ghost stories for around the campfire

10 Ghost Stories for Kids and Teens that Won't Keep Them Up All Night

These funny, creepy tales are perfect for telling around a campfire.

These kid-friendly scary tales are best told around the campfire or with the lights out for full effect, and you can tell our short versions below or click on the links for longer ones.

Each of these 10 ghost stories for kids are sure to bring on some goosebumps but hopefully not keep anyone from sleeping. So read on for some some spooktacular stories to tell all season long, and perhaps get passed on in future years.

The Ghost of the Bloody Finger

A little gory, slightly spooky, this is a story about a bloody finger inching ever closer to a man spending the night alone in a haunted house. It ends with a joke, however, so all that tension is released with a good giggle. For extra fun, be sure to use a sinister voice for the ghost, making it louder and scarier the closer he gets—right up until the last line, when asks for a Band-Aid. Then, he can sound as congenial as Casper the Friendly Ghost.

The Big Toe

Also known as The Hairy Toe, this is a classic story about an old woman who finds a toe in the woods and, depending on the version, eats it (ewwww) or puts it in glass jar. The tale gets creepier as the toe's very large owner comes looking for it, but the fantasy/folklore feel of it helps keeps things light, as does the ending. Children of all ages should be able to enjoy this fable without getting too frightened.

The Ball Pit

More of a play on parental worries about ball pits than a story addressing any kids' concerns (come on, do you think they fret about those things being a bacteria factory the way we do?), "The Ball Pit" is really an urban legend instead of a proper ghost story. But while it may have kids pondering the potential hidden dangers in their favorite play space for a moment or two, the silly ending will get everyone laughing.

Most kids love a good play on words, and this uncanny story about a coffin chasing a man all the way from the cemetery to his bathroom ends with the king daddy of all puns. As you tell the tale, be sure to emphasize the scary BUMP BUMP BUMP sound the coffin makes as it clomps down the street following the poor fellow. You might even want to have a bottle of cough syrup ready to hold up, too, showing what the man throws to stop the coffin. ( They'll love it. Trust us.)

Yellow Ribbon

Spooky to be sure, this long-told-tale revolves around a married couple and the yellow ribbon the woman wears around her neck, which she refuses to remove. Various versions have him untying it while she's sleeping, or the wife allowing her husband to take it off, but it all ends the same way: with her losing her head—and we don't mean metaphorically.

This rollicking ghost story has everything kids love: pirates, hidden treasure, and rowdy, glowing skeletons. The legend goes that on one dark night, the infamous buccaneer Captain Kidd and his crew showed up on the coast, burying their ill-gotten gains on a quiet stretch of sandy land. The treasure was never seen again—except on certain evenings, when the phantom pirates sail in to unearth it once more, celebrating by singing, dancing jigs and telling tales about their days sailing the high seas.

The Lady with the Emerald Ring

A parable about greed, this story set in the late 18th-century actually has a happy ending, well...for some of the characters. The story involves a woman, believed dead, a vicar who steals her emerald ring, and the bad end that comes to him. The only ghost in this story is the one the woman's husband believes her to be, but that's doesn't mean this story isn't spooky.

If you're hosting a gathering of older kids, this is the urban legend for you. Like "The Lady with the Emerald Ring" and "Yellow Ribbon," you can have fun stretching the story out, building the suspense the longer it goes. The story of a couple who park in Lover's Lane, ignoring reports of an escaped killer from a local asylum, it ends with the kind of scare that will have kids jumping out of the their sleeping bags.

The Thing at the Foot of the Bed

Short and (not quite so) sweet, this is a cautionary tale for little ones about an old man who awakens in terror at the thing he sees lurking at the foot of his bed. He takes drastic action instead of investigating, much to his regret. Both spooky and amusing, this story could help kids understand that the scary things at night they think they see in their closet and under the bed are just figments of their imagination.

Fifty-Cent Piece

Not all ghosts are scary. Some just want to be helpful, like the spirits in this story, who host a husband and wife too tired to continue their travels. The pair leave a coin as thanks the next morning, but soon hear the truth about the old couple from neighboring villagers. Eerie rather than disturbing, this story can be told to all ages.

Jill Gleeson is a travel journalist and memoirist based in the Appalachian Mountains of western Pennsylvania who has written for websites and publications including Good Housekeeping, Woman’s Day, Country Living, Washingtonian, Gothamist, Canadian Traveller, and EDGE Media Network. Jill is the travel editor for Enchanted Living. Learn more about her journey at gleesonreboots.com.

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Freak Out Your Friends with These 13 Scary Campfire Stories

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Short campfire ghost stories.

Delight your family at your next campfire by telling these short campfire ghost stories for kids.

Telling stories around the campfire is a great way to end the day. This might become one of your favorite camping traditions!

Tips for telling short campfire ghost stories

Keep your audience in mind..

Some children get very scared by ghost stories - even very silly ghost stories like these one. Wait until they are older .

In the meantime, sing campfire songs together!

Some sensitive children might enjoy these stories if you are careful in the telling. Choose a gentler tone of voice and make the story silly, rather than scary.

Make the story your own.

You could read this story to your family - but it will be much more effective if you tell it in your own words .

You don't have to memorize every detail. Just learn the general idea of the story, and add your own details as you go along.

Be dramatic!

If you have bigger kids who enjoy being scared in a deliciously fun way, ham it up ! Make your voice spooky. Pause for effect. Use sound effects. Have fun!

Short Campfire Ghost Story #1: The Ghost of The Bloody Finger

This scary story turns into a funny story at the very end.

Be sure to make the ghost’s voice very mysterious and spooky . Have him get louder and louder and scarier and scarier as the story progresses.

Then, at the last sentence, change his voice completely . Make him sound conversational and friendly.

In a small town not far from here, there was an old abandoned house. No one ever went near it because everyone said that it was haunted. One day, a bunch of local people were sitting in a coffee shop, chatting about bravery.

One man in particular was bragging loudly. “I’m not afraid of anything!” he boasted.

“Oh yeah?” asked his buddy. “I’ll bet that you aren’t brave enough to spend a night alone in that old abandoned house!” The boaster didn’t want to admit that he was afraid, so he agreed to sleep in the house that very night. At dusk, he arrived at the house alone. He checked every room and found nothing unusual. He chose an upstairs bedroom, spread out his sleeping bag on the floor, and tried to sleep. He had just dozed off when he heard a faint noise from downstairs. He strained to hear what it was. It sounded like someone moaning these words: “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am in the front hall!” The man told himself that he was just imagining things. It must be the wind, he thought. But then he heard, a bit louder, “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am at the bottom of the stairs!” “My imagination is running wild!” thought the man. “I am just going to go to sleep, and soon it will be morning.” But then he heard, even louder, “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am at the top of the stairs!” The man dove inside his sleeping bag, but he could still hear the ghost coming closer. “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am in the upstairs hall!” The man hid his head under his pillow, but he could hear the ghost coming even closer. “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am at the bedroom door!” The man was shaking with terror. The door creaked open. “I am the ghost of the bloody finger! I am in the bedroom!” The ghost paused in the doorway. “I am the ghost of the bloody finger!” (pause) “Do you have a bandaid?”

Short Campfire Ghost Story #2: Rap, Rap, Rap

Here's another classic scary and funny ghost story. Be sure to make your voice very mysterious when you say the last sentence. Pause dramatically before revealing the last words.

There was once a woman who inherited an old house. The neighbors told her that it was haunted, but she didn’t believe them.

When she inspected the house, she was delighted to see that it was completely furnished. She didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and she moved right in. On her first night in the house, she got into bed happily. She was just drifting off to sleep when she heard an odd sound, way off in the distance. It sounded like this: “Rap, rap, rap.” She tried to ignore the sound, but she couldn’t. Finally she decided to get out of bed and investigate. When she opened her bedroom door, the sound was louder: “Rap, rap, rap”. She walked down the hallway. The sound got louder: “Rap, rap, rap”. She headed downstairs. Now it was even louder! “Rap, rap, rap.” She went into the dining room. It was so loud! “Rap, rap, rap.” The sound seemed to be coming from a corner of the room. She walked in that direction. “Rap, rap, rap.” There was a chest of drawers in the corner. The sound was overwhelming now. “Rap, rap, rap.” She opened the top drawer. There was nothing there.

“Rap, rap, rap.” She opened the second drawer. There was nothing there.

“Rap, rap, rap.” She opened the third drawer. There was nothing there. 

“Rap, rap, rap.” She opened the bottom drawer - and saw ……… a roll of wrapping paper!

I hope your family enjoys these short campfire ghost stories! And once the fire has burnt down to coals, be sure to enjoy some camp fire cooking !

You'll find lots more information to help you plan your next camping trip at The Camping Family home page .

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3 True Ghost Stories for Your Next Backyard Campfire

These spooky tales will make you feel like you're out in the backwoods—almost

Heading out the door? Read this article on the Outside app available now on iOS devices for members! >","name":"in-content-cta","type":"link"}}'>Download the app .

We’ve given up so much outdoor recreation this year. Not that we’re mad about it. Saving lives matters more than backpacking trips and summer marathons . But as the days get warmer, I feel myself craving the smoke-in-my hair smell from a campfire. I miss the sound of owls, the dwindling supply of beer in the cooler, and the way time suspends as you wait for the flames to die.

Mostly, though, I miss the stories. There’s something about the light of the fire in the backcountry darkness that makes you lean in and listen a little closer. And, of course, a few sips of whiskey never hurt a good tall tale.

We can’t bring back your spring campfires with friends. We can, however, bring our favorite campfire stories to you. Save these three for retelling   when things return to normal—or tell them now over a Zoom call with your friends.

The Ghost of Oxford Milford Road

The storyteller: writer and editor brad culp.

When Brad Culp was a student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, there was a rumor that the town was one of the most haunted places in America. When Culp started an on-campus magazine, he couldn’t wait to write about several of the area’s most famous phantoms. Not long after his story published, though, he kept finding himself thinking about one ghost in particular—the ghost of Oxford Milford Road.

As the story goes, many decades ago, probably sometime in the 1940s, there was a young man courting a young woman in a rural part of town. Because the woman’s parents didn’t approve of the match, each night he visited under the cover of darkness. After her parents went to bed, the young woman would sneak out of her farmhouse and flash the lights of her parent’s car three times. Then her young suitor would ride his motorcycle down the road.

“One night he took the turn right before her house a little too sharp,” says Culp. The motorcycle went one way, he went the other. His injuries were so severe that he did not survive. Rumor has it, however, that his lovestruck ghost still haunts this stretch of Milford Road.

Curious, Culp, his girlfriend (now his wife), and a friend decided to head out there one night to see if they could verify the tale. His girlfriend was worried she’d be completely freaked out. “She believes more in that stuff than I do,” Culp says. But he was mostly concerned that his suspicions—that none of this was actually true—would be confirmed. On this particular night, as Culp passed the abandoned farm, an idea came to him, and he pitched it to his girlfriend (how could she not say yes?). Though reluctant, she relented, and Culp turned a short way into the farmhouse driveway.

He killed the engine and flashed his lights three times. “No joke, there was a single headlight that appeared three-quarters of a mile down the road,” Culp says. “You saw it start to come, going pretty slow. It kept coming and coming. My wife was freaking out. It was coming closer and closer.” As a collision seemed imminent, Culp turned on his car’s lights. He expected to see a kid on a bike, bailing out from his prank now that he’d been caught. “But there’s nothing there. The light is just gone,” he says.

They got out of the car. They walked around, trying to figure out what it was they could have seen. “To this day, we still talk about it. I saw something I cannot explain,” he says. If you get him and his wife around a campfire, they’ll swear up and down that the story is true. And if you’re ever in Oxford, Ohio, consider parking for just a few minutes on Oxford Milford Road at night to test your own nerve.

