Introducing "Chilling Tales," a spine-chilling anthology that will drag you into a world of relentless suspense and unyielding terror. Delve into a collection of thrilling short stories that is guaranteed to haunt your dreams and leave you trembling in the dead of night.
Between its pages, you will encounter a horrifying
cavalcade
of
demons
summoning
darkness, the relentless pursuit of the undead, and unearthly encounters with the paranormal. Brace yourself
for
heart-stopping
encounters
with
psychopaths lurking in the shadows, ghastly apparitions that defy the laws of existence, and spine-tingling encounters with extraterrestrial horrors from beyond the stars. In this collection, every turn unveils a new mystery that will keep you hooked until the very end.
Through the masterful storytelling of acclaimed authors, "Chilling Tales" will transport you to the darkest corners of the unknown, where fear reigns supreme. Immerse yourself in tales that will have your heart pounding and your mind racing, as you discover the true extent of human dread and unearth the secrets that lie within the realms of the inexplicable.
Prepare to lose yourself in a world where nightmares become your companions, where the line between reality and nightmares blurs beyond recognition. "Chilling Tales" is a gripping journey into the realm of the macabre, an irresistible invitation to confront your deepest fears and embrace the terrors lurking in every shadow. Dare to take a step into the abyss and uncover the secrets that lie within the twisted realms of horror and mystery.
With "Chilling Tales," expect nothing less than an extraordinary collection of narratives that will send shivers down your spine and ensure sleepless nights. Brace yourself for an hauntingly unforgettable
experience that will leave you yearning for more, if you dare.
1
Scary Stories for
Kids - 1
Everyone, including children, enjoys a good horror story for some reason. Children of all ages, from infants to teenagers, enjoy shivering in response to anything unsettling or frightful. We have very short stories as well as lengthier ones with escalating tension in our collection of spooky tales for youngsters. Make sure the one you choose is acceptable for the youngsters listening to the story in terms of both their age and emotional development.
To avoid any issues, we advise you to discuss your plans to deliver a terrifying story to extremely young children with the parents beforehand.
The Clown Statue
A girl in her teens babysat for a wealthy family one night. The wealthy family had a very large house with many rooms. It was filled with lots of artefacts and old ornaments from all over the world. As the parents were leaving to go out, the father told the girl that once the she put the kids down, she must go down to the basement, watch TV there, and not go
Once the kids are asleep, the girl retires to the basement room to watch TV. However, she cannot concentrate on her show because in the in the corner of the room is a life-size clown statue grinning at her.
She finally decides to drape a blanket over the statue so she can ignore it. After a while she can’t stand looking at the clown statue’s over-sized feet sticking out from under the blanket. She decides to call the father and ask his permission to watch TV in another room, because she is freaked out by the giant clown statue in basement room.
“Listen very carefully,” says the man to the girl.
“Our children have been complaining about a clown that comes into their room in the middle of the night.
We just thought it was nightmares. We don’t own a clown statue. You need to get the kids and get out of the house NOW! I’ll call the police.”
The girl hangs up the phone, turns around to look at the covered clown statue, but all there is a blanket on the floor! She hears steps coming down the basement stairs.
Hide and Seek
Two young brothers were at home alone in the
apartment while their parents visited their neighbours next door for a while.
“Be good boys,” their parents said.
To keep themselves occupied the boys decided to play a game of hide and seek. The older boy turned his head to the wall and began to count. He could hear his little brother’s feet as he scampered about looking for a place to hide.
“Ready or not I’m coming,” cried the older brother and off he went looking for his brother. He looked in all the usual places, behind the sofa, in the bathroom behind the shower curtain, behind the curtains in every room, and under all the beds, but he couldn’t find him. The apartment was eerily silent.
Then he heard a scraping sound coming from the wardrobe. The boy was sure he’d already looked there, but he went anyway and called out, “Come out I’ve found you!” but there was only silence.
Again he called for his brother to come out and again nothing. Opening the door, the boy tried to peer behind the wall of dresses and coats hanging there.
He bent down, but he did not see any feet standing there. He began to rise up and put his hand out into the mass of clothing to feel for his little brother when a small, white, icy cold hand came out, grabbed his wrist, and tried to pull him into the closet.
As he is trying to pull himself free, he hears a noise behind him, looks over his shoulder, and sees his brother behind him. “Couldn’t you find me?” asks the boy.
The older brother screams in fright and desperately tries to free himself from the grip of the hand, all the while being pulled into the wardrobe. The younger brother grabs him and together they manage to pull free. They both run screaming from the apartment.
Nobody knows what would have happened if the hand had managed to pull him in. Do you!
The Flying Dutchman
An old legend and famous scary story, there was even a movie based upon this legend in the 1950s.
Some versions say the Dutchman must sail the seas until he finds the love of a good woman.
The legend of The Flying Dutchman began 1641, when a Dutch ship sank off the coast of the Cape of Good Hope. The captain, a Dutch man named VanderDecken, failed to notice the dark clouds looming. Only when he heard the lookout scream out in terror did he realise that they had sailed straight into a fierce storm.
The captain and his crew battled for hours to get out
of the storm. At one point it seemed as if they would make it. Then they heard a sickening crunch; the ship had hit treacherous rocks and began to sink. As the ship plunged downwards, Captain VanderDecken knew that death was approaching. He was not ready to die and screamed out a curse: “I WILL round this Cape even if I have to keep sailing until the end of time!”
So, even today whenever a storm brews off the Cape of Good Hope, if you look into the eye of the storm, you will be able to see the ship and its captain – The Flying Dutchman. The legend goes that whoever sees the ship will die a terrible death.
Many people have claimed to have seen The Flying Dutchman, including the crew of a German submarine boat during World War II.
On 11 July 1881, the Royal Navy ship, the Bacchante, was rounding the tip of Africa when they were confronted with the sight of The Flying Dutchman. The midshipman, a prince who later became King George V, recorded that the lookout man and the officer of the watch had seen The Flying Dutchman and he used these words to describe the ship:
A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the mast, spars and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief.
It is pity that the lookout saw the Flying Dutchman.
For, soon after, on the same trip, he accidentally fell from a mast and died. Fortunately for the English royal family, the young midshipman survived the curse to become The King of England!
The Vanishing Hitchhiker
(This urban legend appears in many forms in different parts of the country. Resurrection Mary is the most famous and is associated with the southwest suburbs of Chicago and Resurrection Cemetery. Tell this story as if it happened to a personal friend.) My Uncle Joe was driving home late one night when he picked up a pretty girl hitchhiking in a white dress.
The girl was very nice and they have a good conversation. He drove her home and dropped her off at her house. The next day, he realized she left her sweater in his car. He decided to drop the sweater off at her house. When he rang the bell, an old lady answered the door. He tells her his story and she tells him he must be mistaken – her daughter died in a car accident after a night of dancing many years ago.
Variation: The hitchhiker never gets to her house. She mysteriously vanishes from the car as they pass the cemetery gates.
A woman is gardening when she digs up a hairy toe.
She brings it in the house and puts it in a jar. When she goes to bed that night, she hears the wind moaning and groaning and then she hears “Where is my Hair-r-r-y To-o-e?”
She creeps further under the covers as the house creaks and cracks and she again hears, “Where is my Hair-r-r-y To-o-e?”
Continue this story as long as you wish, with more details about the scary noises in the house and repeating the question “Where is my Hairy Toe”
more forcibly and louder.
Finally, say “Where is my Hair-r-r-y To-o-e?” in a low, menacing voice and then jump up, point at the listeners, and scream, “You’ve got it!”
2
Scary Stories for
Kids - 2
Scary stories do not need to be long and drawn out. Kids have short attention spans and our
collection of short, scary stories for kids considers this fact and provides a good scare in a short amount of time.
The following stories are a bit longer. To build the suspense, read them slowly while imagining a great deal of vocal expression.
The Lady with the
Emerald Ring
A rich man’s wife became deathly ill the night before Christmas in 1798, so he called for the doctor. By the time the doctor arrived, his wife had died, or so it seemed. Her husband was so grief-stricken that he locked himself in his room and did not attend the funeral the following day. The servants of the house carried the rich woman’s body to the Vicar who, in a drunken stupor, held the ceremony quickly. The veil was drawn across her face, the stone lid lowered, and the iron grille locked.
Just before the clergyman fell to sleep later that night, he remembered the beautiful emerald ring on the finger of the woman he had laid to rest. Wanting the ring and thinking no one would find out, he went downstairs, unlocked the lid, opened it, and tried to pry off the ring. It would not budge. He ran and brought back a file to cut the ring off her finger.
When that did not work, he severed her finger and pulled the ring off. As he left, he turned around to pick up the iron lid, and screamed at the top of his
lungs. He dropped the ring and ran. The woman had awakened, was moaning, and held her severed finger towards him with an evil smile on her face.
Wearing nothing but her fine silk dress, the woman walked back to her home, knocked on the door, and rang the bell, but to no avail. The servants had all gone to sleep, for it was late on Christmas Eve. She lifted a heavy stone, threw it at her husband’s window, and waited. He came to the window with a sorrowful look on his face.
Suddenly, to her surprise, he yelled, “Go away. Why must you torture me so? Don’t you know my wife has just died? Let me mourn and do not bother me again.”
With this he shut the window. He did not realize it was his wife who had thrown the rock at the window.
She repeated her actions, again throwing a rock at the window. He opened the window again, and she yelled to him, “I am no one but your so-called dead wife. Now come down here and open this door, unless you’d like me to die a second time on our doorstep.”
“You are a ghost then?” he said to her.
She said, “No, for ghosts don’t bleed. Now come down here before I catch my own death of cold.”
The man with a joyous look on his face came down
to meet his wife and took her inside where he called the doctor once more and told him the news.
Meanwhile, the clergyman ran home and up the stairs. In a state of fright, he hung himself from the rafters of his home. If he had only known that the woman only wanted to thank him. She had not died after all but had gone into a coma. When he cut off her finger, the pain woke her up.
The Long-Dead Boy
Once upon a time, there was a 10-year-old girl who lived in London in a very old house. She hated the house. It was cold and damp all of the time. Plus, none of her friends would visit because it was believed by everyone in the neighborhood that a ghost lived in the house. The little girl was curious about the ghost, but nobody would talk to her when she asked questions about it or the history of the house.
