25 Horror Books for Kids Perfect for Halloween and In Between!
Have a child who likes to be spooked by the stories they read? Check out this list of horror books for kids ages 9-12 years. The collection includes ghost stories, tales of the supernatural and paranormal, classic horror books, suspenseful mysteries and thrillers, making it great for Halloween and all the days in between!
25 Horror Books for Kids Age 9-12 Years
These creepy horror chapter books are filled with ghosts, zombies, haunted houses, and more, perfect for scaring the socks off 9-12 year olds and keeping them turning the pages late into the night!
As with all of the lists in our Best Chapter Books for Kids collection, each title in this list links to an Amazon page (these are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you) where you can find more information and reviews for titles you might not be personally familiar with.
Dust & Grim by Chuck Wendig
When her father passes away, 13 year old Molly discovers an older brother she never knew existed. And now that they’ve both been orphaned, Molly moves in with Dustin so they can figure out the details for managing the funeral home they’ve inherited from their mother. A magical funeral home with a peculiar clientele…it’s a mortuary for monsters!
Molly is really not sure how she will ever deal with talking wolves, their vampire accountant, the secrets hiding behind strange and mysterious doors, and a secret cemetery in this perfect middle grade mix of silly, gross, and scary! Age 9+ years.
Spirit Hunters (book 1 of the series) by Ellen Oh
Harper’s family has just moved from an air conditioned apartment in New York to a stuffy old house in Washington D.C. Harper knows the move has something to do with a fire at school and a serious accident that put her in hospital, but she has no memories of the incident. Harper is wary of her new home and when her new friend, Dayo, tells her the rumors that her new house has a terrible history of hauntings and evil deeds, she fears that the source of her memory loss may have been caused by a malevolent spirit.
When her little brother, Michael, begins to exhibit signs of plotting something terrible, Harper’s blocked memories begin to resurface. The accident she caused and the change in Michael both seem to have connections to supernatural beings. Harper has no choice but to engage with the spirit world in an attempt to stop another tragedy from tearing her family apart. Age 9+ years.
There are three books in the scary Spirit Hunters series.
Ghost Girl by Ally Malinenko
Ghost Girl explores the power of friendship when trio Zee, her best friend Elijah and her arch nemesis, Nellie, are trapped within a spooky, paranormal existence. Following a dark and stormy night, the people of their town have begun mysteriously disappearing, others are acting in strange and dangerous ways. Zee, who has always loved ghost stories suddenly sees all manner of things that frighten her – including… a ghost!
The trio must work together to defeat the evil forces that threaten them, and work together to save their town. Age 9+ years.
Scritch Scratch: A Ghost Story by Lindsay Currie
Blending Chicago history, a ghostly mystery and a story of friendship, in Scratch Scratch Claire’s start to seventh grade has been a challenge, thanks to her dad’s embarrassing ghost tour business and a new girl moving in to steal her best friend.
Claire doesn’t believe any of the paranormal nonsense her dad is pushing, until one night she’s forced to help him on his ghost tour, and a very troubled spirit follows her home. Now she must overcome a fear of new situations and new people, while using her tried and true love of science to solve the mystery of the ghost boy. Age 10+ years.
For more kids horror books by Lindsay Currie, check out her other spooky titles;
– The Girl in White
– What Lives in the Woods
– The Peculiar Incident on Shady Street
– It Found Us
The Ghouls of Howlfair by Nick Tomlinson
Serious young historian Molly Thompson suspects that the creepy legends about her tourist town of Howlfair are beginning to come true. But when her mother bans her from doing any further research, bookworm Molly and her friends become covert monster-hunters to keep Howlfair safe. It seems that someone is secretly trying to summon Howlfair’s mythical monsters and to Molly and her friends everything, and everyone, is becoming increasingly suspicious! Age 10+ years.
Crater Lake: Don’t Ever Fall Asleep by Jennifer Killick
In this horror-sci-fi-humor inspired tale, friends Lance, Chet, Maksym, and Katja have arrived at Crater Lake, with all their year six classmates on a school trip. The new campground is called Crater Lake as is built in a huge crater formed when a meteor that crashed to earth many years prior.
