Why Do Children Love Scary Stories?

Danny English
Jul 14
8 min read

The Role of Fear in Traditional Storytelling

Earlier in June, I spent three days telling stories at a children's eco festival. Each day we gathered beneath the broad canopy of an ancient oak whose branches stretched generously across a meadow of long summer grass. Throughout those days we wandered through stories of swallows, nettles, hares and trees; tales that invited children to notice the landscape around them with a little more care and a little more curiosity.

On the second afternoon, a boy sitting quietly amongst the grasses raised his hand.

"Have you got a scary story?"

I smiled.

"Not exactly," I replied. "But I do know one with a rather menacing character."

The story was There Stands the Oak, from my book Tales of the Timeless Forest.

Looking back to when I first wrote it, I remember wanting children to see oaks differently. Facts alone rarely take root in the imagination; stories do. My hope was never simply that children would remember that oaks support more life than any other native tree. I hoped that, years later, they might pause beside an old oak, run their fingers across his deeply furrowed bark and remember a story.

The tale follows a group of children who stray beyond the safety of the forest and find themselves pursued across the long grass by the Harandypap, a mysterious creature said to feed upon small and medium-sized mammals. Just as all hope seems lost, an old tree stump calls for the children to climb aboard before growing into a mighty oak, lifting them safely beyond the creature's reach. The Harandypap claws desperately at the trunk, leaving deep scars in the bark before finally giving up. The elders later explain that every oak bears those same marks so that children, wherever they wander, will always recognise the tree that offers refuge.

I chose to tell that story because of where we were.

We were sitting beneath an ancient oak, surrounded by exactly the kind of long grass in which the Harandypap was said to dwell. One of the great joys of oral storytelling is that stories do not simply happen in a landscape; for a little while they become part of it. I knew that, once the story began, every movement of the breeze through the grasses would invite the imagination to wander just a little further than before.

It happened exactly as I had hoped.

The meadow became more than a meadow. Children who had been lying lazily amongst the wildflowers edged a little closer. Conversations faded. Eyes widened. Even those who had struggled to keep still became utterly absorbed. For half an hour, the landscape and the story seemed woven together. The long grass held possibility, and the old oak beneath whom we sat became something more than a tree.

Near the end of the story, the boy who had asked for a scary tale suddenly sat bolt upright.

"Is that story true?"

It was a question that stayed with me.

As the festival drew to a close, I asked the children which story they had enjoyed most.

Almost every one of them gave the same answer.

"The one with the Harandypap."

The question stayed with me on the journey home.

Why are children so often drawn towards stories with frightening characters?

A few days later I carried that question into our monthly Story Tribe gathering, an online circle of storytellers who meet to share tales, ideas and reflections. As often happens when storytellers gather, nobody hurried towards an answer. Instead, the question wandered gently around the circle. We spoke about childhood memories, favourite folktales, monsters we had loved and stories we had once listened to from behind the safety of a cushion. Like all good storytelling conversations, the evening left me with more questions than answers, but also with the growing sense that storytellers have been quietly wrestling with this mystery for a very long time.

Curious to widen the conversation further, I posed the same question to those who follow my storytelling work online.

Did you enjoy scary stories as a child? If so, why?

Reading through the responses felt rather like listening to another storytelling circle. Many remembered the delicious anticipation of not quite knowing what would happen next. Others spoke about hiding behind a cushion whilst insisting that the storyteller carried on. Some remembered the satisfaction of seeing courage rewarded, or the relief that came when good finally overcame evil.

Again and again, however, one thought kept returning.

The ending mattered.

The frightening journey needed to lead somewhere. It needed to offer hope, justice, wisdom or safety. People rarely remembered frightening stories simply because they had been frightened. They remembered them because of where those stories had taken them.

Long before I had opened a psychology journal, people were already describing, in their own words, something the research would later help explain.