The house was scary, and some nights were worse than others. One night, when she was in her room reading, the lamp suddenly went off. She thought the light bulb had died. She did not want to bother her mother, who was already sleeping, by asking for a new bulb. So she put down her book and prepared to sleep. All of a sudden, there was a quiet knocking on the window next to her bed. She saw the reflection of
a boy, about her age, reflected on the window glass.
The girl turned to look in her room but saw nothing.
She got out of bed and went over to her lamp. She felt something wet on the ground. She flicked on the lamp, which now worked, and saw a red stain where she was standing. Then it disappeared. It wasn’t blood, because the red was too bright, almost pink, like paint. She scratched at the purple wall of her room and, believe it or not, behind the purple paint was pink, the same dark shade that had been on the floor.
The girl ran out of her room toward her parent’s room. But then she saw something that made her open her mouth to scream, though no sound came out. The attic door was right above her staircase, really high up; only her dad could reach it. Hanging from it was a noose, the thing they hung people on.
The girl ran back to her room and there was a body in her bed. She grabbed her phone to take a picture. She wanted proof. She wanted to know in the morning if what she saw was a dream or real. She took a picture of her bed, and, without looking at it, ran to get her mother.
Grumpily, her mother came up the stairs. The girl pointed to where the noose had been, but now it was just a piece of string from her mother’s sewing kit.
She led her mother up to her room, to show her the child’s body, but now there was nothing. As her
mother turned to leave the room, the girl remembered the camera. She grabbed it and turned it on, showing it to her mother.
There was no longer a photo of her bed. Instead, there was a photo of a teenage boy, with a red mark around his neck, and pink paint all over his torn clothes.
Her mother told her to stop joking around. However, her mother had an extremely worried look on her face. When asked what was wrong, she said, “He is back!”
The little girl never saw the boy again and her mother refused to tell her who he was.
The Piggy Back Ride
A married couple fought a great deal and finally began talking about getting a divorce. However, the wife discovered she was pregnant and, for the sake of the baby, they decided to give the marriage another try.
The boy was born and the family had a short period of tranquillity. Before long the old problems resurfaced and the father and mother were fighting all the time.
One night, when the boy was about 5 years old, the couple put the boy to bed and then got into an enormous fight. In a fit of rage, the father put his hands around his wife’s neck and choked the life out of her.
Eventually, when he realised what he had done, he began to panic. He knew he had to get rid of the body if he wasn’t going to get caught.
He bundled the body into the boot of his car and drove out of town to a swamp. He took the body from the car, but rigor mortis had started to set in and it was difficult to carry it. He slung his wife’s body across his back, as if he were giving her a piggy back ride, and waded out into the foul-smelling swamp. He let her go and watched the stiff hands and wretched face recede into the murky swamp water.
The man went home, and got in the shower to clean up, but he couldn’t get rid of the foul stench of the swamp. The smell made him sick to his stomach. No matter how hard he scrubbed or how often he showered, he could not get rid of the smell. It followed him wherever he went.
As the days passed the boy became anxious for his mother and asked all kinds of question. The father told the boy his mother had gone to stay with relatives.
The smell remained. The man began to ignore it as
much as he could. One day the man noticed his son was looking at him in a strange way. Every time he approached his son, he recoiled in horror and would not let him touch him.
One day, he walked into his child’s room as he was playing on the floor.
“Son, there seems to be something bothering you. Is there something you want to say to me?”
“Yes, father.”
“Is it about your mother?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Why is mommy’s face so pale?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you give her a piggy-back ride every day?”
The Hitchhiker
A recently married couple was on a long road trip through the heart of the United States. One night it was raining hard and the headlights of their car
flashed across a bearded man on the side of the road hitchhiking. Not usually one for picking up hitchhikers, the husband stopped and pulled over to offer the guy a lift because the weather was so bad.
The man thanked the husband and climbed into the back of the car. He seemed agitated and edgy, barely speaking a word for the whole journey. Eventually, the couple dropped him off where he asked, at a crossroads. The rain was still coming down in sheets.
The couple drove on for a good while and, to pass the time, the husband turned on the radio. The couple heard a news report about an escaped lunatic, considered very dangerous, who should not be approached under any circumstances. The description matched the hitchhiker and the couple looked at each other, clearly shocked, but happy nothing bad had occurred.
Just then the car gave out, and no amount of keying the ignition would make it start again. The husband tells his wife to stay in the car while he sets off through the rain to try and get help. The woman locks the doors and wants to listen to the radio, but the car battery seems dead. Eventually, she doses off.
A while later, she wakes up seeing flashing police lights through the water coming down the windshield and a voice through a loudspeaker, “Lady, open the door, get out of the car, and run towards us as fast as you can. Do it NOW!”
The woman is confused, but she gets out of the car with her hands above her head.
“Run and don’t look back!” orders the police officer.
But the woman is curious and turns. In the flashing blue lights of the police car and illuminated by flashes of lightning she sees the top of the car where the hitchhiker with a machete is hacking at the dismembered corpse of her husband. Blood is streaming down the sides of the car. She screams and faints as a flurry of gunshots rings out.
3
Stories that Will
Scare the Life
Out of You
When I imagine narrating ghost stories, I picture myself telling frightening tales while holding a torch under my chin around a campfire while roasting marshmallows. I then picture retiring to my tent for the night. Even though I’ve never done it, ever, it simply seems like the ideal setting for telling a horror story, especially with the sounds of the forest rustling all around you and the stars above. We’ve gathered
some of the best adult ghost stories from all around the internet that are sure to give you a fright because, even if you’re not in the forest, telling short ghost stories is a great way to pass the time. Bring me some marshmallows!
The Puppy in the
Basement
Mommy told me never to go in the basement, but I wanted to see what was making that noise. It kind of sounded like a puppy, and I wanted to see the puppy, so I opened the basement door and tiptoed down a bit. I didn’t see a puppy, and then Mommy yanked me out of the basement and yelled at me. Mommy had never yelled at me before, and it made me sad and I cried. Then Mommy told me never to go into the basement again, and she gave me a cookie. That made me feel better, so I didn’t ask her why the boy in the basement was making noises like a puppy, or why he had no hands or feet.
Nun Chucks
When my daughter was 2, I found her twirling paper towel tubes, tied with twine, in the air. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was practicing her
“nun chucks”. I was very confused as she’d have no way of knowing what they were. I asked her what she
meant and she said that Adam had told her how to make them and showed her each night how to use them. She went on to say that Adam told her to practice because she may need to know how to defend herself someday. I almost freaked out but asked her what Adam looked like. She said he was tall, blond, and had blue eyes. She said,” Mommy, you KNOW how he looks – you know him! He died of a headache.” I had to leave the room. You see, 4
months before she was born, my tall, blonde, blue-eyed, martial arts-pro friend had died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 27. She has not spoken of him since that day, so I’m not sure if I scared her with my reaction or if she had completed her lessons.
There's Someone Under
the Bed
I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering,
“Daddy, there’s somebody on my bed.”
The Chair
When my sister Betsy and I were kids, our family lived for a while in a charming old farmhouse. We
loved exploring its dusty corners and climbing the apple tree in the backyard. But our favorite thing was the ghost. We called her Mother because she seemed so kind and nurturing. Some mornings Betsy and I would wake up, and on each of our nightstands, we’d find a cup that hadn’t been there the night before.
Mother had left them there, worried that we’d get thirsty during the night. She just wanted to take care of us. Among the homes’ original furnishings was an antique wooden chair which we kept against the back wall of the living room. Whenever we were preoccupied, watching TV or playing a game, Mother would inch that chair forward, across the room, toward us. Sometimes she’d manage to move it all the way to the centre of the room. We always felt sad putting it back against the wall. Mother just wanted to be near us. Years later, long after we’d moved out, I found an old newspaper article about the farmhouse’s original occupant, a widow. She’d murdered her two children by giving them each a cup of poisoned milk before bed. Then she hung herself.
The article included a photo of the farmhouse’s living room, with a woman’s body hanging from a beam.
Beneath her, knocked over, was that old wooden chair, placed exactly in the center of the room.
The Ghost at Home
Last night a friend rushed me out of the house to catch the opening act at a local bar’s music night.
After a few drinks I realized my phone wasn’t in my pocket. I checked the table we were sitting at, the bar, the bathrooms, and after no luck I used my friend’s phone to call mine. After two rings someone answered, gave out a low raspy giggle, and hung up.
They didn’t answer again. I eventually gave it up as a lost cause and headed home. I found my phone laying on my nightstand, right where I left it.
4
The Shortest
Ghost Stories
Ever
Now for something a little different. The Metro came up with these one- or two-sentence ghost stories that are designed to get you thinking – so here are my spooky favorites.
Mummy, the man at the top of the stairs says you should leave. For good. With him.
I woke to hear there was knocking on glass. At first, I reckoned it was the window. when it continued, I realized it was coming from the mirror.
The laughter of a baby is so refreshing and enjoyable. Nothing like it. Unless it’s 1:00 AM and you are dead sure that you all alone at home.
5
More Scary
Stories for Kids
Children appreciate a good scare, but it can be challenging to discover kid-friendly short scary stories that won’t keep them up all night. To help you get the most out of the tales, here’s a compilation of the best scary children’s stories for tiny ones and older kids. And some notes have been added to ensure that you get the most from these stories.
Some of these stories can be found in other sections of this book.
Murderer On The Loose
"Murderer On The Loose" is the story for you if you’re looking for a spooky tale that gets spookier with more information. It’s one of the best scary campfire stories, and kids ages 8 and up love it in its most simple form. If you have children who appreciate the gore, you can add some gruesome details about the murder victims.
A man was lying in bed one evening when he noticed
there were lots of sirens in the streets outside. And there was a helicopter flying around overhead, and the sounds of barking dogs and shouting people.
He looked out his window and saw a great deal of police activity, so he went online to discover what was going on. “Serial Killer Escapes!” said the headlines. As he read further, the man discovered a crazed killer had broken loose and that he was believed to be in the man’s neighborhood.
But he wasn’t too worried. As the night wore on, the noise wound down, and the man went to bed.
Suddenly, the man was startled awake. He thought he had heard a sound. He listened carefully and was just about to go back to sleep when he heard it again.
This time he was sure someone was trying to get in his front door. The man looked down the hallway, terrified, not knowing what to do.
