Classic Campfire Stories: Forty Spooky Tales

by William W. Forgey

Need a good scary story to tell to youngsters—or to anyone, young or old, who wants a little fright before going off to sleep in the great outdoors? Nothing goes better with gooey s’mores and a glowing campfire than a good ghost story, and this collection of Doc Forgey’s best scary classics and frightening folktales will send shivers up anyone’s spine.
Classic Campfire Stories includes forty classic stories of adventures and ghosts, all fun and easy to remember and retell.
Read about:
The Valley of the Blue Mist
The Human Hand
La Cucaracha Mine
The Partner
The Mackenzie River Ghost
The Death of the Old Lion
The Ice Walker only in 1985 version
The Message
The Haunting of the House on the Ridge

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Short Stories

374 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2017

Reviews

[Virginia Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full YouTube review: https://youtu.be/lLvKs27nmDI

I'm honestly surprised how much I enjoyed this. I went into it without any high hopes or expectations but left pleasantly surprised and a bit creeped out at some of the stories. Not in a bad way, mind you, but just the right amount to make your skin crawl.

Normally, I would review each story individually but since there's so many and I would be repeating myself way too much, I'm going to make it easy and review this book as a whole.

I liked the overall wilderness/camping themes and settings. Not every story literally took place outdoors but there were a good handful in which the characters stayed in cabins, went exploring via canoe, and tracked down mysterious footprints in the snow. Just imagining sitting around a crackling fire, surrounded by nothing but untamed wilderness, a twig snapping from behind, an owl hooting- and listening to someone tell these stories just did me in. This is the perfect source to have on hand if you want to give your captive audience a good scare before bed. (The cockroach one really got to me). I've never been camping (indoor girl all the way) so I can only imagine.

I was pleased to find a couple classics as well. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe and Lost Face by Jack London.

The writing style was fun and simple. The stories were told in an engaging way that made them memorable. There was also a story outline after each one so you could memorize the story and retell it. That was a nice touch. The illustrations were nice as well.

My only two dislikes were:
1) language. Altogether, there were maybe five or six words? Still, it was pretty unnecessary.
2) I skipped over two stories because I found them slow starting and hard to get into.

Overall, I really enjoyed this and am very glad I finally got around to reading this. Solid 4-star rating. Fun fact: I bought this last year at the Cracker Barrel I worked at. It was in the camping theme. I would recommend this if you're up for a good, mild scare, in search of a new read for Halloween that isn't all vampires, blood and guts and gross. If you enjoy Folklore, legends, camping, the wilderness...you'll probably like this. Also, if you watch Mr. Ballen on YT- you'll definitely love these!

[John Zirpolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great go-to book. I love reading a couple before we go camping. They are easy to memorize to tell the kids around the fire. Sometimes I add lib a little bit.

[aaron dawson · Rating 1 out of 5]

negative stars ☠️ some of them are maybe fine, but so many are from old white racist men who love colonization & indigenous genocide. not my cuppa tea. i couldn’t finish some of them because they simply infuriated me.

[Kay Peebles · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - I badly wanted to like this book, it is such a cute concept - the formatting is even good, at the end of each story there is a bullet point summary so that you can embellish what you want.

However, that does not make up for the fact that the entire book is drowned in hot racist garbage. I have to HOPE that they are passed down from places before we had higher reasoning, because it's clear that these are all from people who have never met a single non-white person before. The word "savages" is used so often in regard to Native Americans, the only black people are super strong or stupid, and there's even some super fun racism about Vietnamese folks because of the Vietnam war.

Reading this made me sick to my stomach. Genuinely, I wanted to get to the end and just couldn't force myself to do so anymore. Skip this one, they could have sat down and made better stories that don't depend on racism and they just didn't. Sad.

[Christella Esco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in honor of the Halloween holiday. This was a book of mostly older tales that can be told around a campfire or fire pit. Many of them were new to me. The stories weren’t super scary but I guess that would depend on how dramatic one wants to be in telling them. I enjoyed this book.

[Elizabeth Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly creepy!