🕸️ Short Horror Stories 🕸️

The Graveyard Challenge

Several teenage girls went for a sleepover at a friend's house, taking advantage of the fact that the parents were away. When they turned out the lights, they started talking about an old man who had just been buried in a nearby cemetery. It was said that he had been buried alive and could be heard scratching at the coffin, trying to get out.

One of the girls scoffed at the idea, so the others dared her to go visit the grave right there and then. As proof that she had actually gone, she was to drive a wooden stake into the earth of the grave. The girl left and her friends lay waiting for her to return. But the hours went by and their friend failed to materialize. They lay awake, increasingly terrified. Morning came and the girl still had not appeared. So, when the parents came back, they all went down to the cemetery. There they found the girl lying on the grave. Dead. When she had bent down to drive the stake into the ground, she had caught the hem of her skirt. Struggling to get up, she thought the buried man had grabbed her. It was concluded that she died of fright.

[From Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid. The Book of Scary Urban Legends, by Jan Harold Brunvand].