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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

#221: Ghostly

With Halloween fast approaching, I find myself thinking about the different kinds of spooky stories we like to tell each other. Year after year, there’s one particular topic I gravitate towards when in search of a thrill: ghosts. Whether they’re friendly or vengeful, these haunting spectors represent more than just our fears and anxieties around our own mortality. They’re also symbols of the collision between the past and present, and the ways what has been can tangibly affect what will be. It’s no wonder, with the universality of these themes, that ghosts feature in folklore from all around the world.

This week, as the veil between worlds continues to thin, let’s dive into that liminal space between life and death, and see what it has to offer us.

This week's prompts

Write a story from a ghost’s point of view.

Halloween – 134 stories

Write a story about someone who is haunted. Whether by a ghost or something else is up to you.

Halloween – 138 stories

Write a story about someone trying to raise the dead.

Halloween – 49 stories

Write a story where ghosts and the living coexist.

Halloween – 69 stories

Set your story in a world where contacting the dead is as easy as making a phone call.

Halloween – 35 stories

Stories

“Dead Line” by Ashley Anon

Submitted to Contest #221

Iconic world events scorch themselves into our memories, like branding scars that never seem to fade, even with stretches of time. Everybody remembers what they were doing when they saw planes crashing into the twin towers on a T.V screen - where they stood and who they were with. People certainly remembered the life-changing day the dead made contact with the living world. Simon remembered every detail of it. It was the day that ended it all for him, the day that reunited him with his beloved Sarah. It was an overcast Tuesday afternoon, on ...

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“Halloween” by Xochitl Leyva

Submitted to Contest #221

Halloween, it was my favorite holiday. The costumes, trick or treating, getting a stomach ache after all the candy and getting scared with your friends. This year would obviously be a little different, after all it won't be me trick or treating. My son Mason, he's 7, took mostly after me when it came to Halloween. He loves the holiday more than anything, but he definitely takes after Will when it comes to scaring people. This year he decided on dressing up as a werewolf- not my idea- and Will decided to pretend he was too cool for...

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“A Night in the Swamps” by Bracy Ratcliff

Submitted to Contest #221

Nights in the swamps could render the bravest souls paralyzed with fear. Some nights were better than others, when the moon was full and bright the shadows didn’t dance so much from the distant lights of ships in the channel. But this night was particularly bad. He walked almost a mile down the narrow asphalt road, per the directions from a welder working with him on the ship refit. For the first hundred yards or so his shadow was on the ground in front of him, but gradually as he moved away from the ship and its lights h...

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“Annoying people” by Bill Soest

Submitted to Contest #221

Annoying People People are so annoying. I now understand how when I was young the old people would harass me and my friends for being too loud in public. Our laughing and playful banter at the park was fun to us. But not to the old men who would sit on the park benches and grumble about the young whipper-snappers and all the noise and commotion we made. I get it now, I truly get it. I have tried really hard to understand the children on the playground. How they can make up a game and all of them seem to know these unwritten rules, and how to...

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“The End of Bliss” by Frances Hogg

Submitted to Contest #221

Her Aunt Rosie had a camera that could do that. If you looked through the lens while you pushed a little dial with your finger, the image would get bigger. It took a little while for the picture to come back into focus—but then you could do it again, and the image would get bigger still. Tammy had always liked playing with the camera. Liked leaning with her elbows on the windowsill, peering at birds in the treetops of the woods behind their house. She was in those woods now. Without the camera. High in a tree. It was night but she wasn’t ...

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“Lingering Spirit” by Joseph Gozum

Submitted to Contest #221

I had never thought much about what would happen after I died. I suppose most people don't. The living have a tendency to be preoccupied with their own lives, their own problems, their own deaths. But as I watched the world I once knew slip away, I realized that I was trapped in a state of limbo, tethered to the realm of the living by some unresolved matter that I couldn't quite put my finger on. My name was Noah, and I was a ghost. Or at least, I thought that's what I was. I had no memory of how I had died, no recollection of the events l...

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“Oculus School for Ghosts ” by George Georgerfrost@gmail.com

Submitted to Contest #221

“Bartard! Bartard!” A voice rang up the empty well of souls. Appearing from thin air, the presence known as Bartard stood at the side of the presence that had summoned him in a raucous tone of voice. The presence turned and acknowledged him, “There you are.” “What seems to be so urgent, Mr. Biggs?” He asked with a hint of sarcasm mixed in with his subservient, longanimous style. “We have new students a-foot.” He cleared his throat. With a quick undetected roll of his eyes, the short stout presence known as Bartard, bowe...

