You're the only one home. A storm has been raging outside your window all evening. The lights in your house flicker off, then on, then off again--for good. You fumble in the drawer for a flashlight, but you can't find one. You feel around in the cupboard for a candle, but there are none there. You pick up the phone. The line is dead.

The lightning outside flashes an eerie glow throughout the room. In the split second of the lightning flash, you see someone--or something--at the top of your stairs heading down. You're paralyzed for a minute. The thing moves closer. It's now at the bottom of the stairs. You turn and run for the front door. You turn the knob, but somehow, the front door is jammed. You think about heading to the back door--but the thing is between you and the back door. It's getting closer, closer. You reach for the knob one more time, praying that the door will open. The thing is almost to you now, its arms outstretched. You turn the knob. Miraculously the door opens. You run outside, slamming the door behind you. You've barely escaped from something so unspeakable, that you can hardly imagine what it would have been like if it had caught you!

You probably know how this feels. Everyone has been terrified by something at sometime. Usually, whatever you are afraid of isn't real--it's a product of your imagination. You may have seen a scary movie that started you thinking about scary things. Or you may have read a frightening book that made you jumpy. But usually you get scared because you've let your imagination run wild. And there's really nothing wrong with that. After all, your imagination can do wonderful things--and every once in a while, it scares you. That's part of its job.

The stories in this book are products of my imagination. None of them actually happened. (That I'm aware of.) Most of them could never really happen. Could they? But scary stories work best if they sound as if they are true. If you are sharing these with your friends, or telling them around a campfire or your next slumber party, you may want to change them a bit so that they sound as if they happened to you.

The couple in Killer Cactus could be your older sister and her husband. The incident at the camp in the story Horror Weekend could have happened at your very own summer camp. And Dead Man's Hill could even be a hill in your town. Don't be afraid to change some of the details to make some of the stories even scarier. Don't be afraid to let your imagination take these stories in totally different directions.

Many of the stories in this book are about things that have scared me at different times in my life. And as I wrote these stories, I discovered something wonderful about scary stories. Writing stories about them made them less scary! (Almost as if we conjured up the whole scary stuff ourselves.) You might want to try to write some scary stories yourself. Pick something that you're really scared of and then write a story about it and see what happens. You might even want to read the story out loud to your friends to see if you can scare them. You may even want to put together a whole book of your own scary stories.

Just remember, being scared isn't so bad. In fact, it's kind of fun. So dim the lights in your room. Pull your covers up under your chin. And open this book--if you dare. And remember to tell yourself--it's only a story, it's only a story.