The only way out of his room, without going into the hallway, was through the window. He couldn’t climb out. Could he?
His mind was made up as he saw the door wobble in its frame as someone threw their entire weight against it.
Without another moment of hesitation, the man leapt out of his window and ran into his yard. He paused to
look over his shoulder, just in time to see the light go on in his bedroom and a team of police officers pile in.
The man was amazed and relieved at the same time.
Until he felt a hand clamp tight over his mouth and the cold steel of a serial killer’s knife against his throat.
The Hitchhiker
This tale is a fantastic "all-arounder" terrifying tale for kids and is appropriate for those who are roughly 8 years old and older. It’s an excellent scary story for kids to tell over a campfire, but it may also be used for sleepovers, Halloween, or other occasions when you want to scare people.
A man moved to a small town and slowly got to know a few of his new neighbors. He soon learned that most of the residents believed that one of the roads out of town was haunted, but he didn’t believe in ghosts, so he never asked why.
One day, the man went to visit a friend in another town. He was enjoying his visit so much that he ended up staying later than he had planned. By the time he left for home, it was way past midnight.
There was no moon that night, and once he left the
town limits, the only lighting came from his headlights. Soon it began raining, and the rain made it even more difficult to see.
As a result, it was almost too late to brake when the man saw the woman on the road. He jammed his foot hard to the floor, and the car swerved in the road before coming to a stop just inches from her legs.
Normally, the man would have driven off again, but it was so late and the weather was terrible. He decided to offer the woman a ride. She got into his car, took off her wet hoodie and held her hands up to the vents to capture the warmth.
When they reached town, the woman directed him to her home, thanked him for the ride, and went inside.
When the man got home, he discovered she had left her hoodie in his car. He thought about driving back to her house, but it was so late that he decided to go inside to bed and return the hoodie the next day.
The next morning, he drove back to the house where he had dropped her off, walked to the door, and rang the bell. An older woman answered the door, and he handed her the hoodie.
“I gave your daughter a ride home last night, and she left this in my car,” he said.
The woman began to cry.
“My daughter was killed by a hit and run driver many years ago,” she said. “It happened on the road into town, and she was wearing a hoodie just like this one.”
The Thirteenth Floor
This tale is a great method to explain why there isn’t a thirteenth floor if you reside in or visit a building without one. If your child is over 7 years old, they should appreciate this story, but use your best judgment as to whether they are mature enough to handle it.
The first hotel to have more than thirteen floors had a huge Halloween party to celebrate its opening.
Each floor was set up like a maze, decorated with cobwebs and other Halloween decorations. There were lots of people dressed up as ghosts and ghouls to frighten the partygoers. An exciting prize was hidden on the top floor, and the first person to reach the prize would win it.
Jack and Sophia were two of the partygoers. They worked their way easily through the mazes on the first few floors. As they headed up through the building, the hallways on each floor got darker and scarier.
When they got to the twelfth floor, Jack and Sophia heard a blood-curdling scream. As they made their way through the maze, they heard more screams and cries for help. Finally, in the lobby by the elevators, they saw blood dripping from the ceiling.
The elevator dinged, and the doors slowly opened, which was strange because every other time they used the elevator, the doors had been quick and smooth. The light in the elevator was flickering as they stepped in and, as the doors began to close, the lights went out completely.
And then, screams so loud the entire building heard them begin to ring out. At first, the partygoers thought it was part of the scary Halloween theme.
But then, the owners of the building turned on all the lights and asked everyone to return to the lobby.
But when people tried to use the elevator, it never came. The bell would ding, but the doors wouldn’t open, and they were all forced to use the stairs.
Down in the lobby, the building owners explained they had not played the sounds of the screams. And, as they did a check of everyone who had come back, they realized Jack and Sophia had not returned.
Just then, the doors to the elevator opened. It was empty except for Jack’s watch, one of Sophia’s shoes, and a pool of blood. Jack and Sophia were never seen again, and the building owners took away
the button for the thirteenth floor, so nobody would disappear there again.
Clap Once For Yes
This tale is effective for frightening kids at any time, but it works particularly well if you’re camping or want to go on a trek. Instead of just saying "clap,"
provide a real clap when the story’s final sentence appears for the most effect.
A family was camping and left their tent to go on a day hike. They were a few hours from their campsite when a storm suddenly blew up. They became disoriented in the wind and driving rain.
They tried to trace their steps back to the campsite but became lost in the unfamiliar backcountry. Being experienced hikers, they knew once they were lost it was best to stay in one place than wander in the woods, so they prepared to settle down and wait for rescue.
Darkness fell, and the family built a fire to keep warm. As they snuggled up against each other and started to drift off to sleep, they heard a noise coming from the trees.
“Who’s there?” one of the parents called, but there
Then they heard the sound again. But once more, when they called out, there was no answer.
“Perhaps it’s someone who can’t speak,” suggested the daughter. So her mom called out, “Is there anyone there? Clap once for yes and twice for no.”
There was one clap.
“You were right,” the parents said to their daughter.
“There is someone out there.”
“Are you here to rescue us?” shouted the mom.
Clap clap.
“Are you lost like us?”
Clap clap.
“Do you live out here in the woods?”
Clap clap.
“Let me try,” said the son. “Are you a boy?”
Clap clap.
“Are you a girl?”
They all looked at each other, puzzled.
Thinking he was being funny, the son asked: “Are you human?”
Clap clap.
Now, the family was scared.
“Are you alone?” called the mom.
Clap clap.
The family huddled together more.
“How many of you are there then?”
Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap ….
Hide-And-Seek
This scary story for kids is appropriate for young children as early as 5 years old because even the youngest among us enjoy a little bit of a scare. You can explain the creature in the wardrobe to older
children, tell them about it on a wet day, and then advise playing a game of hide-and-seek later.
Two sisters were spending the summer at their grandparents’ house. When the sun was shining, they had plenty of fun, swimming in the lake out front, exploring the woods out back, and playing all sorts of games in the gardens.
However, one week, toward the end of their stay, it did nothing but rain. The girls had played board games, read books, made things with their crafts supplies, and now they were bored.
The grandparents’ house was large, and the girls thought it would be an excellent place for a game of hide-and-seek. The younger sister wanted to hide first. She ran off to find a hiding place while her sister covered her eyes and began to count to fifty.
The older sister heard her sibling’s footsteps running up the stairs and along the hallway to the back of the house. After reaching fifty, she opened her eyes and went in search of her sister.
The girl went into every room. She looked under the beds and in the closets. Behind the curtains and behind the doors, but her sister was nowhere to be found.
Finally, she reached the only room their grandparents
She reached out and grasped the doorknob, turning it slowly and pushing the door open. Much to her surprise, the room was almost empty.
The only item was an old, tall, carved wooden cupboard, covered in cobwebs. But the door was slightly open.
The girl ran over, laughing, and swung the door open expecting to find her sister, but the cupboard was empty. She leaned in, and as she did, a cold, icy hand reached out from the back of the dark cupboard and grabbed her wrist. She let out a scream and tried to escape, but the hand started to pull her into the cupboard.
The girl’s sister heard her screams and ran to find out what was happening. She entered the room and looked on in horror as her sister began to disappear into the cupboard. Luckily, the little sister was quick thinking — she ran toward the cupboard and grabbed her sister’s legs.
After a brief tug-of-war, she managed to pull her sister out of the cupboard, and the two girls ran from the room, slamming the door behind them.
Daddy’s Home
Since "Daddy’s Home" is a little more graphic than the other stories, it is best left for audiences 10 and older. It cannot be toned down to make it suitable for younger children.
A man and his young teenage son lived together in a small house on the outskirts of town. The lot their house sat on was large and overgrown with tall hedges blocking the house from the street.
One day, the man left on an overnight business trip but took his son’s phone charger by mistake. As a result, neither the boy nor his father could charge their phones. Both phones were fully charged at first, but the man was delayed on his way home, and by midnight on the second day, both phones were dead.
It was just after this that the boy heard a knock on the front door. He was a sensible boy and knew not to open the door to strangers. Instead, he looked out of his bedroom window, onto the drive to see who was there.
The boy saw his father’s car in the drive, but he could not see the front door from his room. He went downstairs and looked through the peephole in the door to see who was there. He could see his father on the other side of the door, looking back at him, and the boy reached up to open the door.
“Dad?” the boy called out. “Why are you knocking on the door? Did you forget your keys?”
The boy waited, but there was no reply — just another knock on the door.
“Dad?” the boy called out again. “Why don’t you just open the door and come in?”
But again there was no reply. Instead, there was just a steady, rhythmic knocking on the door which began to get faster and faster. The boy’s dad was knocking constantly on the door, waiting for him to open up when suddenly he stopped and there was no sound at all.
The boy looked through the peephole again. His dad was still there, so he decided to open up. When he opened the door, he discovered his dad’s head taped to the door, in front of the peephole, and a trail of bloody footprints leading down the drive.
The Demon Hello Kitty
This is the perfect children’s scary and fun story. 8
and older children will find this amusing for its absurdity. Even better is if you can utilize a Hello
Kitty object or image to illustrate the character.
Do you know why Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth?
No? Well, let me tell you.
The woman who invented Hello Kitty has a daughter.
Her daughter developed a rare form of cancer in her mouth, and the doctors told her mother there was nothing they could do. Her daughter was going to die.
The mother was inconsolable. Her daughter was her only child, and she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her life without her. She vowed to do whatever she could to save her.
When the little girl was just hours from death, the mother was visited by the devil. He told her he would save her little girl, if she promised to invent a cartoon character that would end up in every home. The mother was suspicious — why would the devil request that she create a cartoon character that would bring joy into the world?
The devil’s intent wasn’t to bring happiness into the lives of children, after all. The devil said he would use the character to hypnotize children and possess them. The mother was torn — should she save her own child and sacrifice all those innocent children out there?
Because of her intense love for her children, the mother agreed, and her daughter recovered. In return,
the mother invented Hello Kitty. The character has no mouth because her daughter’s mouth was eaten away by the cancer and sewn up.
It has pointy ears like the devil’s horns, and the word
“kitty” means demon. So when you say Hello Kitty, you are actually saying, Hello Demon, and welcoming the devil into your home.
Guard Dog
Children over 10 should read this fairly graphic story. Children who insist they are prepared to stay at home alone will benefit the most from it.
