The Creepiest Stories We Read As Kids

By Michael Avery in Geeks and Gaming On 2nd April 2017
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#1. The Dream

And just like that, we’ve jumped right into it. The Dream is a story in one of the many compilations by Alvin Schwartz (who, we’ve decided, is a professional tormentor of small children and some adults). In the story, a young woman is a traveling salesman and plans to move on to a town called Kingston. Before she leaves, she has a dream that a pale-faced woman with stringy black hair and black eyes comes to her bed in a strange house and says, “This is an evil place. Flee while you still can.” So the woman wakes up and reasons out that even if it was just a bad dream, she would just skip Kingston and move on to the next town: Dorset. However, Dorset turns out to be exactly where her dream was set, and in the middle of the night, she actually wakes to the terrifying figure as she did in her nightmare.

In essence, not so scary right? But think about it: the premise of the story is that if evil is in our future, it’s inescapable. No matter what we do to avoid it, it’s going to find us. THAT’S A HORRIFYING IDEA TO PUT IN A CHILD’S MIND.

#2. The Red Spot

Here’s another one of Alvin Schwartz’s messed up stories, one that’s probably developed a fear of spiders in an entire generation of young people. It’s a simple story involving a tiny spider bite. But not the cool kind of spider bite that gives you superpowers.

Little Ruth was sleeping when a spider crawled across her face. The next morning, she had a little red spot on her face that her mother said was probably just a spider bite; no need to worry about it. But it got bigger and bigger, and eventually, it grew to be a painful boil on her face. One night, after a hot bath, it burst — and millions of little baby spiders poured out of the red spot on her face and crawled into her hair and mouth and eyes. And from that moment on, every child ever was terrified of spiders, pimples — and trusting their mothers.

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#3. The Drum

When you were little, you probably misbehaved and did so a lot around your mother. If your mother was especially fed up with you, she may have mindlessly threatened, “If you don’t behave, I might leave and never come back.” And you probably thought, “Well, too bad mom; I don’t believe you.” So you continued to misbehave and, in all likelihood, your mom stuck around and put up with you.

Well, that’s not how the story turned out in The Drum. Two little girls were envious of a drum a gypsy girl played. She said she’d give them the drum, but they had to misbehave as much as possible at home. They did, and the mother threatened time and again to leave. Finally, the gypsy girl revealed she was never really going to give the girls her drum, but by then, their mother had left. Any kid that read this probably ended up listening when their mom threatened to peace out.

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#4. Darby O’Gill and the Little People

This was a kid’s movie rather than a story, but we’re going to count it because — what the hell — it was terrifying. The Disney movie from the late fifties wasn’t exactly fine programming. Actually, it was kind of flat-out terrifying and was clearly made for the sole purpose of scaring the jeepers out of kids. It’s about an old Irish fart who tells stories of leprechauns and is battling to find a great replacement for his role as the Leprechaun King’s caretaker. Yeah, it’s a weird story. But it gets downright spooky when the Banshee shows up. It’s an animated green specter that doesn’t seem to do a whole lot, but its ominous presence is enough to creep any kid out. The creepiest part about it is that it seems to be constantly approaching its victim without ever anything… it’s just waiting to pounce. And darn it all, that Darby O’Gill looks so damn petrified of this Banshee, even a grown adult would be kind of unnerved by it.

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#5. The Last Unicorn

Though this story was made into a movie back in the early eighties, we’re not really talking about the movie. We’re talking about the book, which was so popular in the fantasy genre, it’s considered as being among the top five fantasy novels ever written. The essential premise is that this Unicorn lives in a sanctuary where hunters aren’t allowed to hunt. One day, when hunters considered hunting in the sanctuary anyway, one shouted into the woods that this unicorn was the last of its kind. Curious and unnerved, the unicorn ventured out into the world to find out what happened to the rest. Perhaps, one of the freakiest parts of this book (besides hunters luring the unicorn from safety with threats of extinction) was the ultimate bad guy: the red bull. Sounds silly these days, but this red bull didn’t give you wings. Instead, it loathed unicorns and drove them into the sea to kill their race. Seriously? Killing unicorns? This is some dark stuff for kids to read.

