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Short horror story essay 8 Models
Last updated Friday , 15-03-2024 on 11:35 am
Short horror story essay is one of the popular intimidation methods that help parents in correcting children and improving their behavior in many educational aspects.
Through this article, we will provide you with many models that talk about stories of horror and intimidation that may help or influence the behavior of children, show the goals of horror stories, and the extent of the impact of these stories on improving children’s instincts, and strengthening their personality.
Short horror story essay
The school plays an important and significant role in educating children and improving their behaviour. In a similar article that talks about horror stories, the student can learn about the dimensions of these stories, the extent of their impact and why they are used.
The student can talk about his fears and terrifying situations he went through. The teacher can take advantage of these events and try to address these fears by guiding him and talking to him, or by making him research more about the dimensions of the problem and the benefits that he benefited from despite going through a terrifying situation.
At the beginning of the article we will put several points that show the goals that must be present within the topic, and several models will be created using these points inside them, so that the articles are useful for the student in case he wants to present them to the school, or if he wants to know the aspects that he should talk about inside a similar article he talks about the horror stories and the bad situations he was exposed to.
Objectives of the article
1- To obey orders.
2- Giving up bad behavior.
3- Repressing the evil instincts that are inside every human being.
4- Controlling the child in the safety zone next to the parents.
5- Planting correct means and methods through intimidation.
Several years ago, my father told me a story about a boy who went out without telling his family where he was going. And this was late at night. After he left, he met some children and played a little with them and enjoyed this, but because of the late time these children left him, some of them returned to their home alone, and some of them their families came to to pick them up, and he found himself alone in the end.
He decided to walk around for a while, so that he might encounter other children and continue playing with them. But after walking for a long time, he found that all the streets were empty, and it was dark everywhere, and he could no longer discern where he was, and that he was far from home and lost his way.
And whenever he tried to return from where he came, he found himself in dangerous areas with street dogs, and in order to avoid them, he kept entering other streets, until he lost the way completely. So he sat crying and did not find anyone to bring him home because all the people of the town were asleep.
The time at night was getting hard for this naughty little boy. Every minute that passes feels like it’s a long time and he’s so afraid of darkness and loneliness. And whenever he heard the sound of dogs howling, intensified in crying. And whenever he called his father, he did not come to take him, because he was far from the house and did not tell them that he was going out, and did not tell them where he was going.
Then he learned that he had made a big mistake and that his father would not come to look for him because he thought he was asleep. And he decided to try to call for help and search for any place where there are people and tell them what happened.
And he kept walking in the dark crying for a long time until he found some people, and told them his name, where he lived, and the name of the neighborhood in which he lived. Fortunately for him, they weren’t bad guys, and they brought this guy home.
The father was very angry with him for this behavior and punished him for a week for this behavior. But the boy was happy that he came home and learned the lesson well and knew that this wrong behavior was dangerous and could have lost his family for life.
While hearing this story, I was very afraid and put myself in the place of this boy, and I found myself learning from him what to do. And that I must tell my family where I am going, and watch the time, and take care of myself and not stay away from home. When I finish playing, I go home.
In the early morning, I was very careful to memorize my full name, the name of the neighborhood in which I live, the name of my mother, and the house number.
Although the story was scary for me, I learned a lot from it and had a reaction to every event that takes place in it.
Dear student, a basic form was submitted for the topic on short horror story essay, In addition to many other models such as, horror short story essay, creepy short horror story essay, a short horror story essay, short ghost story essay, short ghost story essay, scary short story essay, scary experience essay.
If you prefer to add any other topic, you can contact us through the comments of this article and we will study your request and add it as soon as possible.
horror short story essay
At the weekend I went on a trip with my friends to the forest. We took camping equipment, some food and water. The weather was nice, the trees were leafy, the birds were flying from tree to tree, the landscape was beautiful.
We wandered in the woods and ate the fruits on the trees, and as we wandered, a huge bear appeared in front of us, looked at us and prepared to attack us.
We were all very terrified, but the instructions reminded us not to run, not to scream, and to act calmly. I took out of my bag a self-defense spray bottle, which should be used in this case. But the bear left quietly and none of us were hurt.
creepy short horror story essay
I get up early and sit in the garden of the house, enjoying the fresh air, listening to the sound of birds, watching beautiful flowers and other beautiful landscapes, but yesterday something terrifying happened to me.
When I sat on the bench in the garden and was enjoying nature I felt something moving under the chair.
I quickly looked under the chair and found a large black snake.
It moves slowly, I felt very terrified and could not move, I remained frozen in my place, the snake crawled slowly and I looked at it with horror, until it moved away several meters, I called the competent authority immediately and a trained man came and caught the snake.
a short horror story essay
Last week I went with my family to the zoo, the weather was nice, and we were enjoying the nature, where there are a lot of green leafy trees and decorated with beautiful flowers and large areas that allow us to run and play, everything was beautiful.
Then we went to the animal cages and watched the animals from a distance.
But there is a person who got very close to the lion’s cage, even though there is a sign on it that says Do not go near the animal cages.
He was not satisfied with that, but he extended his hand into the cage, and the lion grabbed his hand with force, and this person was unable to rid his hand of the lion’s fangs.
The man screamed loudly from the severity of the pain, and the guard came quickly and tried to give the lion a piece of meat to leave the man’s hand, but to no avail.
The veterinarian quickly intervened and gave the lion an anesthetic injection, and the man was able to get his hand out of the cage, but it had many wounds and was taken to the hospital. It was really terrifying moments.
Short ghost story essay
There are many people who feel terrified in the dark, and my brother is very afraid of the dark and feels terrified and imagines frightening things.
So when the electricity went out and the house became dark. I went to his room quietly without feeling, and stood in front of him, making some strange sounds.
My brother jumped quickly and came out of the room saying a ghost of a ghost, but he hit the wall and cut his head and bled a lot, it was a big wound.
At that time I was telling him don’t be afraid, I am your brother, but he was very frightened. I was very sorry for him and regretted that I had caused him to feel terrified and made him crash into the wall.
And I told him I was just trying to joke with you and I wouldn’t do it again but you should train yourself not to be afraid of the dark.
A Short Scary Story Essay
Last weekend I went with my friends on a fishing trip. We chartered a fishing boat with all our fishing gear and went into the sea for a long distance, so that we could see neither the beach nor the city.
We started fishing and we were very happy because there are many fish and they are also big, and the weather was nice.
Suddenly strong winds blew and the waves rose, and the fishing boat was swinging with us over the water, up and down, and we couldn’t control it.
At this time we felt so afraid that we would drown.The fishing boat cannot withstand these bad weather conditions.
But after a while the wind calmed down a bit and we miraculously survived.
Scary short story essay
Last weekend I went with my colleagues on a school trip to one of the archaeological sites, and we had some teachers with us organizing the trip and supervising our transfers.
We entered a museum that houses great antiquities and stood listening to the tour guide talking about the history of these antiquities.
I was fascinated and listened to the tour guide with great interest, so that I did not feel the departure of my colleagues and teachers, as they left the museum and got on the bus and left this place and did not feel my absence.
When I found myself alone in the museum, I felt very afraid and searched for them all over the museum, but I could not find them, so my fear increased and my crying became louder.
Suddenly I found one of the teachers entering the museum and looking for me, so I ran towards him and grabbed his hand and felt safe.
Scary Experience Essay
At the end of the year I had a frightening experience. I went to the beach and decided to snorkel, so I bought wetsuits, put them on, and dived into the sea. But it was not what I expected and almost drowned.
I was so scared when I found myself unable to dive, and could not swim to the top.
It was a difficult situation but one of the lifeguards on the beach saw me, knew I was going to drown and ran to save me.
Therefore, I advise others to learn before we do anything that might endanger our lives.
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Home » Blog » 132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas
132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Horror stories send shivers down our spines. They are gruesome, shocking, and chilling. Scary stories are meant to horrify us, and there are many ways to make a powerful impact on the reader. The element of surprise is crucial to make the readers’ blood freeze.
There are different types of horror stories. They often deal with terrible murders, supernatural powers, psychopaths, the frightening human psychology and much more.
Although many horror writing prompts and scary ideas have been written, the following 132 horror writing prompts can spark great creativity in aspiring writers of the horror genre.
- A family is on a camping trip. The parents are walking with their two children, a daughter and a son. The little boy trips and falls into a dark river. His father jumps to rescue him. Somehow the boy manages to swim to the surface. The father is nowhere to be found. When the mother gets a hold of the boy, she canât recognize him. She tries holding him, but the moment she touches his wet body, her hands start burning.
- A young girl goes missing in a nearby forest. The whole town is searching for her. Her parents find her sitting and smiling in a cave. Her eyes are completely white.
- A woman starts watching a movie late at night. The movie seems all too familiar. Finally, she realizes that it is a movie about her own life and that she might be already dead.
- A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises.
- A child makes her own Halloween mask. She glues a lock of her own hair on her mask. The mask comes to life and threatens to take over the girlâs body.
- While digging in her backyard, an old lady discovers an iron chest. She opens it and finds a pile of old photographs of her ancestors. All of them are missing their left eye.
- A priest is trying to punish God for the death of his sister. He is getting ready to burn down the church, when supernatural forces start to torture him.
- Every year a woman goes to the cemetery where her husband is buried, and when she looks at his tombstone, she notices her own name carved in it.
- A woman puts a lipstick on in the bathroom when she hears a demonic voice saying to her: âCanât you see?â
- Â A mysterious child psychiatrist promises parents to cure their children if they give him a vile of their blood.
- Â A group of 10 friends decide to rent an old English castle for the weekend. The ghosts are disturbed and seek their pound of flesh.
- Â A photographer travels to an Indian reservation for his next project. He starts taking photos, but there are only shadows in the places where people should have been.
- Â A young married couple decide to renovate an abandoned psychiatric hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everything is going well until their first guest arrives.
- Â Three sisters are reunited for the reading of their grandmotherâs will. She has left them a diamond necklace, but they have to fight psychologically and physically for it.
- Â An old woman pretends to be lost and asks young women to help her get home. She offers them a cup of tea and drugs them. When the women wake up, they are chained in the basement. The old woman gives them tools and boards, so that they can build their own coffin. If they refuse, she inflicts pain on them.
- Â A mysterious stranger with a glass eye and a cane commissions a portrait. When the portrait is finished, the painter turns into stone.
- Â A little girlâs sister lives with a monster in the closet. She exits the closet on her sister’s birthday.
- Â The demons under the nuclear plant get released after an explosion and start terrorizing the families of people who work at the plant.
- Â A woman gets trapped in a parallel universe where every day she dies horribly in different ways.
- Â A cannibal hunts for pure childrenâs hearts hoping they will bring him eternal youth.
- Â A politician hides his weird sister in the attic. Sheâs had her supernatural powers after their family home burned to the ground.
- Â A 16-year-old girl wakes up on a stone-cold table surrounded with people in black and white masks. They are chant and start leaning forward. All of them carry carved knives.
- Â A boy hears screaming from his parentsâ bedroom. He jumps and hides under his bed. Suddenly, everything becomes quiet. A man wearing army boots enters his room. He drags the boy from under the bed and says: âWeâve been searching for you for 200 years.â
- A husband and his wife regain consciousness only to see each other tied to chairs, facing each other. A voice on the radio tells them to kill the other, otherwise, they would kill their children.
- Â A mysterious altruist gives a kidney to a young man, who has potential to become a leading neuroscientist. After a year, the altruist kills the young man because he proves to be an unworthy organ recipient. The following year, the mysterious altruist is a bone marrow donor.
- Â A group of friends play truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the group is killed.
- Â A young man becomes obsessed with an old man living opposite his building. The young man is convinced that the old man is the embodiment of the devil, and starts planning the murder.
- Â Concerned and grieving parents bring their 8-year-old son to a psychiatrist after their daughterâs accident, believing that the boy had something to do with her death.
- Â A woman is admitted to a hospital after a car crash. She wakes up after three months in a coma, but when she tries to speak, she canât utter a sound. When the nurse sees that she is awake, she calls a doctor. The last thing the woman remembers is hearing the doctor say: âToday is your lucky day,â right before four men in black robes take her out.
- Â A small-town cop becomes obsessed with a cold case from 1978. Three girls went missing after school, and nobody has seen them since. Then one day, in 2008, three girls with the same names as those in 1978 go missing. The case is reopened.
- Â After his parentsâ death a cardiologist returns to his small town where everyone seems to lead a perfect life. This causes a disturbance in the idyllic life of the people since none of them has a heart.Â
- Â A man is kidnapped from his apartment on midnight and brought on a large private estate. He is told that he will be a human pray and that ten hunters with guns will go after him. He is given a 5-minute head start.
- Â A strange woman in labor is admitted in the local hospital. Nobody seems to recognize her. She screams in agony. A black smoke fills in the entire hospital. After that, nobody is the same. A dark lord is born.
- Â A young girl finds her grandmotherâs gold in a chest in the attic, although she isnât allowed to go there by herself. She touches the gold and she starts seeing horrible visions involving her grandmother when she was younger.
- Â An anthropologist studies rituals involving human sacrifice. She slowly begins to accept them as necessary.
- Â A family of four moves in an old Victorian home. As they restore it, more and more people die suddenly and violently.
- Â An old nurse has lived next door to a family that doesnât get older. Their son has remained to be a seven-year-old boy.
- Â A girl wakes up in her dorm and sees that everybody sleepwalks in the same direction. She acts as if she has the same condition and follows them to an underground black pool where everybody jumps.
- Â A bride returns to the same bridge for 50 years waiting for her husband-to-be to get out of the water.
- Â An old woman locks girlsâ personalities in a forever growing collection of porcelain dolls. Parents of the missing girls are in agony and they finally suspect something. When they tell the police, their claims are instantly dismissed.
- Â A chemistry teacher disfigures teenagers who remind him of his childhood bullies. One day, he learns that the new student in his school is the son of his childhood’s archenemy.
- Â A girl starts digging tiny holes in her backyard. When her mother asks her what she is doing, the girl answers: âMr. Phantom told me to bury my dolls tonight. Tomorrow night I am going to bury our dog. And then, you, mother.â
- Â Twin brothers were kidnapped and returned the next day. They claim that they canât remember anything. The following night, twin sisters disappear.
- Â A boy has a very realistic dream about an impending doom, but nobody believes him until during a storm all the birds fall dead on the ground.
- Â Room 206 is believed to be haunted, so hotel guests never stay in it. One day, an old woman arrives at the hotel and asks for the key to room 206. She says that she was born there.
- Â A genius scientist tries to extract his wifeâs consciousness from her lifeless body and insert it into an imprisoned woman who looks just like his wife.
- Â Two distinguished scientists develop a new type of virus that attacks their brains and turns them into killing machines.
- Â A woman steps out of her house only to find four of her neighbors dead at her doorstep. Little does she know that she isn’t supposed to call the police.
- Â A bachelorâs party ends with two dead people in the pool. Both of them are missing their eyes.
- Â A young woman wearing a black dress is holding a knife in her hand and threatening to kill a frightened man. She is terrified because she does not want to kill anybody, but her body refuses to obey her mind.