This is a story about when a girl’s parents left her alone overnight for the first time. The parents told the girl to make sure all the doors and windows were locked tight after they left, and not to open the door to anyone while they were gone.
The girl did as she was told, and after her parents left, she went around and checked all the windows and doors. They were all locked tight.
By 10 o’clock that night the girl was bored being in the house on her own. She decided to go to her room, with a big bowl of popcorn, and get comfortable in bed. Not long after she got settled, she began to doze off and was awoken with a start when something
It was the dog. The family’s husky had come upstairs and licked her hand while she slept.
The girl went back to sleep but was awoken again.
This time she knew straight away what had woken her up. It was a tap in the bathroom, drip, drip, dripping.
She reached down to her husky, who licked her hand while she fell asleep again.
Every hour or so, the girl was awoken by the dripping tap. But because she had stayed up so late, she was too tired to go and turn it off tightly. Instead, she would reach out to check for her husky and it would lick her hand while she fell asleep.
It was just after 6:30 the next morning when she could stand it no longer and got up to turn off the tap.
She walked into the bathroom and screamed. There was her husky, dead, skinned, and hanging from the ceiling.
The sound hadn’t been the tap. It had been her dog’s blood dripping onto the floor.
The girl ran back to her room to phone for help.
There, on her floor, written in her dog’s blood, was
the message, “Humans can lick, too.”
Cameras Don’t Lie
This disturbing story for youngsters is suitable for those 8 years and older. If you want to add more impact, put a suitable photo on your phone, show it to your audience at the conclusion of the story, and then tell the kids you looked after the children in the story.
A teenage girl had been babysitting for the same family for a few years. The children were generally well behaved, and she enjoyed looking after them.
One day the family called the babysitter with a special request.
“My sister and her husband died in an accident, and we have taken in their daughter,” the father said.
“She is very quiet after what happened to her parents, but she is no trouble. Would you mind looking after her as well as the other children this Saturday?”
The babysitter said she didn’t mind at all, and on Saturday evening, she went to the family’s house.
The children settled down in bed and they all quickly fell asleep, except the niece. The little girl came back downstairs and asked if she could sit with the
babysitter because the monster that killed her parents wouldn’t let her go to sleep.
Thinking the little girl was imagining things, but understanding she had just lost her parents, the babysitter decided to let the little girl sit with her.
Seeing the babysitter’s phone, the little girl asked if she could take some photos with it and the babysitter said yes. The little girl cheered up, just a little, and walked around the room taking photos of her teddy in different spots and snapping sad-looking selfies.
Every now and then the little girl would run back to the babysitter, crying, and asking her to chase away the monster. To make the little girl feel better, the babysitter would pretend to chase it away.
After a while, the little girl could stay awake no longer and fell asleep on the sofa. The babysitter carried her up to bed, tucked her in, and went back downstairs.
She picked up her phone with the intention of deleting the photos the little girl had taken. But when she began to look at them, she let out a scream. In each of the selfies the little girl had taken, behind her, there was a pair of red eyes staring out of a monster’s face.
Looking for children’s ghost stories? Children over the age of 8 will respond strongly if you tell them this story. To make it scarier, tell it in the first person, and include facts from your own childhood to make it seem more plausible.
When I was a child, I lived on a street with a haunted house. A large and happy family had lived in the house until one night when one of the children was playing with matches. The youngest boy of the family dropped a lit match on his bed but was too scared to call out for help.
The boy was burned alive under his covers. His parents and two sisters died with him in the flames.
One evening during a sleepover, my friends and I took turns trying to scare each other with ghost stories. It was approaching midnight and, unable to scare each other, we thought it would be fun to go to the haunted house in the dark.
We walked through the gate together and up to what remained of the door, still set in its stone doorframe.
The smell of smoke hung in the air, and thin clouds of ash were being blown in the breeze. But then we realized there was no breeze.
Shapes began to form in the clouds of ash and gray
hands reached out from the shapes. As we turned to run, screams rose up out of the ashes. “Help us, we’re burning!” they cried.
We started to run, thinking that as soon as we were clear of the house we would be safe. But the ash shapes and screams followed us. As we neared my home,
the
smell
of
burning
was
almost
overwhelming, and as we reached my door, I glanced over my shoulder to see a hand reaching for me.
We piled through my front door, slamming it behind us, and ran up the stairs to my room, slamming that door tight, too. None of us expected to sleep, but the fear had exhausted us and we fell into a deep slumber.
The next morning, in the daylight, we were all much braver. During breakfast, we talked about what happened and came to the conclusion our imaginations had taken over. We decided to walk back to the house in the daylight.
I opened my front door and my mouth dropped in a silent scream. There, on the door, were two large round scorches high on the door, like someone had pounded on it with burning hands. Lower down, there were two smaller sets of handprints, as if children with burning hands had pushed against it.
Finally, near the bottom of the door was a tiny set of burnt handprints, as if the youngest little boy had
tried in vain to push open the door and get help for his family.
6
Short Horror
Stories For
Teenagers
Without some creepy tales, teen sleepovers and camping vacations aren’t complete. Whether they are getting together for a study night out or just a casual get-together with pals, horror stories for teenagers can provide them with joy unlike anything else. The excellent collection of spooky short horror stories in this section will make a night out for teens exciting and enjoyable. With these creepy tales, get ready for a spooky time.
Humans Can Lick Too
This is a frightening story of a girl who was alone at home one night, for the first time. She has a dog to keep her company. The girl listens to the news about a serial killer on the loose. She goes to sleep after locking all the doors and windows but for one, which
Suddenly she is awakened by a dripping sound.
Scared thoroughly, she tries to go back to sleep and puts her hand hanging down her bed for a reassuring lick from her dog. As the dripping sound continues, she goes to check on the taps in the kitchen, bathroom, and everywhere else but finds nothing.
She returns to her bedroom and puts the hand down again for the dog to lick. The dripping sound continues and the girl is too frightened to fall asleep.
But as her hand gets licked from under the bed, she slowly falls asleep.
In the morning, when she opens the closet, she finds her dog killed and hanged upside down. The dripping sound was from the dog’s blood. On the closet doors, she sees a message – “Humans can lick, too”.
Aren’t You Glad You
Didn’t Turn On The
Lights?
Two best friends Meg and Samantha, live in the same room of the college dormitory. Samantha goes out for a party with her date while Meg stays back to study for the upcoming mid-term exams. When Samantha returns from the party, lights are all turned off. She
does not switch on the lights as her friend is asleep.
Early in the morning, Sam tries to wake Meg up to discuss the exams. As Meg doesn’t respond, Sam hesitantly uncovers her face to wake her up. She gets horrified to discover Meg’s face turned black and blue, and falls on the floor in a state of shock. She observes that Meg’s study table was all messed up and finds a creepy note on the wall, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” The murderer must have very much been in the room when Sam came the previous night.
Spiders In The Hairdo
This spine-chilling tale is about Dolores, a teenage girl, who is living on her own for the first time after graduation. She does not have enough money but makes sure to save some bucks to maintain her giant beehive hairdo. She does everything to maintain the hairdo as instructed by the hairstylist, but one day she wakes up with a terrible itch in the scalp.
Dolores tries some cures but realizes that a spider bite is causing the itch. So she calls an exterminator to kill all the spiders and insects in her room. But her pain does not reduce and visits a doctor. The medication given by the doctor fails.
Frustrated, she rushes to her stylist. The salon is full
and the hairstylist asks Dolores to wait. She pushes a lady out of the salon chair and asks for immediate attention.
When the stylist begins to unwrap the beehive hairdo, black widow spiders start crawling down her face and soon the salon is filled with the spiders moving slowly in every corner. Everyone in the salon starts rushing out while Dolores is dead in her chair.
The stylist is horrified to see the beehive hairdo fall to the floor and tiny black widow spiders coming out of the hatched eggs in the scalp of Dolores. It was a macabre scene as the scalp of Dolores was half eaten by the black widow spiders.
The Vanishing Hitch-
Hiker
This next eerie story is about a man driving home late in the night when he spots a girl asking for a hitchhike. The pretty girl is dressed in a beautiful white dress. The man offers her a ride and they strike up an interesting conversation. He drops the girl at her home.
Next day, while driving for work he notices that the girl by accident has forgotten her sweater in his car.
He drives towards her home to hand over the sweater.
An old lady opens the door when he rings the bell.
He narrates the incident which occurred last night and gives the sweater to the lady.
The lady refuses to accept it, saying he is mistaken.
The man is surprised and questions the lady again.
He is dumbstruck and left in an unsettling situation when the lady says her daughter died in a car accident a couple of years ago.
Far Far Away
In a faraway village called Never Better lived a boy Jeremy Johnson Johnson. Since his childhood, he is haunted by a ghost and he becomes friends with it.
But Jeremy is ridiculed by people as they assume that he is talking to himself.
Jeremy’s life changes when he meets Ginger, a beautiful girl, and they grow close to each other. She invites him to play a prank on the town baker and their bond is strengthened when the prank succeeds.
The two children set out on an adventure to save the bookstore of Jeremy’s family. While saving the bookstore, Ginger and Jeremy unfold the mystery of disappearing children in the village with the help of the ghost. Would Ginger and Jeremy go missing too?
Lover’s Lane
A teenage couple is in a deserted lover’s lane, making out in their car. After a short while, the radio stops to announce alarming news that a convicted serial killer just escaped from the asylum. People are asked to report to the police if they see a strange-looking man with a hook attached to his hand.
The girl is frightened and requests the boy to rush home immediately. The boy initially disagrees and tries hard to convince his date to stay, but eventually, they both head back.
When they arrive at the girl’s house, she gets down and tries to close the car door but it won’t close. She freezes as she sees a hook suspended from the doorknob.
The Cats of Ulthar
An old couple in the town of Ulthar finds pleasure in mercilessly killing any cats that enter their property.
The other residents of the town do not speak up against the evil acts but try to keep their felines away from the couple’s property.
One night, some travelers pass through this town, and among them is an orphaned boy who has nobody but a kitten. The kitten goes missing after a couple of
days and he comes to know about the old couple.
The little boy focuses all his energies and unleashes a prayer that affects the sky and the movement of clouds. The travelers leave Ulthar and the people notice that all their cats have gone missing. People are worried but have no clue about the whereabouts of their cats.
The cats return on the following day and seem well-fed, but the old couple has vanished. When the people explore the property, they find the ghastly skeletons of two humans which have been picked clean.
