Scary Stories Anyone?: Hauntingly Good Stuff

Well, it is that time again.  Time to break out the spooky tales!

 Therefore it must be time for me to break out the annual spooky story post.

Last year I wrote about what you might want to consider telling to kids.

Just In Time For Halloween: Telling Spooky Tales 2.0

I love a good scary story.  In fact, it is my favorite kind of tale.  Edgar Allen Poe was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid.  I find scary stories delicious when told well.  I like a good jump, and I like to have a good shiver.

Now, let's be clear about this...I don't like scary movies all that much.  Most of the movies that are supposed to be scary are disgusting, and about sensationalism and less about story.

Road Train movie

I also love tales that I don't see coming.  I love sitting in an audience and watching something uncomfortable and creepy unfold through language.  

Carry Sue Ayvar told the chilling tale of Fellipa to a car full of rapt tellers on our way back to our lodgings from the Haunting in the Hills Festival.  The way she had the Bruja Madre  (bruja is witch, and you pronounce it brew-ha) say 'Fellipa' made my spine tingle.  It was very cool.

It was even cooler to realize that the base of this story she knew from Mexico had a core from a Baba Yaga tale from Russia.

Tried to put a source in for this one, but the
site where this picture is cached has a huge
alert on it!  Just had my computer diagnosed!
Enjoy the picture, but don't head to the site.

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Baba Yaga lives in a house which walks around on chicken legs, her gate is decorated with skulls, and she is sometimes depicted with iron teeth.  I absolutely love witch stories.  If you have a chance to hear Carrie Sue tell Fellipa....take it!

One of my new favorite stories to tell is the Boo Hag.

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I've known this story for some time, but only began telling it last year.  I tell it to sixth grade and older.  At the very end of the tale, the Boo Hag is caught without her skin, and she flies out over the swamp in a vain effort to find some place to hide.  Unfortunately, the early morning light strikes her true form and she explodes in mid-air.  The sixth graders often break into spontaneous applause when the Boo Hag is destroyed.


I love witches.  They are my favorite type of scary thing.  When I was a kid I always wanted to be one because they are so powerful.  I wanted magic at my fingertips, and the will to use that power.  I was always a little annoyed that they used their power for evil since I could see so much potential to do amazing things.  Still, every performer knows that it is always way more fun to play the evil character than the good one

Every Halloween

It goes without saying that I have gotten into trouble on numerous occasions with ghosty type stories.  Yes, I've had unhappy phone calls, and parents who demanded to know why I told this or that story.  Luckily, all of this is in my young, impetuous past...so far.  It is October, so there is still time for me to get some of these grumpy calls.

I told Mr. Fox to a group of students almost a decade ago, and the staff and kids loved it, but one of the parents who got the kid version of the tale lost her mind.  Sigh, what are you going to do?

That has not deterred me.  Kids love these tales.  These stories are part of our fascination with the darkness, the unknown, and the things that go bump in the night.  We tell them in a place where kids can go into the darkness, and then come out safe on the other side.  Scary stories are a rite of passage at sleep overs and campfires.  What I find is that there are ways to present them so that they are the fun, spine tingling events they are supposed to be.   In the face of being one phone call away from a ticked off adult, I persevere!


So, I tell spooky tales, witch stories, and a zombie story or two.  Here are the rules of thumb I follow for telling spooky stories to school aged audiences.


1.  Always ask if it is all right.   I'm talking about the administration, not the students.   Just because the students are in eighth grade, does not mean that the community into which you've come is going to think that their precious children can handle something scary.

2.  I always tell the students that the story is kind of scary, medium scary, or very scary.  I have this same rule for hot sauce.  It allows the listener to decide how much they want to participate in the telling, or if they just want to sit there with their fingers in their ears and their eyes shut.

3.  I make sure there is some levity in the tale to cut the fear factor.  I do this so that the kids can release the pressure.  If you give them a place where they can laugh, it lets them decide just how much tension they want to hold in their bodies.  If they are really intense, and they murmur, then you just keep going, if they pierce the bubble and laugh uproariously, then, you know they needed a break.

4.  I try to always make sure that the story is only as scary as the most terrified person in the audience.  I haven't always done this, and it makes for a terrible experience for some kids.  If I see that there are lots of group clusters clutching ,or someone who looks like they need a break, I ease off the scary.  Luckily, lots of scary stuff is just technique, and you can decide how you turn the phrase, how much drippy, squishy, growly bits you want to add, or adjust the tone of your voice, or the rapidity at which you are speaking.