Was It People or Was It Aliens?

Storyteller: doug averill, retired owner and manager of the flathead lake lodge.

Doug Averill grew up as one of eight boys on his parents’ sprawling dude ranch, the Flathead Lake Lodge, in rural Montana. As a teen, the Averill boys ran wild. “We rode around as a little gang of cowboys,” he remembers. They’d saddle up and head off to check cattle on the three giant tracts of land the family managed, which formed a triangle around some of the state’s most remote rangelands.

One summer in the 1960s, the brothers came across a ghastly sight. There, on the ground, were three dead cows neatly arranged in a circle. No obvious wounds were visible, but their reproductive organs had been removed. “But there was never any blood. It was almost surgical removal,” Averill remembers.

During this decade, America was obsessed with aliens, and write-ups in the local newspapers posited that perhaps this was the work of extraterrestrials. People mused that aliens had taken the reproductive organs for testing. But one day, Averill and his friends came across a lance in their path. Attached to it was a cryptic note with a threatening message. “That’s when we thought, It’s gotta be people doing this,” he says.

Then things got really strange. Over the next few days, a series of odd events unfolded. First, the brothers stopped in at a local bar to grab a hamburger, leaving their horses in the back of a stock truck. The horses were packed in tightly, and the Averills were only gone for a few minutes. When they came back, the horse packed into the middle of the truck was mysteriously out—with no signs of a struggle. “We had no idea how they possibly could have gotten that horse unloaded without unloading all the others,” he says.

The next day, a new wrangler on the ranch fell off his horse and was badly injured. They’d all been riding together, but not a single other member of the crew saw the accident. “It was the weirdest thing,” Averill says. The man’s injuries were so severe that he was left permanently disabled.

Finally, the last terrible thing happened. An old camp cook drove out to meet the brothers and ride for a day. But when he arrived, the tailgate on his stock truck had somehow gone missing, even though it had been there when he’d loaded up. His horse, Betsy, had fallen out of the truck and been dragged behind the vehicle for who knows how long. They had to put her down on the spot. “To be honest, it just killed him to see what had happened to Betsy. We probably should have put him down, too,” remembers Averill. “Those three events were just boom, boom, boom—three things in a row that were so weird all tied together, because they were right after we saw that spear,” he remembers. Three things: like the three dead cows left in a circle.

Averill used to tell the stories from that summer around the campfire quite a lot. But over the years, he’s gotten new stories, and so they’ve been shifted out of rotation. Besides, they’re awfully grim. But he recently got a call about a downed bull, a buffalo. It was out in one of the most remote parts of his ranch. “A neighbor had seen a pack of 16 wolves, and normally, wolves don’t bother buffalo, but 16 of them? I thought, Well, maybe.”

He went to investigate. There, lying in a snow-covered field, was the bull. But there were no bullet holes or teeth marks or gashes on its corpse. Even stranger, scavenging animals and birds hadn’t touched it. “Not even the buzzards, which is really unusual,” he says. One other thing was amiss: its reproductive organs were gone. And there wasn’t a single footprint in the snow around it—or anywhere along the mile-long walk into the ranch from the nearest road.

Ask Averill whether he thinks he’s dealing with aliens or humans, and he’ll tell you he’s pretty sure it’s humans. “But I’d rather it was aliens,” he adds. After that summer back in the sixties, seeing what humans were capable of, he’d pick aliens any day.

The Ghost of La Parva Ski Resort

Storyteller: drew tabke, professional skier.

Throughout Latin America, you’ll hear variations of the story of La Llorona, or the wailing woman. Sometimes she’s lost her husband. Sometimes she’s lost her children. Sometimes it’s both. But in La Parva, a ski spot in the Chilean Andes, the wailing woman is named Lola, and everyone in the area swears they knew her before she died. “A local restaurant owner said he dated her,” pro skier Drew Tabke says, adding that the ski patroller he heard the story from pointed at the exact hut where this tale takes place.

The story starts on a nice day in peak ski season. Lola   and her young son planned to spend the day on the slopes. “As can happen in the Andes, a thick fog rose up from the valley, which often precedes the arrival of a real storm. The clouds enveloped the two as they were making their way down from the top of the mountain, and they lost contact with one another,” Tabke says.

Desperate to find her son, Lola began screaming his name as she ran through the thick fog. Unable to see clearly, though, she stumbled down a steep slope and began sliding toward a rocky couloir.

“By chance, a local lift operator who was returning to his cabin came across her body. He was afraid she was dead, but on closer inspection, he found she was still alive, just barely,” Tabke says. Her body was covered in lacerations from sharp rocks, and the only word she said—in the faintest whisper—was her son’s name.

The lift operator worked to carefully pull her body to his cabin, which was just up the hill. He bandaged her cuts as best he could and then ran to fetch the doctor. Together the doctor and lift operator made their way back to his hut, the fog hanging thickly in the air. When they arrived, though, the bed was empty. Just the bloody sheets remained.

“Neither the woman nor her son were ever found,” Tabke says. But locals report hearing her wail for her child whenever they’re near that lift operator’s cabin.

And here’s the thing: Tabke does not believe in ghosts. Something, however, changes when he arrives in Chile each winter. Maybe it’s the fact that, from La Parva, you can see up to Cerro el Plomo , an Incan child-sacrifice site. Maybe it’s because Tabke has simply read so many magical realism books by authors like Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez. But sitting alone in his cabin in the Andes, with the wind whipping and the candles flickering, he swears that every now and then he just can’t tell if what he’s hearing is a woman or the wind.

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The Best Ghost Stories to Tell Around the Campfire

Last Updated on January 21, 2022 by Christina

There’s nothing like a good ghost story told around a campfire. After scouring the Internet, here’s some classic creepy tales you might remember, as well as some new ones. Happy Halloween!

Lost in the Woods

Scare factor: 4 out 10 (appropriate for all but the very youngest)

Premise: With an accomplice hiding nearby in the woods, the storyteller tells how it was on a night just like this one when a girl named Cassie got lost in the woods while camping with her Girl Scout troop. The adults went to find her, and the lost girl found her way back, but the troop leader never made it back. They say if you listen quietly, you can hear the troop leader calling her name. At this point your accomplice waits a moment for the silence to set in, and then shrieks “Cassie!” making everyone jump.

Notes for telling: Great for campfires. The payoff is when the accomplice makes his entrance, so be sure to build the suspense.  Speak softly at the end, so everyone is very quiet right before your accomplice bursts onto the scene. Change out Cassie for the name of someone in the group.

Bloody Mary

Scare factor: 9 out of 10 (only the for the brave)

Premise: Bloody Mary was a witch who lived in the woods and stole the villagers’ daughters so she could drink their blood to regain her youth. The villagers captured her and burned her alive, but not before she cursed them, saying she would exact her revenge on anyone who repeated her name three times while looking in a mirror.

Notes for telling: At the end of this classic ghost story, pull out a hand mirror and dare anyone to say Bloody Mary three times. Bonus points if you have an accomplice jump out of the woods if anyone takes the dare.

Scare factor: 5 out of 10 (appropriate for most children)

Premise: A boy accepts a dare to visit a grave at night. To prove he completed the dare, he says he will stick his pocket-knife into the ground at the foot of the tombstone. After doing so, though, he couldn’t move. Try as he might, he couldn’t get away, something was keeping him from leaving. After the boy never went to school the next day, his friends investigated and found the boy lying dead on the grave. He had stuck the knife into the ground, but he had stuck it through his coat. He died of fright.

Note for telling: There is no “gotcha!” moment, so the scare is in the description. Make it a dark and creepy night with the wind howling and bats flying and the boy as nervous as can be.

Humans Can Lick Too

Scare factor: 7 out 10 (appropriate for young teens)

Premise: Girl left home all alone at night hears dripping noises from her bed, but every time she goes to check, she finds nothing. Each time she gets back in bed, she feels secure when her “guard dog” licks her hand from underneath the bed. Until finally, she checks her closet and finds her dog hanged and dripping blood in the closet with a scrawled note that says, “Humans can lick, too.”

Notes for telling: Build up the suspense by dragging out these scenes and slowing down the parts right before the “dog” licks her hand yet again.

The Hook Hand Killer

Scare factor: 6 out of 10 (appropriate for older children)

Premise: Teenage boy drives his date to a deserted Lover’s Lane for some late-night smooching. While he and the girl are kissing, the radio cuts to a news bulletin warning the public about a murderer — who just escaped from a nearby asylum! — with a hook in place of his right hand. The girl flips out and insists they leave, and after trying to appease her by locking the doors, the boy reluctantly agrees. Upon arriving at the girl’s house, she gets out of the car and begins shrieking in terror: hanging from the door handle is a bloody hook.

Notes for telling: Make a big deal about how the boy hastily drove away from Lover’s Lane, to support the notion that the hook might have been caught in the door because he sped off.

Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?

Scare factor: 8 out 10 (appropriate for young teens)

Premise: Two girls share a college dorm room together. They go out partying one evening, and one of the girls, Meg, returns to their room and retrieves her purse without turning on the lights. Later, the second girl, Julie, heads back to the room to sleep. Meg stays out until late, at which point she returns to find a bunch of police officers outside her dorm. They try to restrain her, but she insists on entering — where she sees her bloodied dead roommate, and written in blood on the wall, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the light?”

Notes for telling: This one’s all about the creepy payoff, so take your time leading up to it. Like all ghost stories, there are a million versions of this one — some have Meg coming back to sleep and discovering Julie in the morning, etc. Whatever seems spookiest!

The Pink Jelly Bean

Scare factor: 1 out 10 (appropriate for all ages)

Premise: At the end of a long, dark road is a long, dark path. At the end of the long, dark path is a lone, dark house. And the lone, dark house has a single, dark door. Behind the single, dark door is a long, dark hall. At the end of the long, dark hall are some tall, dark stairs. (Story continues, narrowing in from a room to a closet to a chest to a box, etc.) And in the small, dark box is … a pink jellybean!

Notes for telling: The idea here is to build as much suspense as possible before you leap forward and dramatically shout the jellybean line. You’ll know you did it right if your audience reacts by instantly pooping their pants.

See you next week when we pass along an “RV Checklist of Things You Need To Do When You Arrive & Before You Leave.”

Rick Kessler (Gr8LakesCamper)

Gr8LakesCamper celebrates the world of RV Camping in the Great Lakes region. Gather around the campfire and share tips, ideas and stories on RVing, camping and travel destinations. Follow Gr8LakesCamper on   Twitter , Facebook , Pinterest  and the   Gr8LakesCamper blog .

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20 Scary Campfire Stories With Just the Right Level of Creepy Fun for Kids

For spooky chills and eerie thrills!

Whether you’re gathered around a fire in the woods or huddled inside a tent made of sheets in the glow of a flashlight, these spooky tales are the perfect entertainment. Remember to read all scary campfire stories in advance to make sure they’re appropriate for your audience. Then draw them out with your best sound effects and dramatic pauses, and your listeners will shiver in delight!

Drive of Danger

“The man revved his engine powerfully, almost angrily, again and flashed the Nissan’s brights, almost bumping the back of the pickup as he surged forward behind her.”

A young woman driving home late at night is spooked by the car behind her, who keeps flashing his high beams on and off. But it turns out the danger was much closer than she realized.

The Hook-Handed Killer

“they heard another thump, and a long, screeching sound like metal scraping on metal.”.

This old classic has been freaking kids out for ages. Two teens barely escape danger, as the bloody hook hanging on their car door can attest …

The Big Toe

“’Where is my to-o-o-o-o-e?’ the voice groaned.”