The Monkey’s Paw
Sergeant-Major Morris introduces a mummified monkey paw to Mr. and Mrs. White. He tells them that he found it while serving in India. The paw has the ability to grant three wishes but they always come with terrible consequences.
Mr.White ignores Morris’ warnings and asks the paw a wish for £200. The next day he receives the news that his son Herbert died in an accident at his workplace.
The
employer
sends
£200
as
compensation for the family of the accident victim.
Mrs.White is anguished and wants her son back.
After nearly 10 days of the funeral, the couple decides to ask for another wish. They rub the monkey’s paw and ask for his son to come back.
They hear a knock on the door. The knock turns into banging and Mrs.White fumbles to open the door.
Terrified with the idea of seeing a mutilated and decomposed body of their son outside his house, Mr.White makes the third and final wish. The door knocks stop and when Mrs.White opens the door, she is shattered in pain and disappointment as there is nobody there.
Children Of The Corn
A quarrelsome couple is driving towards California to find a better-paying job for Burt, the husband.
While driving, they accidentally ran over a boy who appeared out of nowhere. They blame each other for the accident and finally decide to check the body.
While examining the boy, a shiver runs down their body as they discover that his throat was slit already and was bleeding to death. On further investigation, Vicky, the wife, finds a strange crucifix made of corn husks, in the boy’s bag.
The couple argues over where to take the body and decides to drive towards Gatlin which is just down the road. Gatlin is an isolated community in an abandoned ghost village. They drive further into the
ghostly place and see that the calendar and gas prices are all outdated.
Burt stops the vehicle at a church to go and find someone. Vicky starts to scream for help when she sees many children dressed in Amish clothing heading toward the car. The children pull Vicky out of the car and start beating her mercilessly. When Burt intervenes, Vicky escapes and goes missing.
The sun sets and the ghostly place turns very dark.
Burt goes and hides in a cornfield. As the daylight breaks, he sees Vicky tied to a cross with barbed wires and her eyes ripped out. There are no animals or weeds in the cornfield and nobody takes care of the cornfields. But the cornfield is still blooming.
Children of the corn find Burt, and a giant red-eyed monster emerging from the field ruthlessly kills Burt.
The children belong to a cult that worships “He Who Walks Behind the Rows,” the monster who killed Burt.
The Black Cat
The narrator and his wife live in a house with their pet cat named Pluto. The couple is very fond of their large black cat, and Pluto too loves the narrator. Their close friendship lasts many years until one day when the narrator hangs the cat under the influence of
Soon after the cat’s death, their house catches fire and everything is destroyed. But one wall, which survives the mysterious fire, has an imprint of the large cat tied upside down with a rope.
Disturbed from seeing this, the narrator regrets his actions. One fine evening, he finds a similar cat in a bar and brings that home. The new cat is very similar to Pluto, except for minor differences. Whenever the man sees the new cat, he is reminded of Pluto and is filled with a feeling of guilt.
One day when the man and his wife are walking towards the cellar, the cat gets under the feet of his master and he trips down the stairs. In a fit of rage, he tries to kill the new cat too. But the wife stops him, and in this process gets killed accidentally.
He hides the body inside a wall in the house and when the police investigation begins he takes careful steps. On the day of closing the murder mystery, the police hear a disturbing loud crying sound from one of the walls. The police start breaking down the walls of that room and discover the rotting body of the dead wife.
Beside the dead body is a cat, grinning and meowing vehemently.
Aubrey, an English gentleman, meets a mysterious man named Lord Ruthven. Aubrey goes to Rome with Ruthven but when he finds Ruthven doing wrongful acts with the daughter of a mutual acquaintance, he leaves him.
Aubrey is attracted to Lanthe, a pretty woman he meets in Greece. Lanthe shares stories about the legends of the bloodcurdling Vampires. Ruthven hears them talking and a couple of days later, Lanthe is found dead. Apparently, she is killed by a vampire.
Aubrey continues traveling with Ruthven. On their journey, they are attacked by bandits and Ruthven is gravely wounded. Ruthven takes a promise from Aubrey before dying, that he will not mention about this death to anyone for one year and a day.
One day, Aubrey suddenly realizes that everyone who met Ruthven suffered horribly. He is in London now and is shocked to see Ruthven alive and healthy.
Ruthven starts seeing Aubrey’s sister and proposes her for marriage. Aubrey wants to warn his sister about Ruthven but Ruthven reminds him of the oath.
Aubrey is bound by the oath and has a nervous breakdown. Still he writes a letter to his sister, but she gets married to Ruthven before the letter arrives.
On the night of the wedding, Aubrey’s sister is discovered dead, fully drained of her blood. Ruthven
A Room In The Tower
A young man repeatedly gets a nightmare that he is visiting a friend’s house, whose family is weird. The malevolent mother of his friend, Mrs.Stone, allots a dreadful room in a huge tower for him to retire.
His nightmare repeats but keeps varying every night and the characters in the dream keep growing over the years. In his dream one day, Mrs.Stone expires and she is buried, but she still keeps assigning the same room to him.
In the young man’s normal life, his friend Clinton invites him for dinner one day. He is surprised to see that everything matches with the nightmare. But the personalities and names are different and he has an enjoyable experience. Due to a thunderstorm warning, Clinton’s mother advises him to stay with the family that night and allots a room that is similar to the one he sees in his nightmares. He is shocked at the resemblance.
In the room, he finds a very old painting of Mrs.Stone. With the help of Clinton, he moves the painting to the hall. They are amazed to see their hands covered in blood even though neither of them
They go to bed but the young man is unable to fall asleep and wake up in horror to find Mrs.Stone standing on the top of his bed. She tells him that she is a vampire and is here to turn the young man also into
a
vampire.
They get into a fight and he manages to escape.
When he rushes out of the room, Clinton comes out hearing the commotion. They discover that the portrait is back on the wall in his room. They get scared and flee away.
An old newspaper carries the news that Mrs.Stone’s coffin keeps erupting every day and has to be reburied.
The Boarded Window
Murlock, a villager, returns from the forest and finds his wife having severe fits, which eventually causes her death. He could not save her and sits alone with his dead wife. Tired and exhausted, Murlock falls asleep.
From an open window in his cabin, comes a loud, weeping sound which is similar to the crying of a lost child in the deep woods. Murlock doesn’t move. The sound starts again and gets louder and louder.
When Murlock wakes up, he feels some strange presence in his cabin. There is some weird movement in the dark. Murlock fires his rifle in the air and lights a candle. He witnesses a panther hauling his wife by the neck. When he examines the dead body of his wife, Murlock notices the earlobe of the panther stuck between her teeth.
The Monkey
Two young brothers Peter and Dennis find a clapping monkey toy in the basement of their great uncle’s home.
In the past, their father, Hal, had originally found the monkey in his father’s cupboard when he was a child.
Hal’s father disappeared under strange circumstances and a weird connection between the monkey and the missing father is established. It is revealed that the monkey is cursed and whenever it claps, someone from Hal’s family dies.
As a child, Hal saw his relatives dying one after the other whenever the monkey clapped. Oppressed by the monkey’s devilish enchantment, Hal threw the clapping monkey into a deep well, which now resurfaces
with
his
children.
When Peter and Dennis find the monkey again, Hal shoves it deep down inside a lake. He hopes the problem is solved forever. A couple of days later, a
news headline mentions about the mysterious death of all the fish in the lake.
The Landlady
A young man Billy Weaver is traveling on a cold winter night and seeks a place to stay. After searching a lot, he comes across a boarding house. He rings the bell and an old lady welcomes him inside.
He signs the guest book and gives all the required details. While filling up the guest book, he reads the names and details of other guests who previously stayed there and finds their names quite familiar.
The old lady offers some food and drinks to Billy but he refuses as he is tired and wants to go to bed.
However, they have a conversation over some tea.
Billy notices some peculiar things about the living room. The parrot is sitting quietly in the cage and a dog is lying near the fireplace.
While talking, Billy asks about the other guests and the lady starts saying strange things. She says that one of her guests, Mr. Mulholland, had nice, soft skin.
The situation gets ominous. Billy asks if the parrot is alive. The lady says neither the parrot nor the dog is alive. He panics and wants to get out immediately.
He realizes that the names that appeared familiar were the names given in the newspaper about people who mysteriously disappeared. Finally, Billy asks if there have been any other guests, in the last three years, at the boarding house. The lady says none but him.
7
Enjoy a Scary
Halloween at
Home
Nothing beats a little storytelling on Halloween, whether you’re scaring neighbors while trick-or-treating or entertaining pals at home. Here are some frightening stories to make your hair stand on end.
(A fun part of telling the stories is changing them as you go along so they sound like they happened nearby your house or someone in your audience’s house.)
Head hunter
A family of four – two young children and their parents – were traveling on the road to Agra when
their car broke down. The parents went out to look for help and left the radio on for the kids in case they got bored. By nightfall, the parents still hadn’t returned. Sitting in the darkness, the children continued to listen to the radio and grew alarmed when they heard that a dangerous killer was on the loose, having escaped from a prison nearby. The newsreader warned listeners to take extreme care when going about their business.
Time passed and the children waited. The silence outside the car was absolute until, suddenly, they heard knocking on the car roof above them. “Clank, clank, clank.” The knocks grew louder and faster.
“Douff, douff, douff.” Unable to bear it any longer, the children opened the car doors and fled in terror.
Only the eldest dared to turn to see the source of their fear. On top of the car was a large man, who was bouncing two objects on the top of the vehicle: the heads of the children’s parents.
The madman under the
bed
This is the story of a young girl from Mumbai, called Sara. As a child, Sara was afraid of the dark and got a dog to keep her company. Subsequently, she slept peacefully knowing the dog was under her bed; if she was afraid, she only had to reach out her hand, and
her dog would start licking it until she fell asleep.
Years went by like this and Sara grew up and the dog became old. One night, on the radio, she heard that a dangerous murderer was thought to be in the vicinity of Chembur. With her dog at her side, Sara was not afraid: she got into bed, stretched out her hand, and the dog, as was its wont, began to lick her.
She slept soundly and, when she woke up, she was surprised that the dog was still licking. Looking under the bed, she screamed. The dog lay dead and the tongue that was so tirelessly licking her belonged to a man.
