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Halloween is a time for fun, but also a time for imagination, a time when, as long as things don’t get out of hand, kids enjoy being scared.

And that’s useful. Scary stories are a great way to pass a rainy afternoon, an excellent way to finish a heavy night of track of treating, and stories, told simply by candlelight, are a wonderful way for the internet generation, so used to constant visual input, to feel the power, emotion and atmosphere in words.

Scary Stories can help you:

• Stimulate kids to write stories which let their imagination soar.
• Help your kids to draw the world they create in their heads as they listen.
• Get great quality time with your children. There is nothing better than sitting cuddled next to Mum in the dark, listening to something spooky.

Put perhaps one of the most useful things about Halloween is that it’s a time when everyone can talk about being scared. We all have fears, and small children have more than most.  Halloween is a time to discuss the most irrational of them, to take a good look under the bed and in the closet, to draw the monsters, talk about them, and let the bright light of day reduce their power.

Depending on the age of your children there are some wonderful scary stories to read to them; for example Carl Reiner’s ‘Tell me A Scary Story, but Not Too Scary‘ is ideal for the 4-8 age range and if you’d rather just do the cuddling, the book also includes a CD of Rainer reading the story.  Mp3 files or audio books really come into their own at Halloween, so put on a CD, light some scary candles and sit around in the dark. For teenagers why not introduce them to the classics? There’s no better night to get to know  Frankenstein, and for many, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is still the greatest horror story of all time, despite it’s age, and of course Vampires are thoroughly ‘in’ these days!  Audio makes these tales far more scary than any  film adaptations. For even more atmosphere you can use a CD to add the sound of a thunderstorm in the background, and don’t forget the food, being scare helps you build an appetite.

To get your started, here’s a story about Halloween which you could use in several ways. You could get one of your children to read it out loud, as spookily as possible, or you could use it a prompt , ask them to write where other Halloween customs came from.

The Tale of Jack O’Lantern.

Do you know why, where or when the Jack O’Lantern tradition began?

For centuries people have been making Jack O’ Lanterns at Halloween and probably don’t realise that it originated from an Irish myth about a man called ‘Stingy Jack’. So while reading this keep in mind that it is an ‘Irish Story’.

One night or so the story goes, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him and being true to his name, he didn’t want to pay for it. So he convinced the Devil to have some fun and turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to pay for the drinks, I told you it was an Irish tale, and once the Devil did so Jack decided to keep the money and put it in his pocket, next to a silver cross which prevented the Devil to change back into his own form. However Jack did eventually free the Devil on the condition that he didn’t bother him for a whole year and that should Jack die within that time he would not claim his soul.

The very next year Jack managed to trick the Devil again, this time, he persuaded the him to climb a tree to pick a piece of fruit but while he was up the tree Jack carved the sign of the cross on the tree trunk so that the Devil was forced to promise that he would not bother Jack for ten more years.

Alas, soon after this Jack died but God would not allow such an unsavoury character as Jack into heaven and the Devil who was still upset by the trick he had played on him and still keeping his word not to claim Jack’s soul, wouldn’t allow Jack into hell either, instead he sent Jack off into the Dark, eerie night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip and has been roaming the earth with it ever since.

The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as ‘Jack of the Lantern’ and through time that became ‘Jack O’Lantern.

The Irish and Scots began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving weird and scary faces into turnips and potatoes, in England they used beets and placed them in windows and by doors to frighten Stingy Jack and other wandering spirits away, should they happen to put in an appearance.

Immigrants from these countries brought the Jack O’Lantern tradition with them when they came to the USA. But soon found that a fruit native to America was much easier to carve and that made the pumpkin a perfect Jack O’Lantern.