13 Stories After Dark: The Beginning - Softcover

Crows, I P

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798235115392

Publisher: Kalpanika Publishing, 2026

Synopsis

Thirteen children sat in a circle and dared the shy one to tell a ghost story. He made one up. When the lights came back on, there were fourteen children in the room.

Every legend had a first night.

There's a boy in every class photograph at one school going back thirty years, and he is always eleven years old. There's a fourth door in a bathroom that only has three stalls, and something behind it has been knocking since 1978. There's a school kitchen where the Friday soup makes you remember something wonderful - and one afternoon a new cook uses the whole tin.

Thirteen scary stories for readers aged 9-12.

These aren't retellings of urban legends. They're the stories of how each one started - what actually happened, to a real person, before anybody knew there was a rule.

And every one of them leaves you with a rule of your own:

▪ If your classroom has a desk nobody sits at, leave it where it is.
▪ If you hear knocking from an empty stall, don't ask it anything. Just tell it you're there.
▪ Never eat anything that isn't on the menu.

Inside:
▪ 13 complete stories, 10-20 minutes each - one per night
▪ 13 full-page black-and-white illustrations
▪ A hidden mystery running through all thirteen, solvable only if you read every one
▪ Real chills and real consequences - no gore, no violence, nothing that needs a grown-up in the room

New to the series? Start here. The Beginning stands completely alone - but it's also where everything in 13 Stories After Dark comes from.

Perfect for confident readers, reluctant readers, sleepovers, campfires and long dark car journeys.

About this title

About the Author

I. P. Crows is an independent author and illustrator based in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He has been drawing unsettling things since he was small. While other children were playing video games, he was sitting with his grandfather beside an old radio, listening to horror serials come out of the dark - which is where all of this started, and where he still goes when he needs an idea.

He writes the kind of stories he wanted at eleven.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kalpanika Publishing
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798235115392
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108