- Â A strange religious group starts performing a ritual on a playground. The childrenâs hearts stop beating.
- Â A woman discovers that her niece has done some horrible crimes, so she decides to poison her. Both of them take the poison, but only the aunt dies.
- Â A man encounters death on his way to work. He can ask three questions before he dies. He makes a quick decision.
- Â An older brother kills his baby sister because he wants to be an only child. When he learns that his mother is pregnant again, he decides to punish her.
- Â A husband and his wife move to a new apartment. After a week, both of them kill themselves. They leave a note saying: âNever again.â
- Â A man is trying to open a time portal so that he could kill his parents before he is ever conceived.
- Â A famous conductor imprisons a pianist from the orchestra and makes him play the piano while he tortures other victims, also musicians. Every time the pianist makes a mistake, the conductor cuts of a finger from his victims.
- Â A popular French chef is invited by a mysterious Japanese sushi master for dinner. A powerful potion makes the French chef fall asleep. He wakes up horrified to learn that he is kept on a human farm, in a cage.
- Â A nuclear blast turns animals into blood-thirsty monsters.
- Â A mysterious bug creeps under peopleâs skins and turns them into the worst version of themselves.
- Â A kidnapper makes his victims torture each other for his sheer pleasure.
- Â Four friends are invited to spend the afternoon in an escape room. A manâs voice tells them that they have won a prize. They happily accept and enter the escape room. They soon realize that the room was designed to reflect their worst nightmares.
- Â Two sisters have been given names from the Book of the Dead. Their fates have been sealed, so when they turn 21, dark forces are sent to bring them to the underground.
- Â A mother-to-be starts feeling severe pain in her stomach every time she touches a Bible. Despite the fear for her own life, she starts reading the New Testament out loud.
- Â A literature professor discovers an old manuscript in the college library. He opens it in his study and suddenly a black raven flies through the window.
- Â You are the Ruler of a dystopian society. You kill every time your control is threatened.
- Â You are an intelligent robot who shows no mercy to humanity.
- Â You are a promising researcher who discovers that all the notorious dictators have been cloned.
- Â A nomad meets a fakir who tells him that he would bring agony to dozens of people unless he kills himself before he transforms into a monster.
- Â A most prominent member of a sect goes to animal shelters to find food for the dark forces.
- Â A man hires unethical doctors to help him experience clinical death and then bring him back to life after a minute. Little does he know that one minute of death feels like an eternity full of horrors.
- Â You travel home to visit your parents for the holidays. Everything seems normal until you realize that demons have taken over their consciousness.
- Â A mysterious woman moves into your apartment building. One by one, all of the tenants start hallucinating that monsters chase them and jump into their own deaths.
- Â Divorced parents are kidnapped together with their son. Both of the parents have been given poison, but there is only one antidote. The boy needs to decide which parent gets to be saved. He has 30 seconds to make that decision.
- Â A patient with a multiple-personality disorder tells you that you are one of six characters.
- Â You wake up in bed that is a blood-bath.
- Â The Government abducts children with genius IQ and trains them to fight the horrors in Area 51.
- Â Â A woman who has just given birth at her home is told that the baby is predestined to become the leader of the greatest demonic order in the country.
- Â A man signs a document with his blood to relinquish his body to a sect.
- Â A woman enters a sacred cave in India and disappears for good.
- Â A man opens his eyes in the middle of his autopsy while the coroner is holding his heart.
- Â You look outside the windows in your house only to see that the view has changed and there is black fog surrounding you.
- Â The gargoyles from the Notre Dame have come to life and they start terrorizing Paris.
- Â Somebody rings your doorbell. You open the door and a frightened girl with bloody hands is standing at your doorstep. âYouâre late,â you reprimand her.
- Â You wake up in the middle of the night after a frightful nightmare, so you go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. You turn on the light and a person looking like your identical twin is grinning and pointing a knife at you.
- Â A renowned book editor receives a manuscript elegantly written by hand. The title grabs her attention and she continues reading page after page. When she finishes, the manuscript spontaneously starts burning, and the editor is cursed forever.
- Â The last thing you remember before losing consciousness is fighting a shady Uber driver.
- Â You find yourself in a cage in the middle of a forest and black mythological harpies hovering above the cage.
- Â A woman wants to quit smoking, so she visits a therapist who is supposed to help her with the use of hypnosis. She goes under and when she wakes up, she feels like a born killer.
- Â Five hikers get stranded during a horrible storm. One of them kills the weakest and starts burning his body.
- Â A mother goes in the nursery to check up on the baby and discovers that the baby is missing and, in her place, there is a baby doll.
- Â A killer is willing to pay a large sum of money to the family of a volunteering victim. A cancer patient contacts the killer. The killer ends up dead.
- Â The sacred river in a remote Asian village fills up with blood. The last time that happened, all the children in the village died.
- Â A tall, dark, and handsome stranger invites a blind woman for a romantic date in his botanical garden. The garden is full of black roses in which womenâs souls have been trapped. He tells her that she will stay forever with him in his garden.
- Â A frightened man is trying to lead a werewolf into a trap and kill him with the last silver bullet.
- Â An architect designs houses for the rich and famous. What he doesnât show them is that he always leaves room for a secret passageway to their bedrooms, where they are the most vulnerable.
- Â A manâs DNA was found on a horrible crime scene and he has been charged with murder in the first degree. He adamantly negates any involvement in the crime that has been committed. What he doesnât know is that he had a twin brother who died at birth.
- Â Every passenger on the Orient Express dies in a different, and equally mysterious way. Â
- Â A magician needs a volunteer from the audience in order to demonstrate a trick involving sawing a person in half. A beautiful woman steps on the stage. The magician makes her fall asleep, and then he performs the trick. In the end, he disappears. People in the audience start panicking when they notice the blood dripping from the table. The magician is nowhere to be found. The woman is dead.
- A mother discovers that her bright son is not human.
- Specters keep terrorizing patients in a psychiatric hospital, but nobody believes them.
- A manâs mind is locked into an immovable body. This person is being tortured by a psychopath who kills his family members in front of him, knowing that he is in agony and canât do anything to save them.
- A bride-to-be receives a DVD via mail from an unknown sender. She plays the video and disgusted watches a pagan ritual. The people are wearing masks, but she recognizes the voice of her husband-to-be.
- A man turns himself to the police although he hasnât broken the law. He begs them to put him in prison because he had a premonition that he would become a serial killer.
- Jack the Ripper is actually a woman who brutally kills prostitutes because her own mother was a prostitute.
- A ticking noise wakes her up. Itâs a bomb, and she has only four minutes to do something about it.
- After a horrible car crash, a walking skeleton emerges from the explosion.
- A world-famous violinist virtuoso uses music to summon dark forces.
- A philosopher is trying to outwit Death in order to be granted immortality. He doesnât know that Death already knows the outcome of this conversation.
- A beautiful, but superficial woman promises a demon to give him her virginity in exchange for immortality. Once the demon granted her wish, she refused to fulfill her end of the deal. The demon retaliated by making her immortal, but not eternally youthful.
- A voice starts chanting spells every time somebody wears the gold necklace from Damask.
- Three teenagers beat up a homeless man. The next day all of them go missing.
- Thirteen tourists from Poland visit Trakai Island Castle in Vilnius. Their bodies are found washed up the next morning. They are wearing medieval clothes.
- A group of extremists ambush the vehicle in which a head of a terrorist cell is transported and rescue him. They go after anybody who was involved in his incarceration.
- A hitman is hired to kill a potential heart donor.
- A man is attacked by the neighborâs dog while trying to bury his wife alive.
- A woman disappears from her home without a trace. He husband reports her missing. The police start to suspect the husband when they retrieve some deleted messages.
- After moving to a new house all the family members have the same nightmares. Slowly they realize that they might be more than nightmares.
- A psychopath is drugging his wife, pushing her to commit a suicide so that he could collect the life insurance.
- A woman loses her eyesight overnight. Instead, she starts having premonitions.
- A vampire prefers albino children.
- A man commits murders at night and relives the agony of his victims during the day.
- A black horse carriage stops in front of your house. A hand wearing a black glove make an inviting gesture. Mesmerized, you decide to enter the carriage.
- Demons rejuvenate by eating kind peopleâs hearts.
- People are horrified to find all of the graves dug out the morning after Halloween.
- Men start jumping off building and bridges after hearing a mysterious song.
- A voice in your head tells you to stop listening to the other voices. They were not real.
- A severed head is hanging from a bridge with a message written in the victimâs blood.
- A delusional man brings his screaming children to a chasm.
- A 30-year-old woman learns that a baby with the same name as her died at the local hospital 30 years ago.
- A vampire donates his blood so that a child with special brain powers can receive it.
- A teenager is determined to escape his kidnapper by manipulating him into drinking poison. He doesnât stop there.
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101 Horror Writing Prompts That Are Freaky As Hell
Looking for some scary story ideas for your next writing project?
Sometimes, a good scary prompt idea is all you need to get started on a dark story your readers wonât be able to put down.
And that is the goal. Whatâs a horror story without white-knuckle suspense?
You want your readers at the edge of their seats, unable to stop though they know something bad is about to happen.
You also want to reward them for reading to the end and leave them wanting more.
So, how can this collection of horror writing prompts help with that?
What Are the Main Elements of Horror Writing?
List of most common horror themes and tropes to write on .
- 66 Horror Writing Prompts
Halloween Writing Prompts
Mystery writing prompts, psychological horror story ideas, âthe monster you knowâ story ideas, ghost story writing prompts, funny horror story ideas, horror story ideas.
Every good story needs an idea that takes root in your imagination and doesnât let go. Horror stories in particular need to affect you a certain way. If they donât sound an alarm in your head, they wonât sound one in the heads of your readers, either.
They need to reach into your psyche, take a scrap of memory, and turn it into something that would keep you up at night.
And as youâve no doubt read already, âNo surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.â
Look through the prompts that follow, and choose one that calls out to you and lingers in your imagination.
Paint a picture in your mind of the characters involved. Give yourself a reason to invest in them by giving each one some interesting backstory.
Then set a timer and write.
Since Earl Horace Walpole’s gothic horror The Castle of Otranto hit shelves in 1764, English readers have clamored for dark plots that excite primitive instincts and tickle our fear bones.
Many horror authors leverage shadowy impulses by sprinkling stories with uncomfortable happenings and gruesome fatalities.
But that’s not all it takes to write within the genre, begging the question: What are the main elements of horror? Traditionally, there are five: suspense, fear, violence, gore, and the supernatural.
- Suspense : Creating anxious tension is a critical component of horror as it keeps the audience glued to the story. They need to find out what happens! Traditionally, suspense is valued as a sophisticated form of horror, and building it well is a skill.
- Fear : Confronting fearful things is a powerful emotion with chemical reactionary consequences, making it a hallmark of horror writing.
- Violence : Savagery is scary because it’s inextricably linked to death and pain â two of the four great human fears.
- Gore : Brains and guts are a cornerstone of classic horror. For better or worse, our neural pathways light up when confronted with intestines, brain matter, and gushing fluids. Successful horror writers keep readers and watchers engaged by deploying gore effectively.
- Supernatural: The main difference between “true crime” and “horror” is a supernatural element. While horror stories draw people in with realism, they usually feature an emotional detachment valve in the form of an explicit or implicit otherworldly presence.
Vampires, ghosts, zombies, and murderers are big-picture mainstays of the horror genre. But what are some other, more detailed tropes associated with scary storytelling?
- Babysitter Alone in Big House: The naive babysitter trope is oft-repeated because it works. The sitter acts as a stand-in for the reader or audience in that, like you, they’re vulnerable. Horror-sitters are the character conduit through which readers and viewers can experience the impending fear.
- Manipulative Vampires: Maybe it’s their piercing eyes, snappy attire, or mysterious penchant for the “nightlife.” Whatever the case, people stan vampires, and sensual and manipulative ones are an incredibly effective horror character trope.
- Ghost-Haunted House: Ghost-haunted houses are a recurring horror motif. Whether you approach it from a traditional or modern angle is up to you. Both can work.
- Creepy Kid: In real life, it’s kind to see all kids as precious and special, no matter their quirks. But when it comes to Horror World, creepy kids are a dime a dozen! Sometimes they’re the main attractions or “red herrings” (which we’ll get to more below); other times, they’re supernatural catalysts that serve as a story’s MacGuffin. Whichever the case, unnerving kids go a long way when devising a disturbing scene and fomenting suspense.
- The Nonbeliever: Most horror stories have at least one character whose lack of fear or faith (in the story’s “supernatural” element) lands them six feet under.
- The Red Herring: A “red herring” is a false clue. The term dates back to the 1400s to describe a culinary preparation for fish, but the first known use as a euphemism for “distraction” appeared in 1884.
- Isolation: Few things frighten people more than being all alone while danger looms. As such, isolation can be a helpful trope when crafting horror stories.
- Graveyard Chase: A well-conceived chase around a graveyard is another horror mainstay that continues to deliver. Try adding a twist to modernize the trope.
- Distorting Mirrors: Whether a single reflecting glass or a full-on maze, using mirrors as a motif is a tangible and effective way to signal distortion.
- Aliens and Cultists: The human psyche can’t resist rubbernecking when confronted with the possibility of aliens and the sociopathic underbelly of cults. Resultantly, they work well as engaging frameworks for horror stories.
101 Horror Writing Prompts
Whether youâre writing for a special occasion or just to experiment with the horror genre, any of the scary story prompts in the following groups should get you started.
Go with your gut on this one, and choose an idea that feels both familiar and provocative. Then give it a go!
1. A mysterious gift from an estranged aunt arrives on Halloween with a crystal ball and a note addressed only to you, her godchild.
2. One of the trick-or-treaters bears an uncanny resemblance to your departed sibling and repeats that siblingâs last words before picking your siblingâs favorite candy bar.
3. On Halloween night, you find a box at your door that contains a strange note and a little something from each of the people who have hurt you in the past year.
4. On this Halloween night, your guinea pig wonât stop running in circles, and your dog keeps staring at the door, emitting a low growl.
5. You run out for candy on Halloween afternoon to find the streets empty and the store abandoned. A single car cruises into the lot and pulls into the spot next to yours.
6. Every time you went to answer the doorbell, no one was there. The next day, you heard about the missing children. The worst part? Your kids spent Halloween with your ex and were supposed to come trick-or-treating last night.
7. You arrive home on Halloween to a large package from your new boss, whoâd bought every piece of your favorite candy from local stores. The note reads, âSave some for me.â
8. Youâre watching TV on Halloween night when your show is interrupted by a faintly familiar someone declaring their love for you and saying theyâve watched you all your life.
9. You come home to find a stranger walking through your home, sipping your wine and admiring your collected antiquities. They startle at your approach and act as though youâre the intruder.
10. The night before Halloween, you have a dream in which you wake up to see a dark shape standing outside your closet. You wake up screaming with your hands around your spouseâs throat.
