14 Scary Campfire Stories To Tell Your Friends

If you ever went to summer camp, had an older sibling, or had a particularly macabre set of school bus friends, you've probably heard scary campfire stories before. In fact, you might still wake up in a cold sweat some nights, thinking you can hear the distant scraping of a hook against a car door. And yet, you still can’t resist the urge to re-spook yourself every Halloween. ‘Tis the season to celebrate all things scary, rebranding them as festive.

Even if you weren't much for pitching tents and starting bonfires, you might recognize some of these creepy campfire tales from Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. That's because Schwartz, like many ghost story writers before him, drew inspiration from American folktales and urban legends (and then he added those horrific illustrations from Stephen Gammell, to more effectively haunt our every waking thought). Most of these scary stories have no known origin and no original author on record. They're good old-fashioned oral tradition, kept alive around campfires, at sleepovers, and in the dark places beneath playground equipment. (Which means you can tailor them with whatever details you know will scare the pants off your friends the best.)

Here are some of the most memorably haunting campfire stories that still make us feel all weird inside to this very day.

1. The Hook

A pair of attractive teens are parked at Make Out Point (or Lover's Lane, depending on your version of the story), an isolated spot on the edge of town. The boyfriend switches on the radio for some mood music, and the two start canoodling. But just as things are getting hot and heavy, they're interrupted by a breaking news story: A murderer has escaped from the nearby state asylum. He's armed and dangerous, and he has a hook in place of his right hand.

The girlfriend is obviously frightened, and wants to go home straight away, but the boyfriend insists that they'll be fine. He locks all the car doors and tries to kiss her again. She calmly explains that no means no, and that she wants to go the heck home. Annoyed, the boyfriend slams the gas pedal and drives her back to her house. It's only when they both get out of the car that he notices something dangling from the door handle — a bloody, steel hook.

2. Bloody Mary

This one might be slightly more popular at sleepovers than campfires, but I bet that you're still just a little scared to actually try it. The story goes that if you look into a mirror in a darkened room and chant "Bloody Mary" three times, you'll see the ghostly visage of Bloody Mary herself staring back at you. That, or she'll pop out of the mirror and kill you. The real Bloody Mary was actually Queen Elizabeth's ill-fated older sister, and she's probably not coming to kill you — but staring into a darkened mirror for a prolonged period of time can cause very creepy hallucinations.

3. Wolf Girl

You might know this story as "The Blonde Wolf," which is admittedly not the creepiest of titles. But the story goes that a pregnant woman went into labor in a remote part of Texas. Her husband went for help, but both of their bodies were discovered the next day, ravaged by wolves. The baby was nowhere to be found. Over the years, sightings were reported of a little girl living with a pack of wolves, and later a grown woman, covered in hair, nursing wolf pups... and finally sightings of a strange-looking wolf with suspiciously human-like features.

4. Don’t Turn On The Light

Two college roommates are in the same science class, and the big midterm is tomorrow morning. Marie wants to stay in and study, but Tara wants to go out and party with a cute guy from the lacrosse team. She leaves Marie to her studies. When she gets home very late that night, Marie is in bed and the lights are off. Tara goes to bed without turning the lights on, trying not to disturb her studious friend. In the morning, she goes to wake Marie so they won't be late for the test... but Marie's body lies stiff, and her bed is soaked in blood. On the wall above her, scrawled in blood, are the words "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?"

5. The Clown Statue

A babysitter has been hired to watch two children for the night. After she puts the kids to bed, the parents ask that she watches TV in their bedroom upstairs, because the children have been having nightmares recently. She puts the kids to bed easily enough, and settles in the parents' room to watch TV. But in the corner of the room there's a large life-sized clown statue. She tries to ignore it, but it's just too creepy. Finally, she calls the dad to ask if she can watch TV downstairs instead. "Sure, but why?" he asks. She tells him that the clown statue is just creeping her out too much. There's a pause. "Get the children and leave the house," says the dad. "We don't have a clown statue."

6. The Green Ribbon

A man marries his beloved: a beautiful young woman who always wears a green velvet ribbon around her neck. On their wedding night, he asks why she never takes the ribbon off. "If I do, you'll be sorry," she says, and goes to sleep. Night after night, he keeps asking, but she always gives him the same reply. He begins to go mad with curiosity. Finally, one night, while she's sleeping, he steals the scissors from her sewing box and cuts through the ribbon himself. The ribbon falls away... and her head rolls right off her neck and falls to the floor with a sickening thud.

7. The Hitchhiker

"The Vanishing Hitchhiker" might be the most famous campfire story of all time. A couple are driving late at night when they notice a girl hitchhiking. They pick her up, and she thanks them profusely and gives them a nearby address. They drive her home, trying to make polite conversation. But after a few minutes, the girl falls silent. The driver asks if they've reached the right intersection, but when they turn to the backseat, the girl is gone. She's vanished without a trace. When they reach the address she gave them, an elderly couple greets them at the door. They don't know of any girl... but their own daughter was killed in a car accident many years ago, just a few miles up the road.

8. Doggy Lick

A girl is just a little afraid of the dark, so every night her dog sleeps under her bed. When she's afraid, she puts her hand down, and her dog licks it to reassure her. One night, she wakes to hear a strange dripping sound. She puts her hand down and feels the dog lick it, so she feels better and goes back to sleep. The next morning, she wakes to find the body of her dog hanging in the middle of the room, dripping blood. On the wall someone has written, "Humans can lick too!" (The same murderer as that dorm room one? Possibly.)

