The room seems to get spookier by the minute as hallucinations start and shadows start to appear. Demons start to slither up the walls as cries fill the room. Footsteps. Footsteps? What, the door was locked? The lights flicker. Someone is emerging. Laughter begins to erupt. Blood red as Mars starts trickling down the wall. A low whisper voice starts to speak saying “You are going to die now.”

October is the time of year when Halloween comes around and screaming becomes a daily routine. There are many ways that this could be possible, such as putting on a scary mask and creeping up on people or throwing a fake spider into someone’s lunch. But the one of the most traditional ways of scaring people is by gathering around in a circle, turning off the lights, shining a flashlight, and telling a scary story.

There are some stories that make it on the favorites list and there are some that are just plain traumatizing. So what stories make the favorites list for people at Prep? Mayme Kruger ’19 says that her favorite scary story is “The Picture of Dorion Gray by Oscar Wilde. It is both scary and creepy. As he becomes more and more corrupt, the picture gets gradually more dirtier and dirtier.”

Some scary story that are so great that they are made into movies. Ms. Leaverton shares that “The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (film version is called The Innocents) and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (film version is called The Haunting)” are her favorite scary stories. “The stories both feature big, isolated, spooky houses, which I find particularly scary.”

Plots are so scarring that it makes the audience feel like they are warped into the movie. Feven Mekonenn ’16 tells that “World War Z is frightening because it a what would I do in a zombie apocalypse situation.” Scary stories will also make it hard to go to sleep at night, such as Jasmine Lee’s ’18 favorite story is about a bloody hand that goes and kills people.

Then there are the classic scary stories. Diana Kachman ’19 states that “The original Dracula is creepy. The details are so realistic that you can actually feel the fangs biting into your own neck.” Mrs. Fields agrees saying that it “Still scares me to think about it.” She also mentions that “a movie called Fatal Attraction scares me to this day.”

Even though Halloween is over, scary stories can still be told. They can be used to make people afraid to sleep at night or a bonding moment between friends at a sleepover. So go and tell a scary story to someone.