Short haunted stories

Short Scary Stories & Local Legends

Some of our legends and scary stories are short, so we'll make this fun and add several to these pages. Longer stories are accessible from our Urban Legends and Scary Tales pages. Sit back, read, and have a scare of a good time!



In America there was a mass murder. Policemen went to investigate. Trying not to tread on the bodies, the police took pictures of each one. One policemen saw something on the opposite wall but he couldn't read it. He walks over to it and sees the numbers "7734" in calculator form, written in blood. When taking pictures of this he turned his camera upside-down and told an approaching police officer. When he pointed with the hand that the camera was in, he accidentally took a picture of the upside-down numbers. The policeman was about to delete the picture when he realized something. The numbers were now a word. The word was "hELL."

I come from Canberra, the capital of Australia. Just out of Canberra, on the way to Sydney, there's a huge lake, called "Lake George." These days, as Canberra and it's surrounding area is faced with one of it's worst droughts in years, you would never guess that not that long ago it was filled with water, at times overflowing onto the road. Many people spent fun summers fishing and swimming there, but not everyone had such happy times. Many people lost their lives there, and there are stories about ghostly sightings that go around Canberra. One of the best-known is that if you drive past the Lake George at night by yourself and look in the rear-vision mirror, you'll see someone sitting in the back seat of your car. There have also been reports of ghost trucks and cars that drive along the highway late at night when few cars are traveling.

There is an urban legend in my town of Kokomo, Indiana. We have many urban legends in fact, but there's one in particular. The story is set on Old Sycamore Road which an old road in the farmland, and open field area of my town. There's a small bridge off Old Sycamore Road that takes you onto another road, and it takes you to the next town. The story goes a man, or a boy fell off the bridge, and died once hitting their head on the rocks underneath the bridge, and if you were to drive on Old Sycamore Road at night, and you were to cross that bridge, then the "ghost" of the man, or boy appear next to your car once you pass the exact spot they had fallen from until you exit the bridge. My friends and I have tested this urban legend many times, and we have yet to see anything. We don't even know if anyone really died there, but true or false, it's an interesting, and eerie story, and visual.

There's a bridge called "Covert's Crossing" or "Covert's Bridge" up in New Castle. A young couple had gotten married on Halloween. Around midnight, they were riding in a horse drawn carriage across the bridge at the same time a car was. The bridge was only one lane, so by the time they saw each other it was too late. Story has it that they crashed and the hubcap of the car flew off, decapitating the bride. The police never found her head or the body of the groom. Its been said that if you sit on the bridge on Halloween night around midnight, you can see the headless bride standing on some rocks in the river. However they don't know if she is looking for her head or her lost love.
The legend is that if you sit in three of the graveyard chairs from midnight until one minute after midnight, you will have the ability to see ghosts -- but you will pay with your life. This, however did not apply to three high-school football players on Halloween Night in 1976. They pulled into the graveyard, in the middle of a large, open area. They had heard the legend and decided to try it, but one of them refused to try it. The friend sat down and watched the other boys run from one chair to the other. Then he sensed that something was wrong. They were leaning over to the side with their eyes rolled back, rasping. The boy began frantically screaming for help as his friends kneeled over and grabbed his leg. It is said that the boy also saw spirits for an instant. The boys died and the survivor never spoke a word. Of course, there were people mourning their loved ones nearby. They witnessed the event and filed a police report detailing what happened. No one really knows what those chairs are, except that they have been there since the town was founded.

In Fairmont, West Virginia, there is a small house and rumor has it that the house is haunted. My mom told me a story about when she was a young girl, the house was occupied by a family who no one really knew anything about. Everyone in the neighborhood was afraid of them. My mom went to school with the youngest girl in the family, who looked tired all the time and never spoke a word. Her dad was even more scarier and looked as if he was always mad. The girl seemed afraid of him. Nobody thought this was unusual because everyone was afraid of him, until one night. The police were at the house, but the neighbors didn't know why they were there. The next day, my mom and her classmates found out what had happened. The father came home that night drunk and beat his wife and children to death. Then he went into his truck, set it on fire and shot himself in the head. Now they say, if you go anywhere near the house you can hear the painful screams of the family being brutally murdered by the father.

There was this couple in Scotland who had just moved into an old castle. When they moved in, they decided to empty out the wine cellar and found this large barrel of brandy. They tried moving it and even got a few friends around to help, but they couldn't budge it. In the end, they decided to have a housewarming party and give glasses of brandy out to empty the barrel and make it easier to move. A few days after the party, they went into the cellar and tried to move the barrel again. It still wouldn't move. The husband went to get his saw in order to cut it into smaller pieces and in turns they cut off the top of the barrel. Inside was a dead body and they had drank the brandy that had preserved it.