This one is creepy and gross (the family eats someone’s big toe!), but the ending is one of those terrific “gotcha” moments that make scary campfire stories so much fun.

Room for One More

“the driver called to him, ‘there is room for one more.’ then he waited for a minute or two, and he drove off.”.

A man receives an eerie invitation from a crowd in a hearse late at night. The next day, he receives the same invitation to join a crowded elevator. What happens next is downright spooky.

The Black Ribbon

“She was always dressed exquisitely, and she always wore a black ribbon around her neck.”

A young husband learns the horrifying truth when he ignores his wife’s warning and cuts the black ribbon she insists on wearing around her neck.

The Girl Who Stood on a Grave

“‘something has got me’ she screamed, and she fell to the ground.”.

When a girl agrees to stand on a grave at night, she’s sure there’s nothing to be afraid of. But her friends find her dead the next day. What could have happened?

The Gift of the Doll

“The doll was smiling slightly, and something about that smile made Madeleine uncomfortable.”

Some people love old dolls, while others find them a little creepy. Those in the latter camp will feel vindicated by the actions of the terrifying doll in this creepy tale.

The Hitchhiker

“when tom described the girl’s pretty features and her white dress, the woman immediately burst into tears.”.

Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to pick up hitchhikers. Tom learns this lesson the hard way when the pretty girl he offers a ride to turns out to have been dead for 10 years.

Clinkity-Clink

“And the money went Clinkity-clink, clinkity-clink, and the fire flared and flickered and snapped and popped, and the ghost of the dead woman cried, ‘Oh, where is my money? Who took my money? Whooo? Whooo?'”

This is one of those scary campfire stories that makes a real impact in the telling. Be sure to draw out all the sound effects, creating an eerie atmosphere leading up to the final dramatic moment.

The Ghost of the Bloody Finger

“i am the ghost of the bloody finger i am at the bedroom door”.

The tale of the ghost of the bloody finger is spooky right up until the last minute. After that, kids are likely to dissolve into giggles.

Bloody Mary

“She was glowing with an unearthly light as she set her evil spell upon the miller’s daughter.”

Have you heard that if you look into a mirror in the dark and say “Bloody Mary” three times, her face will appear? Find out exactly who Bloody Mary is in this tale, then dare kids to look into a mirror and tempt fate.

Rings on Her Fingers

“but when he cut into the finger with the wedding ring, it began to bleed, and daisy clark begin to stir.”.

A greedy grave robber gets a lot more than he bargained for when he decides to dig up a young woman and steal her rings.

Milk Bottles

“She was back the next day with two empty milk bottles. He replaced them with full bottles and watched as she hurried out the door.”

Travel back to the desperate days of the Great Depression, and learn the lengths a mother will go to in order to keep her baby alive.

“Rumors began to spread around the village. People said there must be something wrong with this beautiful girl.”

In this Japanese folktale, a young girl puts prospective suitors to the test with a truly gruesome challenge. At last, she thinks she’s finally found her match, but now there’s a horrifying surprise in store for her.

The Dog’s Lick

“If you get scared, put your hand under the bed and the dog will lick it. He’ll keep you safe.”

A dog can be a comforting presence in a scary situation—as long as it’s really a dog. But what if it turns out to be something else altogether?

The Cat’s Paw

“jed stared at the cat’s paw. only it wasn’t a cat’s paw anymore.”.

A man determined to stop a thief thinks he’s shot a cat. The truth is much more disturbing.

No Trespassing

“Something terrible had happened, she thought wearily, fear adding yet more fatigue to her already wounded body.”

These teens didn’t mean to trespass, but that didn’t make any difference to whomever had posted the sign. This one will make you think twice about ignoring posted warnings.

The Golden Hand

“in that moment, a terrible lust woke in his heart—not to possess the lady herself, but to possess the solid gold hand that she wore under her long black gloves.”.

When a man marries a woman not for love, but for greed, he meets a very unhappy ending. This scary campfire story carries a bit of a moral too.

The Thirteenth Floor

“The light in the elevator was flickering as they stepped in and, as the doors began to close, the lights went out completely.”

Ever been in a building without a 13th floor? Learn the story behind the old superstition about the very first unlucky 13th floor and the elevator that led to it.

The Red Spot

“while ruth slept, a spider crawled across her face. it stopped for several minutes on her left cheek, then went on its way.”.

Part urban legend, part spooky story, this tale is sure to creep out arachnophobes and arachnophiles alike!

Looking for more scary campfire stories for kids? Check out these 10 spooky short stories, complete with lesson plan ideas.

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14 Scary Campfire Stories To Tell Your Friends

Put your own spin on these terrifying tales.

If you ever went to summer camp, had an older sibling, or had a particularly macabre set of school bus friends, you've probably heard scary campfire stories before. In fact, you might still wake up in a cold sweat some nights, thinking you can hear the distant scraping of a hook against a car door. And yet, you still can’t resist the urge to re-spook yourself every Halloween. ‘ Tis the season to celebrate all things scary, rebranding them as festive.

Even if you weren't much for pitching tents and starting bonfires, you might recognize some of these creepy campfire tales from Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark . That's because Schwartz, like many ghost story writers before him, drew inspiration from American folktales and urban legends (and then he added those horrific illustrations from Stephen Gammell, to more effectively haunt our every waking thought). Most of these scary stories have no known origin and no original author on record. They're good old-fashioned oral tradition, kept alive around campfires, at sleepovers, and in the dark places beneath playground equipment. (Which means you can tailor them with whatever details you know will scare the pants off your friends the best.)

Here are some of the most memorably haunting campfire stories that still make us feel all weird inside to this very day.

1. The Hook

A pair of attractive teens are parked at Make Out Point (or Lover's Lane, depending on your version of the story), an isolated spot on the edge of town. The boyfriend switches on the radio for some mood music, and the two start canoodling. But just as things are getting hot and heavy, they're interrupted by a breaking news story: A murderer has escaped from the nearby state asylum. He's armed and dangerous, and he has a hook in place of his right hand .

The girlfriend is obviously frightened, and wants to go home straight away, but the boyfriend insists that they'll be fine. He locks all the car doors and tries to kiss her again. She calmly explains that no means no, and that she wants to go the heck home . Annoyed, the boyfriend slams the gas pedal and drives her back to her house. It's only when they both get out of the car that he notices something dangling from the door handle — a bloody, steel hook .

2. Bloody Mary

This one might be slightly more popular at sleepovers than campfires, but I bet that you're still just a little scared to actually try it. The story goes that if you look into a mirror in a darkened room and chant "Bloody Mary" three times, you'll see the ghostly visage of Bloody Mary herself staring back at you. That, or she'll pop out of the mirror and kill you. The real Bloody Mary was actually Queen Elizabeth's ill-fated older sister, and she's probably not coming to kill you — but staring into a darkened mirror for a prolonged period of time can cause very creepy hallucinations .

3. Wolf Girl

You might know this story as " The Blonde Wolf ," which is admittedly not the creepiest of titles. But the story goes that a pregnant woman went into labor in a remote part of Texas. Her husband went for help, but both of their bodies were discovered the next day, ravaged by wolves. The baby was nowhere to be found. Over the years, sightings were reported of a little girl living with a pack of wolves, and later a grown woman, covered in hair, nursing wolf pups... and finally sightings of a strange-looking wolf with suspiciously human-like features.

4. Don’t Turn On The Light

Two college roommates are in the same science class, and the big midterm is tomorrow morning. Marie wants to stay in and study, but Tara wants to go out and party with a cute guy from the lacrosse team. She leaves Marie to her studies. When she gets home very late that night, Marie is in bed and the lights are off . Tara goes to bed without turning the lights on, trying not to disturb her studious friend. In the morning, she goes to wake Marie so they won't be late for the test... but Marie's body lies stiff, and her bed is soaked in blood. On the wall above her, scrawled in blood, are the words " Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?"

5. The Clown Statue

A babysitter has been hired to watch two children for the night. After she puts the kids to bed, the parents ask that she watches TV in their bedroom upstairs, because the children have been having nightmares recently. She puts the kids to bed easily enough, and settles in the parents' room to watch TV. But in the corner of the room there's a large life-sized clown statue. She tries to ignore it, but it's just too creepy. Finally, she calls the dad to ask if she can watch TV downstairs instead. "Sure, but why?" he asks. She tells him that the clown statue is just creeping her out too much. There's a pause. " Get the children and leave the house ," says the dad. "We don't have a clown statue."

6. The Green Ribbon

A man marries his beloved: a beautiful young woman who always wears a green velvet ribbon around her neck. On their wedding night, he asks why she never takes the ribbon off . "If I do, you'll be sorry," she says, and goes to sleep. Night after night, he keeps asking, but she always gives him the same reply. He begins to go mad with curiosity. Finally, one night, while she's sleeping, he steals the scissors from her sewing box and cuts through the ribbon himself. The ribbon falls away... and her head rolls right off her neck and falls to the floor with a sickening thud.

7. The Hitchhiker

"The Vanishing Hitchhiker" might be the most famous campfire story of all time. A couple are driving late at night when they notice a girl hitchhiking. They pick her up, and she thanks them profusely and gives them a nearby address. They drive her home, trying to make polite conversation. But after a few minutes, the girl falls silent. The driver asks if they've reached the right intersection, but when they turn to the backseat, the girl is gone. She's vanished without a trace. When they reach the address she gave them, an elderly couple greets them at the door. They don't know of any girl... but their own daughter was killed in a car accident many years ago, just a few miles up the road.

8. Doggy Lick

A girl is just a little afraid of the dark, so every night her dog sleeps under her bed. When she's afraid, she puts her hand down, and her dog licks it to reassure her. One night, she wakes to hear a strange dripping sound. She puts her hand down and feels the dog lick it, so she feels better and goes back to sleep. The next morning, she wakes to find the body of her dog hanging in the middle of the room, dripping blood. On the wall someone has written, " Humans can lick too! " (The same murderer as that dorm room one? Possibly.)

9. The High Beams

A young woman is driving home late one night, when she notices a truck driving up directly behind her. No one else is on the road. She waits for the truck to pass her, but instead it stays directly behind her and flashes its high beams . She becomes unsettled. No matter how fast she drives, or which back roads she heads down, the truck stays close behind her, flashing its high beams every few minutes. Terrified, she speeds home, with the truck right on her tail, and pulls into her driveway. She leaps out of her car and tries to run to her front door, but the truck driver gets out too — and he's holding a gun. He points the gun in her direction and shoots. The woman screams, but the bullet wasn't for her: She turns to see the body of a man fall out of the back seat of her car, clutching a butcher's knife. The shaken truck driver explains that he noticed the man in the backseat of her car, and was trying to signal to her. Every time the man raised his knife to stab her, he flashed his high beams.

10. The Golden Hand

In a small town, a man is taken by a newcomer — a widow who always wears black gloves, even inside. One day, he strikes up a conversation with her at the store, and as she brushes her hair out of her face, he notices gold gleaming through the glove of her right hand. She explains that she lost her hand in an accident, and instead of getting a traditional prosthetic, she treated herself to a solid gold hand. The man becomes obsessed with her hand. His heart beats for the the heavy, shiny, gold limb. He ends up courting the woman and eventually marrying her, only to poison her slowly. After only a month or marriage, she passes, and he buries her without the hand. One night, he wakes in a cold sweat to find the his bride standing at the end of the bed, gold hand intact. She strangles him with it and he goes limp. The next morning, a maid find the man, alone in his bed, with nothing but the golden hand gripping his lifeless neck .

