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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

“Handful” by A. M. Conger

Submitted to Contest #221

Queen of my tiny mountain, I stood on top of a grassy knoll, surveying my surroundings while a howling wind carried a low wailing sound to me from afar. The wind, slowing momentarily, allowed for the soulful cry to be heard more distinctly, and I could almost recognize it. Was it a bird, a person, a song? The overcast sky and low hanging fog covered most of what I saw, but spots of pastoral green and tips of evergreens popped through from time to time. Turning in the direction of the sound and looking down into the mist, I descended as i...

3 comments 3
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“Ready, Set, Go.” by Joseph Samaan

Submitted to Contest #221

Dreaded Avenue I read the glowing yellow street sign parallel to my eyes.   I squinted to make sure I was at the Dreaded Avenue. This was the place the court said they had buried my wife.  It has been seven days since I have been to court, and seven days since I have been trapped in this bedroom framed in mattresses. I remember the judge called it, “The Rehabilitation Center.”  How sweet of them to imprison me next to my wife. It has also been seven days since the death of my irresistible wife. I have no idea how to func...

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“haunted mansion” by Masha Kurbatova

Submitted to Contest #221

Nelson Muskrat’s father made a fortune in the coffee futures market. Divorced from any material coffee trade, this market saw invisible, imaginary tokens swap hands in a global game of poker that ballooned the bank accounts of key players in Europe and the U.S. while farmers in the Global South tore up unharvested crops of low-grade Robusta coffee plants because production costs were so high, it made no sense to let them bloom. Muskrat Senior’s profits put his son through private school, then Yale, and pumped funds to the young man’s million...

2 comments 2
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“Don't Fear the Beeper” by Michael Novak

Submitted to Contest #221

Thunk! That was the sound of a long-awaited package hitting the concrete stoop of Ray Rosetti’s split-level house. He sprung out of his chair and dashed to the door, like a dog that had just heard its owner’s house key in the deadbolt. He flung open the door and eagerly snapped up a little cardboard box covered in tape. “Thanks Jim!” he called out to the departing mailman as he closed the door and ran back inside. He eagerly placed the box on his kitchen table, crowded with papers, contracts, and print-outs, and carefully opened it with ...

4 comments 4
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“A Ghost's Story” by Paul Crehan

Submitted to Contest #221

A Ghost’s Story                                 by Paul Crehan “So, Mr. Simmons, I see from your chart that you believe you’re a ghost.” “Because I am one,” I said. Dr. Teague wrote something down on the legal pad in his lap. “I see,” he said. “But that’s the thing,” I said. “You do see. You see me. You see that I’m a ghost.” “Uh-huh,” he said, noncommittally, because ...

11 comments 11
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“The Cemetery” by Christopher Gissinger

Submitted to Contest #221

The Fairkin Cemetery would have been the perfect setting for a horror movie. It was old and overgrown, with several spooky mausoleums near the center. Many of the graves dated back several hundred years, before the city itself had even been founded by Eugene Fairkin. Then there were the rumors of disappearances and strange goings on surrounding it. Almost all of the locals could remember stories from before they were born telling them to steer well clear of Fairkin Cemetery. Tara had recently moved into the neighborhood next to the cemetery....

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“Nightmare's Beginning” by Aaron Mooney

Submitted to Contest #221

The teenage boy about fell off his bed at the sound of a large bang!, as though someone had taken a basketball and thrown it as hard as they could on the hardwood floor right outside his bedroom door. It was 3:00 A.M. and he’d been asleep for maybe half an hour, insomnia robbing him of precious rest needed for school the next day. All of that was lost now, in the rearview mirror waving goodbye to him. Adam quickly rolled out of bed and stayed low to the ground, worried there might be someone invading the house. Oh dear God, please keep us s...

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“Until Every Star Stops Burning” by Andrea Sotelo

Submitted to Contest #221

She didn’t cry herself to sleep that night. It was the first time in a long while. Instead, she only blew off the candle that lit the small bedroom in which she now searched for rest, the warm light of the burning wick suited her much better than the synthetic rays of modern electricity. She peeled the heavy blankets off the bed so she could get in, the weight of the covers pressing her into the bed kept her warm and helped with the anxiety that was left in my absence. She had no family left, her parents had left her an orphan years ago tha...

1 comment 1
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“Open House” by Laci Wynn

Submitted to Contest #221

Jack has tried to sell this house for the better part of a year with no resolve, and that’s mostly my fault.  Let me give credit where credit is due, he has pulled all the strings in order to place anyone in this home. I’m talking live streaming the open house, providing food and drink, and raffling off tech gear. Hell, he even hosted a local art show in the home.  Now, I had nothing to do with the art show-shit show…except for switching the red wine with prune juice and clogging all the toilets with the ridiculous dachshund hand...

2 comments 2
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“Raymond Dutch's Guide to being a Homebody” by Q.L. Vincent

Submitted to Contest #221

(TW; Mental deterioration, implied violence and self-mutilation.) [A call was placed on the morning of March 7th, 2008, to the LAPD regarding a foul odor emanating from the residence of one Raymond Dutch. The Dutch residence had a call placed on it before for a noise complaint, but otherwise no other legal issues of note. Upon interviewing the neighbors, the police were told that Raymond Dutch had become reclusive and paranoid following a robbery at his home while he was away on a business trip. They had filed multiple complaints with the ...

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“The Parasite on Her Shoulder” by Anneliesse Alcalde

Submitted to Contest #221

They say twins have a special bond like no other and I couldn’t agree more. Mila has always been by my side since birth as have I. We were inseparable despite our differences. For I was always the weaker of the two; unable to speak my mind or carry myself with confidence, unlike my sister. Always being the victim of other children’s teasing while Mila appointed herself as my knight in shining armor. I can still hear her battle cries as she chased after the boys who threw mud at me and her tiny fist pouncing at their heads after she caught th...

1 comment 1
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“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 ...

4 comments 4
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“What Is Perfection?” by Vladimir 4757

Submitted to Contest #221

    In his eyes a solution, a solution to a problem he imagined. Left alone in a lair with mindless servants, he lumbers, he broods, he works meticulously alone on a project only he thought to achieve. “How many corpses do we have?” He says to one of his mindless servants, lobotomized and mindless, and yet cognizant of his surroundings.  “Forget it, put another on the slab.” He says, his voice echoing as he towers above a metal operating table.  “For years I’ve had narrow minded goals. My Chorts, you are simply ...

4 comments 4
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“Mistress” by Aureliano Giano

Submitted to Contest #221

Chapter I: Encounter I was never a party person. Drunk people were mainly irritating to me, and taking women home who were so drunk that they had no recollection of the previous night at best made me feel embarrassed. Being the 20-year-old idiot that I was, I still went along time and again. The fear of missing out was just greater than the constant feeling of having wasted numerous hours of my life again. Lonely together. I can't say today why I was at the party where I met Claudia. Maybe it was the pressure from my friends or my wish to be...

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“Loss” by Bill VanPatten

Submitted to Contest #221

Fog does not come on little cat feet. It snakes its way across the land, slithering down the San Joaquin Valley, a seductive killer cloaked in gray velvetiness prowling for victims. Silently it swallows everything in its path—a shopping center, a motel, a home. It creeps down highways and roads, obscuring the vision of lonely drivers, luring them deep into the mist. They know they should ease up and take their time. But many don’t. They fall to the fatal charms of the fog and wind up a statistic, a news item at eleven o’clock, a fatalit...

3 comments 3
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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!

Prompts | Big Blue Hand | 2024-11

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