Short Ghost Stories for Children – Are They Appropriate?

Are short ghost stories for children appropriate? And if they can be told or read to children, then what age should the children be so that they enjoy these stories for kids and not get frightened by them? These are serious questions that all parents want the answers to. However, there are no right or wrong answers to these queries. Whether or not ghost stories are appropriate for kids depends largely on the audience. And how old should kids be before they read ghost stories – that too depends on the individual reading these types of stories for kids and varies from person to person.

As far as I am concerned, I would never read short ghost stories for children to kids who are younger than 3 years old. Such small kids often get confused between fiction and reality and may thus end up getting terrified by ghost stories. Hence it is best to keep these ghost stories away from such small kids. Children who are between the age of 3 and 6 years can be exposed to ghost stories, but the short ghost stories for kids that you choose should be more the funny types and not so much the scary type. This age group has a better understanding between reality and make believe, but since they are still very young, they could get scared easily.

Older children can of course enjoy reading ghost stories for kids as they know that ghosts are not real and that they are a figment of the writer’s imagination. In fact, kids are often fascinated by ghost stories and try to get their hands on as many such books as they can. I once had a few kids (including my own) ask me whether they could put short ghost stories for children on the reading list of their children’s book club! My answer was an emphatic ‘No’! Not because I did not think these stories for kids were good, but because I believe that such books do not lend themselves to a lot of constructive discussion and are thus not right for a children’s book club.

What these stories for kids are right for are camp fires! Yes, sitting under the bright stars in the middle of the night with a roaring bonfire next to you and the company of good friends – this is a perfect setting for some scary short ghost stories for children. Another occasion that ghost stories for kids are perfect for is Halloween night. On this night, children are in the zone so to say and thus a scary ghost story will fit into the fun and festivities wonderfully. But parents should take care to see that there aren’t any small kids in the group who may be unnecessarily terrified by these stories for kids.