A List of Spooky Stories I Tell

Boo! Halloween is one of my personal favourite times of year. I love the spooky tales, horrible horror stories, ghoulish tales, ghost stories, yarns about witches, black cats and dogs with red eyes. Stories that make us shiver, cringe, hide behind the couch, are not ust kids' fare. Often these stories were written and/or told for adults. There are a good number of great stories for kids, but there is a bigger number of tales for older kids and adults.

These tales come from all over the world. After a recent listsreve request for stories of this kind, I put together a list of tales I tell. Below is is this list. Some can be told to younger ears, and some need to be shared with mature minds! They are listed with the less fearsome tales at the beginning of each section, and the chillier tales come last. There is some overlap with the end of the Tales With a Little More Terror and the beginning of the Terrifying Tales sections.

Original art by Simon Brooks on the back of a receipt! (C) 2016

Spooky Tales for Younger People
The Man Who Was Affraid of Nothing - Japan
Zara's Magic Kettle - Russian
The Big Toe (although in the last couple of years I have stopped telling this tale as it is told frequently at camps in the summer and has lost it's JUMP impact!
Black Bubble Bubble Gum, a story first told by Francis Caffrey although close to John Steinbeck's short The Affair at 7, Rue de M-
Kolbold on Board - A Scandinavian pirate ghost tale
Bony Fingers and Wet Lips - Europe/America
The Gunniwolf - An English variant of Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood - Germany/France
From Aloft - English/American
Baba Yaga - Russian
Baba Yaga's Black Geese - Russian
The Miser and the Apple Sauce -  A tale originally told by the wonderful Papa Joe
The Unwelcome Guest or The Tailor in the Graveyard - England - One takes place in a house, the other in a - you guessed it - graveyard!
The Viper - England/America - told as a true, personal tale, making it just a little more scary!
The Hedley Kow - England
Wicked John and the Devil - Wales and Ireland, America - this is a tale told by many people

Copped Hall, London, (C) Simon Brooks 2016

Tales With a Little More Terror (can be told to slightly older kids, or much older kids when ramped up!)
The Benders - a true story from the American Mid-West 1873
Cell 17 - a true story of the Carbon County Jail, Mauch-Jim Thorpe PA
The Unstopable Coffin - a joke story, told as a true, personal tale
The Other Mother - England
The Hunchback - A story from 1,001 Nights where a hunch is killed by choking, being pushed down stairs, and a couple of beatings
The Piper's Revenge - a tale of horror from Scotland
The Severed Head - Africa
Taily-po - American
Vasilisa the Beautiful, the story of Vasilisa and her doll - Russia
Wiley and the Hairyman - American
Hand of Glory - England
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - Middle East. One of my favourites where Ali's brother is cut into four pieces and stitched back together for a descent funeral, and the thieves are killed with boiling oil, and their leader stabbed by Ali's maid servant

UK Gravestone, (C) Simon Brooks 2016

Terrifying Tales for Teens and Grown-Ups
WW Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw
RL Stevenson's The Body Snatcher
Edgar Alan Poe's The Black Cat
Mr. Fox - England
Mary Cullhaine - Ireland
Weyland Smith - England/Scandinavia - a man from the ancient Norse tales who kills a king's two sons and has sex with his daughter in revenge for maiming him and imprisoning him on an island. He flies off to find, once more, his wife - a Valkyrie
The Rosewood Casket - America
Golden Hair - an original telling of two other folk tales from Eastern Europe where a dead count steals a woman and her true love comes to rescue her

Original artwork for 'The Shadowlands' by Simon Brooks (C) 2016

Great Stories for Dark Evenings by the Fire
These are tales which can be fit into the last of the two categories but more for older kids and adults than young kids.
Margret of the Three Gifts - Scotland
Tam Lin - Scotland
The Roma Cheating Death - a Russian Gypsy tale
Hansel and Gretel - Germany

I hope you enjoy finding these tales and telling them yourself. And of course, if you want me to tell any of these tales to you, let me know! I do all sorts of programs including a split event where there are two sets - one shorter for younger kids and one a bit longer for older kids and adults. For more information about my Fight Night Program, shoot me an email:
Simon at Diamondscree Dot com
or visit my website:
http://www.diamondscree.com/
and go click on suggested programs under WHAT!
or here http://www.diamondscree.com/programs

Great children's literature, for adults (summer reading, anyone?)

