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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 – 133 stories

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

Halloween – 137 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

“Conversations with the Departed - The Journey of a Psychic Medium” by Karin Eriksson

Submitted to Contest #221

There’s no brightly lit pink neon sign in my window. Nothing that can be seen as a beacon for the curious from a hundred paces away in the dark of night, through rainy mists and fog. No color is reflected in the ripples of water in the street puddles below.No images showing a palm, crystal ball, or the words “Tarot”, “Fortune Teller”, or “Psychic Readings” … No multi-colored plastic beaded curtain, or black velvet drapes accessing a backroom within a brick-and-mortar shop selling crystals, incense, b...

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“Communion of Chocolate Cake” by Sarah Dean

Submitted to Contest #221

It was an unreasonably hot summer day. Much too hot to make a cake and yet here she was, baking a triple chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting and pomegranate drizzle. Why Glaudia was pouring sweat in her tiny, cramped kitchen covered in various sticky, sweet substances, was relatively simple. She was going to summon a demon. A demon to do her dirty work. Mostly that included doing her laundry and feeding her cat while she was at work. Just a simple lesser demon that would be satisfied with a handmade cake in return for a week'...

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“Truce” by Tim Shuman

Submitted to Contest #221

Truce By Tim Shuman The smell of gunpowder, death, and fresh earth fought in the air like the two armies engaged in the great civil struggle. The slaughter was halted by Christmas. As the ranking NCO Dooley had been tasked by the Captain to inform the lieutenant that terms for the truce had been negotiated and that he was to send someone to recover the Union dead. “Begging the Lieutenant’s pardon, but I have an important message from th—” Before Dooley could deliver the message, Lieutenant Cain burst o...

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“New Number, Who Dis?” by Vicki Lynne Ferris

Submitted to Contest #221

::Trigger Warning::Implied domestic violence, implied murder, bros“Welcome to Spirit Wireless, how can I help you get connected?” The salesgirl was pretty, perky, and sharply dressed in a maroon polo shirt and khaki pants. He made quick note of her name tag—“Casey”. Any other time he would have made a comment about her connecting with him, instead he made a mental note to come back to this store closer to closing, next time.“Hi Casey, I’m Mitch, and I need a new phone,” he said, instead.She looked slightly annoyed at his over-...

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“The Birthday Party” by Anna Frederiksen-Washington

Submitted to Contest #221

The darkness was absolute. All she knew was a feeling of confinement. She could not move, and she could not breathe. There was the smell of damp rancid earth permeating the air. Then she awoke. Carina laid in her bed for a long time, staring into the half-light of a new day that was only just dawning. It was the same dream with the same feeling of absolute terror in which she felt no escape. Where did it come from and what did it mean? She could hear the birds beginning their morning song outside. Those beautiful little birds. She knew every...

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“Live Theatre” by Ann Martin

Submitted to Contest #221

LIVE THEATRE Carol Ann Martin (Contains reference to a road accidernt) Failing to stop at the scene. Oh yes, there’ll be trouble about that, I daresay. Somebody will have taken my number, but I can’t help that just now. The police will turn up and they can sort it out with the truck driver. It was the merest bump and it was his fault anyway. I’ve got enough to think about tonight. I’ll think about it tomorrow. In forty years I’ve never been late for a performance. Never. Anything so unprofessional is quite beyond me and tonight will be no ex...

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“What Made Me Believe In Ghosts” by Olivia Cowles

Submitted to Contest #221

It was during my fall term. The leaves were turning and the Oregon weather was becoming more depressing by the minute. Obviously as a young adult freshly in the throes of the freedom that college allows, I was drinking on the regular. My dorm had a policy of no drinking, of course. I was underage, but I was not going to be one of the kids who followed those rules. I was using partying as my coping mechanism to forget all the things I needed to feel. Much like the woman who birthed me. Including the ones that came before her. This was th...

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“Bone Call” by Poppy LaC.

