For me, each camping season brings to mind fond childhood memories of campfires, roasted marshmallows and stories told under starry skies. Thankfully, my siblings and I were blessed to have more than our fair share of adults that were willing to spin a yarn or two. Some of the adults were quite good at telling scary tales. Their campfire stories always left us shivering in our pajamas with one eyeball peeking out of our sleeping bags and both hands clutched to a flashlight. With that said, here are my picks for five of the best scary campfire tales for kids:
“The Hook”
The horror genre is rife with tales of hormone fueled, make out sessions and killers that wait in the darkness to pounce on lovers when they are at their most vulnerable. The classic tale of, “The Hook,” is one of those stories. When told the right way, it will leave you looking over your shoulder after every unidentifiable sound. When told the wrong way, the tale becomes almost laughable. In my opinion, the best way to tell the campfire story is with built-in sound effects and slow, deliberate pauses.
The basic storyline focuses on a couple making out at lovers’ lane and an escaped killer who has a hook in place of a hand. There are several different versions of the story. The version that scared me the most as a child was the one where the boyfriend gets killed. The killer eventually suspends the boyfriend’s dead body upside down from a tree branch that hangs over the couple’s parked car. Once the killer does that, it forces the petrified girlfriend to have to listen to her boyfriend’s class ring scrape back and forth across the hood of their car as his dead body sways in the breeze.
“Big Hairy Toe”
The “Big Hairy Toe” is a cautionary campfire tale of what happens when you steal from others. The version that I remember is both scary and funny. It focuses on a witch that steals the big hairy toe of a sleeping giant for one of her magic spells. The giant eventually returns one dark and stormy night to reclaim his toe and seek revenge. It is typically told with a series of sound effects and a big “gotcha” at the end.
“The White Lady”
“The White Lady” is a campfire tale about love, loss and revenge. The storyline focuses on a mother whose child becomes a victim of violent crime. The child dies and the mother commits suicide shortly thereafter. However, their spirits continue to walk the earth and vex the living. In most versions of the story the mother’s ghost can be heard crying and the child’s ghost can be heard calling out for her mother.
“The Hitchhiker”
“The Hitchhiker” is a campfire tale that has been around for generations. It also has many variations. The one that I remember listening to as a child focused on a girl that was killed in an auto accident on her way home from the prom. In the version of the story that I remember, it had been raining on her prom night and her boyfriend had been drinking. He survived the crash but she didn’t. As such, each year on the anniversary of her death, her ghost would walk along the road still clad in her prom dress waiting for someone to drive by and pick her up. Once she got inside an unsuspecting person’s car, she’d ask to be driven to her boyfriend’s house. In most versions of the story, the driver doesn’t discover that his passenger is dead until he reaches her former boyfriend’s home and gets a chance to speak to him. At that point in the story, the ghost girl typically vanishes.
“Bloody Mary”
Over the years, the campfire story of, “Bloody Mary,” has captured the imagination of many a camper, me included. The story has also been used to create a horror movie and a Halloween attraction. The original storyline focuses on a witch by the name of Mary. The townspeople kill Mary for assorted crimes but she refuses to stay dead. As a matter of fact, she is easily conjured up by chanting her name three times while looking in a mirror. Once she is called, Mary starts on a bloody rampage and kills all who dare speak her name. When I heard the story for the first time, the storyteller passed a mirror around the campfire and dared each of us to look into it and chant Mary’s name. The ones that did chant her name were later ambushed in their tents by a costume clad adult pretending to be Mary. I remember that it darn near scared the life out of us.
Killeen Gonzalez enjoys summer sports and recreation. She has also traveled extensively.
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