Broadly speaking, scary stories are narratives commonly told to elicit fear from their audience, though another lesson or social caution may also be embedded in the tale. They may contain supernatural elements such as ghosts, witches, extraterrestrials, and evil powers, or they may feature more mundane, though no less terrifying elements such as serial killers, psychos, insects, and rodents. These tales are often believed by both the teller and the audience to be true, though many tales are known to be fictitious, deceptive, or rooted in impossibility. However, the actual veracity of the tale does not affect its classification as a scary story. Scary stories may be recounted in a variety of ways including as traditional tales, rumors, and even jokes.
“Scary stories” is a comprehensive term that encompasses stories from a variety of American folk genres including ghost stories, urban legends, and campfire tales. Ghost stories are narratives that feature ghosts and other revenants. For more on ghost stories, see the entry on Legends. Urban legends are tales that feature a contemporary setting and are reported as true. These tales are covered in the entry Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales. Campfire tales are a subcategory of scary stories that are designed to be told in a traditional scary environment, such as around a campfire, at sleepovers, and at other nocturnal events. Telling scary stories is a way to frighten listeners and may be considered as a form of initiation into a closed group (such as a scout troop) or even mild hazing (in the case of deliberately frightening a camper until he or she cries or cannot sleep because of the stories). There are common performance elements when telling campfire tales, such as speaking in a hushed tone, leaning in toward the audience, and illuminating the teller’s face with the campfire or a flashlight shone directly under the storyteller’s chin. The ritualized performance elements of the genre help to distinguish the campfire tale from other subgenres of the broader genre of scary stories. While the campfire tale has a specific performance element, in general the scary story is often recounted without the purported intent of a performance. In fact, many tellers claim to be recounting a true story or personal experience. However, there are elements to recounting scary stories that coincide with oral performance techniques such as cadence, volume, stance, gesture, and occasionally props or audience plants to hook listeners and elicit audience responses (e.g., shrieking, shuddering, hiding, jumping, and even fainting). However, a scary story may be told anywhere and at any time.
Scary stories are both told orally and recorded in literary collections. Some of the more popular American scary stories have been recorded, adapted, and retold by Alvin Schwartz (1927–1992) in the Scary Stories series (illustrated by Stephen Gammell), which includes Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981), More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1984), and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). While this book series is directed at young readers, it does contain a variety of scary stories from differing sources.
There is a complex, yet undeniable relationship between the folkloric scary story and American Gothic and horror texts. By drawing upon the rich tradition of the American scary story, American Gothic and horror narratives provide these works of literature with local color as well as a sense of credibility. The folklore traditions within American scary stories have influenced American Gothic and horror authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), and Stephen King (1947–). The incorporation of scary stories into American horror texts (and then often into television and film) helps to transmit these stories and maintain their cultural relevance.
Furthermore, the genre of American scary stories has inspired a tourist industry. There are many ghost walks and tours of supposedly haunted locations that rely on the cultural awareness of local legends, haunted houses, and ghost stories. The tour guides and proprietors of such tourist locations offer a prepared presentation that relies on both local history and the traditional motifs of scary stories.
Amanda L. Anderson
See also Folklore and Folktales; Halloween Legends; Storytelling; Urban Legends/Urban Belief Tales
Further Reading
Bennet, Gillian, and Smith, Paul. 1996. Contemporary Legend: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Brunvand, Jan Harold. 2012. Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Updated and Expanded Edition. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Dégh, Linda. 2001. Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Evans, Timothy H. 2005. “A Last Defense against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft.” Journal of Folklore Research 42 (1): 99–135.
Schwartz, Alvin. 1981. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. New York: Harper & Row.