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CONTEST ENDED – Thank you for submitting your stories!

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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✍️ 225 stories

“The Lady in Red” by Diana Monney

Submitted to Contest #64

What is it that makes the beatings of the heart raise? Emptiness. One way or another it frightens you. It alarms you what may hinder in the void as much as it terrifies you to realize you are alone and slowly going mad. Perhaps that is why we dread the idea of death. Being buried in the darkness of rotting wood around you while death eats your skin for all eternity. It compels you to fabricate a world beyond with ghosts and souls. He used to be my favourite child, Arthur. He was kind, in the blossoming youth with seventeen years of age. I mi...

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“The Lost Girl” by Megan Lanphere

Submitted to Contest #64

Caroline and I have been best friends since kindergarten because we both snored while we slept and had to be kept separate from the rest of the class during naptime. Once we were put in different rooms we skipped nap time to talk to each other, pretending to be asleep when the teacher would come check on us.  Now we are 17 and taking on a new adventure. We were from Notasulga so we had to get on AL-14 and neither of us had driven on the thruway by ourselves so we were excited. We climbed into Caroline’s sleek grey Malibu: my mother cal...

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“Unexpected Visitors” by Kelsey Dahlberg

Submitted to Contest #64

Oliver had been alone for a very long time.Memory was not an ally in his old age, but he knew it had been a good number of years since he had lived with others; his family had long since moved on to greener pastures, and they had left him alone in this big house with nothing but spiders for company.Even Oliver’s own wife had left eventually, her heart less stubborn than Oliver’s. She couldn’t take the emptiness of the big house once all her beloved children and grandchildren had gone away for good, and so left to follow them.And so, Oliver h...

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“Supernatural Diversity” by Kristen Miller

Submitted to Contest #64

My love for ghosts — or as my dad would say, my obsessions with ghosts — began when I was around twelve or thirteen years old. Dad was a plumber and often brought me on house calls with him as his assistant. I always suspected that he wanted me to take over his plumbing business when he retired, but plumbing was never for me. I couldn't imagine a more boring profession than plumbing. Once you learned how to fix a leaky faucet or replace corroded pipes, it was always the exact same work. I craved novelty and imagination, and above all, meeti...

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“Love/Lie” by Veneshya Maheswaran

Submitted to Contest #64

On a September morning Bella woke up feeling sad.’ Why cant it be holiday’. she hated school for she was picked for her sticking out teeth and hair that’s alway frizz. she felt she was ugly. days passed. one day there was commotion in her class everyone was talking about it there is a new kid joining her class, a boy. Although Bella didn’t know who she had a excitement grow in her. Next morning she sat in her class early as usual so she can escape the people picking on her. Slowly the classroom filled the teacher came and took register. Sudd...

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“Pictures on the Wall” by Kristy Perkins

Submitted to Contest #64

Part 1 I don’t remember what her face looked like. Father doesn’t allow her picture to be hung on the walls, he hasn’t for an awfully long time. I don’t even remember what her voice sounded like, it’s a gurgle of a mess in my mind these days. No matter how hard I try, it's not even a distant memory anymore. I want to remember; I want to pretend she can touch me again. I want to see her face, but Father says I mustn’t. So instead, the halls that she used to walk are all I must remind myself. The roses have since wilted and father has yet to...

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“The Last Bronte” by Nora Sheppard

Submitted to Contest #64

The Last Bronte The bus took me to Haworth, my dream destination for decades, ever since I read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. How could sisters, sheltered and disconnected from much of society, create books of such passion and darkness? As we pulled up to the Bronte Parsonage Museum, I glimpsed the Brontes’ beloved moors. I didn’t know my companions on this excursion. It was a side trip on my tour. I couldn’t miss this chance to see where the Brontes created their masterpieces and lived out their lives. Adjacent to the parsonag...

