Scary Stories for Kids Book – 2024 Halloween Horror Short Stories

Scary Stories To Give You Nightmares

By Kyle McMahon
Published September 2023

Book Description

Get ready to embark on a spine-tingling journey into the world of childhood fears and chilling tales. In this eerie collection of short stories, young readers will experience the thrill of the unknown and the delight of a good scare.

You'll read about a haunted school bus, a figure known only as The Grinner, a farmer with a sinister secret, and mysterious old towns where the line between reality and imagination blurs. "Scary Stories To Give You Nightmares" offers a diverse range of hair-raising adventures that are perfect for campfire storytelling or sleepovers. But beware, for within these pages lurk the kind of stories that might just give you nightmares.

Inspiration

This book was heavily inspired by the classic “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammell. I really wanted to try and create something similar with great stories for kids that also included some cool, scary illustrations.

About the Book

My 4-year-old daughter and I love watching the Peacock TV show Spine Chilling Stories. I don’t know why but she enjoys horror. My son is 8 and he does not enjoy horror as much as her. But he loves the whole book making process. It kind of just happened one day. My son and I just started brainstorming ideas for short scary stories and I started picking some of the ideas I liked and went from there. There are several scary stories for kids type of books out there, several of which that we own. But one thing about most of them is that the stories are a little too long. With how kids’ attention spans are today, I really wanted to try and keep each story short - 1 to 2 pages max. My son loved helping me with the illustrations from Craiyon LLC. I think we have got a really nice gallery for kids to enjoy. It will never live up to Stephen Gammell’s illustrations, but I think they have that same aura of amazing weirdness for kids.

Favorite Stories

My son’s is probably “Bunny”. That was his idea. He really wanted a story about a flesh-eating bunny. At first, I wasn’t so sure but then it ended up turning into one of my favorites as well after listening to feedback from beta readers and re-writing the story to make it even better.
 
“The Grinner” is one I really liked. This was just an original idea I had of a grinning figure that follows and torments a little girl. I got 2 completely different reactions to this story. My niece thought it wasn’t that scary, while my son actually had nightmares from it. Which in a way I liked because now it made the title of the book seem fitting.
 
“Laughing Jack” is a great one. This is a scary clown story with kids being scared inside of a funhouse.
 
“Hello Dolly” was one I had to make. I was influenced by Chucky at a very young age, and I knew I needed a strong haunted doll story.

Price of the Book

I wanted to keep the book as cheap as possible. Unfortunately, Amazon KDP publishing has a minimum that I am allowed to sell for. The eBook is the lowest I can set it at $1.99. But it is free if you have Kindle Unlimited. Plus, I will be using my 5 days of offering the book for free when I can. The paperback is as low as I could go with having the price look like a normal sales number at $4.99. People always tell me, why don’t you sell it for more money? It’s not about money. I like to say, if I had the choice between 1,000 Amazon reviews or $1,000 in my pocket from book sales, I would pick the 1,000 reviews. Also available for FREE on Kindle Unlimited.

Where to buy - Amazon

Now a Series!