Kid's cover, UK

I have always read children's books, from picture books to chapter books and juvenile fiction and, occasionally, juvie non-fiction. From when I was a kid, through my teens, to my 20's, you get the idea! When the first Harry Potter book came out I bought a copy from the U.K. where I first came across it. It had a different cover on it from the kid's version. The children's book of The Philosopher's Stone, had a children's cover (see left) but so many adults were reading it in Britain that the publishers put out a copy of the book, sans illustrations and with an adult looking cover on it (see below). I loved the story (and the black & white photo of the steam train which makes me think of the original Ladykillers movie). Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was new and exciting, and well told and well written. Better written, I thought, than some adult books I had recently read.

Adult's cover, UK

A number of years ago, I discovered a writer called Leon Garfield. It was ironic that I discovered this English writer only after I had moved to the United States and already had my own children! How did I miss this? Apparently his first book, Jack Holburn (1964), was written for adults but the publishers asked him to re-write it for a younger audience, which he did. His second novel for young readers, released in 1966, won the Guardian Prize.  I first read his fifth book, Black Jack (1968). After reading this story of a hung murderer who forces a young boy to help him (his life was saved by a pipe the villain had inserted down his own throat prior to his hanging), I read his third novel, Smith (1967) and got hold of other books of Garfield's to read.

Although it's a while since I read the aforementioned books, I have recently re-read Smith (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book, winner of the Phoenix Award, and a Carnegie Honor Book), finishing the book last night after two sittings, and read John Diamond (1980) for the first time last week. If you or your teens are looking for a bloody good read this summer, then I ask that you give Leon Garfield a try. Some libraries still have his books, they were re-issued, very wisely, by Sunburst Books, Farrar, Straus, Giroux in 2000, and on looking around the web, it appears they were re-re-released in 2013 by New York Review Children's Collection.

Cover by Brett Helquist, 2000

Garfield's writing is wonderful. The language he uses in Black Jack is deliciously rich. I don't often, or like to call writers storytellers, but really Garfield is. The choice of his words creates an atmosphere for the story to hang in, much the same way a set designer will create a scene for a play or movie; Garfield's words allow your mind to see what he saw when writing. His descriptions taste like honey as they move over your tongue. His dialogue is biting, witty, pithy, caring, loving - depending on who is speaking. The pacing of his books is incredible. Relentless, action-packed, but never rushed. You are given rests, breathers where you can relax and take in what happened before Garfield leads you willingly on to the next part of the adventure. You begin to love even the darkest of characters as he shows their depth and detail. His characters are not two dimensional  so often found in modern fiction, but characters, who, within the first few pages, grab. You want to understand and see these people, who you want to meet to get to know better long after the book is over. Some of the characters you least expect, or maybe you do really, show an unexpected side which shocks you!

Smith is a 12 year old pick pocket, who sees his last victim murdered immediately after he has lifted, not money, but a document. Smith cannot read, and being part of the lower life of London, finds it hard to trust anyone to read it for him so as to know it's value. Soon he finds that he is being hunted down for the document, and his life is in danger. The sisters who he lives with are seamstresses trying to survive on what they make. Smith's best friend is a highwayman who knew and learned from the infamous Dick Turpin. But everyone he has contact with is put in danger.

If you are looking for a book to read over the summer for yourself or your teenager, or something to read together, do yourself a favour and grab one of Garfield's books. Try Smith, or Black Jack to start with, and see if, like me, you cannot put his books down, and find yourself reaching for another! Tonight I will begin Jack Holburn. It looks like there might be pirates in this one!

Can't wait!