Scary Short Stories for Kids
Scary stories do not need to be long and drawn out. Kids have short attention spans and our collection of short, scary stories for kids considers this fact and provides a good scare in a short amount of time.
The Clown Statue
A girl in her teens babysat for a wealthy family one night. The wealthy family had a very large house with many rooms. It was filled with lots of artefacts and old ornaments from all over the world. As the parents were leaving to go out, the father told the girl that once the she put the kids down, she must go down to the basement, watch TV there, and not go wandering around the house.
Once the kids are asleep, the girl retires to the basement room to watch TV. However, she cannot concentrate on her show because in the in the corner of the room is a life-size clown statue grinning at her. She finally decides to drape a blanket over the statue so she can ignore it. After a while she can’t stand looking at the clown statue’s over-sized feet sticking out from under the blanket. She decides to call the father and ask his permission to watch TV in another room, because she is freaked out by the giant clown statue in basement room.
“Listen very carefully,” says the man to the girl.
“Our children have been complaining about a clown that comes into their room in the middle of the night. We just thought it was nightmares. We don’t own a clown statue. You need to get the kids and get out of the house NOW! I’ll call the police.”
The girl hangs up the phone, turns around to look at the covered clown statue, but all there is a blanket on the floor! She hears steps coming down the basement stairs.
The Lady with the Emerald Ring
A rich man’s wife became deathly ill the night before Christmas in 1798, so he called for the doctor. By the time the doctor arrived, his wife had died, or so it seemed. Her husband was so grief stricken that he locked himself in his room and did not attend the funeral the following day. The servants of the house carried the rich woman’s body to the Vicar who, in a drunken stupor, held the ceremony quickly. The veil was drawn across her face, the stone lid lowered, and the iron grille locked.
Just before the clergyman fell to sleep later that night, he remembered the beautiful emerald ring on the finger of the woman he had laid to rest. Wanting the ring and thinking no one would find out, he went downstairs, unlocked the lid, opened it, and tried to pry off the ring. It would not budge. He ran and brought back a file to cut the ring off her finger. When that did not work, he severed her finger and pulled the ring off. As he left, he turned around to pick up the iron lid, and screamed at the top of his lungs. He dropped the ring and ran. The woman had awakened, was moaning, and held her severed finger towards him with an evil smile on her face.
Wearing nothing but her fine silk dress, the woman walked back to her home, knocked on the door, and rang the bell, but to no avail. The servants had all gone to sleep, for it was late on Christmas Eve. She lifted a heavy stone, threw it at her husband’s window, and waited. He came to the window with a sorrowful look on his face.
Suddenly, to her surprise, he yelled, “Go away. Why must you torture me so? Don’t you know my wife has just died? Let me mourn and do not bother me again.”
With this he shut the window. He did not realize it was his wife who had thrown the rock at the window. She repeated her actions, again throwing a rock at the window. He opened the window again, and she yelled to him, “I am no one but your so-called dead wife. Now come down here and open this door, unless you’d like me to die a second time on our doorstep.”
“You are a ghost then?” he said to her.
She said, “No, for ghost’s don’t bleed. Now come down here before I catch my own death of cold.”
The man with a joyous look on his face came down to meet his wife and took her inside where he called the doctor once more and told him the news.
Meanwhile, the clergyman ran home and up the stairs. In a state of fright, he hung himself from the rafters of his home. If he had only known that the woman only wanted to thank him. She had not died after all but had gone into a coma. When he cut off her finger, the pain woke her up.
Hide and Seek
This scary story for kids ends with a question, the answers to which can make the story even scarier.
Two young brothers were at home alone in the apartment while their parents visited their neighbours next door for a while.
“Be good boys,” their parents said.
To keep themselves occupied the boys decided to play a game of hide and seek. The older boy turned his head to the wall and began to count. He could hear his little brother’s feet as he scampered about looking for a place to hide.
“Ready or not I’m coming,” cried the older brother and off he went looking for his brother. He looked in all the usual places, behind the sofa, in the bathroom behind the shower curtain, behind the curtains in every room, and under all the beds, but he couldn’t find him. The apartment was eerily silent.
Then he heard a scraping sound coming from the wardrobe. The boy was sure he’d already looked there, but he went anyway and called out, “Come out I’ve found you!” but there was only silence.
Again he called for his brother to come out and again nothing. Opening the door, the boy tried to peer behind the wall of dresses and coats hanging there. He bent down, but he did not see any feet standing there. He began to rise up and put his hand out into the mass of clothing to feel for his little brother when a small, white, icy cold hand came out, grabbed his wrist, and tried to pull him into the closet.
As he is trying to pull himself free, he hears a noise behind him, looks over his shoulder, and sees his brother behind him. “Couldn’t you find me?” asks the boy.
The older brother screams in fright and desperately tries to free himself from the grip of the hand, all the while being pulled into the wardrobe. The younger brother grabs him and together they manage to pull free. They both run screaming from the apartment.
Nobody knows what would have happened if the hand had managed to pull him in. Do you!
