Kids Horror

Have you crossed paths with the creature who likes to eat children? If your answer is no, then you are one lucky kid. Because there is a creature lurking. It began in your nightmares. But now, it's real. It has no name. And it likes to eat children!

In the style of Poe and Seuss, these five vivid yet dark and twisted fables will send shivers down your spine. "Gwendolyn Witch" has a magic crystal that loses its clarity. "The Tooth Wraith" seeps into your bedroom window at night searching for cavities. "The Ghost of the Canyon" is the unsettled spirit of a girl from long ago. "The Playmate" is an unseen child, heard yet never found. In "Gnomes G'Lee", gruesome creatures dead set on defending their garden.

What is it with Olivia and ghosts? No matter where Olivia Kidney goes, they follow. Even when she and her klutzy handyman father start over in a new brownstone in New York City - owned by the mad, bad, and dangerous Ansel Plover - there is no escape from the weirdness that is Olivia's life. Their new living room is entirely submerged underwater, and Olivia needs a boat to navigate past the bobbing furniture and snapping turtles just to get to her bedroom. And then, there are the ghosts. The house holds secrets, lots of them - Olivia can feel it. Why, she wonders, was she invited to live there?

In 1983, Angie, Jenny, and David are watching MTV, riding bikes, and looking forward to their summer vacation before they start junior high school. Lincoln, Nebraska, is a pretty quiet place to grow up, and when the kids take off at 5:00 a.m. to deliver newspapers on Jenny’s route, they aren’t expecting trouble. So when a creature straight out of a horror movie appears, the kids are forced to draw on their wits, their strengths, and most of all their friendship to survive.

Shania's dreams are put on hold when her teacher awakens an ancient evil. Does she have what it takes to break the Mummy's Curse? Peggy wished her dad dated an actual human woman and not one of the creepy sex dolls that are appearing all over town. But Peggy's domestic problems might be the least of her worries as the patented Real Companions begin to get a little too real. Judy longs to follow in her father's footsteps as a scientist, but she learns a hard lesson when she accidentally releases a horde of demon pigs upon the town.

These stories are sure to open your "mind's eye" and engulf your senses of things unseen...and unknown. Imagination is a wonderful thing, and I encourage you to let yours loose and create pockets of wonder or places of escape: happy places in the light of day, or as in these stories, on the slightly darker side.