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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

“The Love Letter” by Jade Lawson

Submitted to Contest #221

The house is empty. Dark now that the sun has set. I could turn on a light. But they give me headaches. Instead I move aside the curtain, letting in the orangey glow from a nearby street lamp. The driveway is still empty. I hate it when Jason is gone. It makes me feel like when you cut an avocado in half. Exposed, browning and rotting, holding my arms out for my other half to be returned. The curtain slips through my fingers as I turn back to the living room. In the dark, I maneuver around the shadowy shape...

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“The Quinqennial Mourner” by Connie Elstun

Submitted to Contest #221

I eternally rest in the Peaceful Forest Cemetery, right over the ridge from Walden, Colorado, and not too far from our homestead in the Sage Hen Springs settlement. I died precisely 5 minutes and 5 seconds after my son Charlie was born in our home on May 5th, 1900. My labor was difficult as I was already 35 years old. He is my only child. The Doctor tried and failed to stop my bleeding; he said, “It’s a boy, Charlemagne, it’s a boy.” That’s all I remember about the end of that life.But that’s not the end of my story; it’s merely the beginnin...

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“Collateral Employee” by Cade Holter

Submitted to Contest #221

My name was lost to me well before my death. It had been the case for he one before me, and the one after me, who I now observe. I don’t know if he had ever had a name. If he might have been a desperate vagrant or some other such person rejected for suffering a mental collapse. He might have been bred for this role, to be shackled with old, rust soaked chains in a man sized closet. Waiting. I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about how this line of work came about, just that I was here well before me, but I do know what is done to the ones l...

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“Dead-Tired” by Wake Lloire

Submitted to Contest #221

Content warning: non-gruesome child death, mental illness, swearing Dead-Tired The night my mother drowned us in the bathtub I could only count up to 57. It’s been a thousand series of 57 as of today. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection in the past 156.1643835616438 years, a lot of updating my math skills as well. My siblings and I are stuck here in this mansion turned hotel, turned affordable housing, turned Airbnb, turned haunted-spot of 2023. I mostly hang out in the bathroom, staring out the window they thankfully put in the wall. T...

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“It's A Ghost's Life” by PJ Town

Submitted to Contest #221

Trust me. This ghosting lark isn’t such a breeze.You may think that all it entails is floating around and going “Whoo-oo!” now and then for effect, and that it seems like an easy enough life-after-death. Then you’ll be thinking of the perks.For one, there’s the fly-on-the-wall factor. You get to witness secrets or listen in to the exchange of them. But what can you do with the information you glean? I mean, half the fun of knowing a secret is breaking confidentiality and spreading it, am I right? Who are you going to spread it to but other g...

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“Bureaucracy, a horror story” by Esme Bonner

Submitted to Contest #221

In the six and half weeks immediately following The Rising the government had to prioritise. Priority number one, obviously, was taxes. Say what you want about the religious and social implications of ghosts, everyone knows what really matters is how we charge people for them. After that it was crime and justice. Is a ghost culpable? Can you arrest one? Is the hauntee or the haunter financially responsible for property damage? What I’m getting at here, is that there were a lot of questions, and I spent a lot of time trying to answer them. I ...

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“Wicked Whispers” by A Twisted

Submitted to Contest #221

The phantom hum of fluorescent lights paired with rustling papers and inaudible chatter tells me it's almost time. As the noises get louder, the room around me brightens and my skin starts to prickle. All of which are signs of the veil thinning. It's not until the glow pierces my eyes, forcing me to raise my hand as a shield, that I know I've arrived. If one was to ask me where I went between visits, I'd have to admit that I hadn't a clue. All I know is that at the same time every night, I'm awakened and allowed to roam the hospital grounds....

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“I remember” by C L

Submitted to Contest #221

I remember the day of the accident like it was yesterday. It was the day I met Killian. The train had stopped in its tracks so violently that the whole wagon trembled as if the Earth itself had moved. Like an earthquake had occurred only on our little side of of the world. Then the lights went off. The cold, blue-toned emergency lights sunk the whole wagon into a grisly, eerie atmosphere that made it look haunted. A faltering, mechanic voice let us know through the speakers that there had been an “unexpected hold up” and that we were going...

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“January is Always Cold” by Kelli Knack

Submitted to Contest #221

I am standing in front of the picture window, the one in our living room that faces the front yard, looking out at a sea of snow. It is winter; the snow has every right to be here. But to me it feels like Mother Nature is rubbing salt into our wounds, isolating us as if we were living inside a snow globe. Staring out the window is a great way to kill time, and that is all I do now, waiting out the season, waiting out grief, neither of which seems to have an ending. But I'm not just ...

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“Ghost and the artist. ” by Lize-Mari De Bod

Submitted to Contest #221

The days have been a blur. How long has it been? The weeks are months and the months years. This time of year is special, because I feel more real. The afterlife continues where life ended. In this forest. Tied to this realm unable to move on completely into the eternal peace. Something is keeping me here. I am looking for something, but what it was has faded away with the seasons. Dwelling the forest gives no answer to the unsettling feeling. The feeling that something is missing. An uncomfortable feeling. Living in a third dimensional pain...

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“Betrayl” by Ashley Sawh

Submitted to Contest #221

"I was once a living soul, and now I am a spirit.” I talked to my faded reflection in the mirror, trying to make myself feel better. “I can move through walls and doors and float through the sky. I can hear and see things that no one else can, and I can feel the emotions of those who are still alive. But most of all, I can haunt the living and make them feel the terror that I feel." I floated through the halls of my old home which burned to a fire, I perished along with it. I’ve been here since I died weeks ago, and no one’s been here since...

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“A Hat for Hestia ” by Amanda Maillet

Submitted to Contest #221

The only thing of value Hestia Ione Brightly’s mother ever gave her was her name.“There’s power in a name,” Hestia murmured to herself as she stood alone on the sidewalk in the dead of night, gazing up at the tattered Jessop Family Hats sign perched above the corner shop.Her mother didn’t teach her that though; Arthur, June, and Margot Jessop did. Rather, her childhood was marked by a rambling carelessness and neglect that cast a shadow over her mother’s intentions to love her. Even so, in the moments when she lay on the wet pavement taking ...

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“The Meeting” by Steven Wierenga

Submitted to Contest #221

In Agua Fria, Arizona, a meeting was being held. It was being held in Lucky’s Tavern, a rough-and-tumble joint known to cause fights that concluded in stand-offs that concluded in shootings that concluded in death(s). Many of the men in this meeting were famous: John ‘Tex’ McGraw, who had met Geronimo; Lucius Goodfellow, who had helped hunt down Billy the Kid; Benjamin ‘Golden Bullet’ (or ‘Goldy’) Alabaster, war hero of Second Bull Run; and even Aldous Jung, who had fought at the Alamo. The oldest member, though not present, was John Fitzsim...

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“The Portrait ” by Maria Zaragoza

Submitted to Contest #221

October 27, 1933Dear Diary, Excellent news this Friday! My portrait came in. I still don’t know how Mother convinced her husband to get it for me. I posed for it the whole of the summer. And what an odd Dear summer that was! You must remember the ailments I spoke of. The long, warm months of summer and the enchanting days of September gone to headaches, dizziness - and how tired I always felt! But all that is past. I have no more complaints to speak of. Nothing bothers me now and I have nothing to do the re...

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“Generally Weird ” by Vesta Bartholomew

Submitted to Contest #221

Sir Francis begrudgingly parted from his reveries of pork pies, turtle soup and port wine and faced the reality that such delights no longer played a role in the course of his existence. In fact, he hadn't tasted such delicacies in nearly two hundred and fifty years. With a low wistful sigh that even yet contained a glimmer of hope, he quietly pushed aside the bright plastic blue tarp that had been covering him. He blinked his eyes rapidly to assess his surroundings of the utility shed in the dim morning autumn l...

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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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