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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

“United Halloweens” by Laura Boynton

Submitted to Contest #65

In my early years, Halloween was cute chubby smiling pumpkins and tottering around in a pink tutu or lion suit before being pushed in my stroller trick-or-treating with my two older brothers and parents.   A little later, Halloween was scary pranks, craving pumpkins, ghost stories with flashlight beams pointed up at chins and pillow cases full of candy from hours of running door to door to door.  Few years more, Halloween turns into pure horror movie marathons with deranged killers, paranormal hauntings and flesh-eat...

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“My Fourth (and Last) Attempt at Being Mortal” by Cassidy M.

Submitted to Contest #65

Honestly, the afterlife is overrated. Well, at least it is if you chose the path labelled “Ghost” (I can’t speak for “Vampire”, “Olympus” or “Llama”, but I’m sure I could find you someone who could tell you about those paths some other time). What can I say? I may or may not have still been a little (okay, a lot) drunk at the choosing time. Note to self: when a shady old lady offers you a vial labelled “poison” on Halloween, she’s probably not joking. I mean, you’d think that being a ghost, I could haunt houses or leave ominous letters to t...

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“A Scare is Born” by Bryan Parent

Submitted to Contest #65

Where am I?  Why is everything so, so, weird?  I realized I was talking to myself.  What a stupid thing to do.  There was no one else around, who could I possibly be talking to anyway?  It didn’t matter, there were more important things to ponder.  First and foremost, my initial question.  Just where am I? I looked around.  It was nearly pitch black and all I could see were odd shapes around me along the ground. Blindly I reached out.  Stone.&nbsp...

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“Onboarding” by Tina West

Submitted to Contest #65

The HR lady leads a woman out of her office. The waiting room is full of recruits. HR lady’s secretary hands her a folder, and then takes a call. HR lady tells you she’ll be back and ready to start your onboarding in a few minutes. You were about to stand up and put out your hand for a handshake, but when she breezed past you, you plopped back down. Awkward. You give a little wave that indicates, “Take your time!” Your time. Her time. Someone’s time. It must be for efficiency’s sake for the new applicants. They’ll want to know when they die...

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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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“Gone But Still Here” by Jamie Clark

Submitted to Contest #65

Being dead is weird. I still exist, I think, but people can’t see me. I like to move things around, little things like throwing rocks near birds or blowing the top off a dandelion, just to remind myself that I’m really still here. I wish other people would know that too. People got over my death pretty quickly, some of them did before I even died. I was gone for a while, a few years probably, before I finally got to go. That’s what I call dying because I felt dead long before it actually happened. One can hardly call wasting away, hardly abl...

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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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“Boo Hoo” by Vanessa Kilmer

Submitted to Contest #65

I stood in the rain and watched the water drops splash up from the ground through the arches of my feet. The light from the street lamp sparkled and refracted on liquid beads. I turned my face up to the weeping sky and felt nothing. I was the only being out on the street tonight. The wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube jack-o-lantern in my neighbor’s yard dodged and bobbed in the wind. The blowup ghost hissed and moaned. An umbrella, its bones turned inside out, tumbled down the avenue, skipping to the tune of spooky music blarin...

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“A Ghostly Halloween” by Jenne Gentry

Submitted to Contest #65

Katelyn woke, though, as a ghost, she no longer slept the same way she did when she was alive. She looked to the moon in the darkening sky. It was almost night. The amount of time that had passed since her death, she did not know, nor did she care, though in truth it had been less than half a year. Every day since her passing had been spent in misery and grief. She missed being alive and found that existing in the same realm of the living, of whom flaunted their beating hearts for all to see, was too much for her ghostly essence to bear. She...

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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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“A Night To Remember” by Helen Molly

Submitted to Contest #65

It’s been a year since it happened. I still remember it as if it happened the day before, and it remains fresh in my mind. On a causal summer day, I was walking down the street, planning to go to the convenience store for some snacks for me and my sister. As I approached the door however, I heard commotion inside the store. People were screaming, and I heard glass windows shattering from the loud, sharp sound of a shotgun. I backed up, not sure what to do. Just as I was deciding to run away, the gunman spotted me and aimed his gun. Before I ...

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“An eternal dusk” by Agathe Burrier

Submitted to Contest #65

Things felt different now. Sacha couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something in the air, like a memory long forgotten that clung to the tips of her hair and down the hem of her dress. The falling night smelled like sadness, like regret. Something wasn’t right. She just didn’t know exactly what was wrong yet. Sacha had been in the dark about a lot of things since her birth a few months ago. The feeling wasn’t new, per se. But it had never been so strong. She could almost taste it now, almost touch it. It smelled like freedom,...

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“These Things Do Happen” by Cori Spruiell

Submitted to Contest #65

The wind was sharp and biting, whipping around street corners and through open doors with a ferocity that sparked rumors of an early frost. Collars were raised against the brisk air, and paces quickened as through the cold could be outrun; tricked by a sidestep or left behind on a crowded stretch of sidewalk.The young woman peering into a window of the corner store was dressed altogether inappropriately for the season. The short hem of her sundress and thin brown sandals would prove no match for the unrelenting chill - that is, if it had bee...

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“A Decent Halloween” by Beth Edgar

Submitted to Contest #65

Ricky Carver was a fast-talking salesman. He wore flashy clothes; he drove expensive cars and always had a beautiful woman hanging on his arm.  Life was idyllic until that fateful night when he and his date du jour had a celebratory dinner at Valentino’s Italian Restaurant. He had just been named salesman of the year and he wanted to celebrate at his favorite place. Ricky had steak pomodoro and one too many gimlets. When it came time to leave, he realized that he had imbibed a bit too much and was thankful that ...

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“A White Bed Sheet” by Abigail Munoz

Submitted to Contest #65

It was my first Halloween. I had never gone trick or treating or even had ever celebrated the holiday before. My family was always weirded out by the idea of Halloween, they never quite understood it. But this year was the first year that they’ve finally agreed to let me go. I was excited, but I realized that I didn’t have a costume to wear. I had absolutely no idea what to wear. I didn't have any money to go buy a costume so I did the next best thing. I took an old white sheet, cut out two holes and made a ghost costume. I put the sheet ove...

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