Halloween is coming up and I was wondering...what are y'alls favorite scary stories? They can be short stories, legends, folktales, novels, or anything else! Mine is the Cherokee legend of Spearfinger. Spearfinger was an old woman who would trick children and then use her long finger to eat their livers. My mom would read this story to me as a child and I always thought it was exciting with just the right amount of scariness. So what are your favorite scary stories?

I have to think about that. Right now all I know is that I'm off liver.

A lot of the top rated SCPs are really scary.
This one probably scared me the most. Warning: Image jumpscare at the end!!

I also love a lot of folk tales and campfire stories. And there's an old fairy tale I read as a kid, about a baron who had a secret room where he slaughtered his brides. I don't remember the name of it, but it scared me a lot.

Bluebeard.
I loved that story.

ETA: I have one, but I don't know if it counts.

My Nan raised me and in one of the bedrooms there's this built in cupboard, my Nan told us when we were young that long before we moved in, before the people before us, they used to keep their daughter locked in the cupboard and she died of hunger, and now she haunted the house... The cupboard was in OUR room!!

She never threatened to lock us in there or anything, in fact the door had been taken off, but it was still really scary. I don't think she realised how scary something like that would be to kids so young, she just thought it was a joke... For years I couldn't sleep without the hallway light on, if I woke up in the middle of the night to find my nan had turned it off I'd scream. Sure it probably cost a bomb in electric, but that's what she gets for terrifying a small child!!

But you know when you're a kid, and you hear a story and your mind just builds upon it and makes it like 1000 times scarier and you add in little details without even realising it... Yeah. I had an over-active imagination as a kid and this did NOT help! I convinced myself this was true and I even started having visions of a dead girl/"ghost" every time I went down the stairs so I used to bolt down the stairs and burst through the living room door.

It's creepy because when I think of the "visions" they're still pretty vivid in my mind, but I know she never existed.

"Nothing important ever happened to him, for good or ill. He died unloved and alone. The end."

Well, when I was six and before I got into Greek Mythology I saw this statue of Medusa in the Natural History Museum. I was a great reader by then, and I found out that Medusa paralysed or turned her victims to stone. Now, I was a six year old with an over active imagination. Every time I had a bath or if I was alone in my room, I was convinced that Medusa would come.

Also, in my cousins' house, upstairs in his room there was this cupboard in the wall. Well, actually, no, it was a slanted door in the wall, that, apparently had space to store your clothes or stuff there. I don't know, as I was too scared- and to be honest, I can't look now because it's locked. Anyway, my cousin told me that something that was like Gollum (from LOTR) lived in there and it liked to eat children. Once, they blindfolded me and hid me in the cupboard. I was five, and they kept the door open and they made noises and poked and got fake teeth and closed them against me skin to make it seem like the creature was there.

The Legend of Hell House and most everything else by Richard Matheson. The book is better than the movie.

In a very similar vein, there's The Haunting, by Shirley Jackson. The movie is better than the book, imo, and is considered to be one of the best haunted house movies.


The more recent The Conjuring isn't bad either.

Harlequin no.7