Are you talking about that fake show on SciFi Channel? I don't know the name but it is so obviously scripted. Anyway, Twilight Zone was in syndication when I was 9 and I loved that show.

Are you talking about that fake show on SciFi Channel?

There's a whole genre of documentary-style haunted house / castles /jails / etc. shows now, on a bunch of channels.

Dead Zone is not too scary. Jonathan Edwards Crossing Over whatever is fine.

John Edward should be forcibly crossed over. The man is a dirt bag.

Has James Randi written any books for kids?

Yeah, John Edward is not fit for consumption be any human and I would hate to see any child of mine watch him.

There are lots of documentary-style shows that are more about the stories and the myths than about the horror part of the paranormal, but you might want to vet them first by recording them and watching them yourself.

Don't really know about movies, but there are also lots of books in your library that would be suitable for an inquisitive 9 year-old with good reading skills. Again, you should vet them so that you can be sure of the content and so that you can be prepared to answer the inevitable questions that come up - being one step ahead of questions is the best way to keep your kids thinking you're cool ;-)

I was really into witches and ghosts and scary stuff when I was nine - when the Harry Potter craze hit now, I totally understood why (without ever having read the books). I think it's a very normal phase to get deeply interested in fantasy or ghosts or super heroes or other "not actually real" things around this age and your cues are how the kid reacts (like you said, you were scared, I was not, I was fascinated). I never watched a proper scary movie (Friday the 13th actually) until I was almost 15 and it scared the bejesus out of me, but I did watch all sorts of documentaries on the bermuda triangle, UFO encounters and anything having to do with ghosts not being the least bit scared at the age of nine. I also carried out elaborate ghosts hoax on friends of mine, including playing a portable record player with Halloween creepy tunes while hanging a sheet ghost on a rope in the tree outside of his bedroom window at midnight. (despite his initial scream, he claims he totally knew it was me. Yah, right.) Harts rubbed on fishing lines tied to windows was a camp favorite as well. Hehe. I think in my case it was the fascination in trying to explain the unexplainable. And the goosebumps when visiting abandoned houses after dark.

There was a lot of suitable books for that age though I don't recall the names. One with a witch in it (very harry potter) which I checked out of the library so often they had to get extra copies, quite a few on doing your own magic ticks which explained a lot. Old books that disbunked seances so popular in Arthur Conan Doyles age were great too. Especially the one with the fairy photos. I say encourage it! But not just with those crap shows alone, they're so boring. (We get the UK one here where a moth freaked out the host and she screamed "I hate it when they do that - when they breathe in your ear like that" convinced it was a ghost. They showed the same clip in slow-mo and she had to admit to letting her fear getting her carried away. So even though it is sometimes boring, it's great in that they don't let natural causes be labeled ghosts, which is good.)

Oh yeah, the UK show I mean is "most Haunted" with Yvette Fielding and Derek Acorah. They never find any ghosts, really, but you get the goosebumps if you want to because like the article says, it's all showmanship.

(also, occhiblu , I'd try to figure out if it is the semi-scientific "I wanna be able to explain this" that is the draw or the "I like goosebumps". It's likely a mix but if it's the "how does this work" curiosity you can sneak lots of school-learning into the brain of your nine-year-old with debunk books and howtos. Fun and educational!)

There is a show on A&E, or TLC, about ghost hunters. This particular duo is a female and a male. I've seen previews for this show and similar. I know there are a ton out there. One particular preview for a show was "the search for Jon Benet Ramsey". I wouldn't let my kids watch this kind of show because I'm not comfortable letting them watch stupidity like this. If it were fiction, Harry Potter, Escape to Witch Mountain, Coraline, UFO's, aliens, Nostradamus, Beetlejuice, etc. I would probably not object.

These "reality shows" that "feel the spirit" of Caylee Anthony or Natalie Halloway are exploitative and wrong. I don't want my young children to watch anything that has to do with the murder of children. And I really don't want them to believe you can sense a ghost with a hand held ghost remote but if it were a tame show, and they weren't easily frightened or gullible, I don't see the harm. My kids are very good at detecting bullshit. I think most kids are.