5.  I often let kids vote about what kind of story they want.  Some kids do not want scary tales.  If they tell you they don't want one...listen!  For a group of kids who don't want a scary tale, then even the least scary thing is uncomfortable to them.

Here is the rub for all of it....

6.  Just because the kids and administrators have a good time with the stories, doesn't mean some parent isn't going to call and freak out about the version the kid tells when they get home!

"But, Donna," you might ask, "Why would you continue with this when it could potentially get you in trouble?"

Last week I was at a school in Apex, NC.  I told the 6th grade Morgan and the Pot of Brains, and the Boo Hag.  Between my second and third set of the day, I had a break, so I went into the library.  One of the women passing through the room stopped and stared at me, and then she walked over to where I was sitting.

"Are you the storyteller?"  She had a clipboard and a broad smile.

"Yes."

"I just want to tell you, I am the speech therapist.  I had a kid right after your set for the sixth grade.  He stutters, and he was so excited when he came to me, he couldn't talk.  He was stuttering like crazy.  Then, I got him to calm down and use his techniques.  Do you know, he told me both of your stories with so much detail and so much passion, and he didn't stutter hardly at all.  Normally he just gives me bare bones descriptions because he doesn't like to talk.  I want to thank you for making him love language so much today that he didn't want to stop talking."

So, get out there and have fun with the spine tinglers, the jump tales, the suspenseful stories, and most especially, those lovely, powerful witches!

Happy Spooking!

Storytelling: an On-Ramp to Learning by Sherry Norfolk

Sherry Norfolk

Stories are not one way we make sense of the world—they are the only way we make sense of it.¹

Have you ever heard of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? It’s “a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn.”² In other words (and this excellent metaphor is theirs, not mine), UDL provides an on-ramp for learning. They offer this example: if you build stairs, some people can use them; if you build a ramp, everyone can use it. Awesome!

Being a Storytelling Teaching Artist who works in inclusive and self-contained classrooms, I began to ask myself some questions:

Does storytelling create an on-ramp to learning?

 Is it accessible to everyone?

Does it provide learning experiences that allow every child – regardless of cognitive, language, learning, emotional, physical or behavioral disability – to succeed?   

In order to build that on-ramp, UDL principles encourage us to offer multiple opportunities for Engagement (motivation), Representation (content), and Expression (demonstrating understanding).  

Platypus Puppet

Of course, storytellers have a huge advantage in the Engagement department -- we can address all learning styles (visual, kinesthetic, auditory) at the same time! But is that enough? Usually – but not for every student. For instance, if you’re telling a story about a platypus to a child who is blind, providing a picture of a platypus won’t help him, but a 3-dimensional model such as a stuffed animal or puppet will. When you think about the needs of your audience and adjust accordingly, storytelling provides multiple opportunities for Engagement!

What about Representation? Well, thanks, to Kieran Egan and a lot of neurological research, we know that “stories are not one way we make sense of the world—they are the only way we make sense of it.” 

By presenting content through story, we help students make sense of, process, store and retrieve the information more readily. We can offer students an on-ramp to learning, but we may need to adjust our lesson plan. If our process requires students to do research or write (challenging for students with learning disabilities) or to work in small groups (difficult for children on the autism spectrum), we will need to provide flexible alternatives.  With some forethought, storytelling provides multiple opportunities for Representation!

Providing multiple opportunities for Expression – for demonstrating understanding – is easy when you are working with story! Just think of the many ways that storytelling is defined in our culture: oral telling, print, film, illustration, digital, etc.  Be ready with suggestions – perhaps a student can cartoon his story rather than writing or telling it, or can act it out with a partner, or tell it with props…or Express himself in a dozen different ways!

Link to the article about storytelling and science where I found this cool graphic.

Story is the ONLY way we make sense of the world. Think about how you can use storytelling as an on-ramp for learning for the kids in your world!