Submitted to Contest #221

(TW: discussions of cancer and hospitalization) The songbirds chirped happily outside of my hospital room, Another day alive. I sat up, rubbing my eyes, waves of pain going through my head. “Miss O’Reilly, are you alright?” I glanced up to see the nurse, “Ah yes, just head pains.” The nurse wrote something on his clipboard, glancing at my heart monitor. Beep. beep. The noise overcame the songbirds. “Right, when is there time for my ‘bone-call?’ I need to tell my husband about my worsening conditions…” I’d pick the cuticle skin off my nails, ...

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“Dialing the Dead” by Lynne Boyd

Submitted to Contest #221

Dialing The Dead I shut the door behind me, and dragged myself inside, exhausted from a twelve-hour shift at the hospital. I dropped my keys on the entry table, and walked into the kitchen. Willow was sitting at the counter, nursing what appeared to be a double whiskey, neat. She stared into her glass, zoned completely out of this world. I walked up behind, put my arms around her and she jumped, startled, having not even noticed my entrance. “Woe, it’s just me. What’s up honey?” She placed her hands on my arms, snuggled in close but didn’t ...

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“The Empty City” by Zoë Page

Submitted to Contest #221

There’s a place that everyone goes when they die. A city. A city of the Dead. A forever city, to stand for eternity, painted in the colors of your emotions. Grey: there is nothing to feel, so all you see is grey. You no longer have anything to lose, gain, nor anyone to miss, nor to miss you, and you feel no sorrow that you are dead, because you have never felt so light. Thus, the city is all grey monotony and supposedly full of souls, and yet they call it the Empty City.Souls are subjective, see? When you can see someone’s soul, you know the...

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“A Ghost's Story” by Aaron Mooney

Submitted to Contest #221

It starts with the nightmare. Not every night, necessarily, but enough of them to burn an image into my mind’s eye, like staring into the sun. It climbs the stairs leading up to my room where I sleep, where I work and eke out my meager existence. I shouldn’t call it an It, really, when I know in my gut that it’s a He.He calls himself Stanley; that’s what I hear in my sleep, whispered in my ear where his breath touches me like wisps of smoke. Sometimes he does more tangible things than that. I hear Him walking up the stairs leading to my room...

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“Six visits - a ghost story” by Fox Ferguson

Submitted to Contest #221

The first time I came back, there were still things that smelt of me. My shaving brush in our pristine white bathroom, my shirts in the wardrobe, a faint smell of cigarettes in my study so you can almost see me exhaling a cloud of white smoke into the easy green light of the vintage lamp-shades. You’d noticed them too. Those stubborn smells. They ingrain into the fabrics of our suburban homes like they ingrain into our minds – one inhalation and you’re transported to another time, another time, another time… The first time I came back I ...

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“Ghost Gunhild and the Intruders” by Karen Best Wright

Submitted to Contest #221

My name is Gunhild, but I am called Hilda. At least, that is what I was called when I was alive. My name means "battle maid" or "fighter" in Old Norse (my ancestry), and I lived true to my name. When I died, I did not desire a fluffy, light at the end of the tunnel death. I wasn't eager to meet any Angels. I was a fighter. I still am, and my home is still my home.I was born and raised in this house. I was the last to die in it. My family line ended with my death at the age of eighty-five. After I died, I never left. I didn't know if I even c...

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“Seaside Cemetery” by Lashun Williams

Submitted to Contest #221

“For there comes neither night nor day. Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it From the watery misty place; Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it In unprofitable space. Living flocks and herds are nowhere found there; Only ghosts in flocks and shoals: Indistinguished hazy ghosts surround there…” “Hello? Excuse me!” There’s a woman. She approaches me. I sit atop my stone step leading towards my grave. I turn to her from my book. She approaches me. With a wide smile that blinds my senses, she takes a hesitant step forward. “I...

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“That Animal” by Lise Rowlandson

Submitted to Contest #221

That Animal Dad built our house in 1919. He erected a simple two-storey, three-bedroom brownstone with an eye-catching wrap-around porch. It was a respectable home occupied by a respectable family but, with time, it no longer was respectable. Rumours surfaced from the many families that moved in and out of my house through the years. Its reputation went from ‘That’s where the Postmaster used to live’ to ‘That spooky house has a malevolent spirit.’ Not that it looks spooky from the outs...

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$250

Prize money

423

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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