11. The Spider Bite

A young woman is on vacation. She’s so relaxed while reading by the pool that she falls asleep. When she wakes up, hours have passed. She stretches, yawns, and notices that her face feels sore. She goes inside to find a mirror, assuming she just got too much sun, but she has a giant red blemish on her cheek . It looks and feels like a pimple, so she washes her face and tries not to think about it. The next morning, the spot has grown. It’s swollen, bulging, and very painful. She places a hot washcloth on her cheek and then examines the sore in the mirror. She gives it a little squeeze and what looks like a long black hair pokes out of the bump — but it moves. She shrieks and the spot bursts open, releasing dozens of baby spiders . Blood and pus and fast-crawling insects ooze down her neck, biting her everywhere.

12. The Car Breakdown

A young woman and her boyfriend are driving down a very rural road in the woods at night when suddenly the car’s engine begins to sputter and eventually breaks down . With no cellphone reception, the boyfriend offers to walk to the nearest big road to find help. He tells his girlfriend to stay in the car and lock the doors before he sets out into the pitch black dense woods. Scared and shivering from the cold for hours, still waiting for her boyfriend to return, the girlfriend suddenly hears a loud tapping on the roof of the car and begins to panic, but she’s also too scared to get out of the car and look. The tapping noise goes on and on, and soon it’s joined by a scratching noise.

The girlfriend, huddled and terrified, listens to the noises all night until she sees bright headlights coming through the trees — it’s a cop car. A policeman shouts out asking if there’s anyone in the car, to which the girlfriend replies, “It’s just me. My boyfriend left me here and hasn’t come back yet.” The officer instructs her to walk toward him and, whatever she does, not turn around, but she lets curiosity get the better of her. She screams in horror, as her boyfriend is beheaded and hanging from a tree branch above the car, blood dripping from his neck and his fingernails scraping against the roof as he sways in the wind.

13. The Peeling Wallpaper

A young couple moves into an old decrepit house that’s definitely a fixer upper. While the husband is taking care of some construction, the wife is tasked with removing the wallpaper that decorates every wall and ceiling in the house. The task is incredibly boring and tedious at first, but she begins to find it super satisfying when she can peel off big chunks at a time — think peeling a sunburn. She then discovers there’s writing under every corner of each piece of wallpaper: a date and a name. When she searches one of the names and dates on the internet, it comes up as a missing person. She does more digging and finds that all of the names and dates line up with missing people, so she and her husband contact the police. When detectives come over to investigate, she overhears one of them say, “Yep, it’s definitely human.” She’s confused — what’s human? Then, they come over to her and ask, “Ma’am, where is all of the material that you’ve removed so far? It wasn’t wallpaper.”

14. The Hike

A guy had just moved to a new town in New Hampshire and was out with a hiking group he had recently joined as a way to make friends. He left his cellphone in the car as a way to connect with nature, and the group of 12 set off on a beautiful, remote trail . An hour in, they passed a bathroom, and the man asked the group to wait for him while he used it. When he came out, they were gone. He started down the trail alone to try and find the group, but hours were passing and it was getting darker. He started to get disoriented in the woods as the sun set, and eventually it was fully dark and he didn’t know how to get back to the parking lot — plus, he felt like something was watching him. Getting more and more freaked out, he finally spotted another bathroom and decided to stay inside for the rest of the night. The man tried to get some rest, but he soon heard the sound of someone weeping outside, getting closer and closer. Paranoid and scared, the man sprinted out of the bathroom and back into the woods. Running for what felt like miles, he somehow ended up back on the road where he flagged down a car and got help.

This article was originally published on Oct. 28, 2016

Exploring Campfire Traditions: Ghost Stories & S’mores

by Tanner Colley

The primal bond between fire and humanity goes way back. You can imagine how our ancestors quickly realized the importance of fire to their survival. With this kind of history, we’ve had a lot of time to think about what to do around a fire.

Let’s explore the origins of two of our favorite campfire traditions: telling ghost stories and the making of the S’more.

Ghost Stories

Imagine the time when you first gathered around a campfire. Chances are someone spoke out: “Let’s tell ghost stories!” What is it about fire that inspires us to share and scare?

We have been telling stories around a fire since we first were able to control it. The first evidence of domestic use of fire happened around 400,000 years ago in a network of caves in Israel. The evidence points to the use of a single hearth for cooking and warmth. 

The single hearth was important for the development of human civilization. The hearth formed a social focus while also helping to develop language. “Flames,” says the late Anthony Bourdain ,” attract people to talk to one another.” The idea of hearth and home is a source of comfort for us where we can support one another.

Today, most of us stand around the kitchen swapping stories after a long day. It strengthens our relationships. Our ancestors likely did the same around the fire. One study notes how these times spent around a campfire helped shape the tradition of storytelling around a fire. Our ancestors, more than likely, did the same.

When did ghosts get added to stories told around the fire? You may be surprised that telling ghost stories around a fire was once a Christmas tradition.

Famous English writer, Jerome K. Jerome, wrote this about ghost stories and Christmas in 1891: “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.” In 1800s England, spooky stories had long been a way to whittle away cold and long nights. The “Winter Tale,” made popular by Shakespeare, was a fantasy of goblins, elves, and fairies. Charles Dickens took the idea of the Winter Tale and applied it in his writing of A Christmas Carol (1843) about an old miser named Scrooge who is visited by three ghosts on Christmas night in order to help him abandon his greedy ways and embrace charity and his community. The tale was meant to be read around a fire, and Dickens thought the Christmas Yule Log the perfect stage.

While the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories never caught on in America, the ghost story around the fire stuck.

S’mores

You just can’t help yourself when offered a sinful, decadent S’more around the fire, but did you know this tradition has its roots in medicine?

One of the pillars of the S’more, the marshmallow , was a swamp plant that produces a sticky, white sap used until the Middle Ages to make lozenges to soothe a sore throat. The Latin name for marshmallow is Althea Officinalis , which comes from the Greek “althea,” meaning to “heal” or “cure.” In the 1800s, French chefs started making it into a sticky sweet rather than a medicine. The original recipe was much more sticky and squishy than the marshmallow we enjoy today. The mallow plant extract was also expensive, meaning marshmallows were enjoyed mostly by the upper class.

Over time, the mallow plant extract was replaced by gelatin, a cheaper alternative, making it available to the lower class. This was when the tradition really got roasting.

By the end of the century, “marshmallow roasts” were the toast of the town. One New York newspaper reported in 1892 “the simplicity of [marshmallow roasts] is particularly charming. One buys two or three pounds of marshmallows, invites half a dozen friends, and that is all the preparation required.” The recommended way of eating at the time was right off the roasting stick. Marshmallows weren’t stuffed between graham crackers with chocolate until the early 1900s.

Whether inspired by the Mallomar or the MoonPie (commercial treats involving marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers) the sacred name and form of “S’more” wouldn’t have been solidified had it not been for the Girl Scouts. A recipe book published by the group in 1927, Trampling and Trailing with the Girl Scouts , includes the first reference to the recipe being called a “S’more,” although the name was “Some More” rather than the shortened “S’more.” “Though it tastes like ‘some more,’ one is really enough,” the book describes.

What other campfire traditions do you enjoy? Share them with us on our Instagram and Facebook pages.

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13 Ghost Stories Books to Read Around the Halloween Campfire

Light your campfires and get your flashlights ready. here are 13 ghost stories books filled with the best campfire stories….

• 1 Light your campfires and get your flashlights ready. Here are 13 ghost stories books filled with the best campfire stories…
• 2.1 1. 50 Real American Ghost Stories
• 2.2 2. The Worlds Favorite Ghost Stories
• 2.3 3. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
• 2.4 4. Ghost Stories (Paranormal Locations Series)
• 2.5 5. Classic Campfire Stories: Forty Spooky Tales
• 3.1 6. Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories
• 3.2 7. Collected Ghost Stories
• 3.3 8. Complete Ghost Stories
• 3.4 9. 50 States 500 Scary Places to Visit
• 3.5 10. A Haunted Road Atlas
• 3.6 11. Civil War Ghosts
• 3.7 12. The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories
• 3.8 13. Campfire Stories for Kids
• 4 15 Easy Campfire Snacks & Treats
• 5 New ebook from Mike and Jennifer Wendland – the Natchez Trace
• 6 Official RV Lifestyle QUICK Links to ALL our eBooks

Faces only partially visible by firelight. A pitch-black backdrop of the wild outdoors. Sounds of the unknown surrounding you. 

All that’s missing is an ominous voice telling a tale of horror to all those brave enough to listen!

The following ghost stories books are filled with scary, spooky (and sometimes silly) campfire stories. With them, you can be the ominous voice that scares adults and children alike!

We use affiliate links and may receive a small commission on purchases at no added cost to you. Thank you for your support. You can read our  full affiliate disclosure here.

13 Best Ghost Stories Books

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As you can see from this video, Jennifer and I are fans of spooky stories. We love to hear about the local tales and myths of monsters, ghosts, and mysteries wherever we travel. (Whether we believe them or not.)

From stories based on real events to creative fiction, this list of the best ghost stories books has something for every RVer. Some can even be used as guides to plan your next road trip!

1. 50 Real American Ghost Stories

This book of 50 Real American Ghost Stories is a collection of America’s haunted heritage. It is written by bestselling author and ghost historian MJ Wayland.

As described: “From the downright chilling, to scary and the weird, this collection of REAL ghost stories is ideal for a Halloween thrill or an insight into a unique haunted history.”

2. The Worlds Favorite Ghost Stories

The World's Favorite Ghost Stories is an illustrated anthology that includes 13 creepy tales from around the world. They include ghost stories about the jikininiki from Japan, sinister specters from South Africa, the ominous silence in Russia, and more.

The stories “are so vivid that they almost feel real. But they couldn’t be—could they?…”

3. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a 3-books-in-1 collection with original artwork and jacketed hardcover. It's even been made into a major motion picture.

The stories are “some of the most terrifying tales of horror, revenge, and supernatural events of all time, collected and retold by Alvin Schwartz.”

4. Ghost Stories (Paranormal Locations Series)

The first book in the series, Ghost Stories is a collection of the world’s scariest haunted locations, paranormal encounters, and demonic possessions. 

Who knows, maybe you’re camping in one of those haunted locations now! The only way to find out is to look inside this book…

5. Classic Campfire Stories: Forty Spooky Tales

Written by a doctor (of what, no one knows!), Classic Campfire Stories is a collection of scary classics and frightening folktales is for young and old.

The ghost stories are all fun and easy to read, remember, and retell!

Official RV Lifestyle 2023 Merch

6. Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories

The Amazon description for Roald Dah's Book of Ghost Stories says it best:

Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than that supreme connoisseur of the unexpected? From the author of such beloved books as James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Witches comes a collection of spooky tales carefully curated by the author himself, Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories.

Of the many permutations of the macabre or bizarre, Dahl was always especially fascinated by the classic ghost story. As he relates in the erudite introduction to this volume, he read some 749 supernatural tales at the British Museum Library before selecting the 14 that comprise this anthology. “Spookiness is, after all, the real purpose of the ghost story,” Dahl writes. “It should give you the creeps and disturb your thoughts.”

7. Collected Ghost Stories

Though the book cover looks similar to #2 on this list, it is a different book by a different author.

Collected Ghost Stories is a collection of classic ghost stories are written by the “finest ghost-story writer England has ever produced,” M.R. James. They are described as “superb examples of beautifully-paced understatement, convincing background and chilling terror.”

This book has certainly caught my interest… they sound quite elegant for ghost stories!

8. Complete Ghost Stories

The Complete Ghost Stories is another collection by M.R. James, which we referenced as the “finest ghost-story writer” in the previous description. He was an English author, medievalist scholar, and provost of King’s College, Cambridge, and Eton College.

James is known for his ghost stories because they abandoned “many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary setting.” Even though these stories were written in the early 1900s, they still stand up today.

