Write a ghost story where there’s more going on than it first appears.

Posted in Mystery on Jul 27, 2021

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✍️ 228 stories

“The Girl in the Goethe House” by Mollie Rodgers

I pass under the words “GOETHE FAMILY ESTATE” and grapple with a queer feeling of unease. The archway is flanked by faceless statues, their features worn smooth by wind and rain. The path to my right leads down the hill, past rows of uniform headstones, to the old convent. Ahead of me stands the Goethe Manor House.The convent was closed decades ago, and the Goethe House has been abandoned for over a century. The only building on the estate that is still occupied is half a mile away; the former Catholic girls’ school, now converted ...

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“The Wandering Medallion ” by 🆇🅰🆅🅸🅴🆁 🅶.🆂. 🅵🅴🆁🅶🆄🆂🅾🅽

When Graham’s heart cancer had forced its removal, it was it for him, except for a last chance at life: a highly experimental prosthetic heart. And for four months, it has worked, constantly transmitting commands in response to his body’s natural nervous signals to a computer. It, in turn, would regulate the BPM. Monitors constantly beeped, showing the peaks and dips in his artificial pulse. Four months and one day since the surgery, the lock to the door of Graham and his Grandparents’ dwelling was picked. The valuables off of...

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“Tying The Thread, A Story of The Undead” by Amany Sayed

You wanted a ghost storyWith a twist?Here’s the twist-I’m the ghostYou can laughShake your headTake a bathGo back to bedI’m not lyingNot a bitI’m here sighingI can’t even sitIf I don’t concentrate, Things go through my skinI don’t have any weightMy ‘bones’ are papery thinHow am I writing?Well I just keep fightingThese worlds that I createI live in them you seeBouncing from state to stateTh...

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“Leave” by Elle Clark

Jessica woke because of the cold. Icy tendrils of damp were clawing at her arms and the chattering of her teeth was enough to make her jaw ache. Beside her, Jackson slept soundly. The duvet was tucked round her shoulders and his face was relaxed and innocently boyish. The cold that seemed to be seeping into her very bones didn’t appear to be affecting him in the slightest. Jessica remembered her mother talking about fevers so hot they tricked you into thinking that the burning you felt was ice. She certainly felt li...

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“THE TWIST” by Enenche Elizabeth

I ran briskly through the backdoor of our house as I managed to escape from my mum. Where is this naughty girl? I heard my mum asked from the living room. I had worn three cardigans with my teddy bear hung round my neck fully prepared for work.I forgot to introduce myself. I am Clara Bernard a junior nurse in Amelia Lewis Hospital (ALH). I am the intelligent one but the clumsiest nurse in the hospital. I was supposed to be a senior nurse but due to...

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“The Prison” by Julia Boddie

She needed money and she needed it very badly. She lived alone, with no parents to tell her what to do. She was free. But nothing in life is free. All things come at a cost, even freedom itself.~~~~~~~~~~In a world like this, it was normal to see a fourteen-year-old kid like her living by themselves. The leaders of her city tried to make fair laws, but they couldn’t. This city had way too much crime. They couldn’t even get parents to take care of their children anymore. So here she was, struggling for m...

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“acrobat” by Masha Kurbatova

Derek is an empirical, sciency person who listens to only facts. But I guess death makes believers of us all. I thought he never listened to me either, yet certainly some things have gone through. How else would he remember where to hire a paranormal investigator? Paranormal Investigator: Where do you notice the greatest level of activity? Derek: By the closet, definitely. That’s where sh...

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“Brown Jade” by Joe Sauers

An instant after Dennis Wing uttered the words zōng yù to the check-in clerk at Heathrow Airport, a hush like a tidal wave of silence washed over the whole of the departure lounge, reducing the bustling character of the international terminal to the stillness of a crypt. A few more moments passed before Dennis registered that everything around him had slowed to a snail’s pace. He looked around wa...

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“A Strange day in July” by ✯𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚 𝐋𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫✯

A Strange day in July By: Haripriya(AUTHOR'S NOTE: This title was from the book ” The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. Also the line ” He threw with all his might, but the third stone came skipping back“)“Whoa!” exclaimed Edith. “Yeah! This is really cool!” replied Ernest. The twins were excited to move to Alabama. Little did they know that they were in for a treat.&nbs...

