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Scary Halloween Stories

Ghosts and ghoulies and the devil come out to play in this collection of the scariest stories published on American Folklore. Great for Halloween! Do you have young children? Read them tales from our Kid's Halloween Stories list!

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN!
New ghost stories and spooky podcasts; getting scarier each week until Halloween! Check out our Halloween jokes page or listen to Halloween stories or try some spooky tongue twisters for more Halloween fun!

HALLOWEEN WEEK!!
Story: Big Liz Scary
A slave girl is murdered by her master when she turns spy for the Yankees.

Podcast: Heartbeat Scary
A jealous husband murders his wife and his haunted thereafter by her heartbeat. From Spooky Maryland.

Halloween Game:The Withered Corpse
Play this gross Body Parts guessing game at your next Halloween party!

WEEK 2:
Story: Black Aggie Scary
An evil statue comes to life at night in the cemetery.

Podcast: The Ghost in the Alley Scary
The vengeful ghost of a murdered girl haunts an alley. From Spooky Canada.
WEEK 3:
Story: The Gold Hand Scary
A man ruthlessly woos a woman because he wants to take possession of her gold hand.

Podcast: Playing Piano Scary
A man is driven mad by his wife's incessant piano playing. From Spooky Campfire Tales.
WEEK 4:
Story: Hairy Toe Scary
An old woman finds a hairy toe and cooks it up for dinner, much to the annoyance of its former owner.

Podcast: Don't Turn On The Light Scary
A college girl returns to her dorm room to find her roommate murdered! From Spooky Maryland.
WEEK 5:
Story: The Ghost in the Stacks
A college student sees the ghost of a murdered girl haunting the library.

Podcast: The Wraith in the Creek Scary
A wraith stalks a lumberjack as he works along the creek. From Spooky Michigan.
WEEK 6:
Story: Enchanted
A little girl follows the sound of the enchanted children of Alpha, with fatal results.

Podcast: I'm Coming Down Now!
A real-estate agent tries in vain to sell a haunted house. From Spooky Canada.
WEEK 7:
Story: Jack and the Devil
Jack is so wicked in life that God refuses to have him in Heaven and the Devil turns him away from Hell.

Podcast: The Headless Horseman
A Sleepy Hollow Dutchman has the very first encounter with the Headless Horseman. Excerpt from Spooky New York.
WEEK 8:
Story: The Jersey Devil and the Hat
A fisherman has a too-close encounter with the Jersey Devil.

Podcast: The Fifty Cent Piece
A couple spend a night at a haunted house. Excerpt from Spooky Campfire Tales.


Scary Halloween Stories
  • The Army of the Dead
    A laundress, newly moved to Charleston following the Civil War, found herself awakened at the stroke of twelve each night by the rumble of heavy wheels passing in the street. But she lived on a dead end street, and had no explanation for the noise...

  • Black Bartelmy's Ghost
    Black Bartelmy was an evil, surly buccaneer who murdered his wife and children and went to sea with a band of pirates as nasty as he. He roamed the Atlantic coast, murdering and pillaging and laying waste to the countryside as he passed...

  • Bloody Bones Scary
    A witch summons a monster to destroy an old hunter who stole her pig.

  • The Bells
    A sweeper -- seeking buried treasure -- encounters a terrible ghost!

  • Podcast: The Black Cat's Message
    Mysterious black cats stalk an old man on his way home from work. From Spooky Southwest.

  • The Black Dog of Hanging Hills
    'And if a man shall meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy; and if twice, it shall be for sorrow; and the third time, he shall die.’

  • The Bloodstain
    The Phelps place was an old, abandoned property with a monstrous, decrepit Victorian house that was supposed to be haunted. It should have been a good resting place for the local deer hunters, but they would not go near it. A few that tried came away before midnight with tales of ghostly thumping noises, gasps, moans, and a terrible wet bloodstain that appeared on the floor of the front porch and could not be wiped away...

  • Bloody Mary
    She lived deep in the forest in a tiny cottage and sold herbal remedies for a living. Folks living in the town nearby called her Bloody Mary, and said she was a witch. None dared cross the old crone for fear that their cows would go dry, their food-stores rot away before winter, their children take sick of fever, or any number of terrible things that an angry witch could do to her neighbors. Then the little girls in the village began to disappear, one by one...

