My daughter (12yo) is an avid reader but has been talking smack about nothing written ever scares her. It’s close to Halloween so I want to school her.
It’s a Good Life by Jerome Bixby was the scariest short story I could think of, but perhaps you have a better recommendation.
As mentioned in another thread, Stephen King’s The Jaunt might be a good candidate. It’s in his collection Skeleton Crew.
Short stories aside, she might find the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House pretty scary.
Another Shirley Jackson: “The Lottery.” There are no ghosts or goblins or vampires, but it is chilling. A snap ending worthy of O.Henry, but much, much, darker.
“The Lottery” is in the Shirley Jackson collection of short stories, The Lottery and Other Stories.
But back to The Haunting of Hill House for a moment. The opening paragraph is brilliant writing:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Thanks guys, keep them coming!
Hand her a copy of James Clavell’s The Children’s Story.
H.P. Lovecraft might be a bit too advanced for a 12-year-old, but The Outsider and Pickman’s Model are both on the short side and pack a punch.
To Build a Fire by Jack London isn’t a conventional horror story, but it tells a pretty terrifying tale nonetheless.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.” I first read that when I was 12, and it sent chills up my spine. You may have to help out a bit with this one–Poe was writing for adults, and not everything would be understandable to a 12-year-old (I had to ask my teacher what “amontillado” was, for example). But Poe’s friendly relationship between Montresor and Fortunato as they go in search of amontillado (which is actually sherry, as my teacher told me) in the cellars, is something we can all relate to. Until they come to an alcove, and the result is … well, read it for yourself.
Years ago, the plots of Twilight Zone episodes were written as short stories and published in paperback collections that you might find on a drugstore rack. I cannot remember the publisher (Bantam? Signet? Dell?), but I had a number of them. Might be worth looking for, since while some stories were fairly benign, some others were scarier than what they could show on television.
For a Poe story, I would try The Masque of the Red Death. Might actually be a little too scary during a real pandemic.
And H.P. Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark has got to be one of the most terrifying stories written. It might or might not be too advanced, depending on the 12-year-old.
Lovecraft, of course, has been accused of racism and xenophobia, but in this particular story I interpret it more as the idea that “people from the Old Country retain knowledge that we in the U.S. have largely forgotten.” See what you think.
Oh, I had nearly forgotten: the story that made the youthful me cast nervous glances behind, whenever the light grew dim, was The Hound of the Baskervilles. Believe it or not, that Conan-Doyle story was the terror of my childhood.
Speaking of Poe, Christopher Lee’s reading of The Raven is probably one of the best dramatic readings I’ve ever heard of any poem, and he really brings to life the terror of the tale in a way that it might be harder for a young person reading the text to appreciate.
I thought “Survivor Type” was pretty creepy, too.
If it were me, I might try “Working at Home,” from Jeremy Robert Johnson’s collection Angel Dust Apocalypse. Dude gets infested with parasitic worms. I read it when the book first came out in 2005, and it’s stuck with me vividly ever since then. Plus, Johnson is a pretty good writer, so the whole book is recommended.
Figuring out what would scare the OP’s daughter is tricky, for two reasons. One is that different people find different things scary: what’s terrifying to one person is ho-hum to another. (See the That’s for children? thread for examples.)
The other reason is that there are different kinds of scary. There are stories that have a shocking ending that stays with you (like the aforementioned “The Jaunt” or “The Lottery”). There are stories that are pervaded by a growing sense of dread or menace (maybe Stephen King’s “1408” is a good example). There are stories that are thrilling or suspenseful and have you scared for the protagonist’s safety. There could be stories that have the literary equivalent of jump scares—and I can’t think of any good examples right now, but that might be what the OP’s daughter is thinking of, since it’s something that’s significantly easier to do on screen than on the page.
Unless you’re thinking of something else, Rod Serling novelized just 19 episodes into short stories, which were originally sold in three volumes. There was also a single-volume collection later of all 19 stories but it appears to be out of print. However, the three-volume version has been reprinted and they’re available from Amazon as either Kindle ebooks or paperbacks. One has to be careful because there are also a number of books with titles like “New Stories from the Twilight Zone” or “More Stories from the Twilight Zone” which are entirely new and unrelated to the original series. But these are the ones Serling wrote himself:
For scariest King short story, I nominate “The Boogeyman”.
That’s the first one I thought of.
London’s “Bâtard” might not have the potential to induce nightmares in a 12-year-old, but it’s creepy nonetheless.
Two of the scariest stories I’ve ever read are by Harlan Ellison. At 12 I don’t think your daughter has the life experience to understand “All the Birds Come Home to Roost,” but “Flop Sweat” might just do the trick. Or go with the classics and have her read “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.”
King’s Gramma. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Though more a novella, Machen’s The Great God Pan might work. Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James is another classic. More modern choices might be Selfies by Lavie Tidhar and Last Breath by Joe Hill.
Has she read The Monkey’s Paw?
Stephen King mentions this as a real classic. Its problem is that it was first published in 1894 and is perhaps a bit dated.
I remember this as a play, I guess derived from the original W.W. Jacobs story. It’s old, tooi (1902) but rather timeless. It’s a “three wishes” story and a sort of morality tale in a horror setting, but the horror is unseen and implied. I think there have been some good suggestions here and I’d include this one. I believe it’s now in the public domain.