Horror Stories we Used to Tell Each Other as Kids

Laura Kasischke wrote an excellent piece for Huff Post the other day entitled Playground Tales: Fifteen Horror Stories My Classmates Told Me. She is the author of If a Stranger Approaches, a collection of short stories chronicling the way in which playground tales can change. In the Huff Post article she writes a list about the horrifying tales that she'd heard as a child. So I loved this idea and promptly contacted my friends and family for their own memories!

1. My best friend told me a story about her older cousins. One of her cousins brought home a wee-gee board. They started to talk to what they believed to be a spirit. Sat around the wee-gee board they asked for proof that they were really talking to a spirit and so the spirit answered that they should go check 'the mirror' (there was a mirror at the top of the stairs, a huge one) they walked around the house checking all the mirrors and when they reached the bottom of the stairs the mirror slipped off the wall and smashed down the stairs. 
2. The Three Fingered Doll: One day the father of a family buys his little girls an old antique doll. The doll's left hand has only three fingers. Each night a family member dies from scratches all over their faces... three scratches. Eventually they figure out that it is the doll killing them all, but it's pretty much too late.
3. Bloody Mary: I was told that a particular bathroom in our school was haunted by the ghost of Queen 'Bloody' Mary. If we went to the bathroom, closed our eyes and stared in to the mirror and say 'Bloody Mary' three times... she would come and slit our throat. Needless to say we never managed to say her name a third time.
4. Our friend told us that his big brother said that one day he was home alone and his parents left the hoover (vacuum) out. He swears that when he went to turn off the hoover he found that it was not plugged in... 
5. We had a super skinny neighbour. My best friend at the time, Rebecca, told me that her mum had told her that she had seen our neighbour eating mice out of bins.
6. Our friend mentioned today that he was told a story when he was a child that he's never forgotten. He was told that a man who lived in a village 'back home' wanted to build an outhouse. He chopped down a tree, and built the outhouse where it had been. One night he went to use the toilet and never came back. The family searched and searched for him. They went to the outhouse and found him there, dead, with his hands and feet turned backwards; killed by a spirit who had lived in the tree.
7. One day my best friend's brother was looking out of the window during a lightning storm. All of a sudden lightning struck the window, hitting her brother, and that is why he wears glasses (yes, she actually did convince me of this story at the ripe old age of 10).
8. A friend of mine was absolutely convinced that her house was haunted by three witches. One witch had just a pair of legs, one witch was a torso, and the third witch was a floating head, and she said that they would stand in her fire place. 
9. When I was a tween the band Incubus was starting to get noticed. One of their songs references 'spontaneous combustion'... there were plenty of stories of family members of teachers and ex-pupils spontaneously-combusting all over the place.
10. I had been told... many, many times, that when I pour boiling water down a sink I should pray, because if I hurt a spirit who is sitting there he may attack me.

I'm intrigued... what stories did you hear from your friends as children? Please leave your comments below, I can't wait to read them!

Props to Huff Post for being awesome and inspiring this post