This one is best saved for the 10 and over set as it is a little more graphic than the rest of the stories. There’s no way of toning it down to make it more appropriate for younger kids.
A man and his young teenage son lived together in a small house on the outskirts of town. The lot their house sat on was large and overgrown with tall hedges blocking the house from the street.
One day, the man left on an overnight business trip but took his son’s phone charger by mistake. As a result, neither the boy nor his father could charge their phones. Both phones were fully charged at first, but the man was delayed on his way home, and by midnight on the second day, both phones were dead.
It was just after this that the boy heard a knock on the front door. He was a sensible boy and knew not to open the door to strangers. Instead, he looked out of his bedroom window, onto the drive to see who was there.
The boy saw his father’s car in the drive, but he could not see the front door from his room. He went downstairs and looked through the peephole in the door to see who was there. He could see his father on the other side of the door, looking back at him, and the boy reached up to open the door.
But something stopped him.
“Dad?” the boy called out. “Why are you knocking on the door? Did you forget your keys?”
The boy waited, but there was no reply — just another knock on the door.
“Dad?” the boy called out again. “Why don’t you just open the door and come in?”
But again there was no reply. Instead, there was just a steady, rhythmic knocking on the door which began to get faster and faster. The boy’s dad was knocking constantly on the door, waiting for him to open up when suddenly he stopped and there was no sound at all.
The boy looked through the peephole again. His dad was still there, so he decided to open up. When he opened the door, he discovered his dad’s head taped to the door, in front of the peephole, and a trail of bloody footprints leading down the drive.