ghost stories
Fireside scary narratives
Ghost stories are tales about spirits of the dead, typically meant to frighten or unsettle.
The genre thrives on atmosphere—creaking floorboards, flickering lights, unexplained phenomena.
Ghost stories range from campfire yarns to literary fiction: We told ghost stories until midnight.
The term can extend to any spooky narrative, whether or not actual ghosts appear.
- haunted housesSpirit-occupied buildings
- Victorian mansionOrnate 19th-century dwelling
- specterGhostly threatening presence
- phantomInsubstantial apparition
- apparitionVisible supernatural manifestation
restless spirit · horror · poltergeist · chain rattling · otherworldly · haunting · banshees · chill · ancestral spirits · regional folklore · revenant · terror · chilling tales · campfire tales · supernatural fiction · oral tradition · fog · séance
- campingtent, campfire, campsite, campground, sleeping bag
- storytellingtale, narrative, narrator, reading aloud, oral tradition
- talestale, tall tales, yarns, folk tale, fairy tale
- American folklorePaul Bunyan, tall tales, folk heroes, John Henry, folk narratives
- folklorefairy tales, fairytales, folktales, folk tales, folk tale
- folktalesfolktales, animal fables, folktale, moral fables, fairy tales
ghost storieshistorical records
Preserved accounts of the past
news reports · documentaries · nonfiction · eyewitness accounts · journalism
story, ghost, stories, ghostly, storybook, ghosts, storyteller, storyline, storytelling