Suddenly, their bus slams to a halt as they come across a strange, blood-covered man in the road. Is he a zombie? Is he an alien? Is he dead? Who is he and what is he trying to tell them? His warnings are garbled and unclear. From that moment on, things don’t seem quite right. Things take an even stranger turn when night falls as the those who have fallen asleep become bug-eyed and brainwashed, and begin heading into the woods on some strange mission – including the teachers. Those who haven’t fallen asleep yet remain still very much human.
The friends must work together in an attempt to stop alien entities from taking control of their classmates and teachers, all while making sure their minds are still functioning and their bodies are still moving, as apparently sleep is not an option! Age 10+ years.
There are two books in the Crater Lake series.
City of Ghosts (book 1 of the series) by Victoria Schwab
This spooky, atmospheric read follows Cassidy Blake, a young girl who can travel behind “the veil” to see the ghosts within. How is that possible? When Cassidy drowned, her best friend Jacob, himself a ghost saved her, and he now walks within the living realm with her.
When her author parents are presented with an opportunity to host a television show that takes viewers on a tour of the scariest cities in the world, Cassidy finds herself in Scotland. There she begins to feel that the pull on the veil is stronger here, and that the ghosts in Scotland are much more sinister than Cassidy has previously encountered.
With the help of a new friend, Cassidy finds out that there is a reason she can see ghosts, and a job she must do. She needs to help send the ghosts walking within the living realm permanently behind the veil, off to whatever lies beyond. And so beings the Cassidy’s adventure of trying to defeat an evil spirit, and save her own life! Age 10+ years.
There are three horror books in The City of Ghosts series.
This Appearing House by Ally Malinenko
Jac is getting ready for a series of tests that will hopefully label her as No Evidence of Disease five years post disease. But Jac fears the disease is returning. She’s taken a couple of falls, her hands have started to twitch, and she might be experiencing hallucinations – how else can you explain the house that just appeared at the end of Juniper Drive? She also has to deal with irritating jerks John and Sam, who like to pick on her best friend, Hazel.
When John declares that he’ll leave Hazel alone if Jac goes in to the house, she does. The boys follow her, and then things start to go wrong. The doors lock behind them, every door leads back to the room they were just in, and voices call out to them. But Jac soon realizes that the house is meant for her. She feels that “the only way out is through,” and she and Hazel try to figure out the mysteries of the house as they’re taken on a dark adventure to find the truth. Age 10+ years.
Serafina and the Black Cloak (book 1 of the series) by Robert Beatty
Serafina lives in the basement of the magnificent Biltmore mansion, the home of the wealthy and influential Vanderbilt family. She’s lived there all of her life with her Pa taking care of her, but the Vanderbilts have no idea she’s even alive.
With the entire estate to roam, she must take care never to be seen by the rich folks upstairs, and never to leave the estate grounds to venture into the forbidden forest nearby. But, when the children of the estate begin to vanish, only Serafina knows the truth. Her life is thrown into turmoil on the night that she witnessed the Man in the Black Cloak vaporize a child into thin air. And now, he wants her. With the help of Braeden Vanderbilt, the young master of Biltmore Estate, they must stop him before he strikes again. Age 10+ years.
There are four books in the Serafina series.
Doll Bones by Holly Black
Zach, Poppy and Alice have an ongoing pretend game with dolls in which they act out fanstastical stories about pirates, mermaids and thieves. Until one day the dolls are thrown away, and in desperation to continue the game Poppy takes a creepy bone-china doll they call the Great Queen from her mother’s cabinet.
Then Poppy begins having dreams that Great Queen won’t rest until she’s buried in an empty grave! As the children make plans to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? Age 10+ years.
The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Molly and Kip are two Irish orphans trying to make their own way in Victorian England. Desperate for work and a place to call home, the children take roles as servants to the Windsor family, who live in an isolated place people refer to with a shudder as “the Sourwoods.” When they arrive, they can’t help but notice that the estate is in a state of disrepair. However, what stands out more than anything is the huge tree that grows so close to the house that some of its branches have grown right through the walls.
The longer Molly and Kip stay, the more they realize there is an eerie connection between the tree and all the strange things they observe – the Windsor family’s sickly complexions, the nightmares that plague everyone at bedtime, a mysterious room upstairs that is kept locked at all times, and a mysterious nighttime visitor. But just as Molly and Kip decide they need to leave this dangerous place, the power of the mysterious tree lures them in. Will they be able to save themselves? Age 10+ years.
