Family Friendly Spooky Poems for Halloween

In the spirit of the season, I've decided to share some spooky, children friendly poems I've written. Enjoy! Oh, and go all the way down to the bottom for the cover reveal of the new book featuring my scary YA story "Mother's Night Out", coming out in November.

Noises in the Dark
By D. G. Driver
 
Shock!
In a single instant
I spring up from my sleep
Something out there woke me
From my slumber so deep
 
Darkness grips the room in terror
An eerie glow from under the door
What’s that?  Did I hear a creak?
Is something moving across the floor?
 
Blankets pulled up to my chin
Protect me from my fear
Lying still as marble
A movement might beckon it near
 
“What’s out there?” My mind screams
I wrench in sweat and tears
It sees me in this state
Through beady eyes it peers
 
“Help me!”  I whine in frustration
Nothing comes in reply
It’s just torturing me
Before I actually die
 
CRASH! 
What was that?
I cover my head and squirm
The rational possibilities:
The dog?  The cat?  A worm?
 
Breath exhales at length
Another inhale takes forever
Close my eyes, forget it
It will strike whenever
 
I throw my teddy bear across the room
My hero gliding through the night
He soars across and hits the wall
Turning on the light
 
Nothing’s there
That I can see
Creeping around
Tormenting me
 
But just to be careful
I’ll keep the light on
For whatever was here
Now seems to be gone
 
And if that doesn’t work
I’ll cry out for Mom.

Pet Monster
 By Donna Getzinger

 
 He creeps
 He crawls
He stumbles and falls
 This little creature of mine
 
He sneaks
 He stalks
He squeaks as he walks
 But I like him just fine 

Sometimes he’s wicked
Sometimes he’s mean
And often he makes
My mother scream 


Mostly, though, he stays in my room
 Hiding under the bed
 I’d show him to you, 
But you might get scared
 Of my pet monster named Fred.

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This next rhyme is one I made up when I used to teach drama and dance classes at elementary schools and after school programs. It is a game where the students sit in a circle. They pass a small pumpkin around, like "Hot Potato", while reciting the poem. Whoever is holding the poem on the final word get to act out a very dramatic (and hopefully over-the-top) death scene. Naturally, that person is now "out", and the game repeats until there is one final survivor. My students always had fun playing this.

The poem is copyrighted, but please feel free to play the game with your students or children on Halloween. Have a blast with this game.  Expect some Oscar-deserving death scenes and a lot of giggling corpses.  For a prize, let the last survivor keep the pumpkin.

Yeah, don't actually play this game with lit up pumpkins...

Pass the Pumpkin
by D. G. Driver

Pass the Pumpkin, pass it fast.
Who knows how long this song will last?
 
The headless horseman’s coming soon
He comes by the light of the Halloween moon
 
If he sees you with his head
You’re gonna wish that you were dead
 
1,2,3,4
Is that him knocking at the door?
 
5,6,7,8
Oh no!  It’s too late!!!!!

I hope you enjoyed all that silliness. I don't write poems often, so there you go. What I do write are novels and short stories, and this has been my year of getting stories published in anthologies. My third one of the year is coming out on November 17th (and it's my understanding that the ebook version will be FREE).

Two or three of you who've been following me for a while may have read my scary baby horror story "Mother's Night Out" when I had it up on Wattpad. Well, I've pulled it off of that page, spruced it up a bit and had it accepted into a real-life book called Fantastic Creatures. All the stories in this book are free of graphic content and bad language and are rated PG-13 or younger. My story is one of the few scary ones with a bit of blood, but it's perfectly appropriate for my usual YA readers. Below is the cover for this wonderful, fun book, and if you click on it, you can read the little bit about werewolves I wrote for their blog. Make sure you follow me on Facebook or Twitter to get updates about when the book is released.

Click here to get to the Fellowship of Fantasy website

Oh hey! Still with me?
Just reminding you, that while I don't have a Halloween-ish horror book out right now, I do still have a great ghost story, Passing Notes, selling for only 99 cents.

I'm also hosting a Goodreads Giveway for a signed copy of my eerie YA novel Whisper of the Woods about a girl trapped 170 feet up in a tree by an ancient tree spirit. The giveaway ends at midnight on October 30th, so don't wait.

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