11. Election day looms, and Halloween feels more ominous than ever. Youâve kept the lights off, but that doesnât stop one visitor from leaving a note: âKnew you lived here.â
12. Your best friend has gone missing, and someone keeps leaving small reminders of them in your mailbox. You see someone approach to deliver something else, and your heart nearly stops when you recognize them.
13. Youâve always wanted a dog, so when a rain-soaked mutt shows up on your front step, you let him in. Unfortunately, something else hitched a ride.
14. Someone moves into the apartment next door and starts playing loud music at night. You call the police, who find the guy dead holding a note with your name and address.
15. Someone keeps replacing items in your home with different objects that look vaguely familiar. No one else has a key to your home, and there are no signs of forced entry.
16. You bake some cookies to share with the new neighbor, but the terrified woman backs away from the plate, shaking her head. Someone from inside calls out, âIâll have those.â
17. Someone at work has offered to do a tarot card spread for you, and you politely decline. You find a single tarot card in your mailbox when you return home.
18. You donât remember wandering alone on a country road as a small child, but someone does. And he wants to make sure youâre not around to testify against him.
19. Someone has gotten to your laundry before you and left it neatly folded in piles on top of the dryer. A note reads, âFor more TLC, knock on #303.â
20. The window of your apartment leads to a fire escape, but twice youâve come home to find it open. Nothing is missing. But someone keeps leaving a ring on your kitchen table.
21. You order a Christmas wreath for your door and the company sends you a package with money instead. The note reads, âKeep half. Iâll pick up the rest in 72 hours.â
22. A child knocks on your door and tells you youâll be visited by three people that night. One of them will show you your future. The childâs face reminds you of someone.
23. Your best friend is dating a woman who seems familiar to you â and not in a good way. Turns out, sheâs got a bad feeling about you, too, and she warns your friend.
24. You receive a surprise delivery of a holiday flower arrangement with a note from someone who went to jail for assault. The message reads, âIâll be home for Christmas.â
25. An abuser from your past has written you a long letter of apology, and you agree to meet them for coffee. You find your favorite coffee place deserted â on Black Friday.
26. You broke up with your sweetheart when he lied about taking you to the prom and begged you to run away with him so he could escape an abusive home. Heâs back.
27. An old friend, who had tried to warn you about an ex-boyfriend years ago, has come back to town to run a diner. Within a week, known bullies start disappearing.
28. For the past three dates, the guy you met ended up dead and posed as if proposing. A note on each oneâs empty chest cavity reads, âMy heart belongs to [your name].â
29. Youâre with a friend at the home of the guy sheâs dating. In the bathroom, you find a box with jewelry for almost every birthstone. Yours is the only one missing. You hear a scream.
30. Everyone keeps telling you your memories canât be trusted. Youâre safe with them. Theyâll protect you. But you havenât left the house in years.
31. You thought it was cute when your little sister wanted to wear your auntâs high heels and pose with a hand on her hip. But your sister had an uncanny way with accidents.
32. You never expected to win the â57 Chevy from the church raffle. Neither did the carâs owner, who immediately tried to buy it back. He didnât respond well to âNo, thanks.â
33. Every time you saw anything like âTornado Warningâ or âFlash Floodâ in the news, you knew someone would end up dead. And your ex would blame the weather.
34. You come home to a dozen roses from a guy whoâs been telling his friends youâre dating, and you get angry. For some reason, though, everyone you know is on his side.
35. Your âSecret Santaâ leaves an expensive bottle of wine with a note, âDrink me.â You call a familiar number and hear the phone ring on the other side of your door.
36. Your dad has a secret known only to his twin brother, who mysteriously disappeared but left a note with a box of his belongings in the attic. You take it with you when you leave.
37. You just broke up with the person whoâs catering your best friendâs wedding. They also made the cake.
38. Some of your in-laws have decided to deliver their sibling from you. When they cross the line, you make a promise to them and to your spouse. One by one, they disappear.
39. Your health is steadily declining, and you donât know why. Neither do your doctors, who test for the usual health issues and find nothing. Then someone calls to warn you.
40. Your estranged father sends you a porcelain doll â the one he swears you told him you wanted. It has the face and hair of your missing mother. And her eyes are glued open.
41. Youâve just told your family youâre asexual, and they seem to accept it. Out of the blue, the handsome guy next door shows up to ask you out, and your parents quietly nod.
42. A cop pulls you over for driving a few miles over the speed limit, tells you to get out of your car, slams you against the hood and whispers in your ear, âThis is from your ex.â
43. You emailed your fiancĂ© for months before meeting him for the first date. Now, youâre getting strange phone calls from someone claiming to be his wife and telling you to run.
44. You stood numb at the coffin of a close friend and flinched when your father rested a hand on your shoulder. âHad to be done,â he whispered. âRemember the bigger picture.â
45. A small package bears the name of your sister, who died five years ago. It contains a pendant that matches her own and a note asking you to activate it by chanting, âSisters Forever.â
46. Your elderly neighbors died on the same day of an apparent suicide pact. In their will, they left their pug to you, along with a small box of what they called âmagical items.â
47. You receive a note penned by your best friend, who died in a car accident the month before, His parents had found it in his room and hand-delivered it, barely looking at you.
48. You pounce on a new opening in the apartment building close to your favorite coffee place. The first night there, you wake up to ghostly shapes surrounding your bed.
49. At your first slumber party, your friendâs older brother surprised you during a late-night run to the bathroom. He died a decade later in prison. Now you see him in your dreams.
50. Your home is the high-tech brainchild of your best friend, who bequeathed it to you (rather than to his wife). It anticipates your every need and desire.
51. Youâve been having dreams about a door that shows up in your room. In one, you walk through it and see someone you love being murdered . You warn them the next day.
52. Youâre the lone survivor of a horrific train crash, and everywhere you go, you see the ghosts of some of the passengers. Some have told you the crash was no accident.
53. Youâre looking through your motherâs possessions when a note slips out of the book sheâd been reading, warning you about âthe ghost who runs this house.â
54. Your new boyfriend is obsessed with ancient artifacts, but when something hitches a ride on his latest find, you witness disturbing changes in his behavior.
55. Your life is already complicated when your boss asks you to stay at his home to care for his dog while heâs away. You soon learn the house is as mischievous as the dog.
56. Youâre an editor for the college literary journal, and youâve been getting poetic hate mail from a student whoâs angry you didnât choose their poems for the latest issue.
57. Your favorite neighbor is a trans woman named Lani who looks out for you. She warns you about a guy down the hall, who keeps trying cheesy pick-up lines to get you to smile.
58. Your co-workers tease you about your weight gain. One is found dead in the bathroom, her mouth stuffed with candy. Everyone but the custodian suspects you.
59. An anonymous admirer sends you a singing telegram with a chilling question. Now you have less than 24 hours to sing your answer in a public square, with a flash mob.
60. You sign up for wine deliveries but are disappointed by the first bottle you open and taste. On the label, you find a crass, insulting note from an old enemy.
61. Your date finds out your BFF is asexual and starts asking intrusive and insensitive questions. When your friend shuts him down, he insults and warns you both.
62. Youâre working the dinner rush, and a customer loudly insists on changing her order the moment you deliver it. Someone quietly follows her as she storms out the door.
63. Youâre having an open house for your new shop, and you catch a customer shoplifting. She says, âI was told to come in here and take these. Youâre being watched.â
64. You arrive at your new house, and the keys from the realtor donât work. Someone answers the door with a disarming smile. âSo, youâre here about the room? Come in!â
65. Your date is going well until you reveal that you have a dog. âIâm not really a dog person,â you hear. When you get a bad feeling and end the date, things get messy.
66. Your journal goes missing, and within a week, a goofy, adorable guy starts showing up at your usual stops. He seems surprised to see you, but something isnât quite right.
Creepy Writing Prompts
67. The old tunnel had been blocked off for as long as anyone could remember, but late at night, you could still hear the faint screams echoing from deep within.
68. As you walk past the abandoned house on your way home from school, you notice one of the curtains move slightly in an upstairs window, but the house has been empty for years.
69. You wake up suddenly in the middle of the night and see two small handprints on the foggy bathroom mirror that are far too small to belong to anyone in your family.
70. Every night when you go to sleep, you feel an uncomfortable pricking sensation on your skin, yet every morning, you find strange symbols carved into your arms that you don’t remember making.
71. While exploring the attic, you find an old doll that looks eerily like you did as a child, and when you pick it up, its eyes suddenly open.
72. The scraping sound from the closet stops whenever you turn on the light, but it always returns as soon as the room goes dark again.
73. Every time you glance in the mirror, your reflection behaves slightly differently than you do – blinking at the wrong time or moving too late.
74. You wake up covered in mud and scratches with no memory of where you’ve been all night, and the soles of your shoes are worn through as if you had walked for miles.
75. Lately, your pets have refused to go into certain rooms of your house, but you have no idea what frightens them so badly about those areas.
76. You discover a trap door hidden under an old Persian rug in your basement and shining a light into it reveals a set of footsteps descending into the darkness below.
77. You wake up one morning to find all the mirrors in your home have been turned around to face the wall, even though you live alone.
78. Your television is switched on in the dead of night, the static slowly resolving into shapes, and what looks back at you from the screen makes your blood run cold.
79. You keep finding sticky notes around your house with messages written on them in unfamiliar handwriting, like “GET OUT” or “I’M WATCHING YOU SLEEP.”
80. Every time you look at a clock, the time is exactly 3 minutes slow, though all the clocks in your home are set correctly and keep perfect time when others view them.
81. On your way home, you notice a figure standing motionless at the end of the street, staring directly at your house with its face hidden in the shadows of its hooded robe.
82. Your dog comes running inside with its leash still attached but hanging limply, yet when you call the number on the leash’s tag, your own cell phone starts ringing from within your house.
83. Your computer camera activates unexpectedly while you’re working, and you see your own bedroom behind you from an impossible angle near the ceiling, suggesting someone is watching through the camera right now.
84. You hear your name called out softly in an empty room, and even though the voice sounds familiar, you live alone, and you know no one else is inside.
Spooky Writing Prompts
85. Every night when you lie in bed, you hear the floorboards outside your room creaking as if someone is pacing back and forth, but every time you quickly open the door to check, the hallway is empty.
86. While exploring the woods behind your new house, you discover a crumbling old stone well, and when you peer down into the darkness, you think you see pale faces staring back up at you.
87. Your reflection in mirrors and windows often moves independently, quickly looking away whenever you try to catch it, watching you from impossible angles that don’t align with where you’re standing.
88. An unfamiliar chat window opens on your computer screen with only the message “I can see you through your webcam” written inside it by an unseen sender.
89. Plants within your home have been dying overnight no matter where you place them, the leaves and stems drained of all color as if the life has been completely sucked out.
90. You wake up to find a pile of dead birds on your lawn, their wings broken and necks bent at odd angles as if they crashed directly into the ground from high altitudes.
91. The old paintings hanging on the walls of your recently inherited mansion seem to follow you with their eyes, and occasionally, you notice mysterious new figures added in the backgrounds that disappear by morning.
92. Turning on all the faucets causes blood to drip out instead of water, yet when others in your home check them, the liquid running from the pipes is perfectly clear.
93. You wake from a nightmare convinced someone was standing silently at the foot of your bed, only to find the imprint of two bare feet seared into your bedroom carpet right where the figure was standing.
94. Whenever you look in the bathroom mirror late at night, you see dead relatives standing silently behind you who disappear when you turn around to check if anyone is there.
95. The baby monitor in the nursery suddenly emits a strange crackling sound followed by a singsong voice you don’t recognize whispering your baby’s name over and over.
96. Your shadow appears to have a mind of its own, often following you more slowly or quickly than it should and reaching areas you know your body has not moved to.
97. Photos taken with phones or cameras in and around your home show blurry figures lurking in the background that do not match any of the people in the images.
98. Any writing you leave out overnight – from sticky notes to notebooks – has mysterious reoccurring symbols added in unfamiliar handwriting scattered among the existing text.
99. You wake in the middle of the night to the sound of your locked window being forced open from the outside, but when you jump out of bed to check, it’s closed securely as if nothing happened.
100. From your garden, you can see directly into your neighbor’s bathroom mirror, but instead of the neighbor’s reflection, you swear you sometimes see your own face staring back with an expression you don’t recognize.
101. While searching through the attic in your recently purchased Victorian home, you find an old portrait of a severe-looking woman whose eyes seem to follow you around the room; later that night, you wake to find the same woman standing at the foot of your bed, silently watching you sleep.
How Do You Come Up with Horror Ideas?
Coming up with fresh, frightening ideas is key to crafting an effective horror story. While horror inspirations can spring from ordinary events and observations, it helps to have strategies to unleash your most sinister creativity. Here are some tips for conjuring bone-chilling tales:
- Mine your nightmares. Dreams often access our deepest fears. Pay attention to recurring nightmares or startling images from your subconscious, as these can inspire terrifying new monsters or situations.
- Twist tropes. Take common horror archetypes like haunted houses, demonic possession, or slashers and put a new spin on them. Surprise readers by changing elements they assume to be familiar.
- Extrapolate fears. Think about phobias you or others have, like darkness, insects, or tight spaces. Imagine those fears exponentially intensified to petrifying extremes.
- Research real horror. Study disturbing historical events, murders, superstitions, or unexplained phenomena and fictionalize them in a new horror setting.
- Observe people. Carefully watch those around you and look for small creepy details in their appearances or behaviors that could be expanded into something sinister.
With an observant eye and inventive mind, creators can find endless inspiration from both mundane moments and their most nightmarish dreams. Putting ordinary things in an ominous light or letting one’s imagination run wild with “what if” scenarios generate the kinds of situations and figures that fuel truly frightening tales.
Pay attention to the world around and inside you, and plumb the depths of your creativity, and you’ll never run short on horror ideas.
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Go Forth and Terrify
Armed with this generous sampling of horror story prompts, what stories are brewing in your mind as you read this?
No need to stick to exact details, either.
If any part of the writing prompts you just read teased your imagination and became the kernel of a story, run with what youâve got.
And donât worry if the first sentence isnât perfect (youâll probably change it, anyway). Just write.
May you love this new story every bit as much as your readers will.
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110+ Horror Writing Prompts (With A Twist)
Give yourself the chills with this list of over 110 horror writing prompts. From scary ghost stories to creepy stories about animals and monsters. Now is the time to write your own horror story , just like Goosebumps or The Haunting of Aveline Jones.
From the gory to the scary, from the monstrous to the supernatural, from the humorous to the wacky, we have it all! Use this horror writing prompts generator to get a random horror writing idea to write about:
Keep on reading for a list of horror story prompts.
Most horror stories are based on one thing, fear. And it’s always a good idea to have a bit of that in your own life. Fear makes us all think differently, it makes us do things we wouldn’t normally do. And it’s the same thing that makes horror stories so scary. It’s a good idea to think of something that scares you, and then write about it. As a starting point, we have provided you with this list of horror prompts. For some of these gory ideas, we have included a twist, while for others itâs up to you how the story goes! Feel free to use any of these prompts in your writing, and to expand on any of the ideas.
