ABSTRACT
American children maintain a lively reservoir of traditional tales of the supernatural, commonly known as ghost stories. 1 Throughout the elementary school years (roughly ages seven through twelve), children learn and pass on these ghost stories in a variety of settings, ranging from sleepovers and Halloween parties to school classrooms and recess. The tales are so audience- and performance-oriented that fairly large groups of children engage in these sometimes rowdy but always entertaining communal storytelling sessions, usually without adult supervision or input. Due in part to this general lack of adult input, this traditional tale repertoire remains unusually stable.
