These Scary Horror Stories Won’t Let You Sleep At Night

April 28, 2017

Some people tend to believe that in order to tell a truly terrifying ghost story, one must have a long, drawn-out plot with multiple characters.

In reality, a good ghost story can come in many lengths and forms.

Here are 5 short ghost stories that pack more punch than most horror films do.

1. The Intruder – Short Ghost Stories That Will Have You Lock All Your Doors

There are children that carry the strain of being present at the time of their parents’ death.

One night, a young boy woke up to the sound of footsteps outside his bedroom door. Knowing he would get in trouble if his parents knew he wasn’t sleeping, the boy just barely opened his eyes to see who was outside his door.

With shock, the boy realized that a man had come into the house and had murdered his parents.

The sound that had woken him up was the intruder, dragging his parents’ bodies past the boy’s bedroom.

The man looked over and saw that the young boy was asleep in his bed. Rather than flee the scene, the intruder dragged the boy’s parents into the boy’s room and propped their corpses against a chair in the corner of his room.

The boy kept pretending he was asleep as the murderer used his parents’ blood to write a message on the wall.

After the message was finished, the intruder got on his hands and knees and crawled under the boy’s bed. Scared out of his mind, the boy remained still under his blankets, trying to peer through the darkness to read the message.

After an hour or so, the sky outside began to lighten, and the boy could finally read what the murderer had written on the wall.

“I know you’re awake.”

2. All the Pretty Walls – Renovation Gone Horribly Awry

This is one of those short ghost stories guaranteed to make your skin crawl … literally.

After much planning and a lot of saving, a young woman and her boyfriend were finally able to purchase their own home. The house itself was exceptionally old and in need of a lot of repairs.

Luckily, the woman’s boyfriend was quite handy with construction work and offered to convert the kitchen into the master bedroom himself.

While he worked on dismantling the kitchen, the young woman set to work peeling off the wallpaper the previous owner had used to cover practically every inch of every room within the house.

It was long, tedious work, but the woman turned it into a game, seeing how long the wallpaper would peel off before it ripped into pieces.

While she was peeling, the woman began to notice that every room had a person’s name and date written on the walls, underneath the wallpaper.

Intrigued, the woman searched on the computer using one of the names and realized that the person in question was a missing person.

The corresponding date was, in fact, the date that person had gone missing. After doing more research, the woman and her boyfriend finally contacted the police.

As a group of officers set up a crime scene, the young woman overheard a forensic investigator murmur, “Yes, this is human.”

The woman walked over to him and asked him what he meant. The investigator turned to her and said, “Ma’am, the material you were peeling off the walls? It isn’t wallpaper.”

3. Birthday Girl – The Late Night Confession

Some of the creepiest short ghost stories are about children.

One day, a man and his wife dropped their three-year-old daughter off at a friend’s house, so she could attend a birthday party.

After a few hours, they drove back, picked up their daughter, and put her straight to bed when they arrived home.

The man fell asleep in front of the television while his wife read quietly in bed.

After a couple of hours, the man woke up to find his daughter standing by his chair, gently tugging on his sleeve.

“Daddy,” she said. “Guess how old I’m going to be next month.”

Smiling, he told her, “I don’t know, Hannah, how old are you going to be?!” and he grabbed his glasses from the table next to him.

Hannah’s grin grew wider as she slowly held up four fingers.

Several hours passed, and the man and his wife had been up all night with Hannah. She refuses to tell them where she got the fingers from.

4. The Lullaby – A Father’s Grisly Mistake

Some short ghost stories don’t need to go into great detail in order to be chilling.

One evening, John fell asleep while reading a book in bed. After an hour or so, he woke up, startled awake by the sound of his infant son crying over the baby monitor.

Just as he was about to get up, he begins to hear his wife through the monitor, softly singing the words, “go to sleep” to their baby.

He listened for several moments, smiling as he imagined his wife cooing and cuddling their precious baby boy.

It was only after he heard the front door of the house open and his wife returning home with groceries that he realized something was terribly, terribly wrong.

5. Seeing Red – The Sleepless Night

Sometimes, a person comes across short ghost stories that make them never want to leave their house.

It was very late at night when a man pulled off the highway and parked his car at a small hotel near Kiev, Ukraine.

Weary with exhaustion, the man shuffled his way to the lobby and asked the woman at the front desk if there were any available rooms.

The woman replied that they did have one room still free that night.

As she handed the key over to the man, she gave him a strange look. “Listen, sir,” she said quietly. “There is a room across from yours that doesn’t have a room number on the door.

This room is always locked, and I advise that you steer clear of it. Don’t even peek in, okay?” Puzzled, but too tired to protest, the man agreed and took his room key.

The man quickly fell asleep but woke up to the sound of trickling water. After checking the sink and the bathtub in the room, the man realized the sound was coming from the unmarked room across the hall.

At first, the man tried to ignore it, but the dripping sound kept him awake.

Agitated, the man opened his room door and walked across the hall. The man wrapped his knuckles against the door, but nobody responded. Peering through the peephole, the only thing the man saw was the color red.

Angry and sleep-deprived, the man returned to the lobby and asked the woman at the front desk about the unmarked room.

The woman told him that once, a couple had checked into that room. Sometime during the night, the husband had woken up and had murdered his wife. “Her skin was all white,” the woman said. “Except for her eyes, which were all red.”

Not for the Faint of Heart

The next time you come across a horror enthusiast, consider sharing some of these eerie, ghostly tales.

You can have your new acquaintance absolutely frightened in a matter of minutes.

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