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“My Zoey” by Daniel Roueche

I wrap her tiny body in my arms. A snot bubble around her nose bursts as she sneezes gently into my sleeve. I bundle her up in her sleeper and place her in her crib. She fusses when I set her down, but within a few minutes, she relaxes into a slow, rhythmic breathing. Standing over the crib, I smile. It’s been a long day filled with baby boogies, watery eyes, and sick crying. I haven’t been a...

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“The Ghost Writer” by Jessy Glazewski

Trigger warning: suicide As Beth climbed the thirteen flights of stairs to the fourteenth floor, she rehearsed in her mind what she was going to say to Devon when she broke the news to him that she was leaving him. With each step, her resolve to finally follow through on this, now 8-month endeavor of ceasing her six-year relationship with Devon, a failed and failed again writer who was never quite able to write that breakthrough novel he always talked about. ...

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“Ceaseless Cycle” by Raquel Rodriguez

Red. Red like blood. Blood red. Dripping down the walls, spinning, spinning, never stop spinning. She grabs her cheeks and holds them hostage in her bloody fingers; her nails sliding down like blades. She screams gleefully, laughs, and slaps her legs raw. Her cheeks now have blood marks on them. Fire. Covered in the fire. Red, bloody fire. Blood vessels burst open in her legs and blood rushes to the surface of her pale skin. “What a great friend!” she ...

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“destiny comes to town” by Lina Oz

“Hey. I’m Destiny.”“Destiny? Cool name. I like it.”“Thanks. And your's is…?”“Amelia.”“Nice to meet you.”“So. Um. Do you like it here?”“It’s…okay. I like the new house. And the high school seems pretty decent. But I––I kind of miss my friends back home.”“Oh––right. I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that must be like––to move right in the middle of…what school year are you again?”“Eleventh.”

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“One, Carry the Five” by Stevie B

May I share something with you? My mother’s ghost haunts me, but rarely does it appear before me late at night or frighten me. Usually, as when she was still alive, her presence comforts me. Do you think that’s strange? Well then, try this on for size: her ghost began to haunt me even before she died on August 23, 2013. Perhaps I owe you an expla...

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“Linden Drive” by Claire Lindsey

I sometimes feel that I knew you once, that the memory of your voice has haunted me for what feels like centuries, ringing in harmony with the silence of death. Yes, I think that I did know you, that this house was ours, but I cannot recall what our names were or even the shape of your face. Everything fades in death; even the sharpest memory becomes muddled and thin, mist on the moorland. Dying is being wrapped in an unending blanket of fog, watching the shape of the world as it happens without you but not seeing anything clearly.

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Title: The Girl in the Goethe House

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Write a ghost story where there’s more going on than it first appears.

Submissions are closed

✍️ 228 stories

“The Girl in the Goethe House” by Mollie Rodgers

“The Wandering Medallion ” by 🆇🅰🆅🅸🅴🆁 🅶.🆂. 🅵🅴🆁🅶🆄🆂🅾🅽

“Tying The Thread, A Story of The Undead” by Amany Sayed

“Leave” by Elle Clark

“THE TWIST” by Enenche Elizabeth

“The Prison” by Julia Boddie

“acrobat” by Masha Kurbatova

“Brown Jade” by Joe Sauers

“A Strange day in July” by ✯𝐋𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚 𝐋𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫✯

“My Zoey” by Daniel Roueche

“The Ghost Writer” by Jessy Glazewski

“Ceaseless Cycle” by Raquel Rodriguez

“destiny comes to town” by Lina Oz

“One, Carry the Five” by Stevie B

“Linden Drive” by Claire Lindsey

🌟 Similar prompts

Set your story in a Gothic manor house.

Write about someone who’s been sent to boarding school.

Write about a family attempting to hide their secrets from someone new.

Write a romance that involves one partner saving the other from a fire.

Contest #64

Enter our weekly contest!

$50

Prize money

762

Contest entries

0

Stories

Win $250 in our short story competition 🏆

Tired of MS Word?

Explore more writing prompt ideas: