Your classroom lights are dimmed, moody ambience plays on the smartboard, and your students are completely silent… not because they’re bored, but because they’re hanging on every word of a spooky podcast.
While I love incorporating podcasts in the classroom all year long, they are especially fun in October! Humans have been telling spooky stories since the beginning of time, and I think podcasts provide the perfect modern medium to continue this literary tradition. If you are ready to prick the ears and engage the minds of your students this Halloween season, here are the best spooky podcast episodes for the ELA classroom!
Using Spooky Podcasts in the Classroom:
These are my tried-and-true strategies for successfully incorporating these best spooky podcasts into your ELA lessons:
Set the Scene: Dim the lights, maybe add some battery-operated candles, and create that perfect spooky atmosphere! The ambiance makes such a difference in student engagement.
Provide Focus Tools: I’ve created spooky-themed podcast pages that students can color while they listen. It works wonders at keeping their hands busy and improving their focus. You can grab them free here!
Create Discussion Opportunities: After each episode, give students time to share their thoughts, theories, and reactions. Some of the best classroom conversations happen right after a good, scary story!
Connect to Literature: Pair these podcasts with classic creepy texts like Edgar Allan Poe’s works or other spooky short stories.
So, put in your eyeballs, pour yourself some pumpkin juice, and watch your students become bewitched by these spooky podcast episodes!
5th-6th Grade Spooky Podcasts for Kids
The Hollow
If you’re looking for age-appropriate spookiness that won’t give your younger students nightmares, The Hollow podcast is absolutely perfect! This Sleepy Hollow retelling is a treat for the ears! Packed with sound effects, cliffhangers, and spooky suspense, The Hollow will keep your students hooked from the first episode.
Plus, your students will be so into this mystery that they won’t even realize how much inferencing, analyzing, and critical thinking they’re doing! You can trick them into learning with these The Hollow Podcast Pages. They integrate coloring to improve focus and ELA skills to enhance learning.
The Hollow Podcast Pages include activities for:
- Characterization – tracking how Jill, Jack, Adam, and the Headless Horseman grow and change
- Literary Devices – exploring imagery, personification, and mood
- Claims and Evidence – supporting ideas with details from the episodes
- Theme – uncovering deeper messages like trust, courage, and love that extend beyond death
- Conflict and Resolution – identifying character vs. character, self, society, and supernatural
- Connections – text-to-self, text-to-world, and text-to-text
Mars Patel Podcast
Do you prefer a middle school podcast that leans more sci-fi than spooky? Then your students will think The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel podcast is out of this world! 😉 You can read all about it here or grab the podcast pages here.
7th-8th Middle School Spooky Podcasts for Teens
Criminal
This list is organized by grade rather than rank, but if I had pick a favorite, these episodes are at the top! Criminal Podcast is a perfect starter podcast because the episodes are short and the reporting is thought-provoking. The best spooky podcast episodes from Criminal include:
- How to Sell a Haunted House– Should homeowners be required to disclose a ghost?
- Bump in the Night– You’ll never sleep under an attic entry again.
- A New Kind of Life– What happens when you can’t let go… even after death?
- All the Time in the World– Let’s take a field trip to the body farm, kids!
To make this Halloween activity even more dynamic, you can pair the episodes with poetry. For example, “Haunted Houses” by Longfellow pairs perfectly with “How to Sell a Haunted House.” You can find pairings for all these spooky podcast episodes in this resource: Poetry and Podcast Pairings: Activities for teaching podcasts and poems
So Supernatural
The So Supernatural podcast adds just the right amount of intrigue for middle and high school minds! “Mystical: King Tut’s Curse” is particularly engaging because it combines history, mystery, and literary connections.
Not only does this spooky podcast episode provide a nice persuasive prompt (should we disturb the dead for research?), but it also includes a cameo of a well-known literary classic, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s perfect for discussing the line between fact and fiction, plus it opens up great conversations about respecting cultural artifacts and burial sites. However, be sure to consider your school’s policy on sensitive topics because it does mention death by suicide.
For a similar cursed topic with a less conspiratorial tone, check out “The Curse of the Hope Diamond” by Smithsonian Sidedoor Podcast . I recently discovered this podcast, and love that the episodes are short and informational yet entertaining all at the same time!
Lore
The Lore podcast is a favorite among English teachers and for good reason! It explores the frightening history behind common folklore. According to the site, “each episode examines historical events that show the dark side of human nature and is presented in a style that’s been compared to a campfire experience.” While there are hundreds of episodes to choose from, I chose “Bones” specifically because I use it as a pairing for The Canterbury Tales. Adding a world lens, “Bones” compares the feudal systems within English and Japanese cultures while also giving some chilling folklore details along the way. You can also check out this list for the best Lore episodes according to Ranker!
If you want to learn more about how I pair podcasts with texts, check out this blog post: Podcast Pairings for the Secondary ELA Classroom: Podcasts to use in English Class, or find a fun and informative podcast pairing for “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe here: 5 Activity Ideas for Teaching “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
9th-10th High School Spooky Podcasts for the Classroom
Spooked
Spooked is where things get genuinely scary! This podcast features real people telling their own supernatural experiences, and the stories are absolutely chilling. For high school students who can handle truly frightening content, these episodes are incredibly engaging.
It doesn’t have any language or sexual content at all, but the story is set inside a school and is extremely SPOOKY. Listen if you dare here: Teacher’s Pet
I have also played another Spooked podcast episode (The Night Whistler) for my students and they loved it. Admittedly, I had to stretch to pair it with Macbeth (emotional ghosts), but it turned out to be so fun, and I have no regrets!
You can see how I set the stage to engage here:
Here are some articles you can pair with a good ghost story:
- The Role of Ghosts in Literature
- What are the top three scientific explanations for ghost sightings?
- The Origins of Ghosts and famous accounts in Literature
- 11 Haunted Novels with Emotional Ghosts
- Ghosts And Spirits Can Be Beneficial To Your Mental Health
If you want a different kind of ghost story, I highly recommend another from the Smithsonian Sidedoor podcast, and you can read all about it in this post: Diverse Short Stories for Spooky Season
Full Body Chills
Full Body Chills offers fictional horror stories that feel incredibly real. The production is top-notch, and as the title suggests, the episodes are meant to give you chills! You can find episodes ranging from Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” to campfire stories. I recommend previewing these spooky podcast episodes to find the perfect fit!
Be sure to check out my podcast pages for any podcast! These worksheets help you plan academic learning goals for podcasts in the ELA classroom!
Spooky Podcasts Conclusion
If you are the type of English teacher who loves tricking students into learning, then I know you’ll be inspired by this list of the best spooky podcasts for ELA! I hope that you find these Halloween activities not only educational, but a whole lot of fun!
