Table Of Contents 

                            AUTHOR’S NOTE

We all like a good scary story once in a while. The hard part is finding the right kind of scary story for you. If you like demons, artificial intelligence, scarecrows, and more, then this is the right book for you! I promise that this book, filled with scary stories of my own creation, will leave you shivering! I hope you enjoy!

Deven Amaravadi

March, 2024

                          THE GARDEN

    Billy was an old farmer who lived far away from any civilization. He lived on a small farm in the countryside, and he liked it that way! To the townsfolk he was “just an old hermit who doesn't want any attention.”

    One day Billy woke up feeling troubled, “If my wheat doesn't grow soon, I'm done for,” he thought. He decided he would take a stroll through the corn maze to clear his troubled mind, so he grabbed a fresh apple and headed out. The corn would usually give him a sense of peace and serenity but today it gave him chills, like something bad was about to happen! 

    Halfway through the maze’s winding paths, he came

across a pathway that had never been there before, “Huh?” he said out loud. Summoning his courage, he decided to take the new walkway and see what was at the other end. 

    When he found a dead end at the end of the path, he turned around to go back . . . and found a scarecrow right behind him, claw-like hands outstretched! Shaken, Billy took the scarecrow and put it back in its original spot. 

    The next day, Billy went back to the spot where he had seen the path, only to find that it was gone! Turning back to the barn to milk the cows, he started to walk in the opposite direction. SHH! SHH! Billy heard rustling!

    He spun around and saw a scarecrow where the path had been. Looking closer, Billy saw a sign in its gnarled hands. It read, "WE SEE YOU" in big, bold letters. This time Billy was scared! He took the scarecrow, burned it, and scattered the ashes in his cabbage patch. Billy went to sleep that night feeling safe and secure. . . unfortunately, he wasn’t. 

    The next morning Billy realized he hadn’t watered the cabbages in a while, so he took the watering can from the shed and filled it up from the tap on the side of the barn. He walked to the cabbage patch and carefully sprinkled water on each one, then started to walk back to his house for breakfast. But as he walked back to his 

house, he saw a piece of straw sticking out of the dirt, completely upright! He tried to uproot the straw, but it wouldn’t budge. He thought nothing of it and started back to his house. 

    The next time Billy came to water the cabbages, he saw an entire hand was sticking up out of the earth! He tried desperately to pull the straw hand up, but his attempts failed. Each time Billy checked on the hand it seemed to be growing bigger, until an entire scarecrow was lying among the plants!  

    One night, Billy was lying in bed, unable to sleep, when he heard tapping on his bedroom window. RAP!! RAP! Expecting to see a crow, he walked over to his 

window to send it off but instead found a scarecrow outside! He opened the window and shoved the scarecrow off the roof but when he looked down, the scarecrow was gone!

    “I want to get out of here!” Billy screamed. He ran to the door to open it but found that it was locked from the outside! With growing horror Billy realized that he was trapped in his own room. “In the morning everything will be fine,” Billy reassured himself. He clambered back into bed and started to drift off. . .

     It was 3 am and Billy slowly rolled over onto his back and woke up. Opening his eyes, he looked around the room. He felt like he was being watched. He looked to his

left and saw a scarecrow right next to his bed!

    The scarecrow raised a gleaming scythe and brought it down, and for a second it looked like its smile grew even bigger, as everything went black.

                         THE CLOSET

    8-year-old Lizzy was sound asleep in her bed when it happened. Scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch! Lizzy leaped out of bed and sprinted to her dad’s room. She woke him up, and drowsily, he walked down the hall to Lizzy’s room with her.

      They opened the creaky doors . . . and there was nothing there. They both went back to their respective rooms and slept soundly through the night. During school the next morning, Lizzy couldn't stop thinking about the scratching noises she had heard the night before. “It’s just my imagination,” she told herself. 

    When she got off the bus and walked in the door,

she thought she heard muttering in some strange language. “Siiiiiiiasss sasheek revleriiak drechostro!” the voice said.

    She ran up to her room and flung the door open, but the voice was silenced and the only thing she could hear was the clicking of her dad’s typewriter. That night Lizzy stayed up late reading when a red glow filled the room. She decided that she could be brave. “I don’t need Dad for this!” she said aloud.

    She got up and opened the closet doors and found lettering in the strange language she had heard in the afternoon! She got her father and pulled him to the closet where he looked at the door. Lizzy thought she

could see fear flick through her father’s bright blue eyes, like he had experienced it himself!