The graveyard challenge
I heard this story from a friend when I was in college in Pune. This happened somewhere in Goa.
Several teenage girls went for a sleepover at a friend’s house, taking advantage of the fact that the parents were away. When they turned out the lights, they started talking about an old man who had just been buried in a nearby cemetery. It was said that he had been buried alive and could be heard scratching at the coffin, trying to get out.
One of the girls scoffed at the idea, so the others dared her to go visit the grave right there and then.
As proof that she had actually gone, she was to drive a wooden stake into the earth of the grave. The girl left and her friends lay waiting for her to return.
But the hours went by and their friend failed to materialize. They lay awake, increasingly terrified.
Morning came and the girl still had not appeared. So, when the parents came back, they all went down to the cemetery. There they found the girl lying on the grave. Dead. When she had bent down to drive the stake into the ground, she had caught the hem of her skirt. Struggling to get up, she thought the buried man had grabbed her. It was concluded that she died of fright.
“Have you been up to
check the kids?”
A teenage girl was asked to babysit for a family that lived in a huge, luxurious house. It was her first evening on the job and, after she put the children to bed upstairs, she sat down in front of the TV. But no sooner had she settled there than the phone rang. The caller was a man. Gasping and laughing menacingly, he asked, “Have been up to check the children?”
The babysitter hung up, convinced that her friends were playing a joke on her, but the man called again, and again he asked, “Have you been up to check the children?” Again, she hung up, now frightened, but
the man called a third time. This time, he said, “I’ve taken care of the kids, now I’m coming for you!”
By now, the babysitter was truly terrified. She called the police and reported the calls. The police told her to try to distract the man the next time he phoned to give them time to trace the call.
As expected, the man called back. The babysitter begged him to leave her alone, thus keeping him on the line for longer. Eventually, he hung up.
Immediately, the phone rang again. This time, it was the police: “Leave the house fast! The calls are coming from upstairs!”
The bony hand
Only last year in Haora, a seven-year-old girl was left with her grandmother in her small apartment while her parents went to the movies. Grandmother and granddaughter had dinner together and chatted for a while. At ten o’clock, the grandmother picked up her sewing, and the little girl turned on the TV. They were sitting companionably together when the grandmother got a terrible thirst and asked her granddaughter to bring her a glass of water.
“It’s too dark,” said the girl.
“Don’t be scared. Follow the corridor. There’s a
switch right next to the bathroom door.”
The girl got up and felt her way along the wall of the corridor, groping for the switch. As she reached the bathroom, she stopped and felt around, only to come into contact with a bony hand that tried to drag her into the bathroom. The girl managed to pull away and ran, screaming and crying, back to her grandmother.
After the incident, the girl needed psychological treatment.
What
happened,
has
never
been
established, though no one but the grandmother and the girl were in the apartment at the time.
Come play with me
Some time ago, a friend of mine and I decided to do the Ouija board for the first time, something we had never dared to do before. First, we bought a vintage Ouija board from a shady antique shop Near Esplanade. Once we laid it out back home, we called two other friends to come and do it with us as I had been told that it was more likely something would happen if there were more people. We had a hard time convincing the other two, but, in the end, they agreed to come along. We got everything ready and, feeling a bit nervous, got started.
During the session, one of the girls we had called to join us said: “This is nonsense. I’m out of here.” We got a little scared and decided to leave it for another
After a few days, the girl who had left called me, sounding absolutely beside herself. She said that, as she was passing a derelict house near her home on the way back from the local library, a little girl dressed in white had asked to play with her. My friend told her that she couldn’t as she was in a hurry to get home, and immediately the girl began to cry tears of blood. My friend fled and when she got home, she called me. At first, I thought she was pulling my leg, but something told me that was not the case.
I began to think about the day we had done the Ouija board and how abrupt my friend had been when she had got up to leave. I didn’t give it much more thought and went to bed. The next day, my friend called me because she was going to be home alone studying and, as she was scared, she asked me to keep her company. I took a bus over to hers and we settled down with our books. After a while, we heard a scratching noise behind us. We both looked up and were horrified to find that the girl she had described to me was sitting on my friend’s bed, scratching the wall. We ran out of the room and when we got to the front door, I noticed that my friend was not there, but I was so terrified, I couldn’t make myself wait for her.
Shortly afterward, the police called my house to tell me that my friend had died of an asthma attack. She
had been found on the stairs of her house, with a terrified expression on her face. For several months after that, I was in treatment. I am now recovering, but the other day, a note appeared in my mailbox written in a little girl’s hand that read, “Your friend died because she wouldn’t play with me. I have a new doll...” I think it’s a joke since our story has become famous in our town, but on the other hand, I’m scared. I wonder, will she come for me?
Room for one more
An Englishman man named Joseph Blackwell came to Kolkata on a business trip. He stayed at the large house some friends owned on the outskirts of the city. That night they had a pleasant evening chatting and reminiscing about the past. But when Blackwell went to bed, he began to toss and turn and was unable to sleep.
At one point during the night, he heard a car pull into the driveway. He went to the window to see who might be arriving at such a late hour. In the moonlight, he saw a black hearse full of people. The driver looked up at him. When Blackwell saw his strange face, he shuddered. The driver called to him,
“There’s room for one more.” He then waited a minute or two before driving off.
In the morning, Blackwell told his friends what had
happened. “You were dreaming,” they said. “That must have been it,” he replied, “but it didn’t seem like a dream.” After breakfast, he left for town and spent the day in the offices of one of the new high-rise buildings in the city.
Late in the afternoon, he was ready to go back to the house and was waiting for the elevator to take him down to the ground floor. But when it stopped at his floor, it was very full. One of the people inside looked at him and said, “There’s room for one more.”
It was the driver of the hearse. “No, thank you,”
Blackwell said. “I’ll wait for the next one.”
The doors closed and the elevator began to descend.
Moments later, there was a terrible crash and shouts and screams could be heard. The elevator had collapsed. All the people inside were killed.
Rings on her fingers
Daisy Clark had been in a coma for over a month when the doctor declared her dead. She was buried on a cool summer day in a small cemetery about a mile from her home.
“May she always rest in peace,” her husband said.
But that was not how it turned out. Late that night, a grave robber armed with a shovel and a flashlight began to dig her up. As the earth was still loose, he
quickly reached the coffin and opened it. His hunch was right. Daisy had been buried wearing two valuable rings: a diamond wedding ring and another studded with a brilliant ruby.
The thief knelt down and reached inside the coffin to take the rings, but they were completely stuck on Daisy’s fingers. He decided that the only way to get them was to cut off her fingers. But when he took out his knife and began to saw at the flesh, it began to bleed, and Daisy began to twitch. Suddenly, she sat up! Terrified, the thief scrambled to his feet, accidentally knocking his flashlight which went out.
In the dark, he could hear Daisy emerge from her grave. The thief stood frozen, clutching the knife in his hand. On seeing him there, Daisy covered herself with her shroud and asked, “Who are you?” Hearing the “corpse” speak, the grave robber ran. Daisy shrugged and kept walking, not bothering to look back.
Seized by fear and confusion, the thief fled in the wrong direction and fell headfirst into the open grave, onto his own knife. As Daisy walked home, the thief bled to death.
8
sized Chills
You’re just trying to fall asleep because it’s been a hard day. But as you try to fall asleep, your thoughts start to wander into the dark side. When that happens, you know it’s time to be frightened! Finding your daily dose of the macabre is easier than ever and serves as a welcome diversion from the grind thanks to true crime podcasts and spooky flicks.
Short horror stories are helpful in such situations!
Small chunks of horrible amusement are available for immediate consumption. Grab a blanket, dim the lights, and settle in for some scary stories if you want to get your taste of horror without having to watch an entire movie or read a book to get to the meaty part.
The Wallpaper
We bought this run-down house, my boyfriend and I.
While he started working on converting the kitchen into the main bedroom, I insisted on removing the old wallpaper. The previous owner papered every wall and ceiling in the house! It’s a lot of work to remove, but it feels so good to get rid of it. The best feeling is getting a long peel, like when your skin peels after a bad sunburn. I turned it into a game, on the hunt to rip
the
longest
piece
possible.
I noticed there was a person’s name and date under a
corner section of paper in every room. I couldn’t help but investigate and Googled those names. What I discovered left me speechless. The names all belonged to missing people, and the dates matched the day of their disappearance! We notified the police, who sent the crime scene team. I overheard one of them say, “Yeah, it’s human.” Wait, what’s human? “Ma’am, where is all the material you removed? This isn’t wallpaper.”
Which One's The Real
Son?
A father went to say good night to his son, as it was routine since he knew his son would have trouble sleeping if he didn’t. It was a sort of silent tradition between them, one he never forgot to attend. The room was dimly lit by the lamp, but the father could clearly see there was something unusual about the kid tonight. He looked the same, just with a huge grin that
drew
from
ear
to
ear.
“You okay, buddy?” he asked. The son nodded, still grinning, before saying, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” The father chuckled and got on his knees to take a look. There, under the bed, was his son. His real son. Pale, trembling, and scared to death. He whispered, “Daddy, there’s someone on my bed.”
A Wedding To Reckon
I stood there, watching as my future father-in-law held his precious daughter’s hand as he walked down the aisle. Tears in his eyes as the wedding march played in the background, reminding him that, in a matter of minutes, he would be witnessing me hold his daughter’s hand and slip a ring on her finger. He reached the altar, and I finally held her hand, grinning from ear to ear. I’d never been this happy before.
My bride’s father then got down on his knees and started begging. “I did what you asked. Just please, please give my daughter back to me.” I glared at him.
He was ruining this beautiful moment. “Shut up. If you sit down and enjoy the wedding, maybe I’ll tell you where I’ve hidden the rest of her body.”
My Mirror
When I smiled in her direction, she didn’t smile back.
There’s something really wrong with this mirror.
My Comrades
Every night, I relive burying my comrades from the war in my dreams.
Not because of the night terrors, but for the scratches on my arms and dirt on the floor every time I wake up.
Icecream With Dad
Mommy has the habit of going out every Saturday night, so Daddy and I always go get ice cream together after dinner, just the two of us. Around dinner time, I go to the kitchen to see what Daddy is cooking, but he’s not there. I saw a note on the counter that said Mommy and Uncle James were going somewhere together. I’m not sure, I don’t read that
well.
I find Daddy in the garage. I shut the door behind me like I’m supposed to. Daddy is in the front seat, the car engine already turned on. It seems like we won’t be having dinner tonight, only ice cream. I get in the backseat behind him since I’m not a big boy yet.
Daddy doesn’t answer when I say hello to him, maybe he can’t hear me over how loud the car is. I think I’ll take a nap on the way to the ice cream shop.
I feel kind of sleepy.
My Wish
It’s so dark here. I can’t even move, breathe, speak, or hear anything.
If only I knew it would be this lonely, I would have wished to be cremated instead.
The Misplaced Phone
Last night I was rushed out of the house by a friend to catch the opening act at a local bar’s music night.
A few drinks later, I realized I had lost my phone. I checked everywhere, even in the restrooms. Nothing.
I ended up using my friend’s phone to call mine. The phone rang twice — someone picked up, giggled with a low and raspy voice, and hung up. I tried again, but nobody responded anymore. In the end, I gave up and headed home. I found my phone on the nightstand, right where I had left it.
The Knocking
Every night, my brother and I used to knock on the wall separating our bedrooms. After I came back
from his funeral, I could still hear the knocking.
The Man At The Window
I don’t know why I looked up, but as soon as I did, I saw a man standing against my window. Forehead on the glass, still eyes, lipstick-red cartoonish smile. My wife was sleeping upstairs, our son in the crib. I couldn’t move a finger, frozen as I watched him past the glass. With his creepy smile still there, he put a hand up and slid it down the window, watching me with piercing eyes. I just stayed there, unable to move, feet still in the bushes I was pruning, looking into my house. He stood against my window.
Mother's Calling
A daughter was in her room, busy with homework when she heard her mother call her name: dinner was ready! She jumped onto her feet and began making her way downstairs when suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed her and pulled her into the laundry room beside the staircase. She panicked before realizing it was her mother — unusually weepy, with bloodshot eyes. “Don’t go down there, honey. I heard it too.”
My four-year-old said he wished people didn’t have to knock to get in a house.
I told him about doorbells, and he asked me if we could install one on his window.
A Dinner To Remember
I open the door to see a policeman who informs me that my husband died in a car crash.
I turn my head to see my husband sitting at the table and eating the dinner I just served, grinning at me.
She-Devil
In 2026, the Messiah descended on Earth. She performed miracles and cured the sick. There was no doubt about her authenticity. Everyone believed her.
Everyone revered her. Following this historical moment, known as the Age of Peace, everything suddenly changed. She warned us there were only a few spots left in heaven for the dead. That was natural: nobody had gone to hell during this age.
People started to go hysteric. Everyone wanted a
place in heaven. That’s when mass suicides started —
the Messiah had assured us that taking your own life is not a sin if you died a devout man. It was literally a race to kill yourself before everyone else.
She was left on her own as humanity perished at their own hands. Grinning, she returned home to her throne of fire and flames and greeted her people with a nod of her demonic horns.
The School Bus
We felt proud as our daughter got on the bus to enjoy her first day of school.
Our hearts dropped when the real school bus arrived two minutes later.
Shattered
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
That’s what I heard just before the lightbulb shattered behind me.
I Am The Reaper
“You look like death,” he said, concern clear on his face.
A wide grin crossed my face, flattered to be recognized, as I caught him with my scythe and pulled him down into the dark abyss.
Fingers
Our daughter spent the day at her friend Sally’s birthday party. Around midnight, when I was asleep after watching the Braves game, she woke me up, tugging my shirt sleeve. “Daddy, guess how old I’m going to be next month.” I decided to follow her lead.
“I don’t know, beauty,” I said as I slipped on my glasses. “How old?” She smiled and held up four fingers. It’s 7:30 now.
My wife and I have been up with her for almost 8
hours. She still refuses to tell us where she got them.
The Voice
Alone in my room, I sneezed softly.
“Bless you,” said a voice.
The Girl Outside
There’s a girl outside my window.
The only problem is that my apartment is on the seventh floor.
9
More Bite-Sized
Thrills
Here are a few of the scariest short stories that have been carefully clawed out from the vast grave of macabre and horror. Some of them are two-sentence horror tales, ideal for horrifying you in an instant!
You can read them in bed on your phone while your significant other snoozes peacefully next to you, or you can read them by yourself with nothing but the flicker of a candle for company. Only one thing is certain: tonight, you’ll be holding to your pillow for dear life while you are haunted by these terrifying tales!
Losing An Eye
I was on my way to school when something in the woods caught my eye.
I couldn’t get it back.
Pregnancy On Mars
The world was thrilled to hear the first mission to Mars would be led by an all-female crew.
A year later, the world was shocked when they all came back pregnant.
The Scratching Sounds
Growing up with cats and dogs, I grew accustomed to being awakened by the sounds of scratching on my door.
Now that I live alone, the sound is much more disturbing.
The Outbreak
It’s been 315 days since the outbreak, 187 days since
I realized I might be the only survivor, and 3 days since the two of us found each other in the wreckage of the world and made me feel like everything was going to be okay again.
After so long alone, I almost forgot that the first sign of infection is hallucinating imaginary people.
Emily
Last year, a young girl named Emily disappeared.
Now, new sidewalks are being poured into my neighborhood, and I’ve found her name in the wet cement — but it was written backward. And from below.
The Unrelenting Father
I aimed my gun at the sick bastard who murdered my wife. He cried so desperately, scared for what was to come. If only he had talked to me and tried to reason, maybe I could have spared him. But that was impossible.
After all, he was born just a few minutes ago.
Still More Bite-
Sized Spills
It isn’t clear why, but when folks are home alone in the middle of the night in their bedroom, they tend to binge-watch horror movies. Reading a well-written horror novel in the complete darkness of your room might prick your nerves, especially if the story revolves around plausible circumstances. Not vampires, zombies, or ghosts can be more terrifying than people.
When a scary story is done well, it has the capacity to send your heart pounding, give you goosebumps, and cause that familiar adrenaline rush.
And even though we recognize that the greatest way to appreciate the genre is through literature and film
— and we promote it! - there is frequently simply not enough time for any of that.
The Cursed Toy
Two young siblings, Peter and Dennis, find a clapping monkey toy in the basement of their great uncle’s
home.
There’s a story behind this toy. In the past, their father Hal had found that monkey in his father’s
cupboard without knowing the toy was cursed. Hal’s father disappeared under unusual circumstances, and the monkey was connected to it. It’s revealed that whenever the monkey claps, someone from Hal’s family dies — his relatives dying one after the other until he figured out the connection with the monkey.
Oppressed by the monkey’s devilish enchantment, Hal threw it into a deep well until it was found again by his kids. When Peter and Dennis find the monkey again, Hal shoves it deep down in a lake to avoid a new death. He hopes the problem is solved forever. A couple of days later, the local newspaper ran a story about the mysterious death of all the fish in the lake.
Pandemic
A pandemic has killed over 99% of humanity, but don’t worry — it’s only contagious among those who know about it.
My Daughter
When I came home from a hard day at work, my daughter’s smiling face greeted me from the driveway. Where’s the rest of her body?
“It’s just a harmless mask on the wall,” my mom said. She’s right; it is harmless — if not for the fact it suddenly appears in my room every night.
I saw a severed arm poking out of the dumpster. It gave me a thumbs-up when I walked by.
The Friend
“Mommy, my friend is coming over,” my daughter cheerfully told me about her imaginary friend.
Then the motion-detecting light turned on.
Freshen Up
I came home after a weeklong trip away. I went straight to the bathroom and took a well-deserved shower.
As I pressed the towel against my face to dry myself,
I discovered it was already wet.
The Basement
Mommy always told me there’s a rule I can’t absolutely break: don’t go in the basement. That place is a total mystery to me. The only thing I know is that there’s often a sound coming from there, like a weeping puppy. And I really wanted to see the puppy! So one day, I opened the basement door and tiptoed downstairs. There was no puppy, and then mommy yanked me out of the room and yelled at me like never before. It made me so sad I started crying.
She told me never to go in the basement again and then gave me a cookie. In the end, I never asked her why that boy in the basement was making noises like a puppy, or why he had no hands or feet.
Don't Look
Don’t look behind you. It doesn’t like to be seen.
Realizing Who I Truly
Am
As I rolled over in bed, I saw something clearly not
human smile at me through the window.
My heart almost stopped when I noticed it was my reflection.
Samantha's Return
Best friends Meg and Samantha share a room in the college dormitory. One night, Samantha goes out to party with her date while Meg decides to keep studying for the upcoming mid-term exams. When Samantha comes back from the party, the lights are all turned off. She doesn’t switch them on, as her friend
is
asleep.
Early in the morning, Samantha asks Meg to discuss the exams. As Meg stays silent, Samantha hesitantly uncovers her face to wake her up. Horrified, she looks at Meg’s face, now turned black and blue, and falls to the floor in shock. She sees that Meg’s desk is all messed up, with only a note on the wall. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?” The murderer must have been in the room when Sam returned the night before.
What Twins Experience
My twin brother and I often share experiences and
If only he had warned me before getting open heart surgery.
The Statue
This story dates back to a few years ago. A married couple decided to enjoy a night out, just the two of them. They called their most trusted babysitter to look after their kids. When she arrived, the two children were already fast asleep in bed, so the babysitter just sat around and ensured everything was okay.
Later that night, she got bored and decided to watch TV, the only cable TV in the parents’ bedroom. She called them and asked if she could use it. Of course, the parents said it was okay, but the babysitter had one final request. She wondered if she could cover that angel statue placed outside the bedroom window with a blanket or something because it made her uneasy. The phone line was silent for a moment, and the father said, “Take the children with you and get out of the house… We’ll call the police. We don’t have
any
angel
statues.”
When the police arrived, they found the kids and the babysitter in pools of their own blood. No statue was
Deep Diving
I love diving into the deeper ocean where you can’t even see the bottom!
Somehow, this time I can’t see the surface either.
11
Ouija Board
Stories
Due to the game’s alleged connections to the afterlife, Ouija boards have captured people’s attention for decades. Many people have seen nothing than their pals moving the planchette around on a Ouija board, while others claim that doing so is dangerous because you never know when things will spiral out of hand.
Here are some stories about Ouija boards that may permanently turn you off the Mystifying Oracle.
