Ghost Stories Coloring Pages
Grab a flashlight and get comfortable. These are the ghost stories people have been telling around campfires, at sleepovers and on long car rides for generations, some newer, some hundreds of years old. Start with the friendly ones below, and work your way down if you're brave enough to make it to the bottom.
Jump to: Cute Ghost Stories | Spooky Ghost Stories | Scary Ghost Stories
Cute Ghost Stories
Not every ghost story needs to be scary. These ones are friendly, or at least more silly than scary
Casper the Friendly Ghost
Casper is the friendliest ghost you'll ever meet. All he really wants is to make some friends, which is tricky when everyone keeps running away screaming...
Dem Bones (American Folklore)
Long ago, the pirate Captain Kidd buried a fortune in treasure near a grove of pine trees on the New Jersey coast, then sailed off before anyone could catch him. Treasure hunters dug up that whole grove looking for it and never found a single coin. But on certain dark nights, folks say Captain Kidd's crew still comes back for a party.
A ghostly ship made of shadows sails up and drops anchor offshore. Out climb Dem Bones, a crew of glowing skeleton pirates in cocked hats and tattered coats, cutlasses swinging at their belts. The first mate even brings along his skeleton parrot. They haul their old treasure chests onto the sand, light a bonfire, and get the whiskey and the fiddle going.
Then the real fun starts. Dem Bones sing, dance and tell tall tales about every ship they ever captured, until the beach is one big rattling, glowing party. Some of them try on jewels from the chests. Some toss gold coins back and forth like a game of catch. Right before the sun comes up, they pack it all away, climb back into their boats and sail off into the dark, until the next time they feel like celebrating.
The Canterville Ghost
Sir Simon de Canterville has been haunting his family's manor for over 300 years, and he's genuinely great at it: he can rattle chains, groan from the walls, and conjure a bloodstain that won't scrub out of the floor. The problem is the new tenants. An American family has just moved in, and instead of running screaming, they offer him a bottle of stain remover and go back to breakfast. For a ghost with centuries of reputation on the line, that might be the scariest thing that's happened to him yet...
Canterville Ghost coloring pages
Annie of Mary King's Close (Edinburgh Ghost Story)
Under the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland, there's a hidden row of old rooms and lanes called Mary King's Close. The city was built right over the top of it long ago.
In 1992, a visitor who said she could sense spirits walked into one of the small rooms and told the guide there was a little girl in the corner. Her name was Annie, and she had lost her doll.
Visitors have been leaving her presents ever since. Today the corner is piled with dolls, teddy bears, toy cars and sweets from people all over the world.
Guides say Annie has never frightened anyone.
The Grey Lady of Hampton Court (English Palace Ghost)
Hampton Court Palace is full of old ghost stories, and most of them are sad or spooky. But there's one ghost the palace staff always smile about: the Grey Lady.
She was Sybil Penn, who looked after the young King Edward VI when he was a little boy. Sybil was kind and loyal, and she stayed at the palace for years. Hundreds of years later, people say she still hasn't left.
Visitors and staff have told of a quiet lady in a grey gown drifting through the old rooms, always calm and never in a hurry.
She never frightens anyone. The Grey Lady is just keeping an eye on things, the way a good nurse always does.
Spooky Ghost Stories
A little eerie, a little sad, and a couple of them just might make you jump.
Heads up: these ones are quite spooky.
The Whistling Lad (Scottish Folklore)
In Scottish folklore, the Whistling Lad is a ghost known for his eerie whistling in lonely places. If you heard that whistle drifting across the hills, it was a warning to watch your step...
The Hand on the Shoulder
A boy once had a no good, very bad day... the kind where everything goes wrong and there's nobody around who understands. His mom was busy with something, rushing around the house and completely ignoring him.
He tried calling his grandma, the way he always did when he felt miserable and just wanted a hug (and a cookie), but the phone just rang and rang.
That night he lay in bed still feeling awful, and that's when he felt it: a hand, on his shoulder. An old wrinkly hand! Ack!!
