14 Short Scary Stories for Kids (Spooky but Kid-Friendly)

For some reason, everyone loves a good scary story, and this includes kids. Children of every age, from toddlers to teens, love to shiver in response to something creepy or scary. Our selection of scary stories for kids includes not only some very short stories, but also some longer stories where the suspense builds. Make sure you choose one appropriate for the age and emotional maturity of the kids listening to the story. For very young children, we suggest you share your plans for telling a scary story with parents before doing so to avoid any problems.

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These 14 short scary stories for kids are kid-safe, each takes about 2 to 5 minutes to read aloud, and every story has an age guide under its title so you can pick the right level of spooky.

Scary Short Stories for Kids

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 Clown Statue

Best for ages 10 and up.

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 wandering around the house.

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

Best for ages 8 and up.

This scary story for kids ends with a question, the answers to which can make the story even scarier.

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

Best for ages 8 and up.

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

Best for ages 8 and up.

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.

The Big Toe

Best for ages 5 and up.

This is a story that is not too scary for young children and can actually be quite funny. This traditional Southern tale should be told in a serious tone.

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!”

The following stories are a bit longer. To build the suspense, tell them slowly, with a great deal of vocal expression

The Viper Is Coming

Best for ages 5 and up. This one ends in giggles, not screams. Use your best spooky voice for the phone calls.

An old woman lived alone at the top of an apartment building. One evening, her telephone rang. A raspy voice whispered, “I am the Viper. I am coming.” She hung up, but her hands were shaking.

An hour later, the phone rang again. “I am the Viper. I am two streets away.”

The calls kept coming, closer and closer. “I am the Viper. I am outside your building.” Then: “I am the Viper. I am coming up the stairs.”

Finally, there was a knock at the door. The woman gathered all her courage and flung it open.

There stood a small man with a bucket and a sponge. “Hello,” he said cheerfully. “I am ze viper. I come to vash and vipe ze vindows.”

The Green Ribbon

Best for ages 6 and up. A gentle classic with one soft gasp at the end, perfect as a first scary story.

Jenny wore a green ribbon around her neck every single day. Her friend Alfred asked her why, and she only said, “I will tell you when the time is right.”

Jenny and Alfred grew up, fell in love, and were married. Still she wore the ribbon, and still she would not say why. Alfred loved her, so he stopped asking.

Many years later, when Jenny was old and her hair was silver, she called Alfred to her bedside. “The time is right now,” she said. “Untie it and you will see.”

With careful fingers, Alfred untied the green ribbon.

And Jenny’s head came softly loose from her shoulders.

Wait Till Martin Comes

Best for ages 6 and up. Scary in the middle, funny at the end. Make each cat’s voice deeper than the last.

An old man was walking home when a terrible storm rolled in, so he took shelter in an abandoned house on the hill. He built a small fire and sat down to dry his clothes.

A black cat padded out of the shadows and sat by the fire. The man liked cats, so he paid it no mind. Then a second cat crept in, this one the size of a dog. It looked at the first cat and asked, “Shall we do it now?”

“No,” said the first cat. “Wait till Martin comes.”

A third cat slunk in, big as a wolf. “Shall we do it now?”

“No. Wait till Martin comes.”

Then came a fourth cat, black as midnight and big as a panther. It stretched, showed its long claws, and purred, “Shall we do it now?”

“No,” the others said together. “Wait till Martin comes.”

The old man jumped up, grabbed his hat, and ran for the door. “When Martin comes,” he shouted over his shoulder, “you tell him I could not wait!”

The Lady with the Emerald Ring

Best for ages 10 and up.

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 ghost’s 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

Best for ages 10 and up.

Sometimes the occasion is perfect for a longer scary story for kids. The following story has been presented as “true” by many past storytellers.

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 neighbourhood 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 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

Best for ages 10 and up.

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 in the Storm

Best for ages 12 and up.

This is a story definitely not suitable for younger kids, but for older ones (from age 10 up). Make sure you use discretion with this classic scary story.

A recently married couple were 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 in 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 loud speaker, “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 ring out.

The Golden Arm

Best for ages 8 and up. The most famous jump-scare story ever told. Pause at the end, then grab the arm of the nearest listener on the last line.

There once was a man whose wife had a golden arm, solid gold from shoulder to fingertip. When she died, the man could not stop thinking about all that gold going to waste in the ground. So one moonless night, he dug up the grave and took the golden arm home.

That night, the wind began to howl. And in the wind, the man heard a voice, far away: “Whooo has my golden arm?”

He pulled the covers over his head. The voice came closer. “Whooo has my golden arm?”

He heard the front door creak open. Footsteps on the stairs. “Whooo has my golden arm?”

The bedroom door swung wide. The voice was right beside the bed now, cold as the grave:

“YOU have it!”

Room for One More

Best for ages 10 and up. A quiet, shivery story with no jump at all. Tell it slowly.

A man traveled to an old country house to visit friends. In the middle of the night, he woke to the sound of wheels on the gravel drive below.

He looked out the window and saw a long black car. The driver stepped out and looked straight up at him. His face was pale and thin as a candle. “There is room for one more,” the driver called softly. The man drew the curtains, and in the morning he told himself it was a dream.

Back in the city the next day, he was waiting for a crowded elevator. When the doors opened, the operator turned to face him. It was the same pale, thin face from the driveway.

“There is room for one more,” the operator said.

“No, thank you,” said the man, stepping back. “I will take the stairs.”

The doors closed. A moment later there was a terrible crash: the elevator cable had snapped, and the car fell all the way to the bottom of the shaft.

Whether the occasion is a camp fire, a sleepover, or a Halloween party, a scary story sets the stage for a fun time. Turn off the lights, set the stage, use your creepiest voice, and be prepared for a late night with little sleep!

More Spooky Fun for Kids

Keep the Halloween mood going after the stories end:

• Scary games to play with friends in real life
• Horror movie trivia questions for older kids and teens
• Halloween riddles with answers
• How to play Ghost in the Graveyard
• Halloween trivia questions and facts

Scary Stories for Kids FAQ

What is a good scary story for kids?

The Big Toe, The Green Ribbon, and Wait Till Martin Comes are ideal first scary stories: each has one twist or gentle jump but nothing truly frightening. Use the age guide next to each story above to match the scare level to your listeners.

Are scary stories OK for 10 year olds?

Yes, most 10 year olds love a mild scare like The Clown Statue or The Golden Arm. Save intense stories like The Hitchhiker in the Storm for ages 12 and up, and follow any scary story with something light before bedtime.