List of Horror Writing Prompts
This list of horror writing prompts will you give you the well-needed inspiration for a good horror story:
- The Haunting Hospital: A small girl named Julie is walking down a country road when she finds a cemetery and realises it is her home town. She goes to her house and finds that it has been turned into a hospital. She finds her father and her mother there. Her father tells her that she is now a part of the hospital and that she must work to be paid. Julie and her mother go to work as nurses.
- Chasing Shadows: A girl named Becky is walking in her neighbourhood when she sees a little boy playing in the street. Becky runs over to him and asks him what he is doing. He tells her that he is a little monster and that he will kill her if she does not leave him alone. Becky takes off running and the little monster chases her.
- Park of Peril: A little girl named Melissa is walking through the park when she finds a little boy who tells her that he will eat her if she does not take him home. Melissa takes off running and the little boy chases her.
- Claws of the Night: This one involves a kid named Angela. One night she goes to sleep and when she wakes up the next morning her hands have turned into the claws of a cat.
- The Poisoned Harvest: A boy named Billy is walking down the street one day when he sees a homeless man. He notices some fruit by the man. When the homeless man is not looking, Billy steals the fruit. Later on, he goes home and eats this piece of fruit. The fruit is poisoned, and Billy goes blind.
- Carnivorous Confrontation: A story of a kid who loves to eat the flesh of dead animals, but one day a man appears and tells him not to eat them.
- Invisible Menace: Write a story about a young boy who is terrorized by an invisible monster.
- Nightmare Room: The invisible monster is eating kids and it is in their room all the time.
- Enchanted Chaos: A handsome prince on a quest to learn magic wants to marry the beautiful princess, but the kingdom is being attacked by demons, ghosts, and…his dad.
- Insanity’s Feast: The whole little town goes insane. They start killing people with their mouths. They kill them in the most gruesome way.
- Shuttered Nightmares: A serial killer is taking photos of their victims. He is telling them how he is going to kill them. And then he starts his killing.
- Witch’s Chains: Two kids named ‘Bud’ and ‘Chip’ got separated from their parents. They live next door to a witch and are unable to leave the house. One day, the witch makes their parents get into a container, and leaves them in the backyard, chained to a tree.
- Enchanted Camp: A summer camp where a powerful wizard casts a spell on the children to make them do his bidding.
- The Weeping Specter: A ghost that follows you around and cries on your shoulder and if you get sad it gets angry and turns into a ghostly voice that spooks people.
- Haunted Truths: The lead character is haunted by a ghost who knows the truth about their past.
- Distrustful Shadows: A girl named Dana, who works at a daycare centre, doesn’t trust anybody. This causes her to make sure she does everything she can to stop any other person from ever entering her place.
- Realm of Nightmares: One day, the princess wakes up in a terrible nightmare. She is being chased by something, she cannot see what it is. And then she hears the voice of her mother, telling her to run away. She goes to her room and sees that the covers on her bed are in a shape that reminds her of the monster she just saw. She knows she cannot sleep in this place. She goes to the other side of her room and sees a window. She goes to the window and finds that it is an opening to a new worldâŠ
- Witch’s Wrath: A girl named Misty lives with her parents and their next-door neighbour who is an evil witch. One day her father and the witch get into a fight and the witch accidentally kills him.
- Brief Awakening: A boy named Sam is suffering from a terrible disease and he only has days to live. He’s in a coma, and he’s not responding to any medical treatments. Until one night he starts to experience some new changesâŠ
- Vengeful Wishes: A little girl named Mina finds a genie. The genie grants her 3 wishes. Because Mina has been a victim of bullying, she uses all her wishes to punish her bullies with ghoulish consequences.Â
- Jar of Horrors: One day, a boy named Marcus went out to take a walk, and he found a jar that he thought was full of gold. Marcus had also found a bag that was heavier than he could lift, but he drags it home anyway. When he opens to bag he discovers something disgustingâŠ
- Game Over: A creepy character named Nemesis is trying to kill Luke, who plays video games and lives in his basement. At night, Luke hears voices telling him to hide. He goes to the basement and a creature knocks him out. He ends up as a character in his gruesome game.Â
- Bracelet of Resurrection: A boy named Josh loses his best friend to a freak accident. He finds the other half of a bracelet he gave his friend that day. He hangs on to it until one night the bracelet brings his best friend back to life.
- The Ghost Writer: Write a story titled, The Ghost Writer. Write about the ghost of someone who haunts you.
- Eternal Specter: Write a scary ghost story about a man who is cursed to spend eternity as a ghost.
- Hidden World: A boy named Brody is having problems adjusting to life in his new home after his parents divorced. He tries to see his dad, but they don’t want him around. One day he discovers a secret passage to a hidden underground world where his father now lives.
- Stuttering Shadows: A story about a young man named Kenny, who works as a garbage man. He also has a terrible stuttering problem that he has to deal with. One day he discovers that his stuttering is getting worse and worse and he becomes scared to death because of it. He thinks that the talking squirrel next to him is a demon.
- Haunted Corner: Write a story about an object in your room that becomes haunted.Â
- Ghostly Deception: A boy named Bryce has been hiding out from his abusive father. One day his father is gone and his dad’s new girlfriend walks into the house. He thinks it’s the ghost of his dead mother. The ghost shows him that his dadâs new girlfriend has been lying to him about how his birth mother died.
- Trapped in Terror: A young boy named Spencer and his sister Sarah, are on a camping trip when they find a box of mysterious objects. When they open it, one of the items shoots at them, striking Sarah and trapping her in a pod inside a tree. While locked inside the tree, Sarah meets an evil doll named Alice.
- Possessed Playtime: A young girl named Cassandra is babysitting her neighbour’s two kids. One day the kids eat some forbidden foods and a demon spirit possesses one of the kids and turns him into an evil creature who haunts the neighbourhood.
- Eyes of the Bunny: A little girl named Hayley discovers a secret house that no one in the neighbourhood knows about, and is welcomed inside by a red-eyed white bunny. One day when Hayley goes to a party, her newfound friend kidnaps her and traps her inside this mysterious house.Â
- Eternal Echo: Write a horror story about a horrible accident or a nightmare that has haunted you your whole life.
- Drowning Destiny: A boy named Joshua falls into a river and is about to drown when he gets rescued by a beautiful mermaid. She tells him that he will die the next day because that is his destiny.Â
- Keys of Madness: A young boy named Alex finds a set of glowing door keys and uses them to enter a huge abandoned mansion. When he explores the mansion, he is visited by a dark spirit who attacks him and drives him insane.
- Alien Abduction: A boy named Sam wakes up one day to find that his parents have been missing for over a year. The day he discovers them, they tell him that he was kidnapped by aliens, and they built an experimental human brainwashing machine.Â
- Dreams of Stella: A young boy named Toby starts having strange dreams of a girl named Stella. One day, he sees Stella when he’s on a roller coaster, but it turns out to be a ghost who is trying to take over his mind.Â
- Eye of the Leaf: A little boy named Ben is playing outside one day when he finds a strange leaf. When he picks it up, it turns into a leaf with a red eye and starts to follow him.Â
- Vengeful Spirit: Write a horror story about a ghost who just wants to kill the person who called him a monster when he was alive.Â
- Nightmare Adoption: A young girl named Annabelle is adopted by a family that lives in a very old house. One day when is playing outside, she is kidnapped by a scary man named the Nightman.
- Stuffed Shadows: A young boy named Jack gets lost in the woods and finds an old abandoned house. He enters the house and finds a huge stuffed animal. When he touches it, it wakes up and attacks him.
- Depths of Fear: Imagine your worst fear and write a scary story about it.
- A Rude Awakening: Write a horror story titled, A Rude Awakening. What would you do if you woke up in a place that you werenât familiar with?
- The Mysterious Case: What happens when someone goes missing and no one knows where theyâve gone?
- Dreamstalker : Write about a monster that might be stalking you in your dreams.
- Write a story titled, When The Wind Blows. This story could be about a sudden change in weather that comes with a new problem.
- Mirror Demon: Continue the following story: Suddenly, the demon in the mirror reappeared and she began to scream.
- Doctor’s Dread: When the doctor gave her the news, she screamed out loud and ran in circles.
- Safekeeping Shadows: In her final hours, she told me to be thankful that I had done my best to keep her safe. That I had made sure no evil would ever hurt her again.Â
- Camping Secrets: Continue the following horror story: As I was growing up, every year our family went camping in the woods. My grandfather passed away a few years ago. He was a rich man, and I wanted to visit his grave at the cemetery.Â
- Forest of Shadows: While walking around the forest, I came across a monstrous-looking creature. I was scared and ran back home. The next day, I decided to go back and see what the monster was doing.Â
- Echoes of Dread: Write down your biggest fear. And then write a story based on this fear.
- Silent Stalker: When I looked in her file I saw that she had gotten five serious stab wounds. But, I could not see any sign of her attacker. Her wounds were all over her body and all over her arms.
- Arachnid Terror: After discovering that a spider was sleeping in her bed, a young girl named Amy screams and runs away, locking herself in the bathroom.
- Electric Fury: A scientific team is doing research on electricity. They find a very strong cell that could create many things when it is exposed to electricity. Suddenly the electricity static comes alive. It gets angry and attacks the scientists.Â
- Imaginary Friend: A little girl named Amber loves to play with her new imaginary friend. She calls him âGiantâ and she makes up stories about him. She believes that he is her friend for real.
- Melting Nightmare: Continue the following story: As it continued attacking, it even caused my teeth to start to melt off of my jaw. My skin would start to burn, and my hair would become brown.Â
- Friday Night Terrors: It’s Friday. The TV is on, and you are wide awake. As you lie there listening, you begin to feel tired. And just as your eyes begin to close, you hear a creak of the floorboards. Your eyes snap open. What you see scares the living hell out of you.
- Blood Dawn: You wake up one morning to find your entire body covered in blood. What do you do?Â
- Room of Despair: How would you react if you were locked in a room and told you could never leave?
- Haunting Memoirs: What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you? Can you explain this in great detail?
- Chilling Chronicles: Make a top ten list of the creepiest books or stories you have ever read.
- The Gruesome Creation: Describe the most gruesome and disgusting creature you can imagine.
- Zoo’s Menace: Write a horror story where there is a threat of animals getting out of the zoo.
- Red-Eyed Pursuit: Continue the following starter: A red-eyed man of tall and dark build looms over a bus stop on a lonely, deserted country road, staring at me intently. I run like hell to get to the other side of the street, but itâs too lateâŠ
- Homebound Horror: A strange animal has been following you through your home. Have you been doing anything strange or dangerous that has made it freak out?
- Midnight Messages: Someone is leaving you messages in the dead of night. Whatâs the creepiest message you’ve received?
- Ghostly Watcher: Create a ghost story about a creature that watches and waits in the corners of dark, abandoned places.
- Jack and Jill’s Nightmare: Jack and Jill went up the hill, but they never came back down. Will they ever make it to the bottom? Write a horror story based on this idea.
- Dark Secrets: The history of your town has a long dark secret that nobody wants to talk about. What is it?
- Mutated Reality: Reality show participants get kidnapped and sent on a dangerous mission, where they must learn how to blend with mutated creatures.
- Beastly Intrusion: In a small community in Japan, a supernatural force enters the community through a sewer. To beat it, the village must learn to work as a team and think like a beast.
- School of Shadows: School kids donât believe in ghosts until theyâre suddenly being terrorised in their school at night.
- Vampiric Genesis: Someone is using a contaminated strain of bat DNA to create vampires in real life. And it’s up to a group of scientists to put an end to it.
- Promised Souls: The dead walk, and all they want to do is get what they were promised. Will you figure it out?
- Spellbound Silence: An aspiring rapper, who always dreamed of singing in front of an adoring crowd, becomes the target of a spell that makes him unable to sing, his most cherished talent. Will he survive the consequences of his initial desire to be a star?
- Mirror Man: Continue this story: You look into the mirror and see a man in black standing in the cornerâŠ
- Cryptic Chronicles: Imagine that you stumble upon a really creepy story in your local library and it leads you on a very strange and frightening journey.
- Lost in a Strange World: When night falls, people get teleported to an area far away, in a very different world! The only way to return home is by combining body parts with the different elements of the land.
- Wicked Takeover: A small town gets taken over by a wicked witch, who’s on a mission to suck the souls of all the inhabitants.
- Soul Seeker: When someone posts an ad online about finding a soul and bringing it home for a price, things get really interesting.
- Human and Beast: What would happen if human DNA was spliced with that of a deadly monster?
- Unknown Beyond: A guy receives an advance warning from his friends in the afterlife to get ready for the afterlife, or something worse may happenâŠ
- Death’s Present: A girl gets a letter that someone wants to give her a present before they die, but the present comes with a very specific clause. What happens when she follows the instructions?
- Dark Diary: As a local woman is trying to recover from the death of her husband, she discovers an old diary, in which she discovers something that happened in her past that has led to events that followed.
- Christmas Carnage: It’s beginning to look like Christmas! But thereâs more to Christmas than Santa and presents. A deadly secret is hidden away in a child’s bedroom. And with a massive killer about to make an appearance, itâs a race against time to track him down.
- Empire of Evil: A ship sets sail for the distant colony of the Empire, but its mission becomes a mission to find the source of evil.
- Hell Town: Using a sinister new machine, a small-town mayor is convinced to turn his town into a hell-like world.
- Wild Dogs: A group of four friends are lured into an abandoned house by a pack of wild dogs.
- I Went To A Party: Complete the following sentence in three different spooky ways: I went to a party andâŠ
- Sea’s Claw: The captain was anxious to get home, but the sea was so rough that his ship could not make it. Suddenly, from the fog, a giant black claw appeared. The giant black claw grabbed the ship and then brought the ship to the bottom of the ocean.
- Dybylu’s Awakening: A monster named Dybylu wakes up one morning, alone in her room. She can feel it in the air; her pet cat is afraid. She goes to look in the mirror and seeâs a human staring back at her.Â
- Murdered Spirit: A little boy is asked to help a spirit of a man who was murdered, but as he hears the story, it sounds weird and a bit confusing, and he begins to wonder if the story is even true.
- Playground Horrors: In a playground near an orphanage, there are many playgrounds where kids play. The best playground is found next to an abandoned asylum.Â
- Barn Cat’s Secret: A drifter named Mick goes to a farm with his friend Sam, and the owner of the farm is a creepy scientist. Mick climbs a barn ladder and sees a strange cat in thereâŠ
- Cape Creature: A sweet girl named Annie and her sister, Charley, are having an adventure in their neighbourhood. Suddenly, Annie spots a strange black cape creature lurking in the distance. It was the most feared and horrible creature Annie has ever seen.
- Island of Souls: The main character goes to an island that no one has visited before. He is enjoying his vacation, but one night he finds out that his home is being invaded by creatures who want to steal his soul.
- Spookie’s Nightmares: A witch known as ‘Spookie’ causes horrible hallucinations to victims of her nightmares. Her victims canât scream or cry or run. All they can do is panic.
- Stick’s Mischief: A girl named Paige finds a stick that attracts a mysterious creature that will play a sick joke on her.Â
- Black Blood: One day, a girl named Robin started having problems in school. Her parents, who are very smart and caring, see something is very wrong with Robin so they take her to the doctor. The doctor makes her go through a lot of tests, and everything is okay except for one last thing. Robin has black blood running through her veins.
