Just in time for Halloween, here are 4 scary skills to keep you on edge as the ghouls and goblins roams the streets for treats! To be honest, only 2 of these 4 spooky skills are meant to be nightmare inducing (a fact that I find hilarious). It’s worth reading these reviews to understand how your skill may be perceived differently that intended. Unfortunately, spooking your users (when they don’t want to be spooked) means bad reviews, something you generally want to avoid.
To find these skills, we took a look at all the reviews on the US marketplace with the word “scary”.
Short Bedtime Story by Webguild – 4716 ratings, 4/5 stars, 1023 reviews
Have Alexa tell a short bedtime story, personalized to your name.
It told us a very scary creepy story not appropriate for kids. (2 stars)
The stories are very short and most of them are a little scary. Almost every story has zombies or something of the like. My daughter was scared (2 stars)
We’ve used the skill 5 times. The stories were either kind of scary or just plain weird. Tonight my son asked that we not use the skill anymore. (2 stars)
The Magic Door by The Magic Door, LLC – 3158 ratings, 4.2/5 stars, 968 reviews
The Magic Door is an Alexa-powered interactive adventure game with original stories.
The whole family loved it! It got surprisingly very scary, and we were a little worried for Alexa, but we loved it. One idea we had was it would be great if you could flash our lights when we play (since those are hooked up to Echo). Would add to the spooky factor. (5 stars)
Some of the missions are very scary. The witch’s mansion gave me nightmares for weeks. It was like I was in a horror movie. (3 stars)
We are listening to it now and it is very scary, but the kids are feeling around like we there. They are enjoying this as our eyes are closed at the sounds as Alexa is talking, and telling us to feel the things we need. can’t wait….. Oh no me and my son jumped so great, fun, and awesome idea for the kids to know what they can imagine. (5 stars)
Amazon Storytime by Amazon Education Consumer Team – 739 ratings, 3.6/5 stars, 738 reviews
Explore a collection of more than a hundred short stories featuring lively full-cast recordings.
Most of the time my kids like these stories. They are quirky and silly. Last night we came across one called the 3 robbers and it was a little scary for a bedtime story. Not really what you want your kids thinking about while they go to sleep. We turned it off. (3 stars)
The skill opens reliably and speaks at a good pace. We stopped using it because it only seems to want to tell us this one story about a swamp of sorrow. The creepy suspense style and scary monster voice scared our 4 year old. She hated it. I tried over and over to change to a different story, but it just kept saying “ok” and then automatically selecting the next volume of the swamp of sorrow. Once it got to volume 4 i just gave up and played an audiobook from her tablet. So it isn’t good for our needs, but for kids who can listen to any genre of story it would probably be a big hit. (2 stars)
The stories are really odd and don’t make sense. One of them was supposed to be a “bedtime story” and was scary. It was still close to Christmas and it was something about two kids who stole something from Santa…he was tracking them down and Frosty was a monster. (1 stars)
Zombie Survival (Preview) by VAL Labs, Inc – 55 ratings, 3.8/5 stars, 14 reviews
Escape from an army of the living dead, rescue others and don’t get bit.
its soo much fun and its so Scary!! i love it! (5 stars)