I Can See You Through
I was about 12 or 13 spending the night at a friend’s house, goofing around with the Ouija board with him and his sister. We were getting all sorts of gibberish plus words spelled out, just kind of scaring ourselves for fun, not taking it very seriously. Then we got the message ’I can see you through the window’ and then
’I can see you through his eyes’ or something like that. There was just a small window in the basement room where we were, and just the backyard and woods past the driveway visible through that window. We asked it more questions and it said ’I’m under the car,’ so we somehow got up the nerve to go out with a flashlight and peer under the car, where we saw a huge black stray cat hissing. We ran inside freaking out, and at that exact moment, the power failed and all the lights in the house went out. We just about actually shit ourselves. A few minutes later, the power came back, and we sat up until dawn that night scared and never played with the board again.
A Mysterious Death
My two best friends (M and L for this story) and I played [the Ouija board] at M’s house. It was going fine until M asked the spirit how it had died and it said ’murder.’ She asked how it had been murdered and it said ’ Not I.’ It gave its name as something older that I can no longer remember and gave us a
date in the 1800s. It started to get heavy. The whole room felt different, and the little thing on the board was ripped out of our hands and went across the room. We stopped playing immediately after that.
M’s mom died of cancer a week later. Very suddenly, nobody knew.
Probably a coincidence, but L’s mom was hospitalized for a serious drinking problem not long after that and then mine had an emergency hysterectomy the same week. I have since then experienced things that I don’t think I would have without this experience. Voices, a dark shadow, footsteps ... I wonder if I’m haunted sometimes still and it’s been nine years.
Our Good Friend Roger
I was over at a friend’s house back in the early ’90s. I believe I was in ninth grade at the time. There were four of us — myself and three other girls. They kept asking me if I wanted to play with the Ouija board because they’d been talking to some dude on it named Roger. I was totally skeptical at first. I wasn’t buying it ... Totally thought they were moving [the planchette], until I asked the board a question that only I knew. We had just got our grades from school back that day and I asked it what I got in science. I remember this clearly, and I know my friends did not know the answer. The board spelled out my grade. Of
course, that piqued my interest so I started asking it more questions.
I can’t really recall the details of that night other than the board kept calling one of my friends a bitch — it hated her. It liked me. His name was Roger and he was stabbed to death. At one point I was the only one controlling the board and asking questions. It worked.
The freakiest thing that’s ever happened to me ... I’m not super spiritual, have never seen anything else paranormal-related, and feel that I’m a very rational person. All I know is something supernatural was controlling that board without a doubt.
The Case of the Vanishing
Board
We were hanging out in a friend’s dorm room and busted out the Ouija board. There were a few of us who had used them before and a few who hadn’t that were quite skeptical. It was about 11:00 p.m. and the communication with the board was going quite well.
Gary, one of the skeptics, kept calling bullshit to the whole thing. We convinced him to sit on the floor with us and give it a shot. His first question was, ’Is this for real or just a bunch of bullshit?’ The planchette zipped to NO. ’Fine’ he says, still not believing, ’Prove it!’
No sooner had he finished that statement [when] the
lights in the room flickered and the building’s fire alarm went off. This freaked us all out and we left the room to follow fire alarm procedures. After about 20
minutes, campus safety said it was a false alarm and let us all back into the dorms. When we arrived back up to our friend’s room, the Ouija board was gone.
No one took it with us and the room was left locked.
A Creepy Christmas
Greeting
I got an Ouija board for Christmas when I was in sixth grade (great Christmas present, huh?). That night, I went over to my best friend’s house and brought the Ouija board with me. We went up to her room, set it on the floor, and asked, ’Is there anyone in the room with us?’ The [planchette] spelled out
’Ruth’ which was my grandma’s name and her great-aunt’s name. Both my grandma and her great-aunt had died that year. We threw the board back in the box and were totally freaked out. I brought it home and put it in my closet, but every time I looked at the box, it gave me this horrible, creepy feeling, so I ended up throwing it in the Dumpster a couple of years later.
The Spirit in the Corner of
Once, right after my ex had lost his friend in an airplane accident, we took [the Ouija board] out to use it. She was very present. She was very scared and alone and desperate for communication. We stopped using it and immediately I felt this presence in the corner of the room. I closed my eyes to take a deep breath. Suddenly the pointer started moving rapidly around and going too fast to spell out the words. It was terrifying. I refused to use the Ouija board again.
I immediately felt exhausted. Completely and utterly drained. I lay down and had a nap. I was asleep for exactly 30 minutes. I woke up, bolted out of bed. I closed my eyes for a second to adjust myself to where I was, and I ’saw’ this spirit/skeletal thing standing in the corner of the room. It suddenly rushed at my face and started screaming at me, with a big, gaunt mouth. I opened my eyes and started screaming at my boyfriend to get it off me. I could feel it, so oppressive and aggressive, trying to get on/in me. I ran from the house, screaming and shaking.
I don’t think I ever used the Ouija board again. One day, it disappeared from my bedroom. It completely vanished. I have never found it. I have no explanations for what happened to it.
The Figure at the Window
When I was around 12–14, one girl brought an Ouija board to my friend’s birthday/slumber party. I was pretty skeptical, but also really curious about it, as I had never used one before. We took turns asking questions, and I just figured someone else was moving the planchette. The other girls were pretty creeped out, but I wasn’t - until it answered a question for me that nobody else knew the answer to.
To this day, I can’t explain how that answered appeared, or any of the other paranormal experiences that happened after we put that board away. I truly believe that we contacted something, and it stuck around.
There were just generally a lot of small things, like footsteps above us when we were on the top floor.
The door kept swinging open on its own, and the girl who lived there said it never did that on its own before then. The creepiest part was that a bunch of us randomly woke up around 4 or 5 in the morning and a few girls saw a black figure walking down on the street outside the window. Apparently one of the girls had seen what they thought was the same figure with his face at the window (on the second story) earlier in the night.
Secrets of the Lake
When I was little, my mom took out a Ouija board
and asked my brother and I if we’d like to play with it ... It started out pretty funny. Someone was obviously moving the glass thing, making words like
’poop’ and stuff like that. (Did I mention we were young enough for that to be hilarious?) But then my mom said let’s get serious and try to contact someone. Here is where it gets weird.
A friend of hers had recently gone missing. He’d been missing for a month or so, and nobody knew where he was. When we asked who it was we’re talking to, his name was spelled out. Let’s just say it was George, since I genuinely don’t remember.
When we asked George if he was my mom’s friend, he said yes. My mom got visibly upset, and asked where he was. ’In a lake’ was spelled out. It was extremely upsetting, and we stopped immediately.
Mom tried to be lighthearted about it, and since I was young, I believed it was no big deal as well, following her lead.
About two weeks later, they found George’s body.
He’d been hit by some car or train or something on some bridge, and his body fell into the nearby lake, though it was more like a very large pond. It was a reasonably remote place, so nobody had found it for a while.
The tragic case of Carol
Sue Elvaker
Oklahoma resident Carol Sue Elvaker had no criminal record and no history of mental health problems, but one dark night in February 2001, she killed her son-in-law Brian Roach. Elvaker claims she had used a Ouija board, which she says sent her a message from the beyond that her daughter’s husband was possessed by an evil spirit and must be murdered. After stabbing him to death in his sleep, Elvaker turned on her own blood: she bundled her own daughter and granddaughter into her car in an attempt to kill them all in a crash. Thankfully no one died, but Elvaker suffered two broken ankles, which didn’t stop her from stripping naked and running into the woods – she claimed the evil spirit that was in Brian had possessed her instead. She was later ruled to be insane in what quickly became known as the Oklahoma Ouija Board Murder.
It knows who you are
Gary Gilmore was sentenced to death after he confessed to the murder of two men in Utah in 1977.
His excuse was more unique than most. He claims his mother, Bessie, made contact one night with a demon via a Ouija Board, which had cursed his entire family with misfortune. Gary’s aunt was seriously paralysed; another aunt was killed; Bessie’s mother-in-law Fay held a séance to get to the bottom of the supernatural shenanigans and wound up half-crazy. Bessie
claimed that later that same night, she woke up with
“an otherworldly thing” beside her in bed, at which point Fay entered the room and screamed “It knows who you are.” Gary’s nightmares started at a young age and he levels all of his murderous behaviour at the family demon. He was executed by firing squad in 1977.
Driven to kill Daddy
Toying with Ouija Boards is not a modern phenomenon – invented in 1890, curious players have been attempting to contact the beyond for over 100 years. In 1933, Dorothea Turley and her 15-year-old daughter Mattie took a board for a spin. A spirit dutifully contacted them and told them via the board to kill Dorothea’s husband, Ernest. However, it wasn’t enough that Ernest had to die – it had to be Mattie that killed her father. Telling her that “the board cannot be denied”, Dorothea ordered her daughter to shoot her father with a shotgun; he died in hospital from his wounds. Mattie was sent to reform school until she was 18, but there are no records of her after that. The Turley case became known as the first ever ‘Murder by Ouija Board’.
D-O-L-L
All Ouija Board stories start with a goof, then quickly become horribly, deadly serious. On a Reddit thread asking for scary paranormal encounters, user Jake Nichols recounted how he, his cousin, and their family were using an Ouija Board at home. Before they started, they removed a large creepy porcelain doll from the same basement and took it to another room, placing it face down. Then the board listed a string of numbers that Jake’s cousin recognized as his social security number, which no one else at the table knew. The spirit was asked to prove itself, and the board spelled the word ‘D-O-L-L’. Suitably freaked, Jake and friends rushed next door only to see the doll standing upright in the middle of the room. Naturally, they burned the Ouija Board – and hopefully the doll too.
The Durham Dog Murder
County Durham resident Paul Carroll thought nothing of using a Ouija Board on Christmas Eve in 2014, using it to try to contact the dead – and it worked. Carroll says an evil spirit subsequently entered the family dog Molly, so he drowned it, chopped it up and dumped it in the drain. Carroll, who has learning difficulties, was discovered and was eventually arrested, charged and given a suspended sentence, but the story doesn’t end there. Just one week after Paul’s guilty plea, his wife Margaret and
her daughter Katrina used the same Ouija Board. This time, the board told them they were going to die. The following day, both mother and daughter took an overdose of prescription drugs and set their house on fire. Surviving the blaze, Margaret and Katrina were jailed for four years each for arson, despite their claims the Ouija Board made them do it.
12
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