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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

Write about someone’s first Halloween as a ghost.

Posted in Halloween on Nov 1, 2022

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✍️ 206 stories

“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,...

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“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...

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“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...

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“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...

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“The Unrested” by A L Burn

Submitted to Contest #65

There’s been a distinct chill in the air for a number of weeks. Crooked trees empty their branches of leaves, the neighbourhood almost entirely visible except the nooks shrouded by thick evergreens. A new energy hums between residents, one that wasn’t here in the lazy months of summer. I perch on my favourite bench, instinctively hugging my knees to my chest as I gaze out over the distant hills. Sunsets are something I have never tired of. In the millions of years gone by and in the many yet to come, the sun rises and falls without care to t...

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“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...

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“Unfinished Business ” by Hungara Gamelia

Submitted to Contest #65

Clear colorless eyes, flickered open.Incorporeal arms, resting lightly in the air.And a piercing cold wind, that could not be felt.Streetlights backlighting an insubstantial figure.Autumn leaves swirled at the feet.Seeming to flow right through it.It seemed to look up.Gaining definition as it did.Dusty brown hair.Hollow eyes.Rayden started at the perfect moon.A sphere of glowing light.That at this moment seemed unnatural.It tingled at his spine.And its light, seemed to pull at the edges of his form.Studying himself.He somehow knew, what he w...

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“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 ...

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“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...

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“All Hallows' Eve” by Lauren Clayton

Submitted to Contest #65

Blood pooled across the cobblestones as I emerged from my body. I stumbled when I tried to stand - my limbs had turned to swirling rivulets of vapour. Puddles of fresh rainwater reflected my ghostly pallor and several trees behind me, or rather, through me. Not a sight you see every day, my internal monologue prompted. A dense fog settled across my vision, so I wiped my eyes, only to find my hand passed completely through my head. Omitting a gasp, albeit more of a strangled gargle, attracted another eddy of translucent vapour. “Newly fledged...

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“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...

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“He came back” by Dewain Williams

Submitted to Contest #65

                                  HE CAME BACK                                  A SHORT STORY                    &n...

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“To Haunt or Not to Haunt” by Elle Adler

Submitted to Contest #65

Learning not to breathe is a hard thing, especially since breathing was never learned to begin with. I cannot actually breathe since I am air. The best explanation I ever got is I am a gaseous form of my human memories. It’s been two months since my death, I still cannot stop trying to breathe. My ghost friends say I can dissipate if I breathe too much. I’ll start expanding, then poof. It could be hazing, though. Ghosts are known for being pranksters.  Tonight should be good. Once a year, people all over interact with us. Halloween. In...

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“One more time” by Starry Nights

Submitted to Contest #65

I have been standing there all alone in a moor. Coldness and darkness surrounding me and engulfing me whole. I have been here for how long …I don’t know. It seems like forever… This place always remains the same,Dark ,cold,hollow but at the same time holding back something hideous behind its misty air …the moor was surrounded by a thick fog which won’t allow my eyes to see what lies there…All I can see is rough barren land in the mid of it , a tree under which lies my place ,a wooden old bench. I have been sitting here for so long …I can’t r...

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“First Time Ghost” by Steve Hupcher

Submitted to Contest #65

For the first time since he could remember, the brisk fall air drifting across his face wasn’t what stirred him. This time it was a woodpecker. The Woodpecker. It was the third day in a row the tympanic echo off the hollow tree reverberated throughout the house. Still in bed, he shot up mid-stretch as his memory came back to him. How did he get there? He looked around feeling dizzy, the way you feel when you realize you’re in a dream and then your whole dream world crashes down around you. Mind still swimming, he laid back down to think. T...

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