|
 |
| Tall Tales | Myths & Legends | Ghost Stories | U.S. Folklore | Heroes & Villains | Campfire Stories | Animal Stories | Native American | Children's Stories | Canadian Folklore | Mexican Folklore |
| Weather Lore | Lesson Plans | Railroad Stories | ESL | Tongue Twisters | Latin American Folklore |
 |
Scary Halloween Stories |  |
HALLOWEEN WEEK!! Story: Axe Murder Hollow There are places you don't want to be stranded in a dead car on a rainy night. This is one of them. Podcast: The Laughing Devil Two gold prospectors are warned against panning for gold in Laughing Devil canyon, but they go anyway. Bonus Story! Burnt Church When a new teacher comes to town, the parents get more than they bargained for. Halloween Game:The Withered Corpse Play this gross Body Parts guessing game at your next Halloween party! WEEK 2: Story: The Handshake Polly's ghost seeks vengeance from her unfaithful bridegroom. Podcast: Pray! A dead man returns to his own funeral to seek vengeance against the wife who made his earthly life miserable. WEEK 3: Story: The Bleeding Sink I found it extremely annoying that one of the bathrooms on my dorm was permanently closed. Especially since the cause was an urban legend. An urban legend, I tell you! Podcast: Where's My Liver? A boy in a jam steals his dead uncle's liver. WEEK 4: Story: Vengeance When a man murders his wife so he can wed another, her ghost returns to foil his plans. Podcast: The Barn Dance A lost man strays into a local barn dance and finds himself dancing with a ghost. WEEK 5: Story: The Ghost in the Alley Rumors were rife about the alleyway behind the tavern. It was haunted, folks said. Haunted by the ghost of a young girl who had been found murdered in that self-same passage. People avoided the small street after dark, for the spirit was said to be a vengeful one. Podcast: The Brick Wall After a soldier kills a man in a duel, he has to face the terrible vengeance of the man's friends. WEEK 6: Story: The Brothers' Revenge The blizzard was raging fiercely around them as the brothers stumbled down the long road. they were miles from any farm, and knew they had to seek shelter or freeze to death. So it was with gratitude that the two brothers spotted a saloon and pushed their way through the door. Podcast: The Lady in the Veil He found the perfect woman! It's a pity she was dead. WEEK 7: Story: The Yellow Ribbon Jane wore a yellow ribbon around her neck everyday. And I mean everyday, rain or shine, whether it matched her outfit or not. It annoyed her best friend Johnny after awhile. He was her next door neighbor and had known Jane since she was three. When he was young, he had barely noticed the yellow ribbon, but now they were in high school together, it bothered him. Podcast: The Wraith of the Creek When he left his tribe to work with the white lumbermen, he changed his name to William Cloud, and the lumberjacks started calling him “Cloudy.” They liked to hear Cloudy tell the story of the wraith that lived in the creek that powered the local log chute. The wraith was an evil creature that desired nothing more than to wrap its long arms around humans or animals and pull them down into the water to drown. Podcast: Rival Witches When two witches get into a fight, there are no survivors. WEEK 8: Story: Muriel She climbed the sand dune swiftly, giggling nervously at her daring, as the soft mist of an early evening fog swirled around her. Around her, her friends were scrambling their way through the sand and long grass, heading steadily upward toward the haunted lighthouse on the summit. Podcast: Chattanooga's Ghost Even death can't keep Chattanooga from his cigars! |
MORE 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
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
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. - 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
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. - 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... - 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...
|
Comments? Email us at webmaster@americanfolklore.net
© S.E. Schlosser 1997 - 2008.
This site is best viewed while eating marshmallows around a campfire under a starry sky.