  • Cow's Head
    Oksana lived in a small house on the edge of town with her father, her stepmother and her stepsister. Oksana's stepmother disliked Oksana, favoring her true daughter, Olena. Soon after her father's remarriage, Oksana found that all the housework fell to her while Olena idled her days away. Oksana's father was a timid man, and could not bring himself to defy his wife. So Oksana wore Olena's cast off clothes, and her hands grew red and chapped from scrubbing in the cold, while Olena attended parties, growing lazy and spoiled...

  • The Cut-Off
    The devil was in the Mississippi River that night. You could feel it with every eddy swirling against the helm of the boat. You could hear it in every jangle of the bell. You could see it in the dim light of the lantern as it tried to pierce the swirling fog...

  • Dancing with the Devil
    The girl hurried through her schoolwork as fast as she could. It was the night of the high school dance, along about 70 years ago in the town of Kingsville, Texas. The girl was so excited about the dance. She had bought a brand new, sparkly red dress for the dance. She knew she looked smashing in it. It was gone to be the best evening of her life...

  • The Death Waltz Scary
    A dead man seeks revenge when his fiance's turns her attention to another less than a week after his death.

  • The Devil On Washington Rock
    The dream was so vivid, she didn't realize at first that it was a dream. The party was crowded, the guests cheerful, the food delicious. Then a rumor began to circulate among the guests. The Devil was coming to the party. The Devil was on the way...

  • Dem Bones
    My granny was told as a child that Captain Kidd, knowing the law was on his trail, traveled up the Jersey coast looking for the perfect spot to bury his stolen booty. And he found it near a grove of gnarled, wind-swept pines on Sandy Hook...

  • The Express Train to Hell
    For days, a ragged old man had hung around the Newark Central Station. The stationmaster kept running him off, but night after night he would return. He kept accosting people, shouting: "It's coming for me! It's coming!" Whenever anyone asked him what was coming for him, he would just clutch his head and cry: "I done wrong! I killed a man that cheated me at cards, and now I'm going to pay!"

  • The Fifty-cent Piece
    There is a story told in Troy and Albany about a couple returning home from a trip to New England. They were driving home in a carriage, and were somewhere near Spiegletown when the light failed and they knew they would have to seek shelter for the night...

  • The Girl in White
    A young man finds himself flirting with a ghost!

  • The Goblin of Easton
    An evil monk is hung for his crimes, but his spirit returns as a goblin to hunt down his brothers.

  • The Headless Horseman
    One cold winter night, early in the New Year, a certain Dutchman left the tavern in Tarrytown and started walking to his home in the hollow nearby. His path led next to the old Sleepy Hollow cemetery where a headless Hessian soldier was buried. At midnight, the Dutchman came within site of the graveyard. The weather had warmed up during the week, and the snow was almost gone from the road. It was a dark night with no moon, and the only light came from his lantern.

  • Podcast: The Hermit's House Scary
    A vampire stalks a young woman and her infant child. From Spooky New York.

  • The Hook
    The reports had been on the radio all day, though she hadn't paid much attention to them. Some crazy man had escaped from the state asylum. They were calling him the Hook Man since he had lost his right arm and had it replaced with a hook. He was a killer, and everyone in the region was warned to keep watch and report anything suspicious. But this didn't interest her. She was more worried about what to wear on her date...

  • La Mala Hora
    My friend Isabela called me one evening before dinner. She was sobbing as she told me that she and her husband Enrique were getting divorced. He had moved out of the house earlier that day and Isabela was distraught...

  • The Llorona, Omen of Death
    They say that the Llorona was once a poor young girl who loved a rich nobleman, and together they had three children. The girl wished to marry the nobleman, but he refused her. He told her that he might have considered marrying her if she had not born the three out-of-wedlock children, which he considered a disgrace. The girl was determined to have the nobleman for her own, so she drowned her children to prove her love to him.

  • The Melt Shop Scary
    The horrible ghost of a dead steel worker haunts the melt shop at night.

  • Milk bottles
    She was just another poor, bedraggled woman, struggling to feed her family. He saw them all the time, their faces careworn, and blank. The Depression had created hundreds of them. He was one of the lucky ones who still had his grocery and money coming in to feed his family...

  • Moll DeGrow
    Moll DeGrow was a wicked witch who once lived on Gully Road in what is now Newark, New Jersey. She took delight in the misery of others, and made things miserable for the folks living near her. If a neighbor slighted her, she would sour their milk. If anyone called her a witch, she made their dogs turn vicious. People were very cautious around Moll De Grow.
  • Podcast: Rival Witches Scary
    The rivalry between two evil witches terrifies the residents of a small town. From Spooky New Jersey.

  • The Screaming Tunnel
    There is a tunnel under the old railroad tracks just to the west of the Queen Elizabeth Way in Niagara Falls. It is known locally as the Screaming Tunnel. A path wanders through the tunnel and then up to an empty field on the hill. But the field was not always empty... (Ontario)

  • The Storm Hag
    She lurks below the surface of the lake near Presque Isle, her lithe form forever swimming through the weeds and the mire. Pale and green of skin, her yellow eyes shine luminously in the dark, and her thin long arms wrap themselves around the unwary, while foul-green pointed teeth sink into soft flesh and sharp nails at the end of long bony fingers stroke you into the deepest sleep there is...

  • Podcast: Tailypo
    An old hunter finds out the hard way that he should be kind to strange animals! From Spooky South.

  • The Telltale Seaweed
    Two sisters were motoring through Cape Cod late one stormy night in the early 1900's when their car broke down in an unpopulated area. Seeing an old, neglected house nearby, they went to the door and tugged on the bell-pull. When no one answered, they looked through a nearby window whose shutter was banging in the bitter wind. Through the window, they could see a library. The dust lay heavy over everything...

  • PODCAST: Turnabout is Fair Play
    An old man turns the tables on a couple of joksters -- AFTER his death! From Spooky New Jersey.

  • The Wampus Cat
    They say that the Wampus cat used to be a beautiful Indian woman. The men of her tribe were always going on hunting trips, but the women had to stay home. The Indian woman secretly followed her husband one day when he went hunting with the other men. She hid herself behind a rock, clutching the hide of a mountain cat around her, and spied on the men as they sat around their campfires telling sacred stories and doing magic.

  • The Werewolf's Bride
    A Werewolf steals a bride on her wedding day.

  • Windigo
    The storm lasted so long that they thought they would starve. Finally, when the wind and swirling snow had died away to just a memory, the father, who was a brave warrior, ventured outside. The next storm was already on the horizon, but if food was not found soon, the family would starve. (Northwest Territories)

  • The White Lady
    In the early 1800s, the White Lady and her daughter were supposed to have lived on the land where the Durand Eastman Park -- part of Irondequoit and Rochester -- now stands. One day, the daughter disappeared...

  • Halloween Game:The Withered Corpse
    Play this gross Body Parts guessing game at your next Halloween party!


Kid's Halloween Stories

  • Bear Lake Monster
    Be careful swimming in Bear Lake! (Utah)

  • PODCAST: The Black Cat's Message
    An old man is followed home by a couple of black cats with a message for the mysterious Aunt Kan.
  • Never Mind Them Watermelons
    Sam Gibb accepts a dare to stay in a haunted house, never expecting to meet a ghost.

  • Podcast: Pecos Bill and the Haunted House
    Pecos Bill takes on several hundred ghosts in the most haunted house in the West! From Spooky Southwest.

  • Piece-by-Piece
    A man decides to visit a haunted house against the advice of his friend.

  • The Headless Horseman
    One cold winter night, early in the New Year, a certain Dutchman left the tavern in Tarrytown and started walking to his home in the hollow nearby...

  • Sasquatch
    A couple of hikers encounter Bigfoot while out on the trails.

  • The Skeleton's Lantern
    An eight-foot skeleton roams the Arizona desert near Yuma.

  • Spuyten Duyvil
    Once in old New Amsterdam, there was a brave trumpeter named Anthony Van Corlaer who would blow his trumpet when Peter Stuyvesant wanted to call the people together...

  • That Pesky Fellow
    A fisherman from Newfoundland was having difficulty finding someone to assist him until a mysterious stranger comes along...

  • Podcast: Tug of War
    A young man plays tug of war with a mischievous ghost haunting his house. From Spooky New York.

  • Wait Until Emmet Comes
    Do you really want to wait for Emmet? (West Virginia)

  • You can't get out
    The town drunk falls into a grave on his way home

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