9. 50 States 500 Scary Places to Visit

Hardcore ghost story fans can use 50 States 500 Scary Places to Visit as a travel guide for their next RV adventure. Organized by state, it takes you on a tour of the scariest haunts in every state. 

Creepy destinations include the House of the Seven Gables, the LaLaurie Mansion, the Winchester Mystery House, the Bell Witch Cave, and many more. It also features full-color photos to bring the tales to life.

10. A Haunted Road Atlas

A Haunted Road Atlas is another possible travel guide for horror-loving RVers. It’s created from the hit true crime podcast And That’s Why We Drink . 

The book is “Jam-packed with illustrations, fun facts, travel tips, and beverage recs, this guide includes some of the country’s most notorious crime scenes, hauntings, and supernatural sightings.”

11. Civil War Ghosts

If you’re traveling in Civil War territory, Civil War Ghosts is for you. It’s a book of real ghost stories reported in newspapers at the time of the Civil War, covering 1860-1865.

“Civil War Ghosts is a unique supernatural look at America while the states battled each other.”

12. The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories

This unique collection of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories were printed in newspapers and magazines during the Christmas season. Some of the authors are very well-known, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Elizabeth Gaskell, while others are “anonymous and forgotten.” 

It's a nice twist on ghost stories to read at Halloween and prepare you for the oncoming Christmas season.

13. Campfire Stories for Kids

To end this spooky list on a lighter note, I’m including one of the best ghost stories books for kids . Aptly named, this book is perfect for telling scary and funny tales around the campfire. 

It includes 21 stories and urban legends that will “make you laugh out loud, or have you sitting on the edge of your seat wondering how it will end.”

15 Easy Campfire Snacks & Treats

Campfire stories are always better when enjoyed with treats! That's why planning one of these Easy Campfire Snacks & Treats is a must for your spooky evening.

For more campfire fun, check out these articles:

• How to Tell a Good Campfire Story
• 30 of the Best Campfire Songs

New ebook from Mike and Jennifer Wendland – the Natchez Trace

The Natchez Trace Parkway  will capture your imagination, soothe your jangled travel nerves, open your mind and inspire you with the history that unfolded along its 444 miles.

Each of the 7 Days of the ebook has:

• Suggested Mileposts to explore
• Places to Eat in each area of the 7 sections
• Campground descriptions and links
• Links to all the special places and information
• Links to videos that show more in detail
• and a lot of highlighted information for each section

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a printed, hard copy guide.

Whether you want to follow the footsteps of explorers, discover natural beauty, or visit historic sites, the Trace has something to grab your attention and leave you eager to see what’s at the next milepost.

You can see why this is one of our favorite US routes to explore.  We’ve traveled it a half dozen times!

Official RV Lifestyle QUICK Links to ALL our eBooks

You can see ALL our eBooks here , or use the following Quick Links to go straight to what you need!

●     Adirondacks

●     Arizona

●     Colorado  

● Coastal Maine

●     Florida’s Atlantic Coast

●     Florida’s Gulf Coast

●     Florida Keys

●     Great Lakes Shoreline

●     Natchez Trace

●     Southern Utah

●     Upper Peninsula

● Lower Peninsula

●     Yellowstone

And MANY of these are BUNDLED together: 

Northeast Bundle Coastal Maine, Adirondacks

Ultimate Michigan and Great Lakes Bundle – 3 ebooks – Upper Peninsula, Lower Peninsula, and the Great Lakes Tour

Michigan Bundle Upper Peninsula, Lower Peninsula

The Great Lakes Adventure Guide Bundle The Great Lake Shoreline Tour & JUST the Upper Peninsula Guide

Florida Adventure Guide Bundle Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast, Keys 

Southwest Adventure Guide Bundle Arizona, Colorado, Southern Utah) 

Ultimate 7-Day RV Adventure Guide Bundle Collection 1- our first 10 ebooks (does NOT contain Great Lakes Shoreline or Natchez Trace)

We also have a nice collection of ebooks that will help you navigate the RV Lifestyle. 

Like these :

RV Buying Secrets

The Beginner's Guide to Boondocking  

The Ultimate Guide to Cheap or FREE RV Camping Sites

Boondocking and Free RV Camping EBOOK Bundle

The Beginner’s Guide to Boondocking ebook and Ultimate Guide to Free Camping Sites

And ONE PRINT book 🙂 and yes, before you ask, we have plans for MANY more print books .

The Complete Guide to Boondocking – PRINT VERSION This is the same as the ebook titled The Beginner's Guide to Boondocking but in print.

And while you are exploring all our ebooks – check out the hoodies, T-shirts, Stickers, and mugs in our MERCH Store! You can get to it directly by just going here – SHOP!

Last update on 2023-10-16 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Published on 2023-10-07

Mike Wendland is an Emmy award-winning journalist, traveler, and producer of RV Podcast, the RV Lifestyle travel blog, and the RV Lifestyle Channel on YouTube. Mike, traveling with his wife Jennifer and their Norwegian Elkhound, Bo, has vast experience and a great passion for exploring North America, previously working as a long-time NBC-TV News Channel Technology Correspondent and now sharing his love for the RV lifestyle with millions. Mike is not only an adept RV life enthusiast but also a skillful storyteller, bringing to his channels stories from the road that perfectly capture the magic and hardships of this lifestyle.

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5 Spooky Stories to Tell by the Crackling Campfire or Firepit

October 19, 2020

There are still some fun things you can enjoy even from the comfort of your own RV site. I think we all enjoy some good stories around the campfire from time to time, funny stories, or perhaps scary campfire stories.

No camping trip is complete without a campfire. There are two things that must absolutely be present while huddled around a campfire. Smores and scary campfire stories. Here I have listed my favorite top 5 stories for the whole family and kids.

1.        The Yellow Ribbon

Jenny always wears a yellow ribbon around her neck, and she has never taken it off. Jenny and Johnny fall in love and marry, but Johnny is always curious about the yellow ribbon she never removes. They get older and Jenny becomes ill, he finally discovers the big secret of the yellow ribbon. It completely blows his mind…… and his head.

https://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2009/08/the_yellow_ribbon.html

2.        The Keyhole

A man checks into a hotel, he is told by the front desk that his floor contains a locked and numberless door. He is also told to avoid the room; however, curiosity gets the better of him. He looks inside the keyhole and sees a woman, very pale, in the corner of the room. The next day he approaches the front desk about the room again, and he finally learns the truth…

https://www.scaryforkids.com/keyhole/

3.        The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A boy and his friend are driving to a school dance one night, when they notice a girl hitchhiking.   They pick her up and she gives them the address to her house. They first take her to the dance and plan on taking her home afterwards. e dab rig They drive her home and notice she left with a coat one of the boys had let her borrow. They arrive the following day to retrieve the coat only to discover the hitchhiker may not be who she says she is.

https://www.scaryforkids.com/vanishing-hitchhiker/

4.        The Cursed Doll

A little girl with a fascination with dolls stumbles upon a doll shop. She spots a beautiful doll that would be perfect for her collection she has at home. She goes to the clerk only to find that the doll is not for sale. After some convincing, she is able to take the doll for free! But somethings are better left behind.

https://www.scaryforkids.com/cursed-doll/

5.        The High Beams

A woman drives home alone at night and notices a lone pair of headlights quickly approaching her. The driver follows her down the stretch of deserted highway making her uneasy. He continues behind her flashing his headlights with the woman now panicked trying to get away. When she finally stops and gets out of the car, she realizes things are not always as they may seem.

https://www.scaryforkids.com/high-beams/

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15 real ghost stories that will send chills down your spine

Are you afraid of things that go bump in the night ?

Then perhaps it's best you don't go any further, because we're about to delve into the world of the supernatural — and these tales are not for the faint of heart.

Whether you believe ghosts are real or just made up for the movies , these ghost stories, as told by real people who experienced things they can't explain , are sure to give you pause — if not proof — that there's more than meets the eye when it comes to the spirit world.

To help curate our collection of spooky yarns, TODAY.com spoke to Derek Hayes, host of " Monsters Among Us ," a podcast in which callers share details of mysterious encounters. According to Hayes, he receives hundreds of calls each week and submissions from across the globe.

"But every once in a while, somebody will call in one of those personal stories. It's that personal connection for me that really brings it home. And some of those are just terrifying ," Hayes tells TODAY.com.

We've collected a sampling of those 'terrifying' stories right here, along with a handful of other scary ghost stories from a ghost hunter, as well as unexplained happenings recounted by ordinary people who claim they've experienced extraordinary events.

Whether you choose believe them is entirely up to you. But if you end up sleeping with the lights on tonight, don't say we didn't warn you.

The 'grandmas' in the cemetery

Jeff, a resident of Dayton, Ohio, was driving with his 3-year-old son, Miles, in the back seat, when they passed by a cemetery. It was a modest cemetery with only flowers and small plaques.

“It basically looks like a giant garden,” Jeff explains on “Monsters Among Us.”

According to Jeff, as they drove by, his toddler, who’d been happily singing, abruptly stopped, pointed to the cemetery and exclaimed, “Look at all those people!”

Jeff turned to look, but didn’t see a soul. Confused, he asked Miles what he was talking about. “All those people over there,” his son replied. “There sure are a lot of grandmas.”

As Jeff tells it, chills ran down his spine as he asked his son what the people were doing. “They’re all standing there, looking down at the grass,” Miles said.

Completely unsettled by the conversation, Jeff sped up and drove home. Later that same day, he says his young son was watching TV when he turned to Jeff and said, “You know … they weren’t alive.”

Thinking Miles was referring to the cartoon, Jeff asked what he meant. “Those people we saw ... they were all paused," his son replied.

“I don’t know if my kid has the sixth sense," Jeff says. "Or if he just has a wild imagination."

The ghost of The Stanley Hotel

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, has been around for more than 100 years and was built as a posh getaway for the wealthy seeking solitude in the mountains.

As the years passed, however, occupancy declined and by the 1970s, the grand hotel had fallen into disrepair. It was around that time that famed author Stephen King spent the night there and was inspired to write the book “The Shining.”

The book and blockbuster film helped return the Stanley to its former glory. Now, guests come in droves to see the hotel that inspired one of the scariest horror movies of all time.

Given its history, it should come as no surprise that many visitors report strange happenings. Aware of the ghostly rumors, Texas resident Henry Yau booked a last-minute getaway in April of 2016 to “check it out.”

After arriving, Yau had dinner, then wandered around the Stanley to take photos. Stopping at the staircase, he waited for people to clear the area, then took a picture, thinking nothing of it.

Later that night, however, Yau fell seriously ill. “I felt really sick, I had the shivers, I was like, something’s really wrong,” he tells TODAY.com. His companion suggested he go to the emergency room, but Yau refused.

On the trip home, Yau began swiping through the photos he’d taken when he discovered what he said was a “really, really strange image” of someone standing on the stairs.

Except no one had been there.

The next day, he posted the photo on Instagram, half-joking that he’d captured a ghost — and the world took notice. Almost overnight, Yau found himself in the limelight with his ghost picture warranting attention from global media outlets and paranormal experts who wanted to examine the photo.

“Some experts say that there’s two ghosts, and other people said that the reason I got sick is because the ghost was trying to materialize, taking energy out of me,” he said. “There’s so many theories about this.”

And what does Yau think? “I have no idea,” he says with a laugh.

The hauntings at the Lizzie Borden House

On August 4, 1892, Andrew and his wife, Abby Borden, were found brutally murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Though murder wasn’t uncommon in the late 1800s, the fact that they were bludgeoned to death with an ax and the main suspect was their 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden, certainly was.

The crime and trial that followed made headlines around the world. Lizzie was ultimately acquitted of murder, but she remains forever linked to the heinous killings, as does the home where the crime was committed.

Now a bed-and-breakfast and museum, the Borden home attracts history buffs and thrill-seekers who come to see for themselves if rumors that the house is haunted are, indeed, true.

“When I started working here, it was more of the history. I really didn’t care about the paranormal,” Suzanne St. John, a realtor and tour guide at the Lizzie Borden House, tells TODAY.com.

However, that all changed after St. John says she experienced a few unusual happenings of her own.

“Guests tell us they hear laughing and playing in the middle of the night, things get moved around,” she says. And St. John has experienced a few unusual things herself, saying that once she discovered toys scattered across a room that no one had been in.

St. John also talks of a picture that fell over and slid two feet across the floor without any plausible explanation, as well as a closet door that once opened on its own volition.

On the eve of the anniversary of Andrew and Abby’s murder, St. John says that she and two other tour guides at the house felt a sudden sharp, piercing pain in their left eyes — the same exact location of Andrew Borden’s fatal injuries.

Perhaps the most unsettling, however, is the story St. John tells of a tour guide at the Lizzie Borden house who asked her group to silence their cell phones before beginning the tour. Moments later, a guest’s cell phone rang. She looked up and said, “It’s my mom.”

The tour guide asked if she wanted to leave and take the call, to which the woman replied: “She died two years ago.”

The ghost of Captain Joseph White

Though Salem, Massachusetts is best known for its infamous witch trials, there have been plenty of other chilling stories throughout its 400-year history.

One of them is the tale of Captain Joseph White, a wealthy merchant who was found bludgeoned to death in his bed.

It was a crime motivated by money, according to Giovanni Alabiso, owner and tour guide at Salem Historical Tours, who says the 82-year-old merchant was allegedly targeted by greedy brothers hoping to get their hands on his will.

Brothers Joseph and Francis Knapp enlisted the help of Richard Crowninshield to help get the job done. “Late in the evening, when Captain White is asleep, Dick Crowninshield comes in, he goes upstairs to the second floor and takes a club and bashes the captain over the head and crushes his skull,” Alabiso tells TODAY.com.

The murder resulted in a scandalous trial and is said to be the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” as well as the game “Clue.”

Whether it’s the brutal nature of the crime or revenge for the attempt to steal his money, the spirit of Captain Joseph White is said to still wander the halls of his former home. “People believe Captain White is roaming around that house, protecting whatever treasure he reportedly has,” Alabiso said.

Tourists take photos of the house, and despite being empty, many pictures reveal shadowy figures (both male and female) in the windows and on the landing of the Gardner-Pingree House.

Who are they? No one knows.

“It’s definitely, absolutely active,” Alabiso says.

The haunted ventriloquist doll

When Marty was a child back in the '90s, she tells "Monsters Among Us" that she was a fan of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy sidekick, Charlie McCarthy.

She says that when her father came across a ventriloquist doll as he wandered through a small magic shop located outside of Santa Rosa, California, he decided to buy it for her birthday.

While ringing up the sale, Marty says the cashier gave her father "weird vibes" and said to him: "You know when you put your hand inside the doll, he's going to come alive."

Laughing off the comment, he brought the dummy home to his daughter.

According to Marty, she was over the moon when he dad gave her the doll, saying: "I was so happy when I got that doll, I was obsessed."

But before long, strange things began happening. Though impossible because the doll's head was made of hard plastic, she says its expression would change, including his smile.

Worried something would happen to her precious dummy, Marty's family shut it away in a cupboard most nights. One night, she and her family were awakened by the "pitter patter" of steps in their living room. Thinking it was the dog or another family member, they went to look.

No one was there. Except for the doll, who was sitting on the couch.

"We remember specifically we always put it away because I loved that doll so much that I took care of it," Marty says on the podcast.

Other strange occurrences began happening. While Marty and her dad were away, her uncle was alone in the house. The uncle says he heard Marty's father calling his name from the living room, even though he wasn't home.

When he went to look? He found the doll, once again, sitting on the couch. And no one else.

"All of our family was pretty much scared of the doll," Marty says. "People would start hearing their names being called, and we would hear walking at night. So, we just decided we needed to get rid of it."

Being Mexican and religious, Marty says her parents wanted to burn the doll in case it was demonic. They put it on the grill and, according to Marty, it wouldn't burn. "This doll would not go up in flames, at all, whatsoever."

They tried cutting it up with a knife, but were unsuccessful. Finally, they threw it in the trash can. After the garbage was collected, Marty's dad went to retrieve the bin.

In it? The doll.

To rid themselves of the dummy, they dug a hole in the backyard, then filled it with cement.

Marty and family have long-since moved away, but she says they still think about the doll and the possibility that eventually "it finds one of us."

The imaginary 'friend'

Jacqueline from Oklahoma says that while her memories have faded over the years, she recalls having an imaginary friend when she was young.

Her grandparents, "Granny Junie" and "Pa Hank," lived in a small home with a quiet backyard. Jacqueline recalls visiting them as a child.

"I have very good memories of my Pa Hank," Jacqueline says on the podcast "Monsters Among Us."

"He would sit under the tree with me and tell me stories." The stories were often about his life and memories of prohibition, she says. "He was actually a very interesting character."

The only problem? Her grandfather died in 1981 — and Jacqueline was born in 1982.

"I don't think I ever realized that I was getting stories from a ghost," she says, adding that the rest of her family knew of his presence in the house. "My Granny Junie would never stay in the house on the anniversary of his death," she says. "He did die in the house."

Jacqueline also recalls hearing Pa Hank get up in the middle of the night when she was staying at the house. "It never occurred to me that these were memories of an entity," she said.

In hindsight, Jacqueline says that even though her childhood "imaginary friend" was actually her dead grandfather, it casts a different light because it was a relative and not a stranger.

"It never felt like ghosts, it felt like talking to my Pa Hank."

The kidnapping ghost

On "Monsters Among Us," a caller named Joe tells of moving to Georgia from California in the late 1990s. Soon after, he says his brother followed him to the Peach State and rented an old house built in the 1800s.

"It looked nice from the outside ... it did not feel good from the inside," Joe says during the podcast.

According to Joe, things seemed off from the moment he helped his brother move into the home. "I walked into the house and went, 'Oh, man.' The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I just felt ill-at-ease, like this place isn't cool at all," he says.

Moments later, while carrying items into the bedroom, Joe says he heard whispering.

"A heated whispering, almost an argument, between two people that seemed to be hovering in the top of the ceiling area of the room," he adds.

Joe ran out of the room and asked his brother if he'd felt something off about the house, too. His brother had picked up on the vibe, but assured Joe that things would be alright.

"As long as you're good," Joe says he told his brother. "I'm not good, but I'm going to help you. I'm going home and I probably won't come back here."

And, sure enough, Joe's brother began experiencing unusual occurrences in the house.

The most alarming, however, was when Joe says his young niece was found wandering alone on a busy road with her hand up in the air.

Police and other agencies were called to investigate the incident and when asked, his brother's 4-year-old explained that she'd gone for a stroll with the "old lady that lives here."

"She just wanted to go for a walk, so we went for a walk."

Given that the front door was too heavy for a 4-year-old to open by herself, no one could understand how she was able to leave the house.

According to Joe, his niece said, "The old lady opened the door, then we petted the dog for a little bit, then went for a walk."

"She was so genuine and honest at 4 years old, that he couldn't call her liar," Joe says during the podcast.

Soon after, his brother moved and never returned.

The ghosts of Stone’s Public House

Considered one of the most haunted restaurants in America, Stone’s Public House in Ashland, Massachusetts, doesn’t have a ghost problem — it has a ghosts problem.

Janet Morazzini, a longtime resident of Ashland, is the bartender and manager of Stone's Public House, which was built by John Stone back in 1832.

According to Morazzini, even before she began working at the inn, she heard stories of the ghost of a young boy roaming the halls of the restaurant, which once served as an ad hoc hospital during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.

It makes sense, Morazzini tells TODAY.com. “That’s where they would quarantine all the sick people,” she explains. “Apparently, quite a few souls have passed just due to that.”

The inn is also the site for other untimely deaths, including that of a young girl who was struck and killed by a train while she played near the railroad tracks bordering the property.

According to Morazzini, a father and son visiting the inn stepped outside the restaurant to watch the trains. After coming back inside, Morazzini overheard the father reassuring his young son that there wasn't anyone else outside — despite the son insisting he'd seen a little girl sitting beside them.

“He’s like, ‘She was sitting right next to me. She was crying. You didn’t see the little girl?’ And the dad said, ‘There was nobody there, it was just me and you, buddy,'" Morazzini recalls.

Other ghosts are said to haunt the old inn, including that of proprietor, John Stone, who Morazzini says didn’t actually die there, but is believed to be “watching over” the place.

One night when Morazzini was alone at the inn, she says she heard footsteps walking directly above her on the second floor. “I was just like, there is no explanation for that whatsoever. I’m leaving," she tells TODAY.com.

Still, she doesn’t believe that the spirits have bad intentions. “I’ve never had that scary, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck-gotta-get-out-of-the-building feeling there."

The unexpected passenger

In the 1990s, Julie, a resident of Portland, Oregon, was driving out the city to meet with friends when she found herself in traffic. The 18-year-old soon discovered that the cause of the slowdown was due to a dreadful car crash and to her horror, as she passed the scene, she realized that someone had died.

A moment later, “there was a woman sitting in my passenger seat.” Julie says on “Monsters Among Us.”

Though she admits it sounds crazy, Julie reports seeing a woman dressed in work clothes seated next to her. And despite being in complete shock, the woman in the passenger seat was even more freaked out. “She looked like somebody who just suddenly ended up in somebody else’s car,” Julie says of the incident.

Panicked, the woman demanded to know how she got there and who Julie was. It was then that Julie noticed the woman had an unearthly quality about her and realized that whoever she’d passed on the side of the road was somehow in the car with her.

“'Ma’am, you need to calm down, my name is Julie and I’m here to help,’” she says she told the stranger. Julie later went on to explain to the woman that she’d been in a car accident and somehow ended up in her passenger seat. The woman was stricken.

At that exact minute, they passed a clearing in the trees. With some encouragement from Julie, the woman peacefully walked toward the sun, then disappeared.

In completely disbelief, Julie pulled over and convinced herself she’d imagined the whole thing. Several days later, however, a story came on the news about a trucker injured in a car accident.

“Before they finished, they threw a picture up of the woman that was in my car and explained that she had passed away in the accident,” Julie says during the podcast. “It was unbelievable, it was too much.”

The ghost in the choir loft

Alicia Diozzi, teacher, tour guide and owner of Salem Kids Tours , typically sticks to talking about Salem, Massachusetts' long and diverse history.

However, there’s one story she likes to share about a ghost that haunts First Church in Salem. The plot twist? Only children can see it.

“The little ones, maybe age 4 or 5, will ask about a ghostly presence that they see up in the choir loft in the main sanctuary of our church,” she tells TODAY.com.

According to Diozzi, kids often point to the same spot in the church and claim they see a woman there.

“The kids will say she’s in a long dress, long-sleeves, and that she sometimes can be heard singing with the choir," Diozzi says.

Tales of the choir ghost have been circulating since the 1960s, says Diozzi. And she might have dismissed them had her own son not pointed to loft 15 years ago and asked about "the lady who sings with the choir."

Was she chilled?

“Yes, definitely,” Diozzi says. “I feel like the main sanctuary at First Church has that feeling, you do kind of feel the presence of the past.”

It’s not a bad feeling she says, but rather a history or energy that’s comforting in a way.

The ghosts of 'Shawshank' penitentiary

The Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio is widely known for being the location of the classic movie, "The Shawshank Redemption."

