When Nobody's Home: 15 Baby-Sitting Tales Of Terror

by Judith Gorog

A collection of short chilling tales follows the experiences of fifteen baby sitters who find more than their share of challenges when they accept seemingly routine sitter jobs. Reprint.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Short Stories, YA Horror, Teen

112 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Born in 1938 in Madison, Wisconsin, Judith Gorog grew up in Pennsylvania, Texas, and California before moving with her mother and stepfather to Wiesbaden, Germany, where she attended an American Air Force high school. After the suburbs, Gorog loved living in a European city, and spent her time exploring the beautiful streets, visiting coffeehouses, and taking horseback-riding lessons. In addition to the local culture, there was an American library with thousands of books in English for her to read. Gorog returned to the United States for college, attending San Jose State College and graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1961. She received her master's degree from Mills College in 1963.

After working for many years as an editor and technical writer, Gorog published her first children's book, A Taste for Quiet and Other Disquieting Tales, in 1982. Since then she has made a name for herself with her “spooky” stories and has published novels and picture books in addition to collections. Gorog and her Hungarian-born husband lived in Italy for a year, and have traveled to Peru, Japan, and Hungary. They have three children and a number of pets. Gorog speaks German, French, Italian, and Hungarian as well as English. When she is not writing, she counts among her many interests cooking, skiing, hiking, swimming, people-watching, and visiting hardware stores.

Reviews

[Angie · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title is completely inaccurate. There are no tales of terror here. The short stories are very unevenly written - some are ok, some are plain awful. There are only a couple of mildly scary ones. And some aren't even about babysitting. I am sure there are much better horror collections out there.

[Azul Huerta · Rating 5 out of 5]

*****spoiler alert *****



Have you ever thought of being a baby-sitter? To go in to a stranger’s house and in some cases not come out at all. You’d think that it’s only a day or some hours but do you know what can happen in those minutes days or hours ? Perhaps you will never know why. My book’s genre is creepy and mysterious My opinion of the book was that it was really exiting and really scary.

The type of conflict in my book is person vs. person because the kids kill themselves and the baby sitter doesn’t know. My story takes place in the Thompson’s mansion.

Sarah’s mom wanted Sarah to baby sit but Sarah didn’t want to Baby-sit because even the thought of babysitting freaked her out because she couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping in a strangers home so her mom finally convinced because there was a dog and with the dog was all she needed to be ok so she went then she baby sat them for the whole day and when it was morning she found the two kids and their dog hanging from the showerhead.

The structure of the book was really well made and really creepy. Why did the two twins kill themselves and the dog? I thought the ending of the book was really satisfying and it leaves you with that question “why?”. I had predicted that she baby-sit for two ghost kids but it turned out that they were crazy people.

I would give this story five stars because it explains every detail of the book and gives you a creepy feeling.
I think people who enjoy getting creped out and getting shocked. So would you baby sit for a couple of days or hours?

[Uma L · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Nobody’s Home Fifteen Baby-sitting tales of Terror by Judith Gorog, was a creepy book. I liked this book because it sent shivers down my spine. It also had a lot of creativity. I think my favorite character in this book was the character in the chapter; double pay. I liked her because she had common sense. She would do everything that I would do and more. She tried everything for the baby to make it stop crying. My favorite quote would be “Poor little guy. He was the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen,” I liked this quote because it was the funniest one. It was funny but I kinda felt bad for it. My least favorite character was Sasha. She had absolutely no common sense. She would put her hand down for the family dog to lick it. She felt it was reassuring. I liked the point of view in the book it was several stories combined into one. I enjoyed this book and will read it again.

[Lizzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were cute stories, not too scary but fun little reads.

[Paul Lê · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was well written and sometimes macabre, but it also wasn't too thrilling. Some stories barely had anything to do with babysitting or horror.

[Alyssa Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. It's one book made up of 15 little mysterious stories about made up and possibly real baby sitting stories. My favorite story was called, "Life as a 900 Number," which was about a boy who called 900 numbers whenever he had a baby sitter over. The last time he made the 900 calls, on the 900th call, he was hit by a wave of terrible words that led to a miserable ending.

[Lizzie M]

it was a very good book and i recommend this book 2 everyone who likes thriller books