His heart jumped straight into his throat and he yanked the covers up over his head, holding as still as he possibly could.
But then a familiar smell reached him through the dark, chocolate chip cookies just like his grandma always made. And so soft he almost missed it, he could hear her humming his favourite song, the one she hummed every single time she tucked him in when he was little.
All the fear melted right out of him. What was left was the warmest, safest feeling he'd ever had, like being wrapped up in every hug she'd ever given him at once.
The next morning at breakfast, his mom sat down across from him with red eyes and told him his grandma had passed away the day before, right around the time he must have felt that hand on his shoulder.
The Banshee (Irish Folklore)
There was once a family in Ireland so old that the banshee knew their name. She didn't haunt their house or chase anyone through the dark. She just waited, somewhere out past the fen, for the nights when one of them was close to passing.
On those nights, a thin cry would drift in over the fields, rising and falling like the wind had learned how to grieve. The family would go quiet and hold each other close, because they knew what that sound meant. Someone they loved had very little time left.
To this day, descendants of that family say they still listen for it, hoping that whenever the wail comes again, it finds them all safely together.
The White Lady (European Castle Legend)
In old castles all across Europe, servants and guards have told the same story for hundreds of years. On quiet moonlit nights, a lady in a long white gown walks the grounds, her hair streaming out behind her as if she were walking against a strong wind, even when the air is perfectly still.
Nobody agrees on who she was. Some say she was a princess who never got to marry the person she loved. Some say she was the lady of the castle, still watching over the family that lived there.
What everyone does agree on is that she isn't there to scare anyone. She only appears when something important is about to happen to the family, a birth, a wedding or a farewell. Guards who saw her would nod politely and let her pass, and then they'd go to tell the family to get ready.
Draugen (Norse Ghostly Sailors)
Along the coast of Norway, fishermen used to tell each other to listen close on foggy nights. If a boat was lost at sea and never got a proper burial, its sailors didn't always stay down in the water. Some rose back up as the Draugen, still dripping, still wrapped in strands of seaweed, doomed to wander the shoreline they never made it home to.
Sailors said you could hear the Draugen before you saw him, a low moaning carried in on the waves, and that the sound meant a storm was coming, or worse, that someone else's boat wasn't coming back either.
Even now, when the fog rolls in thick along that coast, some fishermen still find a reason to head in early rather than wait and see who's moaning out there in the mist.
Draugen (ghostly sailor) coloring pages
The Sailor's Widow (Seaside Ghost Tale)
In a fishing village by the sea, a woman used to climb down to the shore every evening to watch for her husband's ship. He had promised to be home before the autumn storms. The storms came, and the ship didn't.
She kept coming to the shore anyway, long after everyone else had stopped hoping. She wove herself a crown of seaweed and shells so he would know her from far away, and she stood in the waves up to her knees, then her waist, watching the horizon.
One night the tide came in and she was gone. Nobody found her, only a few shells scattered along the sand.
The fishermen say she still comes out on moonlit nights, a tall pale shape with seaweed in her hair and the sea swirling around her feet. She doesn't call out or chase anyone. She just stands and watches the water for a sail.
If you see her, they say, don't wave or call. Just look out at the sea with her for a moment. Some nights, the tide goes out a little earlier after that, as if the sea were trying to bring somebody home.
Yūrei (Japanese Folklore)
In Japan, people say a spirit can only truly rest once it's been properly honoured and remembered. A yūrei is what happens when that doesn't happen, a soul caught between worlds, unable to move on until whatever's holding it here gets put right.
You'd know one if you saw her. Long black hair hanging loose, a white burial kimono, and arms held out limp in front of her like she's not quite controlling them anymore. Look down, and in the old paintings, there's often nothing there at all where her feet should be, just a trail of mist fading into the ground.
Most yūrei aren't looking for trouble. They're looking for the one thing left undone, and once it's finished, the stories say they finally drift away for good.
The Rusalka (Slavic Folklore)
In the old villages of Russia and Ukraine, children were taught one rule about summer: don't go near the river alone after dark. That's when the rusalki come out.
A rusalka is the spirit of a young woman who drowned and was never properly laid to rest. She rises from the reeds with her long hair loose and dripping, wearing a crown of water plants because it's the only one she has left. In the moonlight she looks like any girl standing in the shallows, but she doesn't blink, and the water never seems to ripple around her.
Some rusalki only want company. They sing from the riverbank, and anyone who follows the song too close to the edge may find a cold hand pulling them in.
The villagers had ways to stay safe. They wove wreaths and floated them downstream for the rusalki, and they kept sprigs of bitter wormwood in their pockets, because the spirits hated the smell. And if you ever do hear singing from the reeds, the old advice is simple: turn around and walk home.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker (Classic Urban Legend)
Drive down enough lonely roads at night, and sooner or later you'll hear this one. A driver spots someone waiting by the roadside, soaked from the rain, and offers them a ride. The hitchhiker settles into the back seat and gives an address a few towns over.
Partway there, the driver glances in the mirror to ask a question, and the back seat is empty. No sound of a door opening. Just an empty seat where someone was sitting moments ago.
Shaken, the driver finds the address anyway, just to be sure. Whoever answers the door only sighs and says it's happened before. The person they're describing died on that very road, years ago, and never quite stopped trying to get home.
Legend of Sleepy Hollow (American Folktale)
When darkness falls and the wind stirs the old trees, the Headless Horseman thunders out from the churchyard on his black steed, and any traveler caught on the road after dark had better ride fast...
Legend of Sleepy Hollow coloring pages
The Golden Arm (English and American Campfire Tale)
There was once a man whose wife had just one treasure in the world: an arm made of solid gold. When she passed away, he could only afford to bury her in her plain dress, gold arm and all.
He tried to let it go. He really did. But late one stormy night, the thought of all that gold got the better of him, and he crept out to the graveyard with a shovel.
He'd barely started home with the arm tucked under his coat when a voice came rolling in on the wind behind him. "Whooo's got my golden arm?" He walked faster. The voice got closer. "Whooo's got my golden arm?"
He ran the rest of the way home, dove under the covers, and thought he was finally safe, until a voice right next to his ear whispered, "You've got it!"
The Lady in the Rose Garden (Haunted Garden Tale)
Behind an old stone house, there's a garden where the roses bloom long after every other flower has given up for the year. The new owners found that strange, but the neighbours only shrugged. The roses had always done that.
The gardener who came to prune them one autumn evening noticed something stranger. Every rose was wet, and the drops sliding off the petals looked dark in the moonlight. He told himself it was only dew. Then he saw a pale shape standing between the bushes, long hair hanging straight down. She didn't look at him. She just stood there, the thorns crept closer around her hem.
The old story says she planted that garden for someone who promised to come home and never did. She still waits among the roses, and she still doesn't like it when anyone cuts one.
The gardener finished his pruning the next morning in broad daylight. He's never cut a single rose after sunset since.
Scary Ghost Stories
Beware: these stories are properly scary.
The Girl with the Yellow Ribbon (American Campfire Tale)
There was a girl who always wore a ribbon tied around her neck, a neat golden bow, and she never took it off, not for swimming, not for sleeping. The boy who grew up next door to her fell for her anyway, ribbon and all, and one day he finally asked why she never took it off. "Not yet," she told him. He asked again when they got married. "Not yet." He asked again years later, grey-haired and comfortable together, and every single time, she gave him the same two words.
Finally, on the last night of her life, she took his hand and told him he could untie it now. His fingers trembled pulling the bow loose, mostly because after a lifetime of waiting, he still wasn't sure he wanted to know. The ribbon slipped away... and her head rolled gently off her shoulders and into his lap.
He never did find out why it had stayed on so long. He only knew that whatever had been keeping her together, letting it go meant letting her go too.
Bloody Mary (Sleepover Legend)
Every sleepover has that one dare: turn off the lights, stand in front of the bathroom mirror, and say "Bloody Mary" three times.
Nobody agrees on exactly who she was. Some say a woman wronged long ago. Some say a witch. Some say she's just whatever you're afraid might be standing behind you in the dark. What everyone agrees on is what's supposed to happen next: the glass cracks, a pale face appears behind your own reflection, and she doesn't let go of the mirror easily.
Most people who try it just end up standing in an empty bathroom, laughing nervously at their own reflection. But every sleepover has one friend who swears, to this day, that they saw something move.
La Llorona (Mexican Folklore)
All across Mexico and the American Southwest, kids are told to come straight home before dark, especially if the way home runs past a river. That's where La Llorona walks. Her name means "the weeping woman," and she wears a long white dress, soaked at the hem, with her long hair loose and tangled.
Long ago she was a young mother who loved her two children more than anything. Then, in one terrible moment of anger and heartbreak, she lost them to the river, and in most versions it was her own doing. She searched the water for the rest of her life, and she's been searching ever since.
So if you're ever near a river at night and hear a woman sobbing "¡Ay, mis hijos!" ("Oh, my children!"), don't go to see who it is. They say she can't tell whose children are whose anymore.
The Not Deer (Appalachian Folklore)
A boy once stayed out way past curfew on Halloween night, and by the time he hopped on his bike to pedal home, the streets had gone dark and quiet in that way they only do once trick-or-treating is over. Partway home, he spotted a deer standing at the edge of someone's yard, watching him go by. Nothing strange about that. Deer wandered into the neighbourhood all the time.
A few blocks later, he saw another one. Or maybe the same one. It stood very still, the way deer do, and he told himself that was all it was. Just a deer.
He didn't know why his stomach disagreed.
Then he saw it a third time, closer now, standing right at the edge of the streetlight where he could almost make it out properly. And something in him, somewhere far below the part of his brain that names things deer or not deer, understood all at once that it wasn't one. He couldn't have explained how he knew. He just knew, the way you know a sound is wrong before you've figured out what made it.
He pedalled harder. He didn't look back, because some part of him understood that looking back was exactly what it wanted. The feeling of being watched pressed in closer with every turn of the pedals, all the way down his own street, right up until he saw his mom standing in the porch light with the front door open, looking out for him.
He dropped his bike in the yard and ran. He hit her so hard it was almost a tackle, pushing her back through the doorway as he went, and he didn't feel safe again until he heard the door click shut behind them both.
Greyfriars Kirkyard (Scottish Ghost Story)
In the middle of Edinburgh, Scotland, behind an iron fence, there's an old graveyard called Greyfriars Kirkyard. People come from all over the world to walk through it, and some of them come hoping to be scared.
Its most famous ghost belongs to Sir George Mackenzie, a harsh judge who was buried there in 1691. For over 300 years his tomb was left in peace. Then, in 1998, someone broke into it. Ever since, visitors have told of strange scratches, sudden bruises and a cold, heavy feeling near his tomb. Some people even faint on the path outside.
Not every ghost there is angry. Some say a pale figure with a crown of thistles drifts between the gravestones at night, sad and lonely, and never goes near the living. And the graveyard has its own famous loyal ghost story too: a little dog named Bobby, who guarded his owner's grave for fourteen years and never left.
The guides say that if you visit at night, it's polite to whisper and to leave everything just as you found it.
The Monkey's Paw (English Short Story, 1902)
An old soldier once brought home a strange souvenir: a shriveled monkey's paw, said to grant its owner three wishes. He warned the family who bought it from him. Fate doesn't like being tampered with, he said, and wishes always come true in ways you don't expect.
The family who owned it next wished for enough money to pay off their house. The money arrived the very next day, as a payment for their son's death in an accident at the factory where he worked.
Grieving and desperate, the mother begged for a second wish: to have her son back. Something did come knocking at the door that night. But by then, the father had already used the third and final wish to send it away again, before anyone opened the door to see what had come home.