American kids love ghost stories, and there are plenty of Halloween books written for kids. But I’ll warn you, these stories are truly creepy, creepy. Like, they are not Disney stories with happy endings.

My favorite collection is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz I even brought these books with me to France so I could re-read them at Halloween!

It’s a collection of traditional American ghost stories and urban legends, urban legends, like 2 boys who see a monster in a corn field, a woman who almost becomes the victim of a killer in her car, or a ghost that haunts the 13th floor of a hotel.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are truly scary and the illustrations are even worse, even if they’re for kids.

Another collection of stories I loved when I was little is “In a Dark, Dark Room”. Now these are not as scary, because they’re for children aged 4-8, but they’re excellent for reading some real, accessible English.

And they still have scary stories about a decapitated woman, a young hitchhiker who is a ghost in reality, and a skeleton named John, and more!

Many Americans know the opening line to this scary poem :
“Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered weak and weary…”

And you can really feel the rhythm of the language in it! Listen to it in the video.

This poem “The Raven” was written by Edgar Allan Poe, a famous American poet who was born in Boston in 1809, and The Raven is his most famous poem. You can listen and read along to the entire poem here.

But again, it’s in kind of old style, poetic English, so you might want to find a translation in your language to understand the story.

Poe had a very miserable life: his dad abandoned the family, his mom died the next year, he had problems with his adopted family, he was poor…

Maybe because of his experiences, Edgar Allan Poe became a master at writing mysteries, mysteries, and macabre stories, macabre stories, like The Tell-Tale Heart, a short story about insanity and murder, or The Pit and the Pendulum, about a victim of the Spanish Inquisition.

I told you Poe is not happy stuff. But his stories are classics that we still love, especially around Halloween, when they show the old film versions, especially the ones with the actor Vincent Price, who became famous for playing in these horror films!

It’s not exactly a horror film, but here’s this year’s special Halloween episode: