Menu

More apps built by Reedsy

Assemble a team of professionals

The writing app for authors

Writing courses, events and memberships

Get your book reviewed

Weekly writing prompts and contests

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Weekly Contest
Monthly Contest
Reedsy Literary Prize
Magazine
FAQ

← All contests

#377 Ghost Stories

The rustle of leaves at midnight, the lone howl of a wolf heard from inside a flimsy tent... It’s been years since I last went camping, but I can still remember how excited I was for a change of environment, city fumes replaced by crisp mountain air. One of my favorite memories of that trip was right before bed, when everyone made s’mores and took turns telling creepy, nightmare-inducing tales.

This week, let’s gather around the fire and share our spookiest stories beneath the light of the moon. Think about hauntings of every kind and how they can take your characters by surprise...

🥇 Winner

I'll Take the Low Road

Winner of Weekly Contest #377 🏆

Clara couldn’t for the life of her remember why she’d come to Greyfriars Kirkyard. She’d been excited to tour it when she first arrived in Edinburgh, enraptured by the chance to study history in a city with its eras stacked atop one another like the layers of a cake: stairs slicing through Georgian streets that had been cobbled atop medieval streets, who themselves had dug their foundations through Celtic ruins, with a gothic castle topper looming over them all. After drinking her way through town during Fresher’s Week and beginning her stud...

55 likes 36 comments 36
Read story

⭐️ Shortlisted

This week's prompts

Write a story from the POV of a ghost.

– 87 stories

Include something haunted (a house, doll, mirror, painting, etc.) in your story.

– 58 stories

Write a ghost story where the ghost isn't the scariest thing in it.

– 52 stories

Start or end your story with a door opening on its own.

– 23 stories

Include the line “There’s no one there,” “I know what I saw,” or “I never left” in your story.

– 42 stories

Stories

The Brothers Paranormal - Season 03 - Episode 08 - Stained Glass

Weekly Contest #377

“So everyone just deals with this shit-stain house on their street?” said Juice. He put on the breaks and the van came to a squeaky halt right in front of the said object of humanely waste. “Who wants to touch this house after all that happened inside of it, let alone fix it up, not me.” Said Jack. He looked at it with scrunched face. “Well ya, but they should just knock it down, no?” Juice replied. “Even destruction costs money brother,” Jack said finally peeling his gaze from the home. Dusk was approaching. “Didn’t Gemma tell us ‘you won’t...

9 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

The Clock

Weekly Contest #377

The Clock For Johnny Hart 1931-2007 On Sunday, Charlie arrived at his clock shop just after dawn. The shop was normally closed on Sundays, and on any other day he chose. When the shop was closed, he often went driving around to yard sales, estate sales, antique fairs, pawn shops—anywhere he might discover and buy an antique clock. But today was not a day for exploring the countryside. Charlie unlocked the grating and rolled it up like a window shade. He unlocked the door and entered to the tinkle of a bell overhanging the door on a flat spri...

9 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The House

Weekly Contest #377

CW: Violence and mention of suicide The House By Grendle It sat at the end of a long, elm-lined street in the North End of Bridgeport, a towering Victorian of bruised slate and rotting gingerbread trim. To the neighborhood, the old Halloway place was just an eyesore. But to Cormac, returning to clear out the estate after a lifetime away, it was a mausoleum. The house had always possessed a malignant appetite. The Halloway family history read like a ledger of grotesque accidents: a great-uncle found boiled alive by burst radiator pipes in th...

9 likes 17 comments 17
Read story

The Old House

Weekly Contest #377

Eli Williams was a house flipper by trade, but he liked to think of himself as a restorer of forgotten treasures. He had an eye for older homes, particularly those that had been vacant for some time but still possessed the character and craftsmanship that modern construction often lacked. He enjoyed taking a weathered property, giving it a little tender, loving care, and transforming it into something a new owner could appreciate. Of course, with making a fair amount of profit in mind. So far, the year had been exceptionally good for him. Hi...

9 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A Shot in the Dark

Weekly Contest #377

That was it. Tommy was the last person in the building after the graduation ceremony. Four years of college in the past, and now there was no one there. It was just Tommy standing in the lobby of his school’s basketball arena, the lights starting to dim. It was a strange feeling he had never experienced before, being completely alone in a large, empty building, but it was one that made sense to him. Tommy went to a college that was on the other side of the country from where he grew up. None of his high school friends went there. His parents...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

The PFP Prevailing Fictional Presence

Weekly Contest #377

I am NOT a Ghost! I am a PFP – a Prevailing Fictional Presence. What is the difference you ask? I thought it would be obvious. To become a Ghost, one must have been a real living person. To become a Prevailing Fictional Presence, one must have been a reality living vividly in imagination. I am Malory Tennyson, the chief Prevailing Fictional Presence here at Malory Tennyson’s Cloudbank Cabin for Arthurian Studies. Cloudbank Cabin sits above the Fog Lake, in the shadow of the Many Mooded Mountain. In the Fog Lake, the Prevailing Fictional Pres...

