Six ghost stories for children from age five, written to be read aloud in four minutes each. All of them are set in Stockholm, all have a shiver in the middle and a kind ending, and all can be made scarier or gentler depending on who is listening. The lamp that switched itself on, the footprints in the snow, the voice on the underground, the swing that swung by itself, the book that changed its ending and the tomte in the attic.
Children love being a little bit scared, on condition that it all turns out fine. These stories are built on that: something unexplained happens, the child in the story dares to take a look, and the scary thing turns out to be kind. Halloween, dark November evenings, a den with a torch. Read them quietly.
How to tell them
- Low and slow. The suspense is in the pauses, not in the voice.
- Your own home. Swap Jakobsberg for where you live, the hallway for your hallway. Everything is twice as exciting when it happens at home.
- Read the child. Duvet pulled up to the chin means: hurry to the kind ending.
- End calmly. The story, then a book, then the song. Never the ghost last.
The lamp that switched itself on
In a yellow house in Jakobsberg there was a lamp in the hallway that switched itself on. Every evening, just as the family had gone to bed, it came on. Click. Dad thought it was a loose connection. Mum thought the electrician had made a mistake. But Elsa, who was six, knew.
One night she crept out and sat on the stairs and waited. The clock reached eleven. Click. The lamp came on. And in its light Elsa saw a little old man, no bigger than a coffee cup, standing on the shelf in the hallway and yawning.
I switch it on, said the little man, because I am afraid of the dark. Elsa nodded. So was she, a little. So she fetched her night light, the small one with the stars, and put it on the shelf. The little man looked at it for a long time. Then he switched off the big lamp, curled up beside the star light and fell asleep.
The lamp in the hallway never switched itself on again. But the star light is still on the shelf, and Elsa has never told anyone why.
The footprints in the snow
It had snowed all night, and when Noah looked out in the morning the whole garden was white. Completely white, except for a line of footprints that ran from the fence, across the lawn, up to his window. And stopped there.
The footprints were small. Smaller than his own. And they only went one way. Nobody had walked back.
Noah pulled on his boots and went out. He followed the prints backwards, to the fence, and there, under the spruce tree, he found who had made them: a hedgehog, which really should have been asleep, and which now lay curled up in the snow, freezing.
He carried it into the garage, put it in a cardboard box with straw and newspaper, and it slept there until spring. Every morning he checked on it. And when it woke in April it walked out through the garage door and left a new line of footprints, in gravel this time, away across the garden and under the fence.
The voice on the underground
Alva was taking the underground on her own for the first time, just two stops, from Hornstull to Slussen where mum was waiting. She sat right at the front and held on tight to her bag. And as the train rolled into the tunnel she heard a voice. Next station Mariatorget, said the voice. That was perfectly normal. But then the voice said, a little more quietly: Alva, you have dropped your mitten.
Alva looked down. In the middle of the floor lay her red mitten. She picked it up and looked up at the speaker. Thank you, she whispered. You are welcome, said the speaker.
At Slussen mum stood waving. Alva told her about the voice. Mum laughed and said it was her imagination. But as they went up the escalator they both heard, quite clearly, the speaker say: Bye bye, Alva. Have a good day.
Mum said nothing more about imagination. And Alva has never dropped a mitten on the underground again. She does not dare, in case the voice has to say something one more time.
The swing that swung by itself
In the playground behind the förskola (preschool) there was a swing that swung by itself. Not much. Just a little, back and forth, when nobody was sitting in it. The children said it was the wind. The teachers said it was the wind. But Leo, who was five, had noticed that it swung even when there was no wind.
One afternoon, when everyone else had gone in, Leo walked up to the swing and sat down in the one next to it. And he said, without looking: You can sit in it if you like. I cannot see you, but that does not matter.
The swing beside him swung higher. And higher. And then he heard a laugh, a small happy laugh, that came from nowhere and everywhere. They swung together until the teacher called.
The next day the swing no longer swung by itself. But if you sit in the swing next to it and say that it is okay, it starts again. Try it some time. But say it kindly.
The book that changed its ending
Mira had read the same book a hundred times. The one about the dragon who could not breathe fire. She knew the ending by heart: the dragon learned in the end, and everyone was happy. But one evening, when dad was reading, something happened. The dragon did not learn. Instead the dragon said: I do not want to breathe fire. I want to bake bread. And so it baked bread for the whole village, and everyone was happier than ever.
Dad stared at the page. That was not there before, he said. Mira took the book. It was there now.
The next evening the dragon had become a postman. The evening after that it learned to swim. A new ending every evening, and nobody in the family understood how.
Mira thinks the book was listening. That it had heard her say, a hundred times, that she felt sorry for the dragon who had to breathe fire. So the book changed its mind. Books do that sometimes, if you read them enough times and really mean it.
The tomte in the attic
In the house in Viksjö a family lived downstairs and nobody lived in the attic. At least, that is what they thought. But every morning in December there were marks in the dust on the attic stairs, small ones, like slippers, and a smell of porridge.
On Christmas Eve Hugo crept up. He was eight and not scared, almost. In the attic, in an old armchair, sat a little old man in a grey cap, eating porridge from a bowl Hugo recognised from the kitchen.
That is my porridge, said Hugo. This is my house, said the little man, I lived here before you came. But you are welcome to stay. You are kind to the cat.
They sat for a while and shared the porridge. Then Hugo went downstairs and said nothing. But the next Christmas he put a bowl of porridge on the attic stairs, with butter in it, and in the morning it was empty and polished clean. He does it every year now. And nothing in that house has ever broken.
How we do it with our families
October evenings with our families are torch-den time. The nanny builds the den under the kitchen table, turns off the lights, and tells The lamp that switched itself on with a real lamp that she switches on at just the right moment. And because it is the same nanny every time, the children want the same story next Tuesday, with a new ending.
Would you like a nanny who knows your child, knows how things usually are and notices when something is different? Book a free first meeting with the nanny in your home.
Read more: Bedtime stories for kids · Halloween games for kids · Halloween crafts for kids
Frequently asked questions
How scary should ghost stories for children be?
Exciting, not frightening. Children want to feel the shiver, but they also want to fall asleep afterwards. The rule is that everything scary in the middle turns kind at the end: the ghost is a hedgehog, the voice wants to help, the little old man eats porridge.
From what age are ghost stories suitable?
From four or five, with the gentlest ones first. Six-year-olds want more of a shiver, nine-year-olds want a proper fright. Read the child, not the age: a child who pulls the duvet up to the chin has had enough.
How do you tell a ghost story well?
Low, slow and with pauses. Swap the names and places for the child's own: your house, your playground, your underground station. And always end on something calm, never in the middle of the suspense.
Can you tell them at bedtime?
These six were written for exactly that. All of them end warmly. But tell them before the book and the song, not as the very last thing, so there is time to settle.