The Clackity (book 1 of the series) by Lora Senf
Blight Harbor is the seventh most haunted town in America, and a place where it’s normal to know by name the ghost who haunts your house or the local hardware store! So when things take a sinister turn, and a creature called The Clackity kidnaps the local paranormal expert from the abandoned abattoir at the edge of town, a little girl named Evie knows if she doesn’t go after her, she’ll lose everything. Because that expert is her Aunt and guardian, Desdemona, Evie’s only family.
The Clackity makes a deal with Evie to help get Des back in exchange for the ghost of John Jeffrey Pope, a serial killer who stalked Blight Harbor a hundred years earlier. Evie reluctantly embarks on a journey into a strange otherworld, with her love for her missing aunt propeling her forward through a host of horrors while her ingenuity and pluck allow her to navigate a world where skewed rules and half-truths run the game. Age 11+ years.
There are three books in the scary Blight Harbor book series.
The Nest by Kenneth Oppel
“We’ve come because of the baby,” she said. “We’ve come to help.” Steve is worried about his newborn brother, born with multiple congenital difficulties and facing surgery, concerned for his parents and their stress at the situation, and anxious about the nest of strange wasps outside his window.
When Steve first dreams about what he believes is an angel with an offer to help the baby, he is eager to accept the plan. But this is no angel. The silvery winged wasps have tricked Steve into a horrible contract that will see him help the queen to take his defective baby brother and replace him with a perfect one that the wasps are manufacturing. When Steve realizes his mistake, he fights to do everything possible to keep the strange wasps away from his baby brother. And all the while, the wasps’ nest is growing, the angel keeps visiting him in the night and the adults can not seem to see the danger all around them, in a horror filled story about the dangers of perfection and wishing things were back to normal at any cost. Age 11+ years..
Small Spaces by Katherine Arden
11 year old Ollie spots a woman about to throw an old book in the water. As any book lover would do, Ollie snatches the book away. She discovers it is a personal history from the 1800s. Soon after she finds the book, Ollie goes on a field trip to a nearby farm, and begins to draw parallels between the book and the people around her.
The school bus breaks down on the trip home and Ollie and few of her classmates get thrown into a terrifying adventure as the strange bus driver offers them the strangest advice, “Best get moving. At nightfall they’ll come for the rest of you.” Nightfall is, indeed, fast approaching when Ollie’s previously broken digital wristwatch begins a startling countdown and delivers a terrifying message: RUN!!! As Ollie and two classmates head into the woods that are bordered by a field of scarecrows that seem to be watching them, the bus driver offers one final piece of advice to the trio, “Avoid large places. Keep to small.” Age 11+ years.
There are four scary books in the Small Spaces book series.
The Keeper by Guardalupe Garcia McCall
James’ family have moved to Oregon from Texas and he is feeling homesick, and still grieving the death of his grandmother. He and his sister, Ava, are in the middle of a prank war that their parents are sick of. When James starts receiving sinister letters from “The Keeper,” warning him that his home is being watched and that someone is looking for “young blood,” his parents think it’s just another prank between James and his sister. But when the siblings find out that the town has a history of missing children, they must work together to figure out who is sending the letters before they become the next victims of The Keeper! Age 11+ years.
The List of Unspeakable Fears by J Kasper Kramer
In this historical spooky story set in the early 1900s, we meet Essie, a fearful, anxiety-ridden girl who comes home from school to find her mother already packed to leave to a new home with a step-father her daughter has never met. Worse yet, he’s a doctor who lives on North Brother Island where patients with extremely contagious diseases are sent to be quarantined.
The island poses many dark secrets, and there is something terribly unsettling about her new home, and her stepfather, all things that add to Essie’s ever growing list of unspeakable fears. And when she sees the red door from her nightmares just down the hall from the bedroom of her terrifying new home, Essie is sure a true life nightmare is just about to begin! Age 11+ years.
Nightbooks by J. A. White
Alex loves writing spooky stories but hates being called a weirdo, so late one night he goes out to burn the Nightbooks in which he has long recorded his hair-raising tales. Unfortunately, Alex is captured and imprisoned by a witch and must tell a scary story each night to stay alive. Alex knows that scary stories don’t typically have happy endings and on discovering that there have been other children before him that have now long disappeared, he is desperate for a different ending to the nightmare he now finds himself trapped in! Age 11+ years.
