Tips for Telling Spooky Stories to Kids (Without Totally Freaking Them Out)

To a 12-year-old, there's nothing scarier than a chilling ghost story told by the glow of a campfire. For some kids, scary equals fun. For others, though, it means sleeping with the lights on and a little league bat within arms' reach.

How do you know what ghost stories are appropriate for your child? Eric Wolf, a professional storyteller in Yellow Springs, Ohio, tells ParentDish in a telephone interview, "At certain ages your kids take what you're saying as fact. So the Bogeyman to them is not some mythical thing. It actually exists and it's going to get them at night. And that means, they're going to sleep with their parents. If the parents don't mind, that's all OK, but I think it's important for parents to realize that at different ages kids have different reactions to the same story."

He explains: "Kids see things as good or evil. There is no gray in their world. Even a 7- or 8-year-old sees the world as good and bad. When you tell them a very scary story they're going to think, 'Oh no, evil's in the world and it's going to come get me.' " Eric suggests stories for younger kids, ages 4 to 8, be gentler.

And this leads to rule number one from Brother Wolf, Eric's storytelling persona for his international weekly podcast, The Art of Storytelling Show, which recently garnered him an Oracle Award for Distinguished Service to the National Storytelling Community.

#1 Don't set a ghost story in your home. "Because then you're in trouble," says Eric, who relates this story about a childhood friend of his: "He lived out in the country close enough to town that he could sneak out and make trouble. So every night his parents would tell him the most terrifying stories about ghosts and goblins right outside the house. He was so scared that he would not step foot outside his house after the sun went down." Then again, if you're child is 14 and tends toward mischief, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

#2 Use scary stories as a "teaching moment." "Scary stories are the traditional way that human beings warned children about dangerous or deadly things," says Eric. "If you want to teach a kid about black widow spiders, tell him a story about a person who dies from a black widow spider bite. Believe me, that information will be ingrained on their brains for the rest of their lives."

Eric makes a personal appeal to ParentDish readers: "Don't just use telling scary stories as a means of scaring and entertaining children. Use scary stories as a method for transferring knowledge that can save your kids' lives. Whether it's knowledge about what to do during a flood or how to survive a fire or how to deal with poisonous snakes, that knowledge can be wrapped around a story. And because it's life or death, it's a scary story, and those kids will remember that information forever."

#3 Traditional fairytales are your friends. Anything Brothers' Grimm is good, says Eric, citing Cinderella as a perfect example: "In the original version, her sisters cut off their feet to fit in the shoe. I think that should [still] be in the story for little kids because honestly it's not realistic." He explains that if you have something happen in the story that's truly terrible, kids won't be scared if it's not a natural consequence, hence Cinderella's sisters mutilating their feet. "A really scary story for a 12-year-old would be if nothing really happens to the bad guy at the end of the story," says Eric. "That's really scary because the bad guy could still be out there. For little kids, the rule of fairytales is that at the end of the story, everybody gets their just desserts."

#4 Start them young. For parents interested in doing storytelling for their children, Eric recommends starting them as young as possible. "Find a book of oral narrative stories and read them to your kids at night." Over time you'll gain confidence, he says, and then you can begin to tell them without the book or make up your own. And don't worry if you flub a few things. "Give yourself permission to play around," says Eric. "Little kids are very forgiving."

Related: This Summer, Give Your Kids the Gift of Boredom