Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog

Menu

✕
CONNECT
Editing Design Marketing Publicity Ghostwriting Websites
BLOG
Success Stories
APPS
TOOLS
Book Promotion Sites Book Review Blogs Booktube Channel Guide Book Title Generator Character Name Generator Independent Publishers Literary Agents Literary Magazines Pen Name Generator Plot Generator Publishers Directory Short Story Ideas Writing Contests Writing Exercises Writing Scholarships
ABOUT
About Reedsy Terms Privacy

CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about someone’s first Halloween as a ghost.

Posted in Halloween on Nov 1, 2022

Submissions are closed

Sorry, we are not accepting submissions for this prompt as it is not part of an active contest. Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy Prompts account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or create a new Reedsy account:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 206 stories

“Deus Ex Machina: My Afterlife in Art” by Benjamin Boxer

Submitted to Contest #65

   I was enjoying my usual nightmare until I realized that I was the nightmare. I had become someone else’s nightmare. It's the default actor's nightmare: I’m standing offstage in the wings. The play has already started. Lights rise to a blinding intensity, and an actor I don’t recognize anymore allows the first lines to fall from his or her androgynous mouth into a lapel mic. The wall-mounted speakers expectorate that line into the seat-planted audience, composed mainly of the actors’ obliging relatives and thoughts-and-...

0 comments 0
Read story

“The Salesman ” by Matt Render

Submitted to Contest #65

“I’ve told you a hundred times, Justin... Quit making me out to be the bad guy” “But, I said I was sorry. I don’t know what else to do at this point” Justin said, squeezing his temple, as though to mitigate the pounding of his recurring stress headaches.   “Look, you know I love you, but, yeah... at this point I don’t know, like, what to do...” Laura looked down at the newly purchased silver bracelet with the aqua marine Aquarius charm Justin had wrapped around her wrist.  He didn’t want to mention how he had sacrific...

1 comment 1
Read story

“When I Wore a Younger Mans Clothes” by Jason Dean

Submitted to Contest #65

He played her piano every day. The shape of his heart would determine whether it was for a few minutes or a whole afternoon as grief sat beside him on her stool and there were days even now, six months later, when he could not bear the weight.She was here, he was sure.She had played every single day, hours and hours of practise. Not to entertain or to impress but for the sheer joy, the feeling of interpreting musical notation from more than a century ago and hearing same the notes that Mozart himself had heard. She felt them, speaking to her...

0 comments 0
Read story

“The Ghost of Cedar Lane” by Adele Martin

Submitted to Contest #65

Death. It’s never something you think much about, because you never think it will happen to you... until it does. Even today on Halloween, when people celebrate the dead, you don’t think about death at all. People dress up in their costumes, laughing, indulging in sensory pleasures. They feel more alive than they have reason to feel on most other days of the year; they forget the reason for it all. The meaning is lost to the void. Even when people do imagine death, they go about it the wrong way, thinking of bloody, vengeful murderers; res...

2 comments 2
Read story

“Beneath the Ancient Oak Tree” by Victoria Penny

Submitted to Contest #65

Beneath the Ancient Oak Tree by Victoria Penny As soon as darkness fell, the children were screaming. Gleefully they ran ahead of their parents to the next house with a porch light blazing, a pumpkin grinning menacingly on the doorstep. They would knock like a hammer on anvil, sing trick or treat like a choir and smile greedily as their bags bulged with the spoils of the night. She watched them all from the shadow of an ancient oak tree. These tiny beings gone wild. Made a game of spotting the store bought factory made costumes and t...

0 comments 0
Read story

“The Warmth Remains” by August Whitelock

Submitted to Contest #65

Alex said the bridge was too old, the beams of wood too worn to walk safely across. But yonder the bridge laid a paradisal place, secret and full of magic. I yearned of that light, and from my greed and hunger came my fate. It was an old bridge, cast-iron and oak—residing behind droves of ancient trees, hidden from the world. Who could have told a young degenerate the truth enough for him to abide? I was no listener, even now.  I walked the streets for a while that night, after my death. It was a small town night; no one breathed hot b...

2 comments 2
Read story

“Last Train to Limbo” by Christopher Cayen-Cyr

Submitted to Contest #65

Writer’s Note – Trigger Warning: Story contains elements of suicidal thoughts. The nine o’clock train came and went. So did the quarter past nine train. They kept zooming down the tracks, one right after the other at dizzying speeds. Trains passed by all evening in the filthy subway station, and kids coming back from trick-or-treating rushed for the doors in their costumes every time with the innocence of childhood, unaware of what tragic anniversary it was. They had no idea of what happened last Halloween and would probably never know. Th...

0 comments 0
Read story

“What a ghostly scene” by Sidney B.

Submitted to Contest #65

 I don’t remember dying. Or… living, really. I just remember waking up, and feeling amazing. Well, not really waking up, but sort of, you know? I opened my eyes and I was in my city, not far from where I lived. And I didn’t realise I was dead, at first. But then people kept walking through me and not responding to me, you know, the classic stuff that makes people realise they died in movies. I went to my funeral. It was quite pretty, actually. Apparently, I was loved by a lot of people, as it was really crowded. That, or I was just a ...

0 comments 0
Read story

“Until The Break Of Dawn” by Jolie Soukoule

Submitted to Contest #65

Before even a bland, uncarbonated drop of Grey Goose could be swallowed into abyss, darkness devoured him entirely. Engulfed in this chasm like state, the boy’s ability to move as much as his fingertips had swiftly been seized. The bursting of his aorta, the stretching and shredding of his pulmonary veins, the rattling and plucking of his lungs, the wrecking of his rib cage, however, plunged him into an ocean of torment.“Like a lazy ocean hugs the shore~. Hold me close~. Sway me more~..” a muffled voice was heard harmonizing to a distor...

