Scary Stories

Picture Books

Balmes, Santi.  I Will Fight Monsters for You. Two little girls–one human and the other a monster–are afraid to go to sleep for fear of what’s living under their beds.

Berenstain, Stan. The Berenstain Bears Go on a Ghost Walk. (Holiday) Papa Bear is enthused about preparing for Bear Country School’s Halloween Ghost Walk, but learns that “one person’s fun is another person’s nightmare.”

Bruel, Nick.  Bad Kitty, Scaredy-Cat. (Holiday) Bad Kitty is frightened by the creatures on Halloween, but when she sees all the holiday treats she decides to be a very bad kitty and chases the scary creatures away.

Docherty, Thomas. Big Scary Monster. Big Scary Monster is one misunderstood beastie. He loves to jump out and surprise his friends, but he’s not mean, really. Yet when his friends start hiding from him, he decides to look for new creatures to frighten, only to wind up finding out he’s a bit of a scaredy-cat himself!

Galbraith, Kathryn Osebold. Boo, Bunny! (Holiday) Two small bunnies face their fears while trick-or-treating on Halloween night.

Jenkins, Emily. The Fun Book of Scary Stuff. A little boy tells his two dogs about all the things that scare him.

Shae, Bob. The Scariest Book Ever. (Holiday) This is the scariest book ever! Or so claims its melodramatic ghost narrator. You can go ahead and turn the page, but don’t expect him to come with you. He is a big scaredy-cat!

Taylor, Sean. I Want to Be in a Scary Story. Monster wants to be in a scary story, so the narrator provides a story with scary forests, spooky houses, ghosts, and witches.

Wilson, Karma. Bear Feels Scared. Bear’s animal friends come to his rescue when he becomes lost and frightened in the woods.

Beginning Readers

Cushman, Doug. Dirk Bones and the Mystery of the Haunted House. (Series) “Daily Tombs” newspaper reporter Dirk Bones, who also happens to be a skeleton, investigates when a family of ghosts fears that they are being haunted.

Cazet, Denys. Minnie and Moo and the Haunted Sweater. (Series) Minnie and Moo want to give special presents to the Farmer for his birthday, but something goes awry when Moo knits him a sweater.

Schwartz, Alvin. In a Dark, Dark Room, and Other Scary Stories. Seven scary stories to tell at night in front of a fire or in the dark, based on traditional stories and folktales from various countries.

Thiesing, Lisa. A Dark and Noisy Night: A Silly Thriller with Peggy the Pig. (Holiday) Seeing things at the window and hearing creaks on the staircase, Peggy the Pig is quite frightened when she hears a knock at the door.

VanLeeuwen, Jean. Amanda the Pig and the Awful Scary Monster. Amanda the pig sees monsters at night, but her parents and her brother find different ways to convince her that there are no monsters.

Fiction

Adler, David A. Cam Jansen and the Ghostly Mystery. Cam uses her photographic memory to catch a thief disguised as a ghost.

Alllison, Jennifer. Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator. (Series) During the summer before ninth grade, intrepid Gilda Joyce invites herself to the San Francisco mansion of distant cousin Lester Splinter and his thirteen-year-old daughter, where she uses her purported psychic abilities and detective skills to solve the mystery of the mansion’s boarded-up tower.

Arnold, Louise. Golden & Grey. (Series) When the television show “Exceedingly Haunted Homes of England” hears rumors of ghosts at Tom Golden’s school, he and his “invisible friends” must track down some ghosts that have turned visible in order to restore the balance between the ghost and human worlds.

Buckley, Michael. The Sisters Grimm. (Series) Two sisters, Sabrina and Daphne Grimm, are sent to live with their eccentric grandmother and discover that the characters in many old folktales are real.

Delaney, Joseph. The Last Apprentice. (Series) Young Tom, the seventh son of a seventh son, starts work as an apprentice for the village spook, whose job is to protect ordinary folk from “ghouls, boggarts, and all manner of wicked beasties.”

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.

Gutman, Dan. Miss Mary is Scary! When a British student-teacher arrives, A. J. and his friends wonder if her all-black clothing and love of blood sausage mark her as a vampire, while Mr. Granite simply hopes her musician-boyfriend will stay away long enough for a math lesson.

Harper, Suzanne. The Unseen World of Poppy Malone. (Series) Eleven-year-old Poppy’s parents are paranormal investigators who have never actually found anything, but that may change when they move to Austin, Texas, and Poppy meets a goblin in the attic of their new house.

Polacco, Patricia. The Graves Family. When the spooky Graves family moves to town and tries to fit in with the “normal” residents of Union City, everyone is in for a few surprises.

Half. Half-Minute Horrors. An anthology of very short, scary stories by an assortment of authors and illustrators including Chris Raschka, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, and Lane Smith.

San Souci, Robert. Haunted Houses. Presents ten horror tales about various types of haunted houses, including a mansion with a pirate looking for his head, a dollhouse inhabited by a ghost, and a vacation house with people-eating spiders.

Non-Fiction

001 – 001.95  UFO’s, Mysteries, Monsters.

398.2 – 398.469  Legends, Folktales, Fairy Tales, Myths

808 – 808.8  Poetry, Rhymes and How to Write