Scary stories for kids: these tales of terror made me a hit at sleepovers as a pre-teen

By Christina Morin, Professor in School of English Irish & Communication, University of Limerick

Seeing the cover of Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981) has a powerfully Proustian effect on me: my stomach drops a little bit and a shiver of twinned fear and delight runs down my spine, even now, some 35 or so years after I first encountered it as a precocious pre-teen. At the time, I was a voracious and omnivorous reader with an appetite for books that my parents fully encouraged.

My tastes were wide and varied: some of my favourite books from this period included L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, the Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club…

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