I don't think there is anything wrong with introducing the joy of being a little scared at an appropriate age. I think it would depend on the show. Any reality show that searches for dead children, or takes advantage of people's desperation or vulnerabilities would be off limits.

Slightly related: I enjoyed the children's horror series Are You Afraid of the Dark even when I was a young teenager.

Thanks, all.

I'm working with a kid whose parent just died, and I guess I'm trying to sort through what behaviors and concerns are grief reactions and what's just maybe an age-appropriate obsession with the paranormal. (And yeah, the kid's watching more of the "horror"-type shows. Harry Potter and such probably wouldn't have even registered with me.)

Of course, those are going to overlap and reinforce in weird ways, too. And the family is very religious, too, so I'm wondering how much of the hellfire talk is also coming from church.

Maybe I should just be looking at this a bit more pragmatically -- that the shows may be fine, but they're not helpful right *now*.

My conflict is that I don't want to be all, "Children should be exposed to only rainbows and unicorns!" and I'm a fan of the darker fairytales and such but my gut is telling me that this may be more than this particular kid needs to be dealing with right now.

As a data point: at nine, I was watching not only the 1950s creature-features, the supposedly-real paranormal-report shows, and Twilight Zone and its various knock-offs, but also sneaking up late to watch full-on adult thrillers and scary movies.

Some kids have an innate appetite for this stuff, some don't. My four siblings thought it was (or I was) a little weird for watching this stuff, and they still do.

If a child I knew to be grieving developed a sudden taste for these shows, I would be concerned. If a grieving child's established taste for these programs increased, it seems like a simple mechanism for comfort and brief escapism.

It might be that s/he is using this as a valve through which to process complicated feelings. As a diehard fan of horror films, I know that in the aftermath of crisis, I have an almost insatiable appetite for moderately scary movies. It allows me to push away grief for a brief time, to feel something else for an hour.

Oops --- I am neither a parent nor a child-ed type, as requested, just an auntly/babysitter type. Ignore at will!)

"Aunt" and "babysitter" definitely count as "parent-type" and "child-ed type." :-)

I just have limited experience with kids and spotty memories of my own childhood and wanted input from those of you who have spent more time with them and/or have better memories.

I agree with dabitch. I think it's normal, and by the age of eight or nine, children are becoming more adept reasoners and want to explore whys and hows. Note that it wasn't all that long ago that kids this age were routinely going off to camp and hearing spooky tales. They like to experiment with the paranormal. At that age, I was learning from friends about Ouija Boards, and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, and Bloody Mary. I've also seen countless kids this age going through this themselves at summer camp, Girl Scouts, and school. There is a big genre of scary-ish books for kids at this reading level, and this was also the time I think I got into Nancy Drew.

Kids this age are also becoming well aware of death - some directly and traumatically, but others just because by that age, a pet has died, or a grandparent or family friend has died, and there's an urge to master the otherworld, the question of "but where did they go?"

So I think it's really age-appropriate, even expected. Now, I wouldn't be sure how to determine what's normal development and what's unhealthy morbid fascination, since everything fits on a continuum. Certainly if I were a teacher and a kid talked about and watched and read and drew and acted out nothing but paranormal fantasies, I would want to talk to the parents and psychologist about whether it was time to bring in some alternative influences and atmopheres...

My girls were pretty much scare-free growing up. That is, they'd laugh at horror movies their friends would scream at. Even when in grade school.

I guess my philosophy was if it didn't bother them then I was OK with it. If it gave them bad dreams or whatnot, then they'd get cut off.

In fact, now that I think back, I told them they could watch all the scary stuff they wanted on TV until they came sneaking into bed with me, then it would stop. Never had to enforce that.

Not if he/she's watching it with you, and you sense him or her getting scared, which might be a problem you want to look into. Of course, I'm only talking here as a Non-parent, but this is how I wish I was raised.

My parent's didn't let me watch anything which they didn't think was appropriate, and that only fuelled the flame I guess.

There was this show which had a guy turning into a ware-wolf or something like that, which I always wanted to see and when I did, I was scared shitless of wear-wolves. But The Hulk was always good, so your mileage may vary.