But the old penitentiary, which was shut down in 1990, also has a reputation for being haunted.

Home to some of the most hardened criminals, the maximum-security prison was once the site of murders, suicides and other violent encounters, according to Theresa Argie, author and paranormal investigator known as “ The Haunted Housewife ."

“(The reformatory) had this incredible vein of violence that ran through it almost from the beginning," Argie tells TODAY.com.

“You can imagine why a place like that would be haunted,” she says. “There’s something negative there, you can just feel it in your bones.”

And there are, in fact, plenty of ghost stories from the old prison.

“We ran into female spirits there, which I thought was incredibly interesting,” Argie said. One of them, she says, is likely the wife of a former warden who was accidentally shot and killed while pulling a box down from a closet shelf.

According to Argie, they've captured recordings of a woman crying and, on occasion, smelled rose perfume in the bedroom.

Another spirit that’s said to haunt the reformatory is a woman who sits in the prison chapel and cries. “When you approach this woman sitting in the pew, she disappears. Other people have seen her walking," Argie says.

Then there's the malevolent presence there, according to Argie. And with the help of a medium, she says she communicated with it.

“He would literally be cussing at me,” she recalled.

While their sessions with the angry ghost were unnerving, it wasn’t until he followed Argie’s partner home that they were truly terrified.

“One day, she saw him, through a reflection of her window, she saw this thing in the back, this shadow figure, and she knew it was him," Argie tells TODAY.com.

After seeking the help of a paranormal expert, Argie says that "we haven't seen him since."

The phantom ambulance lights

In the mid 1990s, Robert worked as paramedic in a small Texas town and tells the story of a "strange happening" that he and his partner experienced on a call one night.

After receiving a call for a female having chest pains, he and his partner climbed in the ambulance to make their way to the address.

"We took off Code 3, which means using our emergency lights and sirens," Robert recalls.

In the absence of GPS back then, Robert says that they relied on maps and mailbox numbers to guide them to the rural location.

"The address we were going to was a very rural one," says Robert. "So, there was no street lights and it was a very dark night, so it was very difficult to read the mailboxes."

As they searched for the correct driveway, Robert says he turned off the sirens. After determining they'd found it, they pulled in only to discover they were mistaken.

"So, we turned off the emergency lights as we backed up to the road and went up the correct driveway," he explains.

Upon arriving at the scene, the paramedics realized that they'd been at the exact same address the month prior for a male suffering from cardiac arrest.

"In typical medical black-humor fashion, we mentioned to each other that this was probably the wife who was now having a heart attack and was now going to go join her husband."

They jumped from the ambulance, bags in tow, and began treating the woman, who, fortunately, ended up being alright. Robert says he sent his partner to get the stretcher from the ambulance so they could take her to hospital for evaluation.

"When he returned, he had this strange questioning look on his face," according to Robert. The pair wheeled the patient out to the emergency vehicle and that's when Robert saw that the ambulance "had nearly every light it was equipped with turned on."

"Strobe lights, flood lights, some interior lights ... everything on."

After taking the patient to the hospital, Robert asked his partner why he'd turned on all the lights.

In fact, he reminded Robert that they'd shut them all off after going to the wrong address.

"Neither of us recall activating the emergency lights, strobes or flood lights when we arrived at the house. There was no real reason to do so, we'd already gotten there.

"In the end, we wrote it off as her dead husband letting her know that he was still there."

The ghost dog

Sarah, from Lancaster, Ohio, tells "Monsters Among Us" the story of her childhood dog, Cricket, who according to Sarah was a "pretty unhappy dog."

"She was super cranky, she only liked my grandma," Sarah says. "She didn't seem like she felt well."

Still, the family loved their dog and was devastated when the pup ran out into the road and was struck and killed by a passing car as they were preparing to leave on a family vacation.

"It was very sad, very upsetting, especially with me being a child. My grandmother was there, she loved Cricket and Cricket loved her. They had this special relationship that none of us had."

Despite the loss, the family had prepaid for their vacation, and not having a lot of money, decided to still go, leaving Cricket with an aunt who offered to take of the necessary details.

Upon arriving at the hotel where they were staying, Sarah says the family was "melancholy and sad" over the tragedy.

"We go to bed, and in the middle of the night, I'm not sure why I woke up, but I startled, woke up, sat up in bed, and looked down, and on the floor was Cricket, a full-body apparition, of her," says Sarah.

"She looked so happy, she looked like a different dog. She was jumping around. All that crankiness, all that unhappiness she had, was gone. It was like she was coming to tell me that she was OK. It was the clearest apparition. I've never seen an apparition again. It was the first and only time."

Sarah says she told her mother in the morning what she'd seen and her mom dismissed it as her middle-school brain just trying to make sense of the loss.

"I guess that's possible," says Sarah, "but to this day, I can still envision Cricket in that moment. I've never forgotten that image and it helped me feel better about what had happened because she seemed so happy and I do think she was visiting me that night."

  The ghosts of Willoughby Coal

Built in the late 1800s, the Willoughby Coal building in Willoughby, Ohio, housed a variety of businesses in it's time, including a train depot, cheese factory and flour mill.

In 1912, it became the very prosperous Willoughby Coal, supplying coal to local residents before it was sold to Henry Windus and William “Don” Norris in the 1930s.

Over time, the relationship between the two owners grew contentious, according to Theresa Argie. “Henry Windus wanted to buy the business from Don Norris, but Don was unwilling to sell," the paranormal investigator tells TODAY.com

One morning, Norris allegedly told his wife he was going out for bread and to check on repairs being done on the Willoughby building.

He never returned.

Several hours later, his body was discovered in front of the door. “He was laying in a bloody heap,” Argie says.

Even though his death was ultimately ruled accidental, Argie says that Norris' family believed he'd been murdered. Though no one knows what really happened that morning, Argie believes his spirit still haunts the building.

“We have come in contact with him on many, many occasions,” she says and claims that others have reported seeing faces in the window and heard unexplained footsteps and other unusual occurrences at the building.

But Norris isn't alone.“We’ve probably got five or six resident spirits in the building."

The ghost nanny

Kip, a caller from New York state, talks of an old home that he and his wife purchased. Upon moving in, his wife invited her sister and newborn baby to come for a visit.

“The stayed in the downstairs bedroom and my wife was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom,” Kip explains on "Monsters Among Us," and says the first night their guests stayed, his wife overheard her sister talking to someone in the middle of the night.

The next morning, Kip’s wife asked who she’d been talking to and her sister replied, “I woke up in the middle of the night and there was an old lady standing over my baby and I had to tell her to get away.”

According to Kip, there were more unexplained incidents in the house including mysteriously moving lamps and a creepy occurrence with a fire alarm that went off while his wife was outside working in their garden.

“She immediately runs back into the house, figures out that it’s the smoke alarm in that same downstairs bedroom going off,” Kip says on the podcast. “When she opened the door, she said for a split second all she could see in the room was this white fog.”

Within moments, however, the white fog disappeared and the alarm shut off.

Convinced the house was haunted, Kip’s wife reached out to a neighbor to learn more about the property and discovered that the previous owner was a 90-year-old woman who tragically died in a house fire.

“Needless to say, we fixed up the house and got out of there as fast as we could and moved someplace else," says Kip.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

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For Camp People, by Camp People

Scary Campfire Stories

These campfire stories are either really scary, or are suspenseful enough that they will scare you anyway.

A note about campfire stories from our "soapbox:" We love a good scary story, but be conservative when choosing your audience. Many children are just beginning to sleep out, and an upsetting experience could jeopardize their overall enjoyment of sleeping away from home, or camping out.

Enjoy! If you don't see your favorite story listed, or know a different version, please submit!

Once in a little village not that far from here, there was a problem. Animals had started dying off, one by one. In the morning their owners would see them lying outside with 10 holes in their chest. The people thought it was the work of their neighboring town (insert name). Then, one night a man by the name of …

A House of Terror

The car finally gave out. Jeff hit the dashboard in frustration. It was bad enough that the car had to break down, but at night, in the rain, in the middle of God knows wherever he was, it was a fitting end to his bad week. The week had seen his wife leave him, taking the kids with her. He …

Army of the Dead

A laundress, newly moved to Charleston following the Civil War, found herself awakened at the stroke of twelve each night by the rumble of heavy wheels passing in the street. But she lived on a dead end street, and had no explanation for the noise. Her husband would not allow her to look out the window when she heard the …

Backseat Maniac

There’s a girl driving along I-70 on the way back to Colorado after visiting her relatives in Illinois. It’s about 1:00 am and it starts raining when she realizes she’s almost out of gas. She sees a sign for a gas station about 3 miles ahead and breaths a sigh of relief. But when she gets there she sees it’s …

Blue Baby Bonnet

Once there was a young woman who had a child, but couldn’t afford to take care of it by herself, so she put a blue baby bonnet on it’s head and carried it two miles from her house and left it in the woods As she began to walk home she heard “Blue Baby Bonnet One Mile Away” As she …

“Creak”, a sound, faint, distant, but still heard. “Crack”, something snapping, or being trampled on. The man sits in his room, reading. The room is silent except for the quiet fire burning. “Creak”..Just the the house settling, nothing more. “Crack”, Perhaps some small animals outdoors. “Whoosh”, Was that the wind? The man stands up and peeks out the window. A …

Eversince Julie was a little girl, when she got scared she would put her hand under her bed and her dog would lick her hand to comfort her. Well now Julie was 14 and her parents were going out and were going to be out until late at night. Julie didn’t want to stay home alone but her parents told …

Don’t Turn on the Light

Once their were two girls who shared a college dorm together. Their names were Meg and Venida. The girls were out partying one night. Meg noticed she forgot her purse and went back quickly to the dorm. With out turning on the lights she walked in and grabbed the purse. Then she returned to the party. Later on in the …

Drive of Danger

Tell it at night, and sound effects work well to make the story scarier. It was a late night, rainy, and very dark. A young woman was driving home alone from work after a long, tiring day. Her two-seater pickup truck had been driving on steadily through the rain for the last half hour- aand she still had another half-hour …

Ghost on the Track

The number 12B Train was on its usual journey from Royston to Monkton taking workers to and from the coking factory. The day was supposed to be wet and gloomy and a mist is said to have swept in from the east that cold autumn night. The moon was full looking over Royston that night but still wives and children …

Girl at the Underpass

Not long ago, but before interstate highways ran around towns and cities, a young man left Greensboro late one night to drive to his old home in Lexington. At that time, just east of Jamestown, the old road dipped through a tunnel under the train tracks. The young man knew the road well, but it was a thick foggy night …

La Mala Hora

My friend Isabela called me one evening before dinner. She was sobbing as she told me that she and her husband Enrique were getting divorced. He had moved out of the house earlier that day and Isabela was distraught. I called my husband, who was on a business trip in Chicago, and he agreed that I should go stay with …

Nightmare House

It was a dark and stormy night. Steve had just came in from having tied down anything that could possibly blow away in the wind outside. Cold seaping into his bones, he decided to go sit by the fireplace to warm up. He closed the door to the large living room of the large house he had just purchased. His …

Not In My Neighborhood

When I was 18 I started babysitting my Aunt’s youngest three kids. I always got a very uneasy feeling when I went into her house, the only reason I agreed to stay in house was because I was just out of High School and I needed the money. You need to know that her house is a bi-level. When entering …

On Washington Rock

The dream was so vivid, she didn’t realize at first that it was a dream. The party was crowded, the guests cheerful, the food delicious. Then a rumor began to circulate among the guests. The Devil was coming to the party. The Devil was on the way. She didn’t pay much attention at first. Until a hush came over the …