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“These Silent Halls I Roam” by Bryce Kirkham

Submitted to Contest #221

I was so excited when you guys first moved in! This old house had felt so empty for so long. I would wander these silent halls, listless, bored and lonely. These silent halls I roam, I'd always repeat in my head as a mantra for these dreary days. New people are always so exciting though. I just hope I won't scare you away. Oh, I just hope you'll stick around! You seem like such a wonderful family. You, the wife and mother, with your radiant smile and golden curls, light up any room you enter, I'm sure. You, the husband and father, strike me...

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“The Disembodiment of Tong Leung” by 𝗢wen 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿

Submitted to Contest #221

Somewhere, Write flips a switch, and the rain begins. From your spot on the pier, you watch the clouds form, rolling across the harbour. When you first arrived in the City, you asked Write why he bothered creating nights and days and rain and storms and tides. That day, he appeared to you in his usual form — a young man, spiked hair, black T-shirt. He shrugged in that busy way of his, like he was always in two places at once.—It keeps us all human, he said. Then he taught you how to stop the weather. How to turn it off locally if y...

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“My Purpose” by Alexandria Sammataro

Submitted to Contest #221

I drift through my house, alone. Through the floors, the walls, the doors. I can do whatever I please, for I am freed from the shackles of life. But alas, as I stare out the window on this bright winter morning, at the snow that has fallen over my front yard, I realize, I have no purpose. Death has not brought me to heaven, nor to hell. I am not an angel or a demon. I am a ghost. And what do ghosts do? Are they sad? Do they pity themselves in death? Or perhaps they are happy. They can go anywhere they please, do anything they want. A common ...

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“A Brand-New Ghost Swims Away” by Carrie Simmons

Submitted to Contest #221

Candace opens her eyes and starts to take a deep breath, then realizes quickly she doesn’t have to do that anymore. She glances at her feet. She is shocked she can open her eyes underwater without blinking constantly. I can see underwater, she thinks smiling, how wonderful. Candace continues to look suspiciously at her feet. She frowns, my red shoes are gone. Particles of glass float in the water around her face. I fell off the boat. My wine glass. Shattered. She remembers, vaguely, cruising around the sea with...

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“Death on Repeat” by Elizabeth Beising

Submitted to Contest #221

Matt was accustomed to acting as an insulator to stop his girlfriend before her flow of electric current caused major damage. As soon as Matt got out of his Nissan Sentra, Lily bounced over, grabbed his arm and told him to close his eyes. His touch did not have the usual grounding effect, and Lily was acting like his border collie, Drogo, when Matt returned home from anywhere. Her giddiness gave Matt a stir of excitement tinged with fear. His mind touched on the skydiving incident, then yanked back as if the memory were scalding. Lily ...

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“The Gravestone ” by Andrea Doig

Submitted to Contest #221

Have you ever seen your own gravestone? I sure hope you never do.Catching sight of your final resting place, even momentarily, will scare the bejesus out of the most hardened non-believer. It is a most extraordinary and extra-ordinary sight. Extraordinary from a who-would-have-believed-this-possible perspective, and extra-ordinary from a well-its-not-such-a-surprise-as-we-will-all-end-up-here perspective. It really is quite extraordinarily extra-ordinary.Be that as it may – nothing can prepare you for the sight of your own untimely (is it ev...

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“Haunting Day 1” by William Simon

Submitted to Contest #221

Nicholas has been dead so much longer than he was alive. The house was all eggshell whites and seashell ivories, though it all looked grey in the darkness. Nicholas made his way from room to room taking it all in and occasionally stopping to jot down some notes in a small pad. The place was huge and appeared to have been decorated along the theme of cliché tasteless rich tosser. He could feel a headache coming on already and it was early in the morning of day one. Why he was even able to still feel the pain of a headache was something he’...

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“Scorched Earth” by Ian Grogan

Submitted to Contest #221

Benjamin set his shovel down and sat upon what was left of the loose dirt pile which remained around the earthen hole. He wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm, trying desperately to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The tattered overalls lay soiled and ripped upon weathered skin on his broad shoulders. His exposed arms glistened in the afternoon sun. He pulled out the flask he kept in his back pocket and took a few gulps from it. The misshapen ‘B’ that was etched into the sterling silver hand-me-down rested calmly in his palm; the a...

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$250

Prize money

425

Contest entries

148

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Oct 27, 2023 EST

Won by Bay Colt 🏆

Title: Clearance Aisle Libations

Submissions must be between 1,000 - 3,000 words and will be approved and published on Reedsy Prompts within 7 days of the contest closing.

Read the full terms & conditions or check out the FAQ if you have any questions!

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