, and fiddling with the white and black points did not improve things
much -- but I'm wondering if anyone has successfully done this, and if so
how. I'm really loathe to re-enter the chemical darkroom after two decades
plus away.

Thanks,
David