The Screaming Staircase (book 1 of the series) by Jonathan Stroud
In an alternative modern day London, the world is haunted by supernatural beings, and private agencies rely on child operatives to combat the ghosts, as they are the only ones with senses sensitive enough to detect them.
After a horrible accident in her home village, Lucy Carlyle flees to London and joins a small struggling agency, Lockwood & Co. She is soon they are embroiled in a mystery that may cost Lucy and her teammates their lives in this tale of ancient evil, unsolved murders, powerful ghosts and nefarious mortals. Age 12+ years.
There are five books in the Lockwood & Co horror book series.
The Haunting of Sunshine Girl by Paige McKenzie
When Sunshine and her adoptive mother move to Washington from Texas, an oppressive, wet cold settles upon Sunshine. Everything is gray and creepy and stale. Almost immediately Sunshine begins to experience mysterious noises, hearing cries, footsteps, and even giggling in the middle of the night.
It quickly becomes clear that someone or something is haunting their home and, even more frightening, it seems that only Sunshine can sense it. What starts off as small shifts, quickly escalates into something else, something much scarier. Sunshine is enthralled by what’s happening, and with the help of a new friend, Nolan, is determined to unravel the mysteries that chill the air of her new home. Age 12+ years.
Classic Kids Horror Books for 9-12 Year Olds
The Witches by Roald Dahl
They live in ordinary houses, they look and behave like ordinary women. But witches aren’t ordinary at all. They have murderous, bloodthirsty thoughts and they absolutely hate children – and their leader, the Grand High Witch, is hatching a wicked plan to make every child disappear forever! Age 9+ years.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Coraline, feeling ignored by her overworked parents, finds an alternative world behind a previously locked door in her home where an alternative apartment just like hers exists. But in this other apartment she also finds an “other mother” and “other father” who promise her everything she wants from life as long as she stays with them forever. Could this other life be just too good to be true? A classic horror book for children that will hook readers ages 9+ years.
See Coraline and other great horror books transformed into graphic novel format in our list of spooky graphic novels for kids!
The Field Guide (book 1 of the series) by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
In book one of The Spiderwick Chronicles, twins Jared and Simon and their sister, Mallory, move into the decrepit Spiderwick Estate and discover a field guide for fantastical faeries (that was never intended for human hands) that leads them into a dangerous parallel world to their own!
Be aware that the first book in the series is milder than the content in the remainder of the series titles. Age 9+ years.
There are five books in The Spiderwick Chronicles spooky book series.
Goosebumps book series by R.L. Stine
If you grew up in the 90s, you are probably familiar with R.L. Stine’s spooky Goosebumps series! With more than 60 titles in the series, these short, horror books for kids continue to keep children turning the pages, and could just about keep young fans entertained forever!
With collections like the Classic Goosebumps 20 book set containing titles such as Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, The Haunted Car, The Scarecrow Walks at Night, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, The Blob That Ate Everyone, Night of the Living Dummy and The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, you can see that Stine has re-imagined virtually every nightmare scenario into a page-turner for younger horror readers. Age 9+ years.
The Bad Beginning (book 1 of the series) by Lemony Snicket
Book one of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events series finds the three very intelligent and lovely but very, very unfortunate Baudelaire children sent to live with their distant cousin, Count Olaf, when they are orphaned. Olaf is despicably evil and who will do absolutely anything to get his hands on the children’s inheritance in this dark comedy that is both terribly hilarious and dreadfully irreverent. Age 10+ years.
There are thirteen books in the complete A Series of Unfortunate Events book series.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Orphaned Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn’t live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead.
He lives there following the brutal murder of his family. Granted the Privilege of the Graveyard and taught how to fade into the background, Bod spends his entire childhood playing among graves, learning his letters from the gravestones, running into trouble with ghouls, being tutored by a werewolf with a taste for Eastern European food, and dancing with Death.
And all the while the evil that tried to murder him in the first place is still searching for him! A clever story that is both creepy and nostalgic with a bittersweet ending. Age 10+ years.
More Spooky Books & Resources
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