Searching for answers, I came across the work of psychologist Mathias Clasen, whose research explores what he calls recreational fear. His studies suggest that most children actively seek opportunities to experience manageable fear through ghost stories, chasing games, Halloween and other forms of playful danger, provided they know they are fundamentally safe (Clasen et al., 2025). Other researchers describe an emotional "sweet spot" where fear awakens excitement without becoming overwhelming (Andersen et al., 2021), while Gilmore and Campbell found that children experiencing higher levels of anxiety were significantly less likely to enjoy frightening stories, suggesting that fear is pleasurable only when it is safely held (Gilmore & Campbell, 2007).

I was fascinated by the psychology.

It explained why children enjoy fear.

It did not explain what fear was for.

That answer, I began to suspect, had been waiting in stories all along.

As the question continued to unfold, I found myself in the company of folklorists who have spent their lives listening to stories. Reading their work felt less like discovering a new idea and more like recognising something storytellers have quietly known for centuries.

Jack Zipes argues that fairy tales have never simply entertained us. They help each generation negotiate the realities of life, transforming fear into something that can be approached, explored and understood rather than avoided (Zipes, 2012). Marina Warner makes a similar observation, suggesting that the strange beings who inhabit folklore are less concerned with frightening us than with giving shape to uncertainty itself. Jenny Greenteeth, the boggart, the kelpie, the giant and countless other figures embody the mysteries that every generation must learn to live alongside (Warner, 1994).

Brian Boyd takes the idea further still, proposing that storytelling itself may have evolved because it allowed our ancestors to rehearse life's challenges before encountering them in reality (Boyd, 2009). Stories became safe simulations in which courage, judgement and compassion could be practised without paying the full cost of failure. Developmental psychologist Paul Harris reaches a strikingly similar conclusion from another direction. His work shows that children move with remarkable ease between imagination and reality, allowing imagined experiences to shape how they understand the real world (Harris, 2000).

As I read their work, my thoughts kept returning to the boy beneath the oak.

"Is that story true?"

Perhaps he was not simply asking whether the Harandypap existed.

For half an hour he had willingly stepped into a world where an old tree could speak, where a meadow might conceal an ancient creature and where courage could quite literally help a tree grow. Before stepping back into the ordinary world, he wanted to know where one ended and the other began.

Like many storytellers, I have discovered that stories often know more than their tellers.

Looking back to when I first wrote There Stands the Oak, I realise I instinctively gave the Harandypap an important job. At the time I doubt I could have explained it so clearly. I simply knew that the story needed him. Only now, after sitting beneath that oak, listening to the reflections of Story Tribe, reading the thoughts of people online and wandering through the work of psychologists and folklorists alike, do I begin to understand why.

He was never there simply to frighten children.

He existed because every worthwhile journey needs uncertainty.

Without challenge, courage has little meaning.

Without mystery, there is nothing to discover.

Perhaps that is why frightening stories have survived for so long.

Traditional storytellers understood something that modern research is only beginning to describe. Fear, held within the safe boundaries of story, allows children to practise approaching the unknown. They discover that monsters can be faced, darkness can be entered and uncertainty can be endured. More importantly, they discover that they need not face those things alone. A trusted storyteller is always there to guide them through.

Reading the comments from my online community, I was struck by how often people returned to the ending of the story rather than its frightening moments. They remembered the relief of resolution, the triumph of courage, the comfort of justice restored or the quiet reassurance that everything would be alright in the end.

That seems important.

The stories people remembered most fondly were not the ones that left them frightened.

They were the ones that carried them safely through fear towards meaning.

Perhaps traditional storytellers have always known that fear, on its own, teaches very little. It is only when the journey ends in meaning that the story finds its way into the heart.

As storytellers, we often imagine that we are simply sharing tales from another time.

Perhaps we are doing something much older than that. Perhaps, for a little while, we are lending children the courage to step into mystery, safe in the knowledge that someone will guide them home again.

When I think back to that afternoon beneath the oak, I realise the question that has stayed with me is no longer the one I expected.