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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Center your story around someone who’s being haunted — by what or whom is up to you.

Posted in Dramatic on Nov 1, 2024

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 101 stories

“It Likes to Look Like Family” by Benjamin John

Submitted to Contest #275

It Likes to Look Like Family            I never believed the stories when I was little. Grandmother would always tell me how the women in our family were plagued by a horrifying demon. An angry demon. She told us that once the woman it was attached too died, it moved on to the next female of the next generation. I asked her why the demon was so angry. Grandmother didn’t know, her best guess was that a female ancestor must have communed with the demon in some way. Perhaps she made a deal...

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“Folie en famille” by Jaqueline Spence

Submitted to Contest #275

How many days? How many days such as this must she endure? Eve gazed drowsily out at the tangled garden, lost in thought, hazel eyes unfocused, her very posture vague and indecisive. Rain trickled hypnotically down the kitchen window, but the short storm had done nothing to alleviate the oppressive summer heat; as the downpour had eased off, the air actually seemed to become heavier and more difficult to breathe.  A loud bang startled her as the back door flung wide and a small boy threw himself across the kitchen flagstones l...

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“The Sands of P-111” by Michael Jefferson

Submitted to Contest #275

John F. Kennedy, the spaceship Emerald’s AI, reviews the mission’s astral chart with the crew. “Er-ah, we have passed Gehenna, a habitable planet that was ultimately rejected for exploration by the United Terran Government because it has a surface atmosphere of 822 degrees Fahrenheit, which can boil a human being’s blood in seconds…” John highlights the next planet on the screen, continuing to speak in his clipped Boston accent. “Er -ah, within the hour, we’ll pass Exidor, where temperatures average two hundred degrees below zero and life, w...

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“Open Windows” by Brian Macfarland

Submitted to Contest #275

OPEN WINDOWSI used to enjoy walks on Stanmore Common. But not anymore. Not after what happened that night.The Common is a great place to walk the dog. Mine’s a cocker spaniel, name of Bernard. Droopy ears, wet nose, a tail that never stops wagging. I got him as a pup, and I’ve grown very fond of him. So, one fine afternoon, Bernard was taking me for a walk. He enjoys pulling me along in his eagerness to sniff out the next aromatic delicacy hidden among the autumn leaves. When we reach the woods, I normally let him off the lead. Spotting...

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“The Problem” by V. Willows

Submitted to Contest #275

“Laura, this has got to stop.” The little girl looked up and furrowed her brows. What had to stop? What had she been doing that warranted that hard frown on her father’s face or that sharp tone in his voice? He only used that voice when he got mad, but Laura…didn’t do anything bad. Or, at least, she didn’t think she did anything bad. Here she was, sitting in the living room and eating her peanut butter sandwich as she watched TV. Yet, her father stood in the way of the TV (which she thought was rather rude of him) and stared her down with th...

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“You” by Shi Shang

Submitted to Contest #275

YouA psychological horror story by Shi ShangThis story contains themes of mental illness, suicide and self-harm.You open your eyes. You realize that all this time you’ve been in a cold sweat. The ceiling fan hums and drones above you.You don’t remember falling asleep though.You tell yourself that there’s nothing wrong. People fall asleep on the couch all the time.It felt like yesterday when it happened, though it must have been a year or so. You’ve already lost track of time a long while ago. Not long after moving in, your teenage son went t...

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“We Are All Bound Together” by Donald Mazzella

Submitted to Contest #275

It is difficult enough to explain an improbable event that happened to you alone. When three others have the same experience simultaneously, one must look elsewhere for certainty. Let me explain.In the summer of 1983, my father was still suffering the loss of my mother when we drove to visit a couple of former Newark neighbors at their New Jersey shore home. The bright day portended no clouds and rain.The hosts shared with my father immigration to America and the years of working hard to succeed. Unlike him, they were now enjo...

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“Haunting” by Anne Barber

Submitted to Contest #275

Early on in her relationship with Maggie’s father and his summer house, Maggie’s mother saw a ghost. Now Maggie lay in the dark and imagined her mother doing the same, lying here awake. The ghost was Mr. McDonough and he had worked for the lady who first owned the house. Mr. McDonough fell in love with her and when she died in a car accident, Mr. McDonough sat on the porch in a rocking chair and stared out to sea. He died of a broken heart. Sometimes, on a windless day in August, the empty rocking chair on the porch woul...

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“Hidden Threads” by Denise Whittaker

Submitted to Contest #275

Cedar Grove was the kind of place where people lingered over morning coffee at Benny’s Diner and gathered on their porches long into the evening, so even though it was midnight, Gord McKenzie wasn’t all that surprised to hear the drawn-out notes of a fiddle drift over the lake. After all, he himself was here by the shore setting up his camera in the hopes of capturing the predicted aurora borealis. There were no homes nearby or on the other side of the lake, so the thin crescent moon was the only light that might interfere with his shot. And...

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“Her Song” by Kimberly Fader

Submitted to Contest #275

Her Songby Kimberly Fader“This is my song!” My client announced, cranking up the radio of the dated state-issued sedan, closing her eyes, and belting out the chorus to Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over; “Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in. They come, they come to build a wall between us. But we won’t let them win.”Her medusa-like hair was dirty funky but could pass, at a distance, as flirty funky, especially paired with her red lipstick and the donated rockstar fake fur jacket we just picked up from Goodwill.  We were bo...

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“Breaking in a Lieutenant” by Jeff Scarbrough

Submitted to Contest #275

The dark bedroom of the small home suddenly became extremely cold. A voice broke the silence like a rock through a window. “I’ve got your back Sarg”. The man lying in the bed sat straight up screaming, Who’s there? The tiny hairs on his neck were standing up. This would be a memorable Halloween day for the firefighters at Station 23. The light of the full moon on display in the darkness of the early morning along with the heavy frost on the ground were just signs of the season, or were they? Who knew a promotion to Lieutenant at the fire dep...

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“Revelations of the Shadow” by Kira Akina

Submitted to Contest #275

Revelations of the ShadowBy Kira Akina  She gasps and sits upright breathing heavily; head weary, sweat pearls covering her forehead and chest . Something woke her from her sleep. A sound? No it wasn’t that, not a noise. She groggily lifts her head to look around searching for something to ground her. Her eyelids heavy, she is caught between the state of awake and dreaming. She blinks, slowly becoming more alert. Somewhere in the fog she recalls flashes of images, as if on a film projector. Myra never remembered her dreams. Lost to her...

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“Grave Digger” by Shawn Johnson

Submitted to Contest #275

Gary Tsusz loved playing in the dirt as a kid, plunging his hands into the soil and feeling the textures between his fingers, discovering creatures and creepy crawlies under rocks that would slither this way and that as he tried to pick them up. He loved when his mother would act disappointed in him for getting so dirty and had to clean out the grime under his fingernails. A burden-less child as most kids were and only too happy to be told to go outside and play; make-believe being a prerequisite of childhood at that time.  So it was no...

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“Pawpaw in a Dino” by Aysia Walton

Submitted to Contest #275

Stevie has known that he could listen to souls since he was four. It started the night his Pawpaw died. He’d been woken from a dream about being pushed in a wagon full of maggots through a sunlight-filled garage door. His blanket weighed more than a mountain, pinning his body to the bed where he lay staring up at his Pawpaw. The old man had turned on Stevie’s velociraptor lamp and stood towering over the bed, his body long and stretched out. Stevie had never seen his Pawpaw stand before. He’d been sick since before Stevie was born. At that m...

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“How to Haunt Your Own Algorithm” by Ronald John MacLennan Jr

Submitted to Contest #275

My other self first contacted me through LinkedIn, of all the godforsaken places. While I was hunched over my laptop at 3 AM, eating microwave burritos and pretending to care about quarterly projections, she sent me a connection request. The profile picture was me, but a version that hadn't spent the last five years marinating in fluorescent lighting and cryptocurrency trading. Her hair was the violent purple I'd abandoned after my mother told me I looked like someone had beaten me with a grape popsicle."You've become everything we used to m...

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Contest #275

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Title: Just Another Dead Girl Underwater

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