9. The High Beams

A young woman is driving home late one night, when she notices a truck driving up directly behind her. No one else is on the road. She waits for the truck to pass her, but instead it stays directly behind her and flashes its high beams. She becomes unsettled. No matter how fast she drives, or which back roads she heads down, the truck stays close behind her, flashing its high beams every few minutes. Terrified, she speeds home, with the truck right on her tail, and pulls into her driveway. She leaps out of her car and tries to run to her front door, but the truck driver gets out too — and he's holding a gun. He points the gun in her direction and shoots. The woman screams, but the bullet wasn't for her: She turns to see the body of a man fall out of the back seat of her car, clutching a butcher's knife. The shaken truck driver explains that he noticed the man in the backseat of her car, and was trying to signal to her. Every time the man raised his knife to stab her, he flashed his high beams.

10. The Golden Hand

In a small town, a man is taken by a newcomer — a widow who always wears black gloves, even inside. One day, he strikes up a conversation with her at the store, and as she brushes her hair out of her face, he notices gold gleaming through the glove of her right hand. She explains that she lost her hand in an accident, and instead of getting a traditional prosthetic, she treated herself to a solid gold hand. The man becomes obsessed with her hand. His heart beats for the the heavy, shiny, gold limb. He ends up courting the woman and eventually marrying her, only to poison her slowly. After only a month or marriage, she passes, and he buries her without the hand. One night, he wakes in a cold sweat to find the his bride standing at the end of the bed, gold hand intact. She strangles him with it and he goes limp. The next morning, a maid find the man, alone in his bed, with nothing but the golden hand gripping his lifeless neck.

11. The Spider Bite

A young woman is on vacation. She’s so relaxed while reading by the pool that she falls asleep. When she wakes up, hours have passed. She stretches, yawns, and notices that her face feels sore. She goes inside to find a mirror, assuming she just got too much sun, but she has a giant red blemish on her cheek. It looks and feels like a pimple, so she washes her face and tries not to think about it. The next morning, the spot has grown. It’s swollen, bulging, and very painful. She places a hot washcloth on her cheek and then examines the sore in the mirror. She gives it a little squeeze and what looks like a long black hair pokes out of the bump — but it moves. She shrieks and the spot bursts open, releasing dozens of baby spiders. Blood and pus and fast-crawling insects ooze down her neck, biting her everywhere.

12. The Car Breakdown

A young woman and her boyfriend are driving down a very rural road in the woods at night when suddenly the car’s engine begins to sputter and eventually breaks down. With no cellphone reception, the boyfriend offers to walk to the nearest big road to find help. He tells his girlfriend to stay in the car and lock the doors before he sets out into the pitch black dense woods. Scared and shivering from the cold for hours, still waiting for her boyfriend to return, the girlfriend suddenly hears a loud tapping on the roof of the car and begins to panic, but she’s also too scared to get out of the car and look. The tapping noise goes on and on, and soon it’s joined by a scratching noise.

The girlfriend, huddled and terrified, listens to the noises all night until she sees bright headlights coming through the trees — it’s a cop car. A policeman shouts out asking if there’s anyone in the car, to which the girlfriend replies, “It’s just me. My boyfriend left me here and hasn’t come back yet.” The officer instructs her to walk toward him and, whatever she does, not turn around, but she lets curiosity get the better of her. She screams in horror, as her boyfriend is beheaded and hanging from a tree branch above the car, blood dripping from his neck and his fingernails scraping against the roof as he sways in the wind.

13. The Peeling Wallpaper

A young couple moves into an old decrepit house that’s definitely a fixer upper. While the husband is taking care of some construction, the wife is tasked with removing the wallpaper that decorates every wall and ceiling in the house. The task is incredibly boring and tedious at first, but she begins to find it super satisfying when she can peel off big chunks at a time — think peeling a sunburn. She then discovers there’s writing under every corner of each piece of wallpaper: a date and a name. When she searches one of the names and dates on the internet, it comes up as a missing person. She does more digging and finds that all of the names and dates line up with missing people, so she and her husband contact the police. When detectives come over to investigate, she overhears one of them say, “Yep, it’s definitely human.” She’s confused — what’s human? Then, they come over to her and ask, “Ma’am, where is all of the material that you’ve removed so far? It wasn’t wallpaper.”

14. The Hike

A guy had just moved to a new town in New Hampshire and was out with a hiking group he had recently joined as a way to make friends. He left his cellphone in the car as a way to connect with nature, and the group of 12 set off on a beautiful, remote trail. An hour in, they passed a bathroom, and the man asked the group to wait for him while he used it. When he came out, they were gone. He started down the trail alone to try and find the group, but hours were passing and it was getting darker. He started to get disoriented in the woods as the sun set, and eventually it was fully dark and he didn’t know how to get back to the parking lot — plus, he felt like something was watching him. Getting more and more freaked out, he finally spotted another bathroom and decided to stay inside for the rest of the night. The man tried to get some rest, but he soon heard the sound of someone weeping outside, getting closer and closer. Paranoid and scared, the man sprinted out of the bathroom and back into the woods. Running for what felt like miles, he somehow ended up back on the road where he flagged down a car and got help.