- Mirror’s Curse: A teenage girl named Sarah who is obsessed with her appearance starts turning into an old, ugly witch every time she looks into a mirror.Â
- Bee Killer: When bees start dying suddenly out of nowhere, the lead detective in a bee colony must find the culprit.Â
- Demon’s Puzzle: A strange jigsaw puzzle holds a horrific secret… In it, a grinning demon holds a girl’s head in its giant mouth.
- Forbidden Drawing: A little boy sees a drawing of him in a forbidden book he had found. He is then transported to a never-ending forest, lost foreverâŠ
- When the Past Comes Back: An adult is being haunted by their younger self.
- Beast of the Woods: A reporter goes into the woods where there was a fierce animal attack. In this attack, five women and a little boy were killed. He decides to search for evidence on who this killer creature might beâŠ
- Letters of London: A man lives by himself in a flat in London. A mysterious person starts sending him letters which talk about how scary things will happen if he doesn’t leave his flat.Â
- The Ghost in Her Friend’s Mother: A 7 year old girl is having a sleepover at her friend’s house. Her friend’s mom leaves them alone, but they soon find out that she was poisoned, and that a ghost has taken over her body.
- Creepy Crawlies in Your Kitchen: The first animal the kids see is a snake that eats people’s brains. It sneaks around in people’s kitchens.
- Revolving Nightmares: The story starts off with a character telling the readers about the night he and his parents got stuck in a revolving door. The night would haunt him for the rest of his life.
- Tommy’s Window: A long time ago there was a man named Tommy, who was lost in a forest. Tommy thought he heard a ghost calling him. Tommy went in the direction of the noise and found a scary-looking house that has windows that never opened. Tommy finds out that the house belongs to a witch and that if he opens the windows, the witch will turn Tommy into a puppet.Â
- Tommy the Dog: This is a story about a little boy and his dog. The little boy goes to a big park, and he sees a dog that is alone. He walks over to the dog, but it just barks and then runs away. The next day Tommy starts turning into a human-sized dog.Â
Fear no more! Just use this list of horror writing prompts to start writing your own fantastic horror story! Use any of these scary prompt ideas to take the story from your mind to your computer screen.
Looking for more creepy horror prompts? Check out this list of Halloween writing prompts , as well as this scary Halloween picture prompts .
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the 5 elements of a horror story.
Every good horror story contains the following five elements: Character, Setting, Action, Horror and Resolution. You canât write a good horror without these elements.
How do you write in creepy writing?
To write in creepy writing, you need to immerse yourself in the world of horror. You think to think exactly like your main character or antagonist. Imagine yourself as a ghost, a demon, a monster, or a murderer. You can be a ghost who haunts people in their dreams or a monster who stalks them in the real world. Use extreme details to describe scenes of horror with gory and disgusting elements.
How do you get inspiration for horror?
Most horror stories are based on fear. Think about the things that scare you or haunt you in your nightmares. You can also get inspiration from watching scary movies or reading about scary stories. Finally, horror stories can also be inspired by real-life situations. For example, a girl who is bullied decides to take revenge on her bullies in a gruesome way. Of course, you can also use this list of horror writing prompts to inspire you too!
What are common horror themes?
Horror themes can be based on personal experiences, fears, or nightmares. Here are some common horror themes to explore:
- Stalker: Someone who stalks you in your dreams or in the real world.
- Monsters: Someone or something who appears to be human, but isnât.
- Revenge: Someone who is still haunted by a past event, and needs to seek revenge to overcome it.
- Secrets: A deadly secret that could shake the lives of anyone involved.
- Psychopaths: People who just kill or hurt others for the fun of it.
Did you find this list of over 110 horror writing prompts useful? Let us know in the comments below.
Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.
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Essay on Horror Story
Students are often asked to write an essay on Horror Story in their schools and colleges. And if youâre also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.
Letâs take a lookâŠ
100 Words Essay on Horror Story
Introduction.
Horror stories are a genre of fiction that seeks to scare, disturb, or startle its readers by inducing feelings of horror and terror.
Elements of Horror
Key elements include suspense, surprise, and a sense of impending doom. Often, horror stories involve supernatural elements or entities.
Impact on Readers
These stories can have a profound impact on readers, evoking intense emotions and creating memorable experiences.
Despite their frightening nature, horror stories remain popular due to their ability to engage readersâ emotions and imagination in unique ways.
250 Words Essay on Horror Story
The intrigue of horror stories.
Horror stories have always captivated the human imagination. They are a mirror of our primal fears and anxieties, often personified in the form of ghosts, monsters, or uncanny events. The fascination for horror stories is not merely a pursuit of thrill, but a complex interplay of psychology, culture, and narrative techniques.
Psychological Appeal
At the heart of every horror story is the exploration of fear. Sigmund Freudâs concept of âthe uncannyâ explains our attraction to horror as a confrontation with repressed fears and desires. This exploration of the unknown and the forbidden can be cathartic, allowing us to experience fear in a controlled environment.
Cultural Significance
Horror stories also reflect societal fears and anxieties. For instance, Mary Shelleyâs âFrankensteinâ mirrors the 19th-century fear of scientific advancement, while George Orwellâs â1984â embodies the dread of totalitarian regimes. Thus, horror stories serve as cultural artifacts, offering insights into the zeitgeist of an era.
Narrative Techniques
The narrative techniques employed in horror stories are designed to evoke fear and suspense. Techniques such as foreshadowing, dramatic irony, and unreliable narrators keep readers on edge, while the use of dark, descriptive language helps create a chilling atmosphere.
In conclusion, horror stories are more than mere tales of terror. They are a reflection of our deepest fears, a commentary on societal anxieties, and a testament to the power of narrative techniques in evoking emotional responses. Their enduring popularity is a testament to their complexity and the human fascination with the macabre.
500 Words Essay on Horror Story
Horror stories have been a part of human culture for centuries, delighting and terrifying audiences in equal measure. They are narratives designed to frighten, cause dread or panic, or invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale. The horror genre taps into the primal fear within us, making us confront the unknown and the terrifying.
The Psychology behind Horror
Horror stories, in their essence, serve as a mirror to our psyche, reflecting our deepest fears and anxieties. They provoke a sense of fear and excitement, a thrilling cocktail of emotions that keep audiences coming back for more. The science of fear explains the allure of horror stories. The adrenaline rush, the heightened senses, and the relief after the threat has passed, all contribute to the addictive nature of horror.
The Evolution of Horror Stories
Horror stories have evolved significantly over the years, keeping pace with societal changes and shifts in what we fear. Early horror stories were often tied to religion, reflecting fears of the supernatural and the afterlife. As society became more secular, the focus shifted to the horrors of the human mind and the terrors of the unknown.
Modern horror stories, such as Stephen Kingâs works, often blend elements of the supernatural with the psychological, creating a sense of unease that lingers long after the story is over. The horror genre has also expanded into various sub-genres, such as psychological horror, supernatural horror, and body horror, each catering to different fears and anxieties.
The Impact of Horror Stories on Society
Horror stories have a profound impact on society, shaping and reflecting our collective fears. They often serve as social commentaries, highlighting societal issues under the guise of the supernatural or the macabre. The horror genre allows us to confront and discuss topics that might otherwise be considered taboo, such as death, violence, and the darker aspects of human nature.
In conclusion, horror stories are an integral part of our cultural fabric, serving as both entertainment and a means to explore our deepest fears and anxieties. They have evolved with society, reflecting our changing fears and serving as a commentary on societal issues. Despite their often gruesome and terrifying content, horror stories provide a safe space to explore the darker aspects of our psyche, helping us to understand and confront our fears. The enduring popularity of the horror genre is a testament to its ability to tap into our primal fears and its capacity to thrill, terrify, and captivate audiences.
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- Essay on Visit to an Old Age Home
- Essay on There Is No Place Like Home
- Essay on My Home
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How to Write a Scary Story
How to write a scary story in 5 Easy Steps
Most of us love a good scare!
From our first game of peek-a-boo as a child through those ghost stories around a campfire as a teen, surprises and a little fright never lose their appeal. Itâs why horror movies remain big business at the box office and on streaming websites.
- Even those who profess not to read much will likely have read a Stephen King book or two.
- Gamers arenât immune either, as the popularity of games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hills will attest.
- Horror is one of the best-selling fiction genres in any medium.
In this article, weâll look at spine-chilling tips to help students write spooky stories that will rattle readers to their core. If scary is not your thing, then check out our complete guide to writing a narrative here.
So, pull the curtains, dim the lights and letâs learn how to write a horror story for school.
THE STORY TELLERS BUNDLE OF TEACHING RESOURCES
A MASSIVE COLLECTION of resources for narratives and story writing in the classroom covering all elements of crafting amazing stories. MONTHS WORTH OF WRITING LESSONS AND RESOURCES, including:
1. Write about what scares you.
The old writerâs mantra states, âwrite about what you know. While itâs most unlikely that your students know any killer clowns or lunatic killers who haunt campsites frequented by teenage couples, they can still write about the things that scare them.
This is the best place to start. A student has little hope of frightening the reader unless they choose to write about something they find disturbing.
The more specific the subject, the more personal the writing can become. Horror is filled with tropes and cliches. The world doesnât need another axe murder chasing teens through the woods or another foolhardy ouija board misadventure – unless thereâs a new spin put on things.
Avoiding tired clichés like those mentioned above will help maintain the element of surprise in the writing, which, as we shall see more of later, is essential to keep readers engaged.
Teaching Activity: Ask students to write down a list of the top 3 things that scare them. They neednât be things that other people are scared of; the more personal and idiosyncratic they are, the more original the story is likely to be. These could be anything from a fear of heights or open spaces to a fear of the doorbell ringing at night.
Now, ask the students to choose one of these fears and list why they are scared of it. They should also write about how their fear makes them feel. The more detailed they can write about this, the better.
Encourage the students to use their full five senses to describe the feelings and emotions they would experience. The more convincingly they can convey the experience, the more successful theyâll be in striking fear into the hearts of their readers later on.
2. Use Setting to Your Advantage when writing a Horror story
The setting is a crucial element to any story and when used skillfully, it can be an essential tool in raising the scare factor of any tale.
When asked to write a scary story, younger kids will inevitably gravitate towards the more apparent settings such as haunted houses, cemeteries, and dark woods. Again, these well-worn settings would best be avoided unless the student intends to subvert a readerâs expectations.
In fact, given that surprise is one of the key elements to any good scare, subverting the setting is one great tool for terror available to our students.
For example, the comfort of a sleepover at their grandmotherâs can take a turn for the worse if itâs discovered she holds a Black Mass. Imagine a coven of devil-worshippers in the dead of night in that dated living room where she serves milk and cookies to her grandkids during the day. Enough to make you spill your glass of milk over the embroidered cushions!
The physical environment can also be used to create tension and fear. For example, imagine two siblings hiding in a cupboard witnessing Grandmotherâs midnight Satanic shenanigans. Itâs hot and cramped. Imagine the claustrophobic feeling coupled with the terror of discovery. Itâs enough to make you want to skip that Sunday visit to Grandmaâs entirely [shudder].
If you are going to teach students how to write a scary story about a haunted house ensure you show them examples of figurative language that gives the house character.
Teaching Activity: Ask your students to take the fear they identified in the first activity and devise a setting for a story based on that fear.
One novel approach for deciding on a setting is to choose the place that seems least likely for a horror story. This unlikely element is one of the reasons why clowns are extraordinarily creepy or why the childâs doll in the Chucky movies is so unnervingly terrifying.
Not only will this build strength in the studentâs creative writing muscles, but it will also help ensure a crucial element of originality in the finished story. The setting should be painted as vividly as possible to create a picture in the reader’s mind. The clearer that picture, the more intense the fear created.
Remember, too, the setting consists of both time and place , so students shouldnât be afraid to experiment with historical and future settings for their stories too.
3. Choose your character and point of view wisely when writing a horror story
One of the most common areas horror stories fall down in is that of characterization. Poor characterization is the number one reason many scary stories and movies fall as flat as the characters they utilize.
If your student wants to take their reader on a real knuckle-whitening ride of terror, they have to make the effort to bring their characters to life. An effective strategy to help students bring characters to life on the page is to have them base them on real people.
These real people could be people they know personally, people theyâve heard about in their community or beyond, or even pre-existing fictional characters they are already familiar with. Students should, of course, make the necessary modifications to make sure they are not committing either defamation or plagiarism.
At a more advanced level, students may also consider creating a composite character that brings together various aspects of different characters (real or fictional) that they already know.
Once students have gathered together their cast of characters, theyâll need to decide on a point of view from which to tell the story. Generally, this will be a first or third-person POV, and though the advantages and disadvantages of each type are too complex to go into here, you can find out more about different POVs in other articles on this site.
That said, some general points to consider when choosing a POV for a horror story are that while the first-person POV is great for grabbing the readerâs attention from the outset and for building suspense when the story is in the past tense, it may ruin any suspense regarding whether the narrator survives or not.
Third-person narratives allow for a slower build to a story while maintaining the suspense concerning the outcome for the storyâs protagonist. They also allow for the more detailed narration and description demanded by longer stories.
One more point for students to consider is whether the narrator is reliable or not, If they opt for an unreliable narrator, this can open up great opportunities for a final twist in the tale. The 90âs movie The Usual Suspects is a great example of the unreliable narrator at work where the climactic twist at the end reveals the real Keyser Söze.
Teaching Activity: For this activity, students should select a scene to rewrite from a fiction book they are already familiar with. A book a few levels below their current reading level will be perfect.
Students rewrite the scene from first and third-person limited and omniscient perspectives, as well as from the points of view of different characters in the story. More advanced students can even play with using a reliable and unreliable narrator if theyâve already grasped these concepts.
When students have written the different versions of the scene, they should take time to compare the effects of these different points of view. Ask them to identify which of the perspectives and points of view worked best for this particular scene and story. What were the specific advantages and disadvantages of each version?
COMPLETE YEAR LONG INFERENCE WRITING RESOURCE
Tap into the power of imagery in your classroom to get your students to master INFERENCE as AUTHORS and CRITICAL THINKERS .
This YEAR LONG 500+ PAGE unit is packed with robust opportunities for your students to develop the critical skill of inference through fun imagery and powerful thinking tools, and graphic organizers.
4. Lay It all on the line when writing a scary story
Like the card game poker, it is when the stakes are highest that horror stories are at their most exhilarating.
In the world of stories, these stakes are directly related to the central problem and character motivation. The broad appeal of horror stories lies in the universality of these motivations.
Ensure students understand this and reflect this knowledge in their writing. There are several different types of âstakeâ they can use to amp up the readerâs interest. Letâs take a look at 2 of the most common motivations in this genre:
The Survival Motivation: This is the most primitive of the 3. Not wanting to die is something we can all relate to and needs no explanation. However, this motivation can be further enhanced by adding another layer for the character. For example, if the protagonist needs to survive to defeat the monster etc, then the need to survive is emphasized beyond just the preservation of life.
