Most years we’re too frightened to open for Halloween. This year, we decided there’s nothing to fear but fear itself, and invited three of the scariest people we know — Tony Toledo, Elisa Pearmain and Tom McCabe. These fine professional storytellers will recount their most frightening stories at our Me&Thee Ghost Story Festival. Tom McCabe will have you looking over your shoulder with “The True Tale of My Sister’s Haunted House.” What Elisa Pearmain has to say will chill your spine and coffee both. And what starts as a humdrum yarn for Tony Toledo will lift you off the edge of your seat by the time it’s done.

Tom McCabe, Parent’s Choice award winner, has shared his tales and classroom workshops with more than a million people throughout the United States and abroad during the past twenty years. Boston’s Channel Five calls him “New England’s Pied Piper.” He offers programs and residencies in Storytelling, Writing, Reading and Conflict Resolution, and is a very popular conference speaker and workshop leader.

Elisa Pearmain was a Storyteller in Residence in the Boston Public Schools for ten years, fostering an appreciation for multicultural stories and training students to be confident storytellers. She empowers teachers and other adults to make storytelling an integral part of the classroom nationwide through the Lesley College Master’s Program and as a workshop leader at conferences. She earned an M.Ed. in the Creative Arts in Learning with a Concentration in Storytelling. Award-winning author of Doorways to the Soul: Fifty-two Wisdom Tales from around the World (Pilgrim Press 1998), Elisa brings her interest in the world’s spiritual traditions to her collection of world wisdom tales and commentary.

Tony Toledo has been a full-time storyteller since 1990. He has raised the hair on thousands of people’s heads in Salem at Halloween time with his tales of the inexplicable. This year he participated in the Harry Potter Conference in Salem as well. He frequently haunts elementary schools, libraries and trains. Tony is one half of a tandem team with his wife, KR Glickman, presenting “Unseen Borders: Stories in Sign and Voice.” He has held forth at First Night Boston, Sharing the Fire Storytelling Conference, and his home town library in Beverly, where Nancy Bonne, the Children’s Librarian, proclaimed him a “municipal treasure.” Tony has been a storyteller for Young Audiences of Massachusetts for 15 years. Not least, he’s been an enthusiastic volunteer at the Me&Thee Coffeehouse since 1991. He likes to tell people that he is 48 years old but reads at a 59 year old level.

Come catch the spirits at the Me&Thee — and bring the kids in costume!