1.     Kieran Egan (2004). “The cognitive tools of children’s imagination.” Early Childhood Education, 36 (1), 4-10.

2.     National Center on Universal Design for Learning (http://www.udlcenter.org/)

BIO: Sherry Norfolk is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed storyteller, teaching artist, and author, performing and leading residencies and professional development workshops across the United States and SE Asia. She was a presenter at the 2014 Kennedy Center-VSA Intersections Conference, “Leveling the Playing Field: Storytelling in the Special Needs Classroom,” and for the 2015 Kennedy Center-VSA webinar, “Teach Them to Fly: How Storytelling Gives Primary-age Children with Special Needs Their Wings.”   www.sherrynorfolk.com

Storytelling And Education...Sherry Norfolk is on Deck

The 2015-2016 season has begun!  The schools are open and lots of little tykes and big tykes are back in the classrooms where knowledge will rain down upon them, and if they are lucky, not all of it will slide off and be washed away by the janitors at the end of the day.

I had a rousing week last week in Kentucky and Tennessee working with the Haunting in the Hills Ghost Story Festival.  We filmed a ghost story special for KET, and worked in schools the week before the haunting on Saturday Night!  Mary Hamilton was our sponsor, guide, guru and all around amazing hostess  for the event.  She was brilliant.  if she does this role again next year, then whoever she asks should jump at it.  It was a great amount of fun!

P.S., the next time you are invited to the Wright/Hamilton household for dinner, request that Charles make Meatloaf.  You won't be sorry.

I am not what you'd call a rustic type of girl.......

All week, the park rangers escorted us through the area and introduced us at the schools.  The kids were fun, and loved storytelling.

We stayed in cabins on Pickett State Park.  Beautiful.

One night, right before I went to sleep, I saw a cave cricket in my room, and no husband in sight to capture the little guy and escort him to safety.  I just put my house shoes up on the dresser, as well as my tennis shoes, my skeletoes, and every other bag, purse or container I owned.  I gave him the floor.

I did a short hike with Megan Hicks, and wondered the entire time why people do it for fun.  I did see the Twin Arches.  Megan thought I was going to pass out half the time we were hiking.  The scenery was pretty, though.

Had great sets with Dan Kedding, Megan Hicks, and Carrie Sue Ayvar.  (I was sitting here for a few minutes racking my brain to remember who the fourth teller might have been, since there were four tellers on the bill, only to realize that I was the fourth teller.  Sometimes....)

One Night, I could hear something banging against the ceiling and the curtains, but couldn't locate what it might be.  Every time I turned on the light, the thing would vanish.  Finally, turned on the light to see a giant moth ghost past the lamp.  Freaked me out.  I opened the door and turned on the hall light for twenty minutes, but my noisy guest would not leave.  Finally, I just turned out the light and slept as much as I could while hearing something bump against the ceiling, curtains and glass every twenty minutes or so.

Saturday night during the ghost stories, twenty minutes into a thirty minute story, a snake made an appearance.  The snake was uninvited, freaked out the people closest to the stage, and proceeded to climb the hay bales that were in front of the stage as decoration.  I tried to ignore it, but the thing was agitated, ended up climbing all the way up on stage with me, and hiding behind the speakers.  I was going to let it be, but the head ranger came up on the stage informed me quietly it was a copperhead, therefore poisonous, and as a barefoot storyteller, I really needed to get off the stage.

Upstaged by nature.  

The rangers were terrific, and saved the day while being both polite and forceful.  I have decided that if I am ever in trouble, I totally want the Park Rangers to be the people I call.  Do I live near a national park?  No.  Do I still want Park Rangers to respond to my emergency?  Yes.

From now on, perhaps I will do my camping at the Hilton as the good lord intended.



This weekend I will be playing the Heart of NC Storytelling Festival in Greensboro.  I know it will be a fun if wet event, since it will be raining for the next couple of days.  If you are in the area, come out and play.  It will be dry and fun.




Next week I have another guest blogger.  She's one of my favorites.

Sherry Norfolk

I spend a lot of time buried in reading and research about using storytelling in education...not as much as Sherry Norfolk.

Sherry is one of the wells I go to draw from when I have a question.  If I need some advice about storytelling in classrooms or in education in general, she is a great source.

The kind of odd thing about Sherry is I have no idea when I met her.  Somehow, I feel like I've always just known her, but that can't be right.  She sort of slid right into my life, I looked up and she was just always there.  Perhaps it is because I knew her as an educator and writer, long before I ever saw her tell stories.

Her work in education and storytelling has been a gift to me as a teaching artist.  I am always honored when she agrees to do a little writing for me on the side, and her insights make me feel smarter.