#6. Burning Feet

Burning Feet is another one of Alvin Schwartz’s short horror stories, but it’s hardly his story. He adapted his story from the millions of Algonquin folklore nightmares about wendigos, which are evil spirits whose purpose is to devour mankind. Obviously the groundwork for a great story for kids, right? This particular story, which has scarred plenty of kids, was about a successful hunter that decided to venture into territory that was usually left alone, due to superstition. One night, the hunter was in his tent when a wind storm kicked up. He looked outside to see that it wasn’t windy, but he could still hear the gusts of wind seeming to whisper the name of his guide. The guide understandably panicked and ran. Somewhere in the darkness, something happened to him. He screamed, “Oh my fiery feet! My burning feet of fire!” Apparently, the wendigo had caught him and had dragged him until his feet burned off from friction. And as if that wasn’t enough, the wendigo flew the guide up into the air and dropped him to his death before eating him. So yeah… none of us ever want to go camping again.

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#7. The Hook

Alright. This short story isn’t as scary as people think it is. It’s kind of like every campfire story you ever heard as a kid. But imagine reading it all alone, sitting by yourself in your room as a child, the branches of a tree tapping against the cold glass of your window…

As the story goes, there’s a killer (isn’t there always) who had replaced one of his hands with a hook (of course). He’d escaped from the state asylum (obviously), and everyone was searching for him. But what do these darned teenagers care? They’re going on a date to the middle of nowhere where they can make out (or scream), and no one would know. But something was tapping against the car. Then the whole car shook and the kids panicked and hauled their asses out of there. By the time they got home, the girl found a bloody hook hand dangling from the handle of the passenger-side door. Moral of the story, kids: don’t trust your skeezy boyfriend who wants to take you to Lovers Lane. Instead, trust your gut and stay home reading rticles.

#8. Pinocchio

This stupid damn story. We’d say that we were just talking about the story and not also about the movie, but let’s be real: this movie is downright creepy and messed up. There are a lot of freaky parts that could (and likely did) scar you for life. Let’s review, shall we? Pinocchio is a puppet that magically comes to life. In the book, Pinocchio accidentally kills the talking Jiminy Cricket pretty early on by throwing a hammer at it. (If you weren’t scarred before, you are now). Then Pinocchio is kidnapped by a puppet master because, why not? Then he meets an undead fairy waiting for her hearse to pick her up for her funeral. Then Pinocchio’s dad is swallowed by a big sea monster. Then Pinocchio plays hookey and is turned into a donkey by this ass and then sold to the circus. Eventually, he gets his dad back and un-donkey-fies and turns into a real boy. Okay, cool… but what the hell was all that sh*t?! Pinocchio was always doing something totally innocent like walking to school or searching for his dad when these terrible awful things happened to him! Are we trying to inspire total fear of the unknown in our kids?!

#9. The Girl With the Green Ribbon Around Her Neck

You know this one. We know you know this one. It’s the one that left you, as a six-year-old in the school library, staring at the last line with your jaw on the floor.

So Alfred met Jenny when they were both school children. Alfred liked her immediately and noticed she wore a green ribbon around her neck. He asked her why she wore it, and she answered that she would tell him someday. So, of course, as the two grew older, they fell in love and grew closer and closer. Yet every time Alfred asked about that damn ribbon, he got the same answer: “I’ll tell you later, baby.” One day, when the two were older, Jenny got sick and was about to die a long and terrible death. You know how her husband comforts her? BY ASKING ABOUT THE DAMN RIBBON. “You want to know that bad? Fine. Take off the damn ribbon,” Jenny answered. (We may be paraphrasing). So he did. AND JENNY’S HEAD FELL OFF. Those exact words end the story — with a little illustration of Jenny’s disembodied head lying on the floor. How cute.

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#10. The Black Cauldron

Alright, we’re fudging a little bit again. The Black Cauldron is not a book or a story, per se, but a movie. Made in the mid-eighties, it was a story about kids rising up against the forces of evil. How empowering and encouraging! Except that it was terrifying, and any kid that saw it wanted to make sure they never had to fight a battle like that in their lives. It was scariest because the villain, The Horned King, felt like someone straight out of a Lord of the Rings book, and we were certainly not old enough to handle sh*t that was that intense. And this was the toned down version! Apparently, there was a test screening for this movie, and it was so intense, most of the children fled the theater before it was halfway over. As a result, the filmmakers had to cut over twelve minutes from the movie of undead Cauldron-born armies brutally killing each other and of Taran slicing his enemies at the neck and through their torso. And it still ended up being terrifying! THIS WAS MADE FOR CHILDREN? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!