Once there was a little girl whose name was Rose Marie. One night she woke up about midnight because she heard someone walking across the floor downstairs. step…step…step…step…step She quickly pulled the covers up over her head and shivered, holding her breath. Soon, she hears a wavery voice (say slowly in a scary voice). ” Rose Marie – I’m on …

SCARY STORY (Revised/Updated)

SCREAMS IN THE DARK She was my best friend. But I try never to think about her. It’s only on certain nights, when I’m all alone in my room, that I remember… It was last year when my best friend asked me to stay at her house overnight. She lived in a big, gloomy house set way back in the …

You can give them all a mirror while you say the story. (Or not!) To SCARE them Silly! Whoever is foolish enough to say Bloody Mary three times in the mirror is sure to die. Once upon a time, there was a woman called Mary Worth. Everyone insisted she was a witch, and no one dared go newar her house. …

Something Black and Cold

It started with little things, strange incidents that were sometimes inconvenient, sometimes almost amusing. But then the heavy trouble began… and the terror. In the early 1970s, two sisters, Lois Dean and Diantha Summer, moved their families into two old houses in the middle of Rawlins, Wyoming, a small city in the Rocky Mountains. Lois and her husband and their …

The trials and tribulations of living in today’s modern society can tend to wear on your nerves. One can grow very weary of dealing with bills, taxes, insurance, traffic, and pollution; not to mention anything about keeping food in the refrigerator. Often times the whole thing can make you wanna holler, throw up both your hands! And that’s exactly what …

The Big Toe

A boy was digging at the edge of the garden when he saw a big toe. He tried to pick it up, but it was stuck to something. So he gave it a good hard jerk, and it came off in his hand. Then he heard something groan and scamper away. The boy took the toe into the kitchen and …

The Birth of the Jersey Devil

A storm was raging that night in 1735, when Mother Leeds was brought to bed in child birth. The room was full of woman folk gathered to help her, more out of curiosity than good will. They had all heard the rumors that Mother Leeds was involved in witchcraft, and had sworn she would give birth to a devil. Tension …

The Black Ribbon

Long ago, a young man met and fell in love with a beautiful young woman. She was always dressed exquisitely and she always wore a black ribbon around her neck. Soon the man and the woman were married and moved into a little cottage by the sea. They started out very happily, but soon the young man became more and …

The Boy with the Brass Buttons

A young couple were delighted to purchase the old-fashioned house in the Stuyvesant Square section of Philadelphia. They moved into their dream home in the winter of 1889, bringing their six year old daughter with them. There was a lot of refurbishing to do, so the little girl tended to go up to the attic to play while her parents …

The girl hurried through her schoolwork as fast as she could. It was the night of the high school dance, along about 70 years ago in the town of Kingsville, Texas. The girl was so excited about the dance. She had bought a brand new, sparkly red dress for the dance. She knew she looked smashing in it. It was …

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Kayla Clarke , Senior Web Producer

Got a ghost story? Experience something you just can’t explain? We’d love to hear about it.

Ghost stories aren’t just for telling in the dark of night around a crackling campfire -- they’re also for sharing with strangers on the internet. Though I wouldn’t say no to a good story around a campfire (or a s’more) right now.

Unfortunately, the best I can do is a virtual campfire. So, this is it. Tell us about your ghost story (or otherwise unexplained experience) using the form below and we’ll share the best ones with the group. Don’t forget to mention where and when it happened!

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627 episodes

Creepy TRUE stories of paranormal phenomena of all types. Ghost stories, UFO, cryptids and more! This feed reflects the last 90 days of content, Jim Harold's Campfire has been in production since 2009 with over 390 episodes. True ghost stories, hauntings, life after death stories and more. Hosted by Jim Harold.

Jim Harold's Campfire Jim Harold's Spooky Studio

• Society & Culture
• 4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

Listen on Apple Podcasts Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

• OCT 12, 2023

Your Favorite Campfire Stories

Over two hours of our creepiest Campfire stories as chosen by you! Evil, hauntings, doppelgangers, narrow escapes and much more in this two-hour plus extravaganza. Enjoy! --- Please support our great sponsors as they make our free podcasts possible! -HELLOFRESH- HelloFresh is America’s #1 Meal Kit! Go to https://hellofresh.com/50campfire for 50% off plus free shipping! -POLICYGENIUS- Policygenius makes it easy to get life insurance done (and done right). Feel good knowing that your loved ones would be taken care of if anything were to happen. Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. STAMPS.COM- Stamps.com takes the pain out of shipping by giving you access to deeply discounted shipping options and integrating with the most popular online shopping platforms to make labeling a breeze. There’s NO risk. And with my promo code, campfire, you get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital shipping scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage, and type in campfire. -TRANSCRIPT- Go here for a full transcript: https://jimharold.com/your-favorite-campfire-stories-jim-harolds-campfire-626/ -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE

• 2 hr 19 min
• OCT 5, 2023

Rock and Roll Ghost

A Rock n Roll ghost, MORE haunted hotels, a sighting of a very weird, 3-foot creature and much more strangeness on this edition of Jim Harold's Campfire! --- Please support our great sponsors as they make our free podcasts possible! -CALM- (Campfire Sponsorship) We’re so happy to partner with Calm. Calm is the app designed to help you ease stress and get the best sleep of your life. Calm is offering Campfire listeners a special limited time promotion of 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at https://CALM.COM/campfire -PAIR EYEWEAR- With Pair Eyewear you can switch up your style in a snap with affordable base frames and magnetic top frames starting at just $25. Go to https://paireyewear.com/campfire for 15% off your first pair. -RAYCON- Raycon wireless earbuds are the best way to bring audio with you, because no matter how much you shake things up—literally, no matter how much you shake—you know they won’t fall out of your ears. Celebrate Raycon turning 6, with their biggest sale of the year, going on now! Hurry now to https://buyraycon.com/campfire and use code BIRTHDAY to get 20 to 40% off sitewide! -TRANSCRIPT- For a full transcript, click here: https://jimharold.com/rock-and-roll-ghost-jim-harolds-campfire-625/  -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE

• 1 hr 25 min
• SEP 28, 2023

Haunted Hotels

Haunted hotels headline this week's Campfire. Throw in an imaginary friend who is really dead and a host of other ghost stories you have a perfect episode for this spooky season! Enjoy and share with your friends. --- Please support our great sponsors as they make our free podcasts possible! -RITUAL- You deserve to know what’s in your multivitamin. That’s why Ritual is offering my listeners my listeners 30% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/campfire to start your Ritual today.   -BetterHelp- Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is professional therapy done online, available to people worldwide. They have a special offer for my listeners: get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/jimharold -HELLOFRESH- HelloFresh is America’s #1 Meal Kit! Go to https://hellofresh.com/50campfire for 50% off plus 15% off the next 2 months! -TRANSCRIPT- CLICK HERE for a full transcript. -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE  

• 1 hr 29 min
• SEP 21, 2023

The Hag and Bigfoot

An encounter with The Hag, more haunted houses and a couple has a terrifying night in the woods with a strange cryptid. This and much more on this edition of Campfire! --- Please support our great sponsors as they make our free podcasts possible! -Firstleaf- Wine exploration without guesswork. Give your palate what it really wants with Firstleaf. Go to Try https://Firstleaf.com/CAMPFIRE tosign up and you’ll get your first SIX hand-curated bottles for just $44.95. -GRAMMARLY- You’ll be amazed at what you can do with Grammarly! Go to grammarly.com/GO to download for FREE today! -RocketMoney- Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/campfire -Jim's Merch- Get your LIMITED EDITION HALLOWEEN Campfire merch at https://jimharold.com/merch -TRANSCRIPT- CLICK HERE for a full transcript. -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE

• 1 hr 27 min
• SEP 14, 2023

Haunted Healthcare

Haunted hospitals, haunted houses, a haunted church...you get the picture! A whole lotta hauntings on this edition of Campfire! -CALM- (Campfire Sponsorship) We’re so happy to partner with Calm. Calm is the app designed to help you ease stress and get the best sleep of your life. Calm is offering Campfire listeners a special limited time promotion of 40% off a Calm Premium subscription at CALM.COM/campfire -HELLOFRESH- HelloFresh is America’s #1 Meal Kit! Go to https://hellofresh.com/50campfire for 50% off plus free shipping! -POLICYGENIUS- Policygenius makes it easy to get life insurance done (and done right). You could save 50% or more by comparing quotes, and feel good knowing that your loved ones would be taken care of if anything were to happen. Go to policygenius.com to get started. -STAMPS.COM- Stamps.com takes the pain out of shipping by giving you access to deeply discounted shipping options and integrating with the most popular online shopping platforms to make labeling a breeze. There’s NO risk. And with my promo code, campfire, you get a special offer that includes a 4-week trial PLUS free postage and a digital shipping scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the TOP of the homepage, and type in campfire. -TRANSCRIPT- CLICK HERE for a full transcript. -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE 

• 1 hr 47 min
• SEP 7, 2023

The Ghost Who Got In My Face

A ghost determined to get his point across, a very weird experience with an orb in the woods, an incredible childhood encounter with a UFO and much more on this edition of Campfire! VISIT JIM’S NEW MAUSOLEUM! CLICK HERE to visit my new mausoleum! My Mausoleum of Merch on Amazon, that is, where you can find: LIMITED EDITION Halloween 2023 Campfire merch!!!! Campfire T’s & merch Stay Spooky T’s & merch Halloween costume and decoration ideas Guest books Much more & it’s growing all the time! CLICK HERE to visit my new Mausoleum of Merch! Remember, we earn a commission on items you purchase through our storefront and you help support the shows! Jim is a participant in the Amazon Associates, Influencer and Merch on Demand programs. -BetterHelp- Jim Harold’s Campfire is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is professional therapy done online, available to people worldwide. They have a special offer for my listeners: get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/jimharold -Pair Eyewear- With Pair Eyewear you can switch up your style in a snap with affordable base frames and magnetic top frames starting at just $25. Go to paireyewear.com/campfire for 15% off your first purchase. -RocketMoney- Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions – and manage your money the easy way – by going to RocketMoney.com/campfire -TRANSCRIPT- CLICK HERE for a full transcript. -- For more information on our podcast data policy CLICK HERE

• 1 hr 43 min
• © Jim Harold Media, LLC. 2009 - 2023

Customer Reviews

6.3K Ratings

Great content!

Jim, thanks so much for this great podcast! The content is great and hearing people stories and experiences is really entertaining and eye opening.

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All I listen to is podcast my husband introduced me to this amazing we would listen on road trips but now listen to it religiously

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NelaPresents is enchanted to summon you to the Grand Reception for « Ghost Stories & Spooky Vibes » around the campfire at The Off-Central. The tent is pitched, the spirits have been summoned. All that’s needed is you! Join us at the Reception on October 14th from 5-8pm! Be drawn to the campfire, stirred by the art, and embrace the spooky. _______

You can also float in to see the art Wed & Thurs 6:30-7:30pm, Fri & Sat 7-8pm, Sun 2-3pm, through October 15th. _______

We’re collaborating with The Off-Central and our art show runs in the gallery space at the same time as their play « Ghost Stories from Yellowstone » runs on stage. The show & play both run from Oct 5-15.

You don’t need a ticket to the play to see the art but once you’re in the spooky mood some Ghost Stories will make the experience even better! _______

Show features artists:

@thecraftyhag

@perrydevick

@ggomez_inks

@corthartle

@dylan.marvin.claystuff

@the_meatyard

@bettys_boos

@theferalfeline

@NelaPresents

@theoffcentral

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Ghost Stories & Spooky Vibes – Reception

Organized by NelaPresents

• Visual Arts

Event Details

The Off-Central, 2260 1st Ave S, St Petersburg, FL, 33712

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