Scary Stories Vol. 1: Scary Tales to Tell in the Dark, 9 Horror Short Stories for Kids and for All Ages

By: James Scary

Narrated by: Francis Nicholas Stein

This book is a strong collection of extremely dark and scary short stories that cuts across a variety of horrific events. The stories contain a range of horror devices like vengeful ghosts, unnameable monsters, bloodcurdling absurdities and shadowy secrets; making it the perfect book to fall back onto on dark nights when you seek to be thrilled and thrown into fear. The stories herein are also ideal for camp nights, sleepovers, and other similar gatherings.

Telling scary stories in the dark is an age-long culture and this collection seeks to reinforce that culture with a fresh style. The stories explore a variety of horror that have been crafted nicely to fit the contemporary society and even, in one of the stories, inject a science feel to the horror like in the story, "Becoming".

The stories have been written to suit the general needs of listeners of all ages as evidenced in the teen/adult characters in the stories. In addition to the very common horror settings such as abandoned mansions, the woods, basement, and attics, the stories introduce other new environments such as the apocalyptic setting in the story titled "Last Man on Earth" - a testament to its progressiveness. In the story "October 30th", a tale of the annual, horror festival is told in a fresh tone. Most of the stories touch on the inevitable horror - death. "Ghost House" tells an enthralling and fast paced story and so does "Miss Fairborn’s Auction".

There is a general belief that books give a wider room for imaginations - even wider than the room that watching a movie affords you, and truthfully so. These tales, when listened to in the dark, will leave you with much to imagine - an arm covered in goose bumps and the back of your neck with all the hackles on their ends. The curtains you see might not be curtains. The mirrors, too, might become home to many faces and the old man by the road might not be what you think he is. Welcome to the home of scary and macabre tales.

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©2019 Alessio Aloisi (P)2019 Alessio Aloisi

Intralling horror film base

I love the book. I’m going to make a movie out of it. Aulldough i not going to include the second book. The material is gory and suggestive

not the original:(

my 7 year old says its ok hut my 10 year old thinks its lame. im with him.

Little to no editing

Stories were predictable and the narration was odd. There were several parts where the narrator (single narrator doing voices, not multiple narrators as the description suggests) messed up and started over. You could hear him say "ugh" then clap as if it was a marker for editing, then he would start over. My 8-year-old enjoyed the stories.

What’s up with the clapping?

Although the stories were enjoyable, the reading leaves a lot to be desired. The reader lacked inflection and read in an extremely montone voice taking away from the gripping story line of these short chapters. Reader made a lot of fluency errors while reading and would re-read sentences and clap during the re-reads. Very distracting and ruins the experience.

Highly disappointed in this book!

This book might be scary for younger kids, but it's definitely not scary stories for all ages. Honestly I would probably give this book 1.5 Stars. A couple of the stories were fun, but most of them felt random and incomplete or just didn't make sense. For example one story was describing a winter scene yet there were bats flying out of an abandoned house. Since when do bats fly around outside in the winter when there's snow?

Then Francis Nicholas Stein as narrator was difficult to listen to and was just horrible. The reading was overly exaggerated and certain parts he narrated didn't match what he was reading. For example in one story a girl hissed a whisper to the character, but when the narrator read it it was like she was speaking normally in an excitable way. And don't get me started on how many times the narrator stops in the middle of reading, then you hear an audible sigh of frustration, and then there is a strange loud clap before he returns to narrating. Why is it hard to find a good book with actual scary stories in it?

Pass!

Not impressed by the narration... I suppose this is an unedited version maybe? He makes a few mistakes throughout the reading and speaks too closely to the microphone for one chapter. The most obnoxious and odd thing about this audiobook was the absence of the use of contractions. That drove me crazy. Only one or two stories were good or even adequate. Very disappointed overall. I’m looking for scary stories elsewhere...

NOT WORTH YOUR CREDIT

if your looking for scary stories skip this one. extreamly forgettable. every story I thought , that's it! it tries to do the classic twilight zone or RL stine twists but fails miserably. could be I'm not thr age bracket this was intended for but, I thoroughly enjoy clean family friendly horror like R.L. Stine. not worth your credit.

Save your credit

Few things to comment about here:
-Narrator lacks inflection or emotion, the stories are a constant drone, making it hard to transition between characters.
-Was this even edited? Several odd instances where the narrator makes an error, says, “ugh,” and claps. So very odd.
-These stories did not translate well to audio, was generally disappointed, there are better options out there.

Misleading and not very good

I ended up here because I was looking specifically for "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". The narration was poor and the stories would hardly even be scary to a small child. Don't buy this unless it's for your 3 year old.