9 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Good Behaviour

Weekly Contest #377

CW: Violence, substance abuse, mental health issues Grim handed me the latest yellow manila folder , looking, well, um, grim. No surprise there. “You could just email me you know.” To be honest, I would have preferred that he emailed me. I really didn’t need to see his face each time. “I can’t get used to all this new fangled technology” he said, shrugging his hollow black shoulders. And then disappeared into thin air. I sat on the sofa, drinking my coffee, and thumbed absent-mindedly through the folder. I’d look at it properly tonight. Onc...

9 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Being Dead Sucks

Weekly Contest #377

When I died and came back as a ghost I was kind of embarrassed about it. I’d been squished by a semi-truck and I guess by ghost logic you look like your body at the time of death. So I wasn’t a particularly attractive ghost to look at. I didn’t really know where else to go, so I kept going to my community college classes. I’d sort of go home afterschool, except my mom had terrible anxiety and I figured she wouldn’t want to see the semi-dismembered ghost of her twenty year old daughter while she was eating spaghetti. So I’d just stand outside...

9 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

The Swallow

Weekly Contest #377

Content Warning: Suicide, animal injury, and alcohol misuse. It was half past midnight when Virgil knocked on my door again. Three frail taps. “Anabell? You awake honey?” It was locked, but his voice slipped easily through the keyhole. “You there hon’?” “Yep, I’m here.” “What are you doing in there?” “Tossing and turning,” I said before raising the bottle to my lips. Kiss me baby, I whispered to myself. The rotgut made its way down the gully to my gut, rekindling a spiced fire in a cavern of no other substance. There was nothing in me anymo...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Goodwill

Weekly Contest #377

The man following me thought he was being a spy like James Bond. He was, in reality, more like Peter Sellers trailing the Pink Panther. In other words, pretty obvious. Why he’d be tailing me I had no idea. I was on my way to Skywalker Antiques, my after-retirement project which consisted of a store owned by me and co-opped with five others. Antique hunting was addictive and fun. Yard sales were the best, people just wanting to get rid of stuff. Estate sales were hit or miss, often the prices the controllers wanted were what we’d be able to ...

8 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Nothing Beyond It

Weekly Contest #377

The door opened by itself. A heavy, grinding thud swept up the stairway and through the floorboards beneath my chair. Until then, I had heard nothing. I was enjoying the quiet. That was what I told myself, anyway. No traffic on a Sunday night. No sounds from other apartments. I had chosen this penthouse in this location for its silence. I had dismissed the observation of a colleague that Sentosa has the highest concentration of ghosts in Singapore. Now I sat listening to that silence, waiting for the usual components of it to reassert themse...

8 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

LINE FIVE

Weekly Contest #377

CW: Suicide, death, mental health issues So this is all confidential? I know, I know you explained it. But I’m after promotion and if this got out – well, I’m sure you can imagine. I want to get on in life and I don’t need this haunting my career. I’m sorry. Can you give me a minute. I don’t know why it still affects me like this – it’s ridiculous, I mean, I’m traumatised by something that never actually happened, but I get it, that’s why I’m here. I was working line five the day I saw him. It was the back end of a long shift, but I can tel...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

The Generation Game

Weekly Contest #377

We are all made of stars and yet we make of ourself ghosts. This is the game that is played all about us as we enter this existence and it is the game we are doomed to play unless we awaken to the absurdity of it all. There are other games to be played. The game of ghosts is just one of many games on offer. We are after all inquisitive collectors of clues and we make of those clues what we will. The most important of our creations are the discards. Everything that we dismiss and ignore has far more value than that which we clutch at. In thi...

8 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Backwards

Weekly Contest #377

A phone alarm blasts from my bedside table. It’s loud enough to jolt me awake, so I throw my arm over my body and smack the screen repeatedly till the ringing stops. We do this dance every nine minutes as the alarm’s snooze goes off, until I’m finally angry enough to pick up the phone and turn off all the alarms. I’m about to happily lie back down when I see the time. 10:02 A.M. “Oh shit.” I throw the thin top sheet aside and stomp to the bathroom to hurriedly get ready. I’m mid-brushing my teeth when I stop and listen. I peek my head out th...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

I know what I saw

Weekly Contest #377

Paige was about nine years old that summer night, almost 30 years ago. Our little house didn't have a porch; just a concrete step to sit on and watch the birdfeeders, or the dogs, or the sky. Mom always said sitting on concrete would give you hemorrhoids. Paige and I escaped unscathed, and that summer we often found ourselves on that step. Boys busy on their mysterious pursuits, I kept my girl company with idle chat, and then, stories. "Make this one scary, Mom," she might urge. Or "a story about the dogs on an adventure" or "what will my de...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

How to Write a Novel

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

How to Write a Novel