On an isolated road, around midnight, in upstate NY, a man and his girlfriend are driving. Suddenly a car approaches them from behind. "Pull over!" he says. The man shrugs and turns in a dirt road. He gets out and talks to the man. "What is it, babe?" the girlfriend asks, but she gets no answer. She shrugged and continued to browse through the different radio stations. Then she heard a crash "Babe?" she said hesitantly. She ran out of the car and saw her boyfriend's head bouncing back and forth on the radio antennae. The back lights were smashed in. Screaming, she goes to get her cell phone out of the car. As soon as she opens the car door she hears, "No use. . . No one will answer you."
It was just a regular library, but when night strikes, it becomes alive and extremely spooky. Three girls came for research and stayed overtime. When midnight approached, the girls had no intention of researching anymore because they soon found out that there was no way out. The books started screaming loudly and the girls were petrified. When they turned around, the third girl was hung to a tree and we saw the blood streaming down her head! It was too scary to watch. We soon split up to find an exit, but when I turned to show my friend that the book was alive, I saw her dead with a stabbed back! I was the only survivor and it was only a matter of time before they would kill me. I quickly turned around and I saw, aaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

It is said that in Mexico there is a ghost of a woman who drowned her kids. They call her the "Cry Baby" because she cries a lot. She is a wandering spirit, looking for her kids. If you misbehave with your parents she will visit you. She will come out if you are near a pile of water and scream "oh, my children!" It is not safe to look in her face! If you do, death will follow. IF I WERE YOU I WOULD BE NICE TO YOUR PARENTS! The part about the woman drowning her kids is real. I think that the other part about her coming out of the water is true. If you encounter her, I would recommend putting on some ear plugs and running away from her.

On Halloween in 2003, my family and I went into the city because my mom had bought a car and she needed to make a car payment to the dealer. We decided to take my little sister and her friend trick or treating out there. My mom made her payment and my sister and her friend were trick or treating. It was getting late so we decided that was enough. We had along drive back home. We ate at a fast food burger joint and began the long drive home. When we were on the freeway, a car was driving right next to us and the driver was wearing a mask, staring right at us. Everybody started to get scared. He was keeping up with us and had his head turned sideways staring for about 10 minutes. Then he looked ahead and drove past us.

Two 18 wheeler trucks were on a highway. The two trucks smashed into each other and all the people died. They took the trucks to the junkyard. A day later, it started to smell. It got worse every day. Finally they took apart the fused trucks and found a VW beetle with the passengers still in there, dead.

On a warm summer night, a couple of friends of mine and I stayed up until about 3:00 a.m. talking about scary stuff that has happened to us. One began telling us about a weird encounter he had with a ghost or something supernatural. He said he was driving back home (from Abilene, Texas to Laredo, Texas) when he saw a hitchhiker on the road. As he passed the woman, he looked back in the rearview mirror to catch a last glance, when, to his surprise the woman appeared to be sitting in his back seat. He must of been really tired of driving or something but he just shook it off and continued on his way.
One day I was outside with my best friend at about 11:30pm when all the sudden we see a van drive right next to us. He stops and looks like he's tweekin or something. We get all freaked out and start walking back to my house. He pulls up to my driveway, so we start running. He starts to get out of the van and we noticed that he had an ice pick in his left hand. So we start screaming and luckily my dad was still up working late in his garage, so he opens the garage and tackles the weirdo! He holds him there until the police show up. The cops tell us that we where lucky because we were the only ones to make it out of the six people he's tried the same thing on. We don't stay out that late anymore.

One Halloween night, a 16 year old girl named May and her friends, Irene, Kate, and Leslie, were out driving to a Halloween party outside of town. So, of course, they took the freeway. The car was slowing down, like it was running out of gas, but the meter said it was full. May and Leslie went to check out the engine. When they opened the hood, there was a hand. A lone bare, hand. They were so frightened they couldn't scream. Leslie reached out to touch it then IT MOVED! This time they both screamed and Irene and Kate ran out the car screaming. They said there was a man with his flesh torn and a missing hand in the back seat. The girls ran and the car was chasing them slowly. May called the her parents, Irene called 911, on their cellular phones as they ran. But when the cops and May's parents came, all four girls were soaking in blood. Not their own blood. The cops found a black gemstone, unidentified, in the driver's seat -- covered with blood. The girls went ahead to the party. The address was just a vacant lot but in that vacant lot were many bloody, black, unidentified gemstones.

One night, these kids were coming home from a party and there was a cemetery about one block away from home. One kid was telling the others about a local legend. If you go and stand on the grave for ten seconds and stab a knife into it, that a hand will grab you and pull you into the grave with the corpse. One girl was brave enough to do it for $20.00. She got a knife, walked to a grave, stood on it, and stabbed the knife into it. Suddenly, her leg felt heavy and she tried to pick it up -- but something was grabbing HER! She was yelling and crying for help, but her friends thought she was kidding, so they just left. The next day, they found out that she had died, of fright. She thought that somebody was grabbing her, but the knife she was using had pierced her pants and held her there.

There is a factory behind a middle school in Dallas, Texas. One day, four girls were walking home from the movie theatre that used to be there before the school. When they were in the middle of the field, two girls said they needed to use the restroom. They didn't want to go back to the theatre so they decided to climb over the fence and use the restroom at the factory. The two girls went while the other two stayed to help them over the fence. After twenty minutes, the two remaining girls heard deadly screams from their friends. They ran and their friends were never seen again. Today, the factory still remains and it is said if you cross the fence border, you too will never be seen again.
Here's one I heard on the radio from a woman who told her story about seeing a ghost, which is scary: A few years ago, the woman and her family had just moved to a new house somewhere in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. One night, her baby son was crying so she got out of bed and went to see him. Suddenly, the baby stopped crying. The woman knew that he must have fallen asleep so she went back to bed. A few hours later, the baby cried again, so she got up and went over to check again. As she opened the door to her son's room, she saw a boy, about 6 or 7 years old, calming the baby down. When he saw the woman, he disappeared. The woman was shocked and later told her neighbours what happened. The neighbours already knew about the ghost and told her that there was a boy who died from an illness, about 80 years ago, and was buried under the exact place where her baby son's room is.