She knows how to get underneath storytelling and education better than almost anyone else I've ever met, and she can tell a wonderful story as well.

Next week she is going to be featured in this space talking about Universal Design for Learning.  Yeah, I hadn't heard much about this before I read her piece.  Very cool stuff.

If you don't know Sherry's work, here is a brief bio:

Sherry Norfolk is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed storyteller, teaching artist, and author, performing and leading residencies and professional development workshops across the United States and SE Asia. She was a presenter at the 2014 Kennedy Center-VSA Intersections Conference, “Leveling the Playing Field: Storytelling in the Special Needs Classroom,” and for the 2015 Kennedy Center-VSA webinar, “Teach Them to Fly: How Storytelling Gives Primary-age Children with Special Needs Their Wings.”   www.sherrynorfolk.com

Stop in next week!

Happy Teaching.

The Stories We Tell Are The Stories We Need by Sherry Lovett

Why do we tell what we tell? While there are probably as many answers to that question as there are storytellers, I believe there is a common thread to the answer: we tell what we need to tell. On a conscious or unconscious level stories mirror our lives, help us move through them, heal, and grow. 

I have several examples of this reality from my own story selections.

Some time ago I was drawn to tell Dame Ragnell, also known as Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady, a King Arthur tale. I had heard Donna Washington’s phenomenal version and Gwenda Ledbetter’s classic rendition, and I felt this pull, this undeniable, unquenchable desire to learn this story. I was in love with it!

At the time, I didn’t think about “why” I wanted to tell it so badly, I just knew I loved it. I began to research the story, and after reading many, many versions, I crafted my own. What was this mirroring in my life?

My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a long, slow, heartbreaking journey.

 I moved her in with my family, so I could care for her. This was as difficult a time in my life as I have ever had, and at every turn I felt imprisoned - by a disease, by helplessness, by caregiving - I was feeling a desperate need for ‘my own way’; for control over the circumstances of my life. So… I told that story over and over, and through it I found my voice during this hard, time.

I tell a story called Courageous Clare. It is based on an old folktale.  Initially I was drawn to it because it has a tree as one of the characters. I love trees. I started talking the story through, and it morphed into my own creation, which I told at every opportunity.

During the time when I was crafting this story, I was starting to face adult audiences more often.  I feel at ease in schools and library youth programs because that is my background, but I find that my nerves rise to a high tempo when I am performing for adults. I was in need of courage as I branched out and left my comfort zone. Courageous Clare was giving me that courage, urging me to do what I am called to do.

A long time ago I learned Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ story, Sealskin, Soulskin. It is an exquisite tale about the selkie fairy folk who can remove their sealskins, and walk as humans.  If their sealskin is taken, they must remain a human.  They lose an essential part of who they are.

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In the story a woman selkie has her sealskin stolen, and grows sick when it is not returned after seven years. Only when it is returned to her, and she has gone back to the sea, does she get well. Recently I decided I wanted to create my own version of this story, so, again, I researched, finding lots of versions to read and information to study. I began to imagine the story I wanted to tell, and to talk it into my being.  

All the while the story, which I call “Isla’s Love” was telling me, “You must follow your heart, and you must be your authentic self.  That’s the only way to succeed.” This at a time of transition for me, of coming to the end of homeschooling my daughter, and moving toward… something that is a continuation of what is authentic for me: my own storytelling business.

I am currently working on two stories: one, a personal piece called Kisses Remembered, inspired by a workshop with Regi Carpenter, and a folktale called, The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew, from a collection by Daniel Morden called Dark Tales from the Woods.

With my new eye for why I am telling a story, I can see that both of these stories are about my mom and her continued journey through Alzheimer's. “Kisses Remembered is a tribute to my mom as well as a journey through my life in the form of memorable kisses.  “The Leaves That Hung But Never Grew” is about the magic of having someone help you remember who you are, which is my job now with my mom. These stories comfort and inspire me. They give me hope.

I don’t think I will ever look at stories the same way again. There is no way for me to not know that every story I tell connects with my life in some way, so I embrace this knowledge and use it to inform my work.

When I am drawn to a new story, when I fall in love with a character, and when I find myself telling a piece over and over, I surrender to the pull, open my eyes and see why I tell what I tell. 




So… why do you tell what you tell?

For mor information about Sherry, just click the link!

Sherry Lovett!