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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write a story about someone trying to raise the dead.

Posted in Halloween on Oct 20, 2023

Submissions are closed

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✍️ 50 stories

“Clearance Aisle Libations” by Bay Colt

🏆 Winner of Contest #221

The worst part about being an amateur necromancer is that no one respects you, not even the dead. My older brother, Joseph, is practically crying over the phone, struggling to speak through great gasps of heaving, wheezing laughter. After way too many seconds of this, he finally manages to choke out, “Really? Goddamn—Mountain Dew?” Irritated, I switch the phone to my other ear, tipping my head awkwardly to pin it in place while I free up my hands for my shovel. “It was the only drink left on clearance.” Joseph makes a thin, stifled little...

104 comments 104
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“Unreliable” by Scott Christenson

⭐️ Shortlisted for Contest #221

Jake called the Windy City Ice hotline. His grandfather’s voice answered. “If your Windy City Ice machine is currently malfunctioning, leave your name and contact number after the beep. Our licensed service technician will contact you shortly. Windy City Ice is a family-owned company, and we care about our customers.”Jake hung up and returned to writing The Siren Under Highway D. Writing was an escape from his father. After grandfather's passing, the company's accountant made it clear that Windy City was heading toward bankruptcy, and Dad wa...

38 comments 38
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“The Ouija” by Ty Warmbrodt

Submitted to Contest #221

Growing up we all have that certain someone who is our rock, our safe person, someone we can relax around and just be ourselves, someone we can confide in and turn to during our darkest moments. That person for Lucinda Maxwell was her Granny Erma.Lucinda is a bit of a peculiar girl, somewhat socially inept. She’s the very definition of Plain Jane, dressing conservatively for the nineteen-fifties, much less the twenty-first century. She prefers books to television and board games to video games. She writes and draws in a journal she keeps wit...

19 comments 19
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“A Long Day’s Work” by H.R. Bennett

Submitted to Contest #221

A Long Day’s WorkTrigger Warning: Violence, Gore, Loss, DeathWe thought we were ready.We thought we had seen it all.We thought we could handle anything that could be thrown at us.To be fair, up until that point, that was true. Armond and I had survived so much together on our little adventures, that we no longer thought of ourselves as mortal in the traditional sense. What was the threat of the average, mundane weapon when our training could simply knock it away? What was the threat of magic when we had magic of our own? What was the threat ...

0 comments 0
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“Malik The Undead Menace” by Anthony Carello

Submitted to Contest #221

Malik walked down the hall with purpose, each step echoing through the grand halls of his home. Every dozen or so paces stood a pair of undead. Each one was ready to fight to the death with only a thought if he commanded it. Though it wasn’t like anyone was stupid enough to try and attack him—or to even get through his first line of defense at the bottom of the mountain. As he walked, his estate reacted to his emotions. The anger and frustration he had felt over the past decades had only increased in recent years. # A long time ago, when he ...

4 comments 4
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“Resurrecting Dreams” by Leilaine Mori

Submitted to Contest #221

Under the enchanting canvas of the sky, painted in hues of pink and purple that evoked the dreamy essence of a cotton candy, Daniel stood in front of an aged tombstone in his hometown. His heart raced, and he felt like he could not breathe properly. The cemetery was a place of memories, each gravestone holding the story of someone's life. But for Daniel, it was different. For Daniel, this place held a piece of his past that he hoped to resurrect.He gazed at the tombstone, which was written his own name, a birth date of September 25, 1993, an...

1 comment 1
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“Ghostly Characterizations” by Nina H

Submitted to Contest #221

Raising the dead is not an easy job. Just ask Gretchen. She has been tasked with this tricky venture for years. How is it she got so lucky? Well, she sort of just stumbled into it.  Gretchen is a 60-something, introverted, book loving, people loathing, crochet crafting librarian. Every day, she wakes up, drinks her tea, and sets out on foot to the local library where she rules the roost and rafters. She demands silence, respect, and book spines perfectly aligned on the shelves. Soldiers in the fight against screens, ignorance, and illi...

14 comments 14
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“Remorse of a Depraved Heart ” by Luca King Greek

Submitted to Contest #221

Six Months PriorAt the prayer group meeting in Unit 2, at the Maine State Prison, half a dozen inmates found temporary solace in communion, an oasis of humanity in a barren place. Among them was a relatively youthful man of a broken and yearning heart., barely twenty-five years old. He hung his head and prayed hard, harder than any man should, so hard that he sucked a singularity through a cleft in eternity, he stirred up the spirits of the dead, the other prisoners could feel it, and it drew a rush of energy into the recreation room.&n...

1 comment 1
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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....

0 comments 0
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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...

0 comments 0
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“Mom.” by Skott's Ghost

Submitted to Contest #221

[WARNING: mentions the loss of a child.]Exactly thirteen days have gone by since Cibil had to lay her eight year old daughter, Naomi, to rest since the day she succumbed to her leukemia. For all thirteen days, she remained paralyzed in her unkempt spring mattress, hugging the oversized, stuffed alien plush doll Naomi would prioritize over everything else, even her mother, Cibil.Cibil hadn't stopped crying since the funeral. Even as her eyes swelled, and her head began beating slowly in pain, the tears constantly flooded her eyes from below.C...

3 comments 3
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“Normalton Nightmare” by Cajek Veilwinter

Submitted to Contest #221

It had taken months to find all the ingredients. Some were taken from her mother’s crypt in the basement of her own home, some from her mother’s office, and even one had been ‘borrowed’ from her father’s police station downtown. The fingernail of a dead necromancer was the most complicated to discover, but the location of the grave itself - uncovered from her father’s files at the police station - were the most delicious. When Arachne had uncovered that one, she couldn’t help but let out a little cackle. It was the night before Hallowe...

2 comments 2
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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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“The Grinding Hall” by David Andrew

Submitted to Contest #221

“Gragatha, can you please go in the kitchen and check on it again?!”“Gungor can do it himself,” Gragatha roared back from the other end of the grinding hall, “Gragatha isn’t Gungor’s… uh… kitchen person!”The grinding hall was what any average person could only describe as enormous. It spanned a couple acres, with a ceiling as tall as fifty grown men standing on each others’ shoulders (inadvisable though that may be). The floor was paved with flagstones the size of cottages, and the door was fully seventy feet tall. There was a drain the size...

6 comments 6
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“Aunt Liz” by Peter Stone

Submitted to Contest #221

The children were playing every evening in the field across from the neighbors’ house until the street lights would come on. Football or baseball and then on some nights it was hid and seek. Sitting under the old oak tree before going home they would tell one another ghost stories intending to provoke nightmares on their peers. Janet was the youngest of the gang and always asked her older brothers to walk back home with her on most nights since she would be terrified. She never told the others ghost stories because just thinking of ghosts wo...

2 comments 2
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🌟 Similar prompts

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Write a story where ghosts and the living coexist.

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Contest #221

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This week's theme: Ghostly

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Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Oct 27, 2023 EST

Won by Bay Colt 🏆

Title: Clearance Aisle Libations

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