S.E. Schlosser is the author of The Spooky Series by Globe Pequot Press, which includes Spooky New England, Spooky New York, Spooky Canada, Spooky Campfire Tales, and many others. She has been telling stories since she was a child, when games of "let's pretend" quickly built themselves into full-length tales acted out with friends. A graduate of both Houghton College and the Institute of Children's Literature, Sandy received her MLS from Rutgers University while working as a full-time music teacher and a freelance author.

Gather ‘round a campfire or huddle under the covers: these bone-chilling stories are full of things that go bump in the night. The flash cards are the perfect size for reading aloud on camping trips, at sleepover parties, or alone with a flashlight. Check the “scare rating” on the corner of the card to find just the right level of spookiness to entertain your audience.

This Halloween, you may want to check out some of these haunted spots throughout New Jersey.

This Halloween, you may want to check out some of these haunted spots throughout New York.

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences under starry skies. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

Slowly, two eyes burned themselves into the paper, and a wide grinning mouth with the shattered remains of teeth took shape. "Vengeance," the mouth whispered. Meet the ghost of a murdered wife who returns from the grave to destroy her faithless husband.

Charlie was startled awake by a familiar sound. He sat bolt upright with an oath. It sounded just like Myrtle playing on the piano. But this was impossible, since she was buried behind the woodshed...

"It comes," Summer Moon intoned. "It comes with the storm! It comes!" Her words ended in a terrible shriek. The villagers drew back, wives shrinking behind their husbands; children huddling against their mothers' skirts. Only the chief dared face the frenzied wise woman. "What comes, good mother?" he asked. She turned her glowing, silvery eyes upon him. "Wendigo," she hissed, and the word seemed to echo unnaturally through the crisp autumn air. "Wendigo."

It was getting real dark in the mountain shadow. It would be night soon. I wanted out of Dead Man's Canyon before night. I urged my horse back into our working jog. Suddenly, he tossed up his head and froze in place. The wind whipped down off the ridge, biting cold as it howled down from the snowline. My teeth began to chatter, but I kept my gun hand still, finger on the trigger. And then the phantom came for me...

“Take it down!” the captain roared. "Take it down and bury it!" He staggered away from the head on the pike, which reappeared before him, the woman's dead eyes gazing defiantly into his own, her long gray hair blowing wildly in the wind.

He gradually became aware that the words in the article he was reading were following a faint, rhythmic pattern that ebbed and flowed around a soft, steady beat. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. It sounded like a heart beat. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. It sounded like Polly's heart beat. Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum. Jason screamed in terror and flung himself out of the house, running toward the bridge as the heart beat grew louder and louder in his ears.

"As I drove down the street paralleling the graveyard, I saw a strange light glowing among the tombstones. I stopped the car to take a look, and I saw a figure moving among the gravestones. She was walking slowly as if she bore a heavy weight and she was glowing from the inside..."

Standing just inside the gate was a hooded form, blacker than the blackest shadow. Two white-blue eyes blazed out of the cowl that covered its head, and skeletal fingers gripped a large scythe. The air around the figure seemed to crackle with the energy of a thousand bolts of lightning, its robes whipped in an unseen wind, and its skeletal feet were half-buried in swirling gray clouds that stretched back and back into eternity. Millie gasped in horror and clutched Sam's shoulder as the figure slowly raised an arm and pointed a skeletal finger at them...

About two weeks after I arrived in camp, I awoke in the middle of the night feeling a cold breeze piercing my sleeping bag. I shuddered and then gasped as something huge and heavy suddenly fell on top of me and began to press me down into the mattress. It covered my whole body. I tried to breathe, but the darkness smothered my nose and mouth, and the weight made it impossible for me to expand my lungs...

"North Plainfield Fire Department," I said into the phone, expecting the dispatcher's voice, calling us to a fire. Instead, a frantic woman's voice rang over the connection: "We need you to come at once. There is a terrible ghost in our house and we want you to remove it!"

Gather round the campfire and get ready for Spooky New Orleans; tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences under starry skies. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences under the New Orleans skies. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night...

He was nervous about passing the graveyard, remembering the rumors of a galloping ghost that he had heard at the tavern. He stumbled along, humming to himself to keep up his courage. Suddenly, his eye was caught by a light rising from the ground in the cemetery. He stopped, his heart pounding in fear. Before his startled eyes, a white mist burst forth from an unmarked grave and formed into a large horse carrying a headless rider.

“My riiiiiinnngg! I want my ring!” the ghost of Kate wailed, its voice rising s’high only hound dogs could hear the top notes. The pressure on Mary’s ears was something awful. She clapped both hands over her ears and shouted: “I ain’t got it!” “Yes You DO!” roared the ghost.

Don’t be silly, she told herself, forcing her shaking legs up another step. It’s just the loose shutter blowing in the wind. And then all the hair on the back of her neck stood on end as she realized she could hear something breathing behind her…

I was awakened for by soft strains of music that seemed to come from everywhere at once. As I listened, the haunting melody faded away. And then I heard my wife screaming."

He hadn't been sleeping long when a thumping noise awoke him. It sounded like an animal was climbing up the side of the cabin. He heard a scratch, scratch, scratching noise, like the claws of a cat. And then a voice rang out: "Tailypo, Tailypo; all I want's my Tailypo."

All at once, the moon came sliding out from behind a cloud, lighting the scene in front of me. And I screamed. I couldn't help it. The skeleton of a horse was rising out of the water, dripping mud and dead leaves and gunk of all sorts. First came its skull, then the bones of its neck, and then its shoulder girdle and its back. I hadn't seen the figure on its back at first because its torso was hidden by the horse's skull. Now I could see a uniformed body which ended obscenely at the throat...

Once there was a widow who wished to marry a rich nobleman. However, the nobleman did not want to raise another man's children and he dismissed her. The widow was determined to have the nobleman for her own, so the widow drowned her children to be free of them. When she told the nobleman what she had done, he was horrified and would have nothing more to do with her.

"It was growing darker as the storm clouds thickened above us. Rosa lit a kerosene lantern to give the digging men more light. Suddenly, I saw a white figure rise up from the ground right beside Alberto. The familiar shaking began in my knees and spread to the rest of my body, clenching my stomach. "Al…Al…Alberto!" I shouted around the knot in my throat. Alberto whirled around and the handle of his shovel went right through the body of the ghost..."

As if he sensed my thoughts, Goggle-Eyed Jim turned his face toward the window. His eyes, behind the goggles, seemed to glow with a greenish-blue light. His face was so gray and withered, he seemed like a corpse...

A huge wind swept through the bedroom, bringing with it the damp, salty smell of the sea. The tempest tore the blankets right off Billy's shaking body. He sat bolt upright, heart thundering against his ribs, as a bloated, red-haired figure stepped down from the vastness of the eternal horizon and down into the bedroom...

"As Lucille approached the wide double doors, her heart started pounding in fear. There was an oddly metallic smell in the air - the smell of blood. Something was wrong! Lucille wrenched the doors open and stepped into the barn, the light from her lantern flickering across the dusty floor. Then she saw the broken body of her husband lying a few feet away..."

Welcome to Yellowstone National Park, the place where ghosts walk! A phantom bellman assists a woman with her luggage; a picnicker has lunch with a ghost; a park ranger encounters a Sasquatch; a young man faces an ancient wilderness spirit of the Bear, and so much more. So, is the first national park really spooky? You bet.