Happy Halloween!

Yes, Halloween is still four weeks away and, even more unfortunately, on a Monday this year, but that does not mean we cannot start buying pumpkins, brainstorming costume ideas, and gleefully torturing ourselves with the scariest stories the Internet offers. I am a big fan of scary stories, so much so that one of the classes I took this year is simply entitled “Ghost Fiction.” So, I thought I might share with you some of my favorite spooky stories and some of the best places to find short and exciting scares to read.

1. “The Boogeyman” by Stephen King

My family used to take a lot of long car rides to visit family, often times driving through the night. On one such night, while my brother and sister slept, my mom put on an audio book of Stephen King short stories. The first one that came on was this story and I still count it as one of the scariest things I have ever heard. It tells the story of a couple who lose three children to very mysterious circumstances and that’s all I’ll say. It may have been a combination of the late night, the lack of sleep, and the eerie way the narrator read the story, but I have read the story several times now and a chill still runs down my spine when I reach the end. It’s short, it’s suspenseful, it’s about one of your childhood monsters, and it comes from the master of horror. What more could you want?

Read it here.

Other King stories.

2. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

Not a horror story in the traditional sense, O’Connor’s story does not include ghosts, goblins, or ghouls. Instead, you have a family of five travelling and getting stopped along the way. You may finish reading the story and not know who the real villain is and I believe that’s what’s so terrifying about it. I’ll say no more, as I do not want to spoil any part of this amazingly crafted story, but if there is any story on this list to read for the sake of it being good literature, it’s this one.

Read it here.

3. “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Like O’Connor’s story, “The Lottery” does not contain any ghosts or spooky occurrences. Humans can bring the horror all by themselves. This story is fairly popular, so you may have already read it or at least know the ending, but it’s still worth experiencing again. Each time I read it, I keep hoping for a better ending. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.

Read it here.

4. “Ringing the Changes” by Robert Aickman

I was introduced to this story through my Ghost Fiction class and it instantly became one of my favorite scary stories. Unlike the O’Connor and Jackson pieces, this story does include ghosts – though of a variety I will not divulge. The story follows a newly married couple embarking on their honeymoon, visiting a town neither has ever been to before. Let’s just say the night they arrive turns out to be less than ideal.

Listen to it here:

5. “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe

It would feel blasphemous to write a list of scary stories for Halloween without including a Poe tale. Though “The Masque of the Red Death” may not be his scariest, it’s my personal favorite and includes perhaps the scariest monster of all: death.

Read it here.

6. Let’s Not Meet

I believe reddit is a scary concept all on its own, but Let’s Not Meet is a great section full of (maybe) true accounts of people experiencing the most horrifying and creepy sides of humanity. I recommend looking through the top posts of all time, as many of the recently posted ones are clearly exaggerated and more disturbing than spooky. The best legitimately scary one I’ve read is “The Smiling Man” and the funniest (though still creepy) is “There’ll Be No More Milk When the Anti-Christ Comes.”

Find more here.

Note: There is also a subreddit called No Sleep that consists of fiction horror stories, stories that often get featured on the site I talk about in #6.

7. Sixpenceee

This is my go-to site for very short stories that are pure horror. The writing isn’t at Aickman or King’s level and you may see some of the twists coming, but the stories are written to terrify and they very often deliver. There are so many on this site that it’s hard to pick a favorite, but the one that I think about when I think “sixpenceee” is “Uncle Gerry’s Family Fun Zone.”

Read it here.

For more, go here.

8. Urban Legends

You have certainly heard urban legends from your town before. You may have helped circulate some. The exorcism room at Holy Cross would be considered an urban legend, even though we all know it exists and all the things that happened there must be taken as absolute truth. However, there are thousands of urban legends all over the web, telling creepy stories of haunted bridges, gold mines, hospitals, and even more bridges.

Read a collection on Thought Catalog.

I can only hope one of those stories or sites piqued your interest. If not, there are always the deep, dark pits of Netflix’s horror section to visit. Just promise you’ll watch or read at least one scary thing this Halloween season, even if it’s as tame as an old episode of Goosebumps.