    Her father had the lettering removed and Lizzy slept normally for the next few nights. Scraaatch Scraaatch. Lizzy woke up, it was Friday in the middle of the night, “Oh no, not again!” she moaned. 

    She got her dad and they looked in the closet. . . to find a deep cavernous hole through the back wall! Her dad was scared, so he installed security cameras, locked doors and boarded up windows, called the police to inspect the house, and had the hole covered in cement!   

“Nothing is getting in without us knowing,” he told Lizzy, and nothing did ever get in over the course of Lizzy’s life.

    But she never slept quite the same for the rest of her life. After all, if the thing found its way in once, couldn’t it find its way in . . . AGAIN?

                               MARCH MADNESS 

    Max couldn’t wait! At the beginning of March his team (the Evergreens) had entered March Madness! Now, here they were, in the last basketball game of the tournament! All that stood in the path of victory were the Axes. They just had to beat them, and they would be the best in the country! 

    A sharp whistle cut through the air as the refs signaled for the game to begin. Fans roared as the Axes immediately grabbed the ball and scored! 

    Suddenly, Max felt a searing pain in his side, and it spread through his body. Abruptly he looked up and saw the ball right in front of him! 

    He watched it soar . . . until it stopped? An Ax had caught the ball in midair! 

    “Montgomery passes to Angelo, oh, oh, Angelo scores!!!” the commentator whooped. As the game continued, Max felt a burning pain in his torso like a white-hot knife! He ignored the sensation and continued to play, but then the Axes scored another point and Max felt that searing pain again, deeper this time and more intense. “Something's wrong,” he whispered to himself.

     Max realized that he wasn’t paying attention. He looked up just as the player called Jackson scored a three-pointer! Three burning waves of agony flowed 

up his body - and he swayed.  And then he understood. Their team’s name was the Evergreens, and the opposing team members were the Axes! He realized what axes do to trees! 

    With Jackson’s three-point shot the Axes win, and the game was over! The buzzer was loud and clear in Max’s mind and two words formed in his field of vision as he slowly faded into agony and darkness. 

GAME. OVER.

            My Cameras are Way too Smart

    “We’ll be upstairs unpacking, Jake,” Mom said. “You can do what you like on your computer while we’re

sorting out your stuff,” Dad added, “Thanks, Dad,” Jake shouted from upstairs. As soon as he got on his computer, he went to I_AM_Watching.com. It was a security app he had downloaded. He could now monitor the house from his computer. He had taken it upon himself to check the footage whenever they came back from a trip, and this was one of those times. He and his mom and dad had just come back from Romania.

    “Clear, clear,” he muttered as he flipped through each screen.

    Seeing that all was well, he switched to his favorite video game. But when the game started to load, he heard a muffled click . . .

    Jake turned around to see if his mom had snuck in to put away laundry but saw no one.

    When he looked back at the screen, he froze. The flickering numbers had been replaced with the words I_Am_WATCHinG. “Wait, isn’t that the name of the . . .” Jake trailed off, he already knew what it was. He went back to the security app and checked. He was right! The name of the app was I_Am_Watching.com! “Wait, what?” he said, “How did those words get into my game?” He 

 shrugged it off and continued to play his game.  Suddenly he realized he was supposed to finish his essay for school! How could he have forgotten?

    He switched over to his partially typed document, an essay on computer viruses and typed the last paragraph and the conclusion. 

    He poked his head into his parent’s room and asked, “Dad, may I print my essay for school?”  

    “Of course, Buddy,” his dad said, still bent over the bulging suitcases.

    “Thanks," Jake said as he dashed up to the printer in the attic. He stopped halfway up the creaky stairs and ran back to get his computer, then ran back up to the 

attic and went over to the printer that sat atop his dad's desk. He went to the top right corner of the screen and pressed the print button. 

    He looked at the printer expectantly as the machine started to make its typical whirring noise. He turned his head back to his computer to look at the finished report . . . and jumped with a yell! 

    The words in the document had turned red and arranged themselves into the shape of a skull! He slammed the computer shut and looked at the printer.

A piece of paper lay in the slot where the paper came out. He picked it up and looked at it. “Oh no,” he whispered in fright. The paper showed a picture of his 

house and below it was all their information! Thirty-Two, Static Lane 01866 read the page. And below that was the most frightening thing of all! A picture of him was next to all the information that had ever been recorded about him! 

Jake Horitsky 

Address: 32 Static Lane 01866. 

Email: Jake_Horitsky9082093@email.com  

Password: Xlovecams8614 

Age: 9, Gender: Male 

Height: 5.6 

Parents: Annabelle “Ann” and Rotu Horitsky 

Birthday: December 13th, 2011