Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night: 10 Scary Stories to Give You Nightmares!

What’s the first book that scared you? For me and readers of my generation, it was probably Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its sequels. Well, this generation now has its own seminal introduction to horror, and it hits many of the same marvelously creepy notes as its spiritual ancestor.Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night is undoubtedly designed in the Scary Stories vein, complete with similar pen-and-ink drawings, but with updated tales, all featuring children or teens as the protagonists. It’s a crash course in classic horror tropes— urban legends, Frankenstein’s monsters, danger lurking in the dark, hauntings, encounters with the dead— but still offers a few fresh surprises.

The stories in this collection range from the absurd (a tiger in the bathroom) to the supremely unsettling (a young girl’s gift of a zombie costume foreboding a much darker outcome than a spoiled Christmas), and it kicks off with one of my favorite creepy Neil Gaiman stories. And he’s not the only major name involved. This collection is packed with heavy hitters like Stephen King, Robert Shearman, and Michael Marshall Smith.

Top to bottom, this is terrific YA horror, guaranteed to make a new generation of young fans…if they’re brave enough to keep turning the pages.