The Protection Motivation: Here, the protagonist’s prime motivation is the need to protect others from a threat, usually in the form of loved ones such as family or a lover. Again, this is a primitive desire that we can all relate to and needs little in the way of explanation for the reader. There are two main ways to increase the stakes for this motivation – increase the number of peopleâs lives on the line or reveal a deep relationship between the protector and the protected.
Teaching Activity: Organize students into small groups. Have them look at a list of horror movies, such as those on an online database like IMDb, and then sort the movies into two categories: Survival Motivation or Protection Motivation .
There may be some crossover as many movies will employ both motivations to enhance the drama. In such cases, students should focus on the prime motivation of the movieâs protagonist. Where thereâs disagreement, a discussion can be had as a whole class at the end.
When they have completed this activity, students should then look at their notes from the previous activities described above. What motivation is best suited to their embryonic story? Students should write a few lines to explain.
5. Avoid Clichés in horror writing
There are arguably more familiar tropes and clichés associated with this genre of story-telling than any other. For our student writers, these should be avoided. Clichés and overused tropes result in dull and predictable storylines. These are the opposite of the elements such as surprise and shock, which good horror so often relies on.
The one exception is when the writer takes well-worn plotlines and characters and subverts them to come up with something new, which leads us directly to our next activity.
Teaching Activity: Organize the students into small groups again and challenge them to make a list of clichĂ©s and tropes from horror books and movies. The IMDb movie database will again serve well if they need some inspiration. Even if they donât know the movies, they can read the synopses and identify some of the clichĂ©s and tropes used.
Once students have their list, they should attempt to make something fresh from them. The simplest way to do this is often to change the setting or characters. This will lead to unusual ideas, such as vampires in space or piranhas in the city sewage system.
The ideas generated need not be plausible or even âgoodâ. This activity aims to flex the studentsâ creativity muscles in pursuit of something original.
The Final Bell Tolls
So there we have it. Five tips to help students hone their horror-writing skills and five activities to put that newly-gained knowledge into practice.
Writing spooky stories is a great way to get reluctant students to write at Halloween and any time of the year.
Though writing spooky stories is fun , students still gain opportunities to internalize literature’s essential elements and develop their understanding of how language, structure, and story work.
Not bad for a nightâs work…
Now go and write one, and be sure to read our complete guide to writing narratives if you need any further guidance on story writing.
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4820+ Horror Short Stories to read
Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest . From hauntings and murderers to terrifying creatures from the deep, our collection of horror stories will have you breaking out in cold sweats. Take a look⊠if you dare.
đ Winning stories
â the gingerbread cookies â by aaron chin.
đ Winner of Contest #230
The Gingerbread Cookies Letâs go downstairs and bake some cookies, like mother used to make. The warm smell sits right at home in your nostrils, invading them like wild ax-murderers hacking and slashing their way through endless miles of human bodies that stand in the way of their inhumane, carnal desires. Shhh, shhh, but thatâs too dark. Itâs Christmas after all. So letâs go down...
â Cerulean â by AnneMarie Miles
đ Winner of Contest #224
The door is cerulean, a bright and vibrant blue, but really it is the color of my sudden uneasiness. The feeling creeps up me slowly, jumps out at me dauntingly, and I am frozen in it. If the door were a mirror â and how I wish it were as innocent as a mirror â I would see my face reflected back to me, and it would tell me to run.Iâm not sure whatâs more jarring: the fact that this door is a clashing contrast to the rest of the library dĂ©cor, or the fact that Iâve never noticed the path we took to get here before. I supp...
â Do Flamethrowers Belong In The Library? â by Kenz Ross
đ Winner of Contest #212
We lose people all the time. Itâs just the nature of the job. What can you expect from a place full of nooks and crannies people intentionally go to get lost in? I usually donât worry when I donât see someone for a while, but when itâs been days since someoneâs checked out, itâs usually a sign that I need to step in. Iâm not doing this alone, thankfully. No Librarian i...
âïž Recommended stories
â the unbecoming of belinda blackwell â by giulietta villalobos.
âïž Shortlisted for Contest #242
There are few places Belinda Blackwell likes to lay down to rest more than upon her husbandâs chest. He hadnât been expecting her. Belinda hadnât been expecting to be home so soon, eitherâ what with the unpredictability of her fatherâs illness demanding open schedules from his children, someone on-call at all times lest the old man die without one of them there to hold his hand. When Oscar had come to join them a week earlyâ something about a case closing timely and a stiffening in his shoulders when Belinda enquired about her sister-in...
â General â by Hannah Lannswift
âïž Shortlisted for Contest #236
My eyes fly open like Iâm waking from the dead. I start up, tossing aside the blanket that had been tangled around my legs. Something woke me up. I kick dirty laundry out of the way and shift my body to sitting up. Head swimming. The sunlight is too bright in the room and I find myself squinting around. When I lean forward, my phone tumbles off my lap, hits the edge of the coffee table, and clatters to the floor...
â A Decently Modest Proposal â by Allan Bernal
Hey you! Yes you, reading this story! Donât worry, this isnât some piece of meta fiction, Iâm dictating what I say to a gracious volunteer whoâll post it for me. Iâve got an offer for you â and no, not like a door to door salesman peddling dull kitchen knives or what have you. You see, my offer is as genuine as a babyâs first laugh. My name is Donald Basemore-Cooper â quite a mouthful I know, my friends c...
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âïž All stories
â blood sacrifice â by patrick boey.
Submitted to Contest #243
If you listen closely enough, you might just hear the faint whispering of the paintings when a new artwork arrives at The Gallery Diablerie. A stifled laugh here, a murmured rumour thereâeasy to attribute to any of the galleryâs wealthy clientele or dismiss as a passing echo or the squeak of a wooden floorboard. But when the lights are down and the visitors have departed, the paintings gossip freely amongst themselves, nudging their neighbours and visiting friends on the next landing; exchanging hearsay and dealing judgement; assessing the n...
â The Final Delivery â by Frank Lester
People snorting bad shit?Tommy straightened up at the accusation.âMy shit? Fuckâem.âGrowing up in the projects hardened oneâs view of life.âItâs their choice, man. I only sell it. What they do with it . . . who gives a shit?â he said, his voice flat.âThe shit youâre putting out on the street is bad. Poison.âTommy shrugged and went back to stacking the bricks in a large canvas bag.âYeah. Probably somebody wants a bigger cut andâs spreading bullshit,â he said without looking up.âIt ainât bullshit, Tommy. The cops are shakinâ everyone down. You...
â SCHISM â by Hazel October
Ash twitched, wincing, a painâacid sharp and hot seared through the index and middle fingers on his left hand, they were stuck, jammed between the cubicle door and the marred tile underneathâit must have slammed on his fingers after heâd passed out last night on the floor of the disabled bathroom. He dared himself to look at his hand and regretted it instantly. Blood pooled down his arm, sticky and warm, bits of it dry and crusted towards his forearm, while the part near his fingers was still fresh and gushing. The fingers themselves h...
â Sentient Masterpiece â by Bec Newton
There was an appeal in a museum that I could never quite explain. The expanse of the stone structure, the quiet reverence a building such as this commanded. Everything about it was comforting and felt so permanent and reassuring. The atmosphere held a strange, cool mustiness despite its impeccable cleanliness, like an ancient tomb opened to the world for people to discover its treasures, and I was here to discover them all. My museum was the best. It combined both the treasures of the past with art. The best of both worlds in this ...
â El Gato de la Muerte â by Tanya Humphreys
Dominic sipped espresso as he watched the cat. The thing was all angular bones under tufted black fur, it slunk low to the ground, making Dom think of the Grinch as it stole the Whosâ Joy. Looking at this poor creature, Dom felt his own joy ebbing away. The thin dark woman selling fish tacos flapped her apron, âSal de aqui!â she screeched as the cat did also. Dom went to the womanâs stall and pointed at the fried fish. She narrowed her eyes as she assessed his station in life. She could have been 30, she could have been 50, her skin was taut...
â The living Museum â by Jeff McDonald
In a small town in America, there lived a teenager named Alex. He was an ordinary teenager who loved playing video games and hanging out with his friends. One day, his mother, who worked for a big tech company, had to go on a business trip to Inverness, Scotland. Reluctantly, she took Alex along with her, much to his dismay. He was not excited about spending his summer vacation in a foreign country. As they arrived in Inverness, Alex's boredom only grew. The city seemed dull and uninteresting to him. His mother, noticing his lack of enthusia...
â An Evening Conversation â by Barbara Ferguson
âExcuse me, maâam, the museum is closed. Iâll have to ask you to leave.â Alexâs key ring jingled as he walked toward the woman sitting on the bench in the museumâs newest exhibit. It was a sarcophagus and collection of artifacts found in and around a tomb in what had been Persia, on loan from the National Museum of Iran. The womanâs hair fell over her shoulder as she turned to face him and smiled. He stared. Her combination of dark hair and eyes and pale glowing skin was ethereal and he wondered when or if heâd ever seen a woman so captivati...
â Leopardus â by Alexandra L. Burris
   His predicament was becoming ridiculous. To think he had been relieved no longer to live as a savage - how eagerly he had anticipated his return to England all these months - and now this! This was his welcome. It was a humiliation. He, who had been decorated by the Royal Society, trapped inside a museum, contemplating the indignity of sleeping upon the floor!    He was due to give a lecture the following morning at the Society of Venerable Adventurers. Thanks to the stupidity of the clerk who had locked him ...
â Eschatology Exhibition â by J. I. MumfoRD
[tw gore, insane ravings, eldritch corruption]Sarah's palms left moist patches on the worn desk as she cursed the volunteer manager for leaving her to conduct the "Relics of the Occult" tour alone. Her notecards were smeared with sweat stains. She was not ready, but she had run out of time.She slid past the massive alcohol filled container of an immature leviathan and shelves full of specimen vats. Their unblinking eyes upturned in perverse supplication.She let herself through the armored door, piercing the insulated, fireproof glass wall, b...
â SHADOWS OF THE RELIC: VINCENT BLACKWOOD'S ESCAPE â by Darvico Ulmeli
In the heart of a bustling city stood the renowned Heritage Museum, home to priceless artifacts and treasures from civilizations long past. Among these treasures lay the ultimate prizeâ âEmerald Eye,â an ancient relic rumored to possess mystical powers beyond comprehension. For years, it had eluded the grasp of even the most skilled thieves. But the relic beckoned like a siren's call for Vincent Blackwood, a notorious art thief with an audacious reputation. Tall and lean, with an athletic build honed by years of daring escapades, he moved wi...
â Plight at the Museum â by Joshua G. J. Insole
The carâs tyres skidded over the rain-wet road, squealing in the night.Edward Rakee gritted his teeth. He didnât like driving this fast, but the situation called for it. This had been the first night after changing the museumâs exhibits, his first actual decision on the job. At midnight, heâd gotten a call. The motion sensor alarms had detected someone inside the building. Someone had broken in â what a disaster. He gripped the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip and fought to keep control of his 2-tonne beast.Burnhelm Museumâs windows gl...
â Insipid â by Dustin Gillham
This is where the judges are taken. For now. Tied. Muffled. Their breath is shallow. Temporary⊠If at all. Regardless, all of them have an expiration. More often than notâŠSlowly. In the grime and timeless hours of the city, the roads cross like shadowy vapors in the cataclysm of morning traffic. When the homeless and the drunks float, wash up in alleyways and orphaned parking lots, and felines move forward bony and lean, forbidding perimeters etched about in shadows without any particular order. The artist paints and creates without forgiven...
â The Thumping â by Aidan Kuemmerle
The museum's intercom crackled on with train station static.   "HELLO NORVIL MUSEUM!" I ducked at the sound, trying to escape it, cracking my ear drums. He spoke fast, like a sports announcer, at the most critical part of the game. "Welcome to your nightly broadcast from your FAVORITE night guard! As always, we must get the boring things out of the way before we have! Some! Fun!" His voice trailed up and down with the meter of a radio host. It was well practiced. "If there is ANY other human in this fine establishment other th...
â The Gallery of Souls â by Noted Moments
In the heart of the city, stood The Grand Galerie Des RĂȘves (Gallery of Dreams). This, its marble façade, adorned with intricate carvings and mysterious symbols. Within its walls, treasures from forgotten civilizations lay in silent rest, waiting for curious eyes to discover their secrets.Eamon, a humble night guard, patrolled the museum's silent halls. His footsteps echoed off the polished marble floors as he checked each exhibit. The museum was eerily quiet at night, and Eamon often wondered about the stories behind the artifacts. But one ...
â Demonic Bureaucracy â by Tess Corbel
Submitted to Contest #242
The Company liked to think of itself as forward looking, ready to face the challenges of the future. They bragged about the efficiency and modernity of their workforce. But in the end they were so focused on their financial gains that they ignored the most insidious threat. They forgot the first rule of corporate demon management â protect yourself before profits. Now they were stuck with a demon-possessed CEO. Theyâd managed to lock him in an empty office when they realised what was going on, but in their haste had forgotten to take his pho...
The Best Horror Short Stories
Horror stories. What is it that you think of first? Maybe itâs malevolent, otherworldly spirits. Or perhaps itâs psychopaths, serial killers, and struggling writers driven mad by a deserted hotel? Whatever it is, thereâs one thing that unites you and every other horror lover out there â adrenaline. You know the feeling: your skin crawls, your heart pounds, a shiver runs down your spine. And, as all the best horror story writers will tell you, the cause of this feeling isnât just the presence of a monster, but the creation of suspense.Â
Thatâs where short stories come in. Think Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft: some of their best horrors take the form of a short story. Tales that climb steadily towards a dark and horrific denouement. The kind of thing that, if youâre brave enough, youâd tell your friends around a campfire â a torch casting spooky shadows on your face.Â
Looking for some spine-chilling horror stories?
If youâre into creepy stories that keep you awake at night, then look no further than our collection of short horror stories, compiled from submissions to our weekly writing contest. Here weâve gathered together all the scary stories that made us want to lock our laptops in a cupboard and hide under the blankets. And at the top of the page, is the cream of the crop: horror stories that have either won our competition or been shortlisted.Â
Lots of promising new writers have emerged from this collection, deftly creating atmosphere and building that all-important suspense. So who knows? You might just discover the next Stephen King. And if you enjoy this collection of horror stories, then why not try your hand at writing your own? You could join this weekâs short story contest , and walk away with the cash prize â and a shot at publication in Prompted , our new literary magazine!
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Everyday Beauty
Three months in, buried saints, paradise falls: chapter 19, growing up – the delhi years, moonstruck at midnight, cycle of rebirth, the island flamingo: chapter 28, dish best served cold, factory reset, in her mother’s footpath, puzzle pieces, sound check, skateboards and paper jams, dragons have arrived, the claiming, paradise falls: chapter 18, concentrate, the island flamingo: chapter 27, the dark chasm, southern ways – part 7, love you more fifteen years later, writing blues, dead letter, rouse the earth, the cycle of life, storm drain: a 500 word horror story.
