Ghosts and Good Books! Celebrate With These Spooky Stories to Read on Halloween
With Halloween coming up, many people are trying to make plans like figuring out the perfect costumes and implementing new Halloween traditions for their families. And one of the best activities to prioritize this time of year is putting together a list of spooky stories to read on Halloween!
Looking for good options for your kiddos that will show off some Halloween spirit and maybe provide some scares without necessarily bringing about nightmares? Do you like the idea of starting the tradition of choosing a new Halloween book each fall? We've got the best stories to share!
Whether your audience is a playdate of toddlers or a Halloween party of preteens, here are a few more spooky tales to choose from. You can also access ghostly stories and anthologies online at Americanfolklore.net and TLC.com.
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Best Halloween Stories For Kids Ages 3-7
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, $7.18 on Amazon
Charles Schulz's familiar story about Linus’s resolute belief in the mythical Great Pumpkin is a ready-made Halloween tradition.
Big Pumpkin, $7.99 on Amazon
Richly illustrated, this picture book by Erica Silverman tells the story of a witch who tries to bake a pumpkin pie. Her pumpkin is too big to get it off the vine, so she enlists help from the ghosts, vampire, and mummy—and none can pry the squash from its stem. In the end, it’s the tiny bat who saves the day.
Scary, Scary Halloween, $7.99 on Amazon
Set a spooky mood in a candlelit room with this rhyming tale by Eve Bunting that’s perfect for kids with a soft spot for Dr. Seuss. A green pair of eyes watches a skeleton, a ghost, a vampire, and more spooky characters walk by. The twist? These creatures aren’t as scary as they first appear to be.
Bone Soup, $6.89 on Amazon
Cambria Evan’s charming tale is reminiscent of The Little Red Hen, but with a Halloween theme and contemporary illustrations. Finnigin the skeleton is ravenously looking for food, but he has moved to a new town and the zombies and mummies there won’t share their snacks. So he brews his own meal: a soup with bones, spider eggs, toenails, and dandelions, and slowly the other creatures come around.
Related: Haunted Hollywood! Tinseltown's Most Disturbing Legends, Ghosts and Spooky Sights
Best Halloween Stories For Kids Ages 8 and Up
The Scary Stories Treasury: Three Books to Chill Your Bones, $13.25 on Amazon
This collection of Alvin Schwartz’s three books of spooky tales features the beloved illustrations by Stephen Gammell.
Dare to Be Scared: Thirteen Stories to Chill and Thrill, $6.06 on Amazon
Familiar myths, legends, and folk stories are given a modern-day spin in this collection by Robert San Souci. All the leading characters are boys and girls aged 8 to 12.
Favorite Scary Stories of American Children, $11.91 on Amazon
It won’t be a problem finding an appropriate story to read in this collection—each of these 23 tales is marked with a symbol rating its age level and what setting it’s best for, whether a group or a one-on-one reading. Traditional scary stories like “The Golem” and “The Red Velvet Ribbon” are mixed in with crowd-pleasing originals.
The Best Ghost Stories Ever, $11.88 on Amazon
Is classical literature more your style? Challenge your older kids with the eerie works by literary greats like Henry James, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Blackwell that appear in this curated compendium.
Half-Minute Horrors, $6.99 on Amazon
Spice up your celebration with ghostly tales that can be told in thirty seconds—they’ll appeal to short attention spans or guests at a big Halloween party. Choose from 70 stories by beloved authors like Lemony Snicket, James Patterson, R.L. Stine and Margaret Atwood.
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And it wouldn’t be Halloween without…
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, $8.95 on Amazon
Washington Irving pits the Headless Horseman against the awkward Ichabod Crane in his classic circa 1820 tale, as retold for young readers.
The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories, $6.99 on Amazon
Master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe will lend an old-fashioned, spooky vibe to your Halloween celebration. Standards like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Oblong Box,” and more are enhanced by Gris Grimly’s eerie, full-color illustrations in this collection.
And on a lighter note, next up, we have the funniest Halloween jokes for kids!