The Ghost of Skinny Jack (original title: Skinn Skerping – Hemskast av alla spöken i Småland) is a children's book written by Astrid Lindgren.

A girl and her older brother are at their grandmother house, who always tells them ghost stories.

One night Skinny Jack disguised himself as a ghost to scare the sexton in the church.

He stayed in church for about a hundred years and nobody dared to get close to him, until a maid came to the town who was not afraid of anything.

A rich man wanted to know if the maid was actually as brave as she said and offered her five crowns to bring Skinny Jack to him.

When the siblings have finished listening to the story of Skinny Jack, their grandmother gives the boy a guitar and the girl a bag with magazines.

When she watches her brother disappearing into the bushes, the girl no longer dares to walk.

She believes that Skinny Jack could hide anywhere there, but finally she pulls herself together and starts walking.

After Ida Ingström had told her grandchildren the story, she gave Gunnar Ericsson a guitar and Astrid Lindgren a thick book.

[3] In 1986 the book Skinn Skerping hemskast av alla spöken i Småland was published in Sweden by Rabén & Sjögren.