The early summer rainstorm ceased. But, dark clouds remained and hovered above the sparsely populated street. Rainwater trickled into the storm drain below and lured the brown, slimy creature to the surface. Overcast skies and rain-drenched surface created the perfect environment for the underground creature. Conditions were ideal for it to go in search of a meal. It seeped out through a small crevice between the road and the round drain cap.
The sinister blob slithered down the deserted street and headed toward the nearest home. It glided across the dampened pavement with an eerie silence. Driven by hunger, the brown goo then drifted onto the wet grass where it devoured pill bugs and worms. The mysterious mass lacked a mouth, so it absorbed things through its gelatinous skin.
As it neared the solitary house, it sensed large sources of food and quickened its pace. The blob slithered into the backyard, inched its way up the steps, and squeezed through a screen door. Once inside, the creature squirmed into the family room and moved up the backside of the sofa where a male dozed. With stealth and silence, the goo rolled toward him. It slid over the manâs forehead and dove into his opened mouth.
The male bolted awake, and his eyes flew open. He coughed, retched, and struggled to breathe. The man reached up and grabbed at the goo to yank it away, but the creature ingested his hands. Before long, he succumbed to the attack.
The mass then inched its way down the manâs esophagus and into his stomach. After consuming the innards, the slimy creature forced its way out through the abdomen of the lifeless male. It slithered in and out repeatedly until it consumed every bit of flesh, bones, organs, blood, and hair. Evidence of the maleâs body was non-existent. Goneâvanished into the belly of the blob.
The creature left the couch and made its way into the kitchen where it detected a female. The mass glided toward her leg and ascended.
She looked down and screamed. The female shook her leg and whacked at the brown goo to free her body from the ghastly creature, but it latched on with unmatched strength. It made its way toward her face, entered her mouth, and rendered her silent.
The slime entered through her eye sockets and consumed her brain, then moved down to ingest her body. A droplet of blood remained on the floorâuntil the gelatinous creature rolled backward to absorb it.
The slimy creature sensed movement coming from above. It slithered up the refrigerator, toward the family feline.
Fearful of the strange brown blob, the calico cat jumped down and dashed out of the house.
The nefarious creature, satisfied with its consumption of food, rolled down from the appliance. It slithered out of the house and headed back toward its homeâthe underground. It intended to roam the storm drains, to lie in wait for the next rainstorm and the meal itâd provide.
How Can You Pretend?
Orion’s embrace part 10.
Donna Trovato
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101 Terrifying Horror Story Prompts
Welcome to the story den of horror, scares, and the macabre.
Most writers are often asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?" A majority of the time, writers find it difficult to answer that question.
We get our ideas from a plethora of sources â news headlines, novels, television shows, movies, our lives, our fears, our phobias, etc. They can come from a scene or moment in a film that wasn't fully explored. They can come from a single visual that entices the creative mind â a seed that continues to grow and grow until the writer is forced to finally put it to paper or screen.
In the spirit of helping writers find those seeds, here we offer 101 originally conceived and terrifying story prompts that you can use as inspiration for your next horror story.
They may inspire screenplays, novels, short stories, or even smaller moments that you can include in what stories you are already writing or what you will create in your upcoming projects.
But beware! If you scare easily â and have active imaginations like most writers do â turn up the lights and proceed with caution...
1. A girl goes missing in the woods, and her parents find only a decrepit and scary doll left behind. They soon learn that the doll is actually their daughter. And she's alive.
2. New residents of an old neighborhood are invited by their friendly neighbors to a Halloween party. The neighbors are vampires.
3. A family dog runs away from home. He returns a year later to the delight of his family. But there's something different about him. Something demonic.
4. A girl goes missing. Fifteen years later, her parents get a call from her older self. But they listen in fear because they killed their daughter that dark night years ago.
5. A man reads a novel, soon realizing that the story is his very own â and according to the book, a killer is looming.
6. A scientist clones his family that died in an airplane crash â but soon learns the repercussions of playing God.
7. A man wakes up bound to an electric chair.
8. A man wakes up in a coffin next to a freshly dead body.
9. A woman wakes up to find her family gone and her doors and windows boarded up with no way to escape.
10. A man afraid of snakes is shipwrecked on an island covered with them.
11. Serial killers worldwide are connected by a dark web website.
12. The world's population is overtaken by vampires â all except one little child.
13. A woman afraid of clowns is forced to work in a traveling circus.
14. An astronaut and cosmonaut are on the International Space Station when their countries go to Nuclear War with each other. Their last orders are to eliminate the other.
15. A treasure hunter finds a tomb buried beneath the dirt.
16. A young brother and sister find an old door in their basement that wasn't there before.
17. Winged creatures can be seen within the storm clouds above.
18. A man wakes up to find a hobo clown staring down at him.
19. Residents of a town suddenly fall dead while the dead from cemeteries around them rise.
20. A doctor performs the first head transplant â things go wrong.
21. A man is texted pictures of himself in various stages of torture that he has no memory of.
22. A girl wakes up to find a little boy sitting on his bed, claiming to be her younger brother â but she never had one.
23. A scare walk in the woods during Halloween is actually real.
24. A bartender serves last call to the only remaining patron, who is the Devil himself.
25. Earth suffers a planet-wide blackout as all technology is lost.
26. A boy's stepfather is actually a murderous werewolf.
27. Something has turned the neighborhood pets into demonic killers.
28. A priest is a vampire.
29. A woman wakes up with no eyes.
30. A man wakes up with no mouth.
31. A monster is terrified by the scary child who lives above his bed.
32. An astronaut jettisoned into the cold of space in a mission gone wrong suddenly appears at the doorstep of his family.
33. A woman answers a phone call only to learn that the voice on the other end is her future self, warning her that a killer is looming.
34. A boy realizes that aliens have replaced his family.
35. A woman wakes up in an abandoned prison that she cannot escape.
36. A bank robber steals from the small town bank that holds the riches of witches.
37. A door-to-door salesman circa the 1950s visits the wrong house.
38. Deceased soldiers return to their Civil War-era homes.
39. Kidnappers abduct the child of a vampire.
40. An innocent circus clown discovers the dark history of the trade.
41. A homeless man is stalked by faceless beings.
42. A spelunker stumbles upon a series of caverns infested with rattlesnakes.
43. A group of friends is forced to venture through a chamber of horrors where only one is promised to survive.
44. He's not the man she thought he was. In fact, he's not a man at all.
45. Suburbia is actually purgatory.
46. Someone discovers that we are all actually robots â who created us and why?
47. She's not an angel. She's a demon.
48. An old shipwreck washes ashore.
49. A sinkhole swallows a house whole and unleashes something from beneath.
50. A man has sleep paralysis at the worst possible time.
51. A woman out hiking is caught in a bear trap as the sun begins to go down.
52. Naked figures with no faces stalk campers in the woods.
53. An astronaut is the sole survivor of a moon landing gone wrong â only to discover that the moon is infested with strange creatures.
54. A woman is wrongfully condemned to an insane asylum.
55. A mother's baby will not leave its womb and continues to grow and grow and grow while doctors try to cut it out but can't.
56. Friends on a road trip stumble upon a backcountry town whose residents all dress up as different types of clowns.
57. Tourists in Ireland retreat to an old castle when the country is taken over by greedy and vengeful leprechauns.
58. A boy on a farm makes a scarecrow that comes alive.
59. A figure dressed in an old, dirty Easter Bunny suit haunts the children of a town.
60. The abused animals of a zoo are unleashed and wreak havoc on a small town.
61. A deceased grandma's old doll collection comes alive.
62. Little Red Riding Hood was a vampire.
63. Somebody clones Hitler and raises him as a white supremacist.
64. A pumpkin patch comes alive â beings with heads of pumpkins and bodies of vines.
65. An endless swarm of killer bees wreaks havoc on the country.
66. Christ returns to Earth â at least that is who people thought he was.
67. A natural anomaly brings all of the country's spiders to a horrified town.
68. A woman finds old 16mm film from her childhood and sees that she had a sister â what happened to her?
69. Something ancient rises from an old pond.
70. A woman suddenly begins to wake up in somebody else's body every morning â each day ends with her being stocked and killed by the same murderer in black.
71. An Artificial Intelligence begins to communicate with a family online, only to terrorize them through their technology.
72. A family buys a cheap house only to discover that an old cemetery is their back yard.
73. Years after the zombie apocalypse subsides, survivors discover that the epidemic was caused by aliens that have appeared to lay claim to the planet.
74. A woman has memories of being abducted by aliens â but she soon learns that they weren't aliens. They were...
75. A boy has a tumor that slowly grows into a Siamese twin â the older they get, the more evil the twin becomes.
76. A cult that worships history's deadliest serial killers begins to kill by copying their methods.
77. Stone gargoyles suddenly appear on the tops of buildings and houses of a small town.
78. A family on a boat trip stumbles upon an old pirate ship.
79. A winter snowstorm traps a family in an abandoned insane asylum.
80. A little girl comes down from upstairs and asks her parents, "Can you hear it breathing? I can."
81. A town is enveloped in unexplained darkness for weeks.
82. A jetliner flies high in the sky as Nuclear War breaks out below.
83. Children discover a deep, dark well in the woods â an old ladder leads down into it.
84. A child sleepwalks into their parent's room and whispers, "I'm sorry. The Devil told me to."
85. As a woman showers, a voice comes from the drain whispering, "I see you."
86. A child finds a crayon drawing of a strange family â it's inscribed with the words we live in your walls .
87. All of the cemetery's graves are now open, gaping holes â the dirt pushed out from underground.
88. A woman is watching a scary movie alone on Halloween night â someone, or something, keeps knocking at her door.
89. Someone is taking a bath as a hand from behind the shower curtain pushes their head into the water.
90. A farmer and his sons begin to hear the laughter of children coming from his fields at night â no children are in sight.
91. Someone looks out their window to see a clown standing at a corner holding a balloon â staring at them.
92. Mannequins in a department store seem to be moving on their own.
93. What if the God people worshiped was really Satan â and Satan had somehow kept God prisoner?
94. A man dies and wakes up in the body of a serial killer â and no matter how hard he tries to stop killing, he can't.
95. A prisoner awakens to find the prison empty â but he's locked in his cell.
96. A woman jogging stumbles upon a dead, bloody body â she then hears a strange clicking sound and looks up to see a dark figure running towards her.
97. A girl hears laughter downstairs â she's the only one home.
98. An Uber driver picks up the wrong person â and may not live to tell the tale.
99. There's someone or something living and moving up in the attic â but it's not a ghost.
100. A child's imaginary friend is not imaginary.
101. The reflections that we see of ourselves in the mirror are actually us in a parallel universe â and they are planning to do whatever it takes to take our place in this world.
Share this with your writing peers or anyone that loves a good scary story.
For some more scares, check out ScreenCraft's 20 Terrifying Two-Sentence Horror Stories and 8 Ways Horror Movies Scare the S*** Out of Audiences!
Sleep well and keep writing.
Once you're inspired, take your idea to the next level and Develop Your Horror Movie Idea in 15 Days .
Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.
He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries Blackout , starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner. Follow Ken on Twitter @KenMoviesÂ
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Can you write a scary story in 150 words? (7 Scary Good Shortcuts)
If love stories make you swoon and comedies make you belly laugh like a deranged raccoon, then horror stories make you clench your gut, slam shut your eyes, and pray for the nightmare to end. Scary stories deliver fear. Thatâs their job. But can you write a scary story in 150 words?
Thatâs a question terrifying enough to send shudders down the spine of the most experienced writer.
Yes, you can write a scary story in 150 words (or less). The keys are: 1) To trigger fear fast by leveraging age-old human psychology, and 2) To narrow the story to its most basic elements. In this post, youâll learn 7 ways to terrify readers while keeping your story super short. Plus 75 fear-themed prompts to give you all the goosebumps.
That brings up a few other questions: how to write a good horror story? what even makes good horror?
Letâs start with how to write micro-stories, then layer on the scary.
Read some r eal life writing convention horror stories .
How to Write Short Horror stories
There are a number of effective ways to write super short stories, or micro-stories (also called micro-fiction or, in our case, micro horror). Itâs all about drilling down to the heart of the story. Then cut away the fat. After that, you keep scraping away at the story until you get all the way to the bones.
Three scary effective ways to write short:
- Story Stripping (I promise this is SFW – safe for work đ )
Find the Bones
Write the bones, story stripping.
To write a short story, you write a story short.
Trust me, that sounds more profound than it actually is (don’t end sentences with is, it’s just poor grammar-ship). But the point stands. Writing short stories doesn’t mean that you shortchange the story. It means that you take the complete story and strip it down to its essence.
So, that means you have to really understand the story. That’s the only way to know what to save and what to shave.
Consider these tips when stripping your story:
- Complete this story template (Character + Conflict + Crucible). Just fill in the details of your story so that you have the main elements – the character (who the story is about), the conflict (what is the main character up against), and the crucible (the setting or situation that traps the character in the story so they can’t just run away).
- If you don’t have a story, use a prompt (like the 75 scary-themed prompts later in this post)
- Strip your story down to one or (at most) two characters. You only have 150 words after all.
- Strip your story down to a single setting. More settings mean more words, which you don’t have at your disposal.
- Strip your story down to one conflict.
Table of Contents
After you finish story stripping, it’s time to find the bones. In practice, it’s really just another, deeper level of cuts. You might have a scene or series of scenes in your mind.
Time to kill those darlings. Prepare yourself because this is going to hurt.
It’s time to find the bones of your micro-horror story:
- Cut your story down to one character (really, give it an honest try). You probably don’t need the other character (at least not much). Pretend you HAVE to cut your story down to one character. How would you do it? (Then do it).
- Cut your story down to one scene. (There’s probably no time for multiple scenes. Go deep with one scene instead of drifting on the surface of several scenes).
- Now cut your story down to a slice of that scene (a micro-scene). Which slice? The most dramatic slice. The scariest slice (Scary Spice?).
- Cut your story down to one slice of the setting, the micro-setting. (If your setting was a graveyard, now it’s one tombstone. If your setting is an abandoned school, now it’s a haunted bus or empty classroom)
Once you complete those steps, you will have a super bony story ready for the page. You have finished the brutal work of chopping away at your story. Now it’s time to focus on techniques for translating your slimmed up story into actual words.
But before you grab your pencil or keyboard, I have two more cool techniques to share with you. These methods will help you maintain your narrow focus to reach your goal of penning your story in a maximum of 150 words.
The first approach is called the Napkin Test. Here’s how it goes. You attempt to write your entire story on one regular-sized napkin. I know! It’s a terrible test. The worst, really. But it forces you into conciseness. The physical edges of the napkin taunt you with their limits.
Try it out. Grab a napkin (or go buy a cheap pack the next time you are at the store). Try to force yourself to write the entire story in the square space of that napkin.
The second method is even worse. I call it Twitterizing your story. Instead of the napkin, write your entire story in one 150-character tweet (or whatever the current Twitter limit is – if Twitter still exists lol). Even if Twitter is a distant relic of the past when you are reading this post, you can still attempt to write your entire story in 150 characters. Let’s be nice and not include the spaces in the character count.