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“Millie” by Jared Thomason

Submitted to Contest #64

    The wind howls. The branches bang against the window. Every so often a flash of light briefly illuminates the room, followed shortly by a crash of thunder. Guess I’m not going to get any sleep tonight. Again. Actually, it’s worse when there is no storm. The nights when the weather’s calm make this large, foreboding room much, much eerier for me, for there is no noise whatsoever to speak of after dark. You never realize just how silent the night can be until you’re left all alone, with nothing but your thoughts to accompany you....

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“EMBERS ON SNOW” by Meghna Chatterjee

Submitted to Contest #64

I stared the failed group of cops of my reputed department. I scrutinised them with my icy gaze before letting my eyes fall on the members of the accused household. Three days ago a murder had happened here allegedly committed by the ghost of a woman, Aerial Mackenzie, who died decade ago due to unexplained reasons. I stared at the brother of Aerial, a grumpy forty-year old man who stood with his wife. He was John Mackenzie and his wife, a pretty woman with blue eyes in her late thirties, Sarah Mackenzie. John Mackenzie was the eldest aft...

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“The Last Maid” by Steak AndEggs

Submitted to Contest #64

I parked my car in the employee section in the back of the hotel. Once the car stopped, I pulled a picture of my son Jack out from underneath the visor. I gave it a kiss and got out of the car. I walked away from it and locked the doors with my remote. I liked to look back and make sure the lights flash. That’s when I noticed that my car sat there all by itself. There wasn’t a single car in the entire employee section before mine. “Maybe it’s their offseason?” I said to myself. I didn’t care how bad the job was. I needed the money despe...

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“The Talbot Sisters’ Vengeance” by Naomi Spencer

Submitted to Contest #64

It was a cold December night when it happened again. The air was glacial, and you could barely feel your fingers, even with fur-lined gloves on. That day, I had been fixing my sink for the third time this month, thinking about how long it had been since I had last taken a vacation. At five minutes past ten on that night, a forty-year-old clerk named Winton Carline, on his way to his lazy, good-for-nothing kids and his apathetic wife, began screaming. By the time the neighbors came out of their houses, Carline had disappeared and would neve...

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“Justice” by Matthew Eubanks

Submitted to Contest #64

It's the same routine every night that saves me from insanity. We sit by the window while she rocks and stares. I make sure she has blankets. Grandmother Pearl always sleeps till morning. When her eyes close, I'm gone, out the back door, closing the white gate softly. Only a few blocks from the house the world of streetlights and asphalt ends and the trail that leads to Hartselle Woods begins. What begins as a paved trail for tourists that branches off the highway quickly becomes the darkness and the quiet that I need. I leave...

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“Please Forgive Your Mother” by J. Paul

Submitted to Contest #64

Mr. Westerleigh wasn’t sure how many olives made sense. The twelfth olive on the salad’s crispy surface completed a neat circular pattern, but perhaps a thirteenth in the middle would amuse, or even captivate. On the other hand, thirteen felt like quite an obnoxious number of olives in one salad for four. This wasn’t a small problem - he had to get this right. His estranged daughter, Meredith, would be coming for dinner with her new man, a fast-talking lawyer named Elmer. It was imperative that he executed this salad perfectly. For many m...

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“Lucy's Visitor” by Josie Gilbert

Submitted to Contest #64

Over the years Lucy had moved to a new house several times, but nothing had prepared her for her current move. She and her husband, Eric, had finally scraped together the funds to buy their dream home: a manor house on the Sussex Downs, surrounded by large, established gardens. Part of the house itself dated back to the sixteenth century, albeit with many later and varied additions. It had obviously been well-loved by its owners, with each leaving their own mark, thereby creating a hotchpotch of architectural features and internal decoration...

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“Henry” by Larissa Barrios

Submitted to Contest #64

Adel fought with the door, twisting the skeleton key back and forth while pushing with her shoulder. For years the manor sat empty, sealed up, waiting for someone to bring life back to its halls. Now it refused to open back up, like a scorned lover. She turned the key again and heard a deep click. The door groaned inwards, sending an echo through the antechamber.  Adel picked up her bags from the stope and entered, taking in every little detail. She  had viewed the manor before buying it, but now that it was officially hers, she w...

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Title: The Girl in the Goethe House

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