3 comments 3
Read story

“Take Me Home” by Lindsey Albright

Submitted to Contest #65

Rain splattered and pooled in the mud over Charlie’s grave and in the middle, Charlie’s ghost sat. He was a young man when he died, only twenty-seven, and even though he had never believed in ghosts, there he was. He knew the air around him was cold. That much was obvious even if he couldn’t feel it. If it wasn’t for the steady and large droplets of water that fell from rolling gray clouds overhead or the brisk wind that rattled what remained of the leaves in the trees, the group of teenagers wearing Halloween costumes that snuck into the ce...

0 comments 0
Read story

“Waiting room” by Louise Owen

Submitted to Contest #65

I had always wondered what life is like within the physical realm. Unfortunately, my questions were never answered. Faded memories swirled swiftly around my head, echoing at me and calling me to listen to them, to remember them. I couldn't. I was never sure why these memories wouldn't show themselves fully. I could bathe myself within the thought of them but I would never remember them. All that was held within my mind was a thick and twisted fog along with some laughter echoing around it. Gentle laugher, childlike even Did I have one? Well,...

2 comments 2
Read story

“In Their Dreams” by Kathleen Whalen

Submitted to Contest #65

    I could hear their voices from downstairs. I was hiding in the dark corner of Sarah’s closet. Not that I needed to hide since no one can see me.   They were coming in from school, Thalia chattering about Halloween and Sarah sulking the way she seemed to do a lot of late.  “I’m going to be Cookie Monster and Thalia is going to be Elmo,” Sarah said without enthusiasm.  “Sarah, you’re ten years old. You’re way too old to be Cookie Monster for Halloween,” Patrick said.  I had t...

2 comments 2
Read story

“The Dead's Halloween” by Preetilina Hota

Submitted to Contest #65

It was Saturday morning, the sun shone more brighter than yesterday, the clouds up in the sky were blue triumphant and glorious, the gorgeous flower in the garden were dancing in the dazzling sunlight, the weather was calm and pleasant and so Rupert Walshsam a 42-year-old man, with red hair, thin nose, having almond shaped eyes was sitting in the backyard lawn reading the second chapter of the novel ‘The house of Silk’ which he bought yesterday from the Dulrupe’s Ghost Library. He was a book lover when he was alive, he had hundreds of books ...

0 comments 0
Read story

“Ay, de mi Lorona ” by DREW LANE

Submitted to Contest #65

Ay, de mi Llorona.  The pencil lead scratched the grain of the paper steadily. The vault of the church should be slightly more rounded and her bitten nails pressed the pencil tight to correct the inaccuracy. She refined the perspective lines and sketched details at the top of the light-cream pillars. On the baroque clock that overlooked the empty nave from the semi-circular mezzanine, two arrows stretched with contained vanity. The tiny one pointing at 11, the other at 12. As Liz curled deeper onto the straw of her wooden chair, he...

1 comment 1
Read story

“Both Ways” by Jim Snyder

Submitted to Contest #65

There was a screech echoing through the air with a ferocity that surely no mortal had heard, much more like the sound of a thousand demons crying out in pain all at once than anything else it might otherwise have been. Andrew stood still, frightened. He had never experienced such an ear-splitting sound in his short nine years of life and he almost certain never would again. His older brother, Braydon, had assured him for repeated years that this night was the one night humans could count on demons and vampires and werewolves a...

0 comments 0
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Start your story with two characters deciding to spend the night in a graveyard.

Novel – 320 stories

Write about a group of witches meeting up on Halloween night.

Halloween – 135 stories

Write about a vampire or werewolf who moves into a quiet suburban neighborhood.

Vampire – 160 stories

Write about someone taking a child trick-or-treating for the very first time.

Kids – 87 stories

Contest #65

Enter our weekly contest!

This week's theme: Spooky Season

$50

Prize money

908

Contest entries

0

Stories

Ended on 23:59 - Oct 30, 2020 EST

Won by Joshua G. J. Insole 🏆

Title: Bridgemoss Guardians

View details

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

We'll send you 5 prompts each week. Respond with your short story and you could win $250!

NEW VIDEO COURSE 🎉

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

Explore more writing prompt ideas:

Adults Writing Prompts ⭢

Adventure Writing Prompts ⭢

Angst Writing Prompts ⭢

Character Writing Prompts ⭢

Christmas Writing Prompts ⭢

Dark Writing Prompts ⭢

Dialogue Writing Prompts ⭢

Dramatic Writing Prompts ⭢

Dystopian Writing Prompts ⭢

Fall Writing Prompts ⭢

Fantasy Writing Prompts ⭢

Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Fluff Writing Prompts ⭢

Funny Writing Prompts ⭢

Halloween Writing Prompts ⭢

High School Writing Prompts ⭢

Historical Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Holiday Writing Prompts ⭢

Horror Writing Prompts ⭢

Kids Writing Prompts ⭢

Middle School Writing Prompts ⭢

Mystery Writing Prompts ⭢

Narrative Writing Prompts ⭢

Nonfiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Novel Writing Prompts ⭢

Poetry Writing Prompts ⭢

Romance Writing Prompts ⭢

Sad Writing Prompts ⭢

Science Fiction Writing Prompts ⭢

Short Story Writing Prompts ⭢

Spring Writing Prompts ⭢

Summer Writing Prompts ⭢

Teens Writing Prompts ⭢

Thanksgiving Writing Prompts ⭢

Thriller and Suspense Writing Prompts ⭢

Valentine's Day Writing Prompts ⭢

Vampire Writing Prompts ⭢

Winter Writing Prompts ⭢