If you enjoy weird animatronics, secret stories, and cool mysteries then check out these reads. Scary screens and creepy dolls abound in these books for fans of horror video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. Get ready for chills, thrills, and terrifying tales. Curated by Katie Rivers.
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It’s Watching by Lindsay Currie
On Halloween night, Josie and her two best friends, Jackson and Alison, sneak into the infamously haunted Bachelor’s Grove cemetery. They are hoping to prove the existence of a famous ghost to secure coveted editorial spots on the school newspaper. Instead, they are chased out by a security guard before they gather any evidence…or so they think.
Later, a sinister meme appears on their phones. It’s an image of the “phantom farmhouse,” an evil apparition rumored to appear to unlucky visitors at Bachelor’s Grove—luring them in…and never letting them out—with the words I’m watching dripping down the screen.
Soon, strange and scary things begin to happen all around them. When a second meme from the same number arrives, this time with a countdown, they realize they have only three days to figure out who is terrorizing them. As they investigate, the trio must use their journalistic skills to uncover the truth, or risk becoming a part of the graveyard’s sinister past forever.
Read at Your Own Risk by Remy Lai
Read at Your Own Risk is the spine-chilling illustrated sketch diary of a kid who is being haunted after a game goes terribly wrong and an evil spirit starts conversing with her on the page.
“The journal format of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets the thrills and chills of R.L. Stine in this middle-grade horror.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“For tweens seeking Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets Tim Burton, this is an enjoyable scare that may prompt readers to write their own.” —School Library Journal
Hannah and her friends were just having a bit of fun when they decided to play a game to communicate with spirits of the dead. Little did they know something would answer their call and crawl its way into the pages of Hannah’s journal. What started out as a game has turned into something much more evil. With dire, horrifying consequences.
Is there any way to escape the curse?
Night of the Living Ted by Barry Hutchison
When Lisa Marie and her step-brother Vernon pop into town to get their dad a birthday present, they discover the Create-a-Ted shop is offering free Halloween bears! Making two grisly bears for themselves and choosing an Elvis bear named Bearvis for Dad, they head home. That night the shopkeeper brings the bears to life for nefarious purposes … but Vernon’s bear, Grizz, doesn’t want to be a slave to humans – he wants to rule the world! Converting the shopkeeper’s Stuff-U-Lator into a machine for turning living matter into stuffed bears, he begins to prowl the streets. Can the children and Bearvis save themselves – and the world – from being stuffed?
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring…. In Coraline’s family’s new flat there are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close. The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own. Only it’s different. At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there’s another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go. Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself
Missing Pieces by Carley Anne West
Lock your doors! From the creators of the blockbuster horror video game Hello Neighbor comes the story that started it all. Unravel the mystery in this gripping prequel novel! Nicky Roth has always been a lonely kid. But that all changes when he and his family move to Raven Brooks and meet their eccentric neighbors, the Petersons. Nicky befriends the Petersons’ son, Aaron, bonding over their talents for tinkering. Soon the boys are inseparable and using their skills to pull pranks on the townspeople. But something about Aaron bothers Nicky–people seem almost afraid of him and his family. Through snippets from Aaron and a lot of sleuthing in the town’s archives, Nicky discovers a dark past haunting his neighbors, a streak of bad luck they can’t seem to shake. Aaron thinks that’s all behind them now, but Nicky has a feeling the Petersons are fated for another tragedy. . . . This pulse-pounding prequel novel to the hit video game Hello Neighbor includes two-color illustrations throughout, to help readers unwind the mystery at the heart of the game.
1-2-3-4, I Declare a Thumb War by Lisi Harrison
Meet Whisper, Frannie, Sophie, Gemma, and Zuzu, five friends who tell eerie tales by night and navigate middle school drama by day. In Misery Falls, Oregon, it is the 100th anniversary of the electrocution of the town’s most infamous killer, Silas Hoke, and the town is abuzz. When a mysterious text message leads the girls to the cemetery—where Silas Hoke is buried!—life can’t get any creepier. Except, yes, it can, thanks to the surprise storyteller who meets them at the cemetery, inspires the first-ever meeting of the Graveyard Girls, and sets the stage for a terrifying tale from Whisper that they’ll never forget.
I.R.L. by Jenny Goebel
A spooky tale of virtual school gone very, very wrong…
Not every kid would be thrilled to move to rural Alaska, but sixth-grader Lucy is eager to leave her bullies behind and start over. However, it turns out that Lucy’s new school does remote learning from October to April, when the roads become too icy to navigate safely. Being the new kid is hard enough — how is she going to make friends when she can’t meet anyone in person?!
Luckily, the sixth grade class at White Pine Secondary School is tiny (just thirteen students) and they’re all super nice and really welcoming. While chatting on zoom, they ask Lucy lots of questions about living in the big city, some of which strike Lucy as a little odd but she just chalks it up to the fact that her new classmates have spent their whole lives in a VERY small town.
As the ice starts to thaw, Lucy grows increasingly excited about meeting her new friends in person! But when she enters the school’s address on her phone’s GPS, it leads her to a crumbling, clearly abandoned building with a rotted wood sign in front — a sign that reads White Pine Secondary School.
There’s nothing else in sight… except a tiny cemetery with snow-dusted headstones poking out of the frozen ground. Headstones will some very familiar names on them . . .
Lucy doesn’t know what to believe. Are her new “friends” pulling an elaborate prank? Or is truth far, far more horrifying?
All the Lovely Bad Ones: A Ghost Story by Scott Peterson
In this eerie full-color graphic novel adaptation of one of award-winning author Mary Downing Hahn’s most popular ghost stories, mischievous siblings pretend their grandmother’s Vermont inn is haunted and awaken the real spirits who dwell there.
Travis and his sister, Corey, can’t resist a good trick. When they learn that their grandmother’s quiet Vermont inn, where they’re spending the summer, has a history of ghost sightings, they decide to do a little haunting of their own. Before long, their supernatural pranks have tourists flocking to the inn, and business booms.
But Travis and Corey soon find out that theirs aren’t the only ghosts at Fox Hill Inn. Their thoughtless games have awakened something dangerous, something that should have stayed asleep. Can these siblings lay to rest the restless spirits they’ve disturbed?
The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
The Night Gardener follows two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house. But the house and its family are not quite what they seem. Soon the children are confronted by a mysterious spectre and an ancient curse that threatens their very lives. With Auxier’s exquisite command of language, The Night Gardener is a mesmerizing read and a classic in the making.
Doll Bones by Holly Black
Winner of a 2014 Newbery Honor Medal.
Zach, Poppy, and Alice have been friends forever. And for almost as long, they’ve been playing one continuous, ever-changing game of pirates and thieves, mermaids and warriors. Ruling over all is the Great Queen, a bone-china doll cursing those who displease her.
But they are in middle school now. Zach’s father pushes him to give up make-believe, and Zach quits the game. Their friendship might be over, until Poppy declares she’s been having dreams about the Queen–and the ghost of a girl who will not rest until the bone-china doll is buried in her empty grave.
Zach and Alice and Poppy set off on one last adventure to lay the Queen’s ghost to rest. But nothing goes according to plan, and as their adventure turns into an epic journey, creepy things begin to happen. Is the doll just a doll or something more sinister? And if there really is a ghost, will it let them go now that it has them in its clutches?
Shelf Analysis 