Why punish yourself with the nearly impossible? Because, once you struggle to write your story in 150 characters, 150 words will seem like a football field of space.
Then there is the actual writing of words. Writing a scary story in 150 words is a challenge best met with intention.
Apply these best practices for writing super short copy:
- Use short words (as a bonus, often shorter words pack more punch)
- Use short sentences
- Avoid adjectives and adverbs (you can always add them in later if you are under word court)
- Use vivid verbs with more emotional connotation
- Use nouns with more meaning
- Use symbols, subtext, and multiple meanings as often as you can (you can double the emotional impact of your writing while keeping the word count low)
Check out my post on The Best Thesaurus for Writers .
In summary, to write short requires short, simple sentences filled with short, simple words packed with subtext.
7 Ways to Terrify Readers (Based on Neuroscience)
You have the bones of your story. It’s time to talk terror. There are certain tools and techniques writers use to create the unsettling atmosphere of psychological suspense.
When you are writing micro-fiction, you must employ the best horror tactics to terrify readers in the small space of your story. Apply these next tips to scare your readers’ shorts off.
By the way, all of these tips work wonders because they are based on real brain science (sources at the bottom of the article).
1. Scare them Early
Things are scarier if you are already afraid. So scare them early and often. Once we are primed for fear, we interpret everything else through this fear-smeared lens. Especially in a micro or short story, we need to get to the fear fast.
In your story, don’t go for the slow burn by building to suspense or fear. Dive into the middle of the scary. Think that’s hard to do in 150 words? Try 5 words.
2. Threaten the Ordinary
Un-scary things can be the scariest (humans imagine the worst). One of Alfred Hitchcock’s favorite techniques was to invoke fear in normal settings, like showers, and into normal things, like birds.
Sure, graveyards and old, empty houses are scary. But so are rain gutters with smiling clowns.
When choosing your story and scene settings, think outside of the graveyard. Invoke fear into the ordinary. Pick a normal place and make it terrifying.
3. Slow Time Down
When scared, people experience time distortion where time appears to move slower. Novice skydivers, for instance, often think the preparations before jumping take longer than they do. Horror scenes in movies and fiction often exploit this slo-mo feature to terror by increasing the pace of terror while simultaneously slowing time down to focus on the fear.
You can achieve a similar effect by raising the pace of action in your story while slowing down the experience of the horror. You do that by focusing in on specific character actions, description of simple setting details (like the bloodstained baby shoes), and entering into the mind and emotions of the character.
4. No Way Out
According to neuroscientists (people way smarter than me), the purpose of fear is to prompt us into appropriate adaptive action. Mainly, that is to escape the source of the threat or perceived threat.
That’s why it’s so terrifying to feel trapped. So, ramp up the fear in your stories by hemming in your characters so that they can’t do what everything in their biology is screaming at them to do: get the hell out .
Now all of those buried alive stories make more sense. So do the stories of being conscious but immobile on the surgeon’s table, the scalpel sharp and gleaming inches away from the whites of your eyeball.
When you think about trapping your character or characters, think not only about the physical location. Also, think about access to help through cell phones and other resources like food, water, and air.
5. Helpless
Another primitive fear is powerlessness. When we feel helpless, we feel desperately alone. That’s another reason those buried alive stories are so dang terrifying.
Spook up your story by getting your character alone and without any outside help. In your 150-word story, you might only have one character anyway. But this technique also works for longer stories.
When plotting out your story (or pantsing your way through it), ask yourself, “How can I make my character more helpless?” and, “What do they need? How can I take that away?”
6. Vulnerable
Like helplessness, vulnerability is another fear trigger. That’s one of the reasons the shower scene in Psycho is so visceral. The female character is completely vulnerable.
The same can be said of the movie Jaws. When we are floating in the ocean, we are easy prey. Vulnerability can be terrifying.
What parts of your story can exploit vulnerability? How can you make your character more vulnerable?
Consider these possibilities:
- Darkness (When we can’t see, we are more vulnerable)
- Handicapped (Such as when we are injured and can’t run or defend ourselves)
- Weaker/Smaller (Children are vulnerable, when facing bigger and stronger opponents, we are all vulnerable)
- The unknown (When we don’t know what is out there or what we are up against, fear magnifies)
7. Empathetic Fear
The terror that I can relate to is more terrifying. Vampire horror stories and zombie stories can be very scary, but I can’t really relate to them. But hearing a knock on the door in the middle of the night? I’ve been there .
That’s why scary stories involving pets (Pet Cemetery) and dolls (Chucky) scare the goodness right out of us. Most all of us have experienced pets. Most of us have glanced side-eyed at a creepy doll perched on a dusty dresser and wondered at the dark intelligence that might be starting back at us.
When crafting your story, dig into relatable experiences and places. They terrify us in their normalcy. We connect to them more easily and fully.
75 Scary Story Writing Prompts
In case you need spooky story starters to write your short horror story, here are 75 writing prompts. Use them for writing sprints, creative fodder to generate new and terrifying micro or long-form horror story ideas, to write creepy fanfiction, or just as a mental exercise to train your mind to see story possibilities everywhere. You could even consider them 75 Halloween themed prompts (since some of the prompts reference this spooky holiday) . It’s completely up to you!
Download a copy of all 75 Horror writing prompts as a PDF below: (Just click the Download button)
- You come home and no one recognizes you.
- The old civil war painting in the hall just blinked.
- Describe Halloween from a Jack-O-Lantern’s point of view.
- What is the most terrified you have ever been?
- What are some unusual tools that you could use to carve a pumpkin?
- Write a scene where someone carves a pumpkin while the pumpkin screams.
- Something is following you while trick-or-treating.
- You realize that you are slowly losing your mind.
- Your character must stay overnight in the room where a dozen people were murdered.
- The old man in front of you has fully black eyes (no whites)
- Your dog is acting strangely like it doesn’t recognize you.
- Your character wakes up trapped somewhere.
- What is the most terrifying day of the year? Why?
- A kid suspects his or her parents may be trying to murder them.
- Your mirror image stops mimicking you.
- Your character finds a long-lost letter that chills his spine.
- The doll on the dresser just moved by itself.
- Who do you want to scare this Halloween? How will you scare them?
- Your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
- What would you do during a zombie pandemic?
- You suspect the old lady next door is cooking more than bread.
- Write a story about a haunted playground.
- Share your first pumpkin carving experience with a person deathly afraid of knives.
- Can you write a poem from the point of view of a serial killer?
- Prepare a questionnaire to interview the monster under your bed.
- How would you define yourself, a scaredy-cat or strong-hearted person who is difficult to scare?
- Do you believe in ghosts?
- Write a descriptive recipe from the point of view of an evil witch.
- Complete the sentence- When I looked behind the basement water heater âŠ
- Your little brother tells you that he saw a monster underneath the bed. Then he shows you the claw marks on his shin.
- Write a persuasive letter to your pen pal pleading with them to never to play “Bloody Mary.”
- Flip to three random words in the dictionary and create a scary story that connects all three.
- Make a list of decorative items that can be used by a Vampire to lure victims into his lair.
- A new mother finds a jack-o-lantern with a secret spooky message inside it.
- What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night to find someone staring at you?
- Your shadow stops following you. What do you do?
- You wake up in the middle of the night and can’t breathe.
- Write about the history of a ghost town.
- Write a story about a kid who goes trick-or-treating but gets lost in the woods.
- While taking a shower, your character realizes she is covered in giant tarantulas.
- All the power and lights suddenly go off in the middle of a storm.
- Your character starts spitting up blood.
- You are a vampire trying to get invited into a house. Write a first-person account of what you would say to gain entrance.
- What scares you the most?
- What are the similarities of your top three scary movies?
- Write about a normal object that becomes unsettling.
- A traveling minister brings your dead brother back to life but something is different about him.
- List as many words as you can that sound “scary” to you.
- You start hearing the thoughts of a serial killer.
- A new girl in town puts a curse on you.
- You wake up in bed next to a dead body.
- A man attends a funeral and realizes the body in the coffin isn’t dead.
- A woman gets in touch with her dead younger sister.
- A woman attends a funeral and realizes the body in the coffin is her.
- If you could bring any Halloween monsters back to life who would it be and why?
- A man is accused of kidnapping a child he has never met.
- A woman wakes up with no eyesight in a place she has never been.
- Write a story where nothing is as it seems.
- A scary clown is walking towards you in the dark.
- The local psyche ward just lost all power and all staff has mysteriously disappeared.
- The empty subway train slows to a stop in the middle of a tunnel.
- A serial killer is recreating every one of Stephen King’s novels .
- A man takes a beautiful woman home, but she starts acting oddly inhuman.
- A woman’s spouse is convinced she’s been replaced with a clone.
- A man’s dog starts becoming more aggressive.
- Create a social media profile for one of the following: mummy, clown, zombies, vampires, or werewolf.
- All the children in town disappear.
- A woman gets out of the shower to a strange message written in the steam on the bathroom mirror.
- A mythical being comes back to life.
- The faces of a man’s neighbors start to sag grossly.
- Write about a household item possessed by an evil spirit.
- Complete the story – The moment she stepped off the curb onto the deserted street…
- You think you might be starting to crave blood.
- The magnets on the fridge spell out, “I’m in the room with you.”
- You start to hear whispering in the walls of your house.
How to use These Horror Writing Prompts for Writing Sprints
- Choose one or more prompts from the list
- Prepare your writing tools
- Decide on a word count goal, for example, 1,000 words (hey, that’s almost 7 of those 150-word stories. The actual calculation is 6.66. Coincidence??).
- Set a timer for between 15 and 60 minutes.
- Start the timer.
- Write as many words as you can until the timer stops or goes off.
- Record Your word sprint data on a spreadsheet or using online software. For example, your word count achieved compared to your word count software.
For a complete breakdown of writing sprints, read Writing Sprints: The Ultimate Guide to Successful Writing Sprints .
So, that’s how to write a scary story in 150-words (or less). For even more awesome content, consider these articles:
- 21 Ways To Write a Complex Villain [Ultimate Badass Guide]
- How To Write Morally Gray Characters [Bestseller Secrets Revealed]
- How to Become a Writer for SNL (The Insanely Complete Guide)
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20 Must-Read Horror Short Stories
Carolina Ciucci
Carolina Ciucci is a teacher, writer and reviewer based in the south of Argentina. She hoards books like theyâre going out of style. In case of emergency, you can summon her by talking about Ireland, fictional witches, and the BrontĂ« family. Twitter: @carolinabeci
View All posts by Carolina Ciucci
Germany has all but lost WWII. For Uwe, who has spent the war caring for his widowed mother, this is a relief. But for others in his village, the fight is not over yet. Inspired by talk of power and his villageâs werewolf lore, Uwe joins a resistance unit preparing for the arrival of Allied soldiers. But when the menâs violent rampage takes a devastatingly personal turn, Uwe must grapple not only with his role in their evil acts but with his own humanity. Read or listen to this terrifying short story from Alma Katsu free with Prime.
Horror is a curious sort of genre. Think about it: we voluntarily seek out stories that will make us feel strong negative emotions, and we lavish praise on those stories that scare the crap out of us. A good rule of thumb: it’s a good horror story if you go to sleep that night with your bedside lamp on, and/or have nightmares based on it. But why ? Why do we do actively pursue being frightened?
People’s interest in horror is nothing new; on the contrary, it’s as old as humanity itself. As a result, for as long as we have been interested in human behavior, we’ve been interested in this fascination with fear. H.P. Lovecraft nailed it when he said that “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Indeed. But I’d venture that it’s not only fear of the unknown. It’s fear of an unknown that we cannot control. Otherwise, stories about magic s chools wouldn’t be so beloved: magic is unknown to us, but tales of magic schools offer us the chance to corral it, thus taking away that what makes it frightening.
Because this love of horror is so old, there are countless horror short stories that are worth at least one read. Alas, I have a limited space here, so I’m only going to recommend 20. I chose to mix classic horror short stories with more recent works, in order to paint as varied and comprehensive a picture as possible. If you’re new to the genre, consider using this only as a starting point. If you’re a seasoned veteran, I hope you find at least a couple of stories that will make you burn through your electric bill. Shall we?
General content warnings for rape, murder, misogyny, and more.
“The House Made of Sugar” by Silvina Ocampo in Thus Were Their Faces , translated by Daniel Balderston
Cristina has some superstitions. For example, she never wants to live in a house with a history. But is it really superstition if the ghosts are out to get you?
“Riding the Red” by Nalo Hopkinson in Skin Folk
Little Red Riding Hood, rape culture, internalized misogyny, and puberty, all wrapped up in one tidy package. This story may very well be the scariest thing I’ve read in years.
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson in The Lottery and Other Stories
This is the story that reshaped the way I look at horror: Jackson doesn’t need any supernatural elements to craft a tale as chilling and terrifying as the most accomplished ghost story.
“The Outsider” by H.P. Lovecraft in The Classic Horror Stories
No list of horror short stories would be complete without Lovecraft. Along with Poe, he’s probably the master of horror; and this story, exploring what happens when the monsters aren’t who you’d expect, shows why.
“The Inn” by Mariana EnrĂquez in Things We Lost in the Fire , translated by Megan McDowell
EnrĂquez’s work may feature supernatural elements, but their real horror lies in the real, human parts of it. In this story, death doesn’t stop the last dictatorship in Argentina from continuing to spread terror.
“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong in Nightmare Magazine , Issue 37
Sometimes, you’re the monster. In this incredible story, Wong explores the implications of having a monster within yourself.
“The Gold Coin” by Clara Madrigano in Nightmare Magazine , Issue 120
The supernatural isn’t, in and of itself, terrifying. But when somebody with less than stellar intentions learns to wield it? That’s when we fall squarely in horror territory.
“Introduction to the Horror Story, Day 1” by Kurt Fawer in Nightmare Magazine , Issue 98
We’ve all likened having to sit through class with a horror story once or twice. Lucky for us, most people don’t mean it as literally as the students of this Introduction to the Horror Story module.
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe
I know everyone raves about “The Fall of the House of Asher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and they are masterpieces, to be sure. But I read this particular story on a fateful night when I was 12 years old, never touched it again, and I still remember every detail 20 years later. If that doesn’t earn it a spot in this list, well, I don’t know what would.
“Night of the Living Dead Chola” by V. Castro in Mestiza Blood
The thing about horror stories: sometimes you find yourself rooting for the monster. Sometimes, you realize that the real monster isn’t the zombie, but rather the human man that she’s hunting down in pursuit of revenge. Or maybe simple justice.
“The Lake” by Tananarive Due in Ghost Summer
trigger warning: pedophilia
Metamorphosis is a common trope in horror. But unlike most characters, Abbie is delighted by the change â amping the eerie factor up by a million. What makes this story a thousand times creepier though? Abbie’s predilection for teenage boys. Sexual predators are recast as lake creatures in this chilling read.
“Welcome to the Museum of Torture” by Yoko Ogawa in Revenge
The title alone is a masterpiece of the genre. The story itself? Let’s just say that you’ll find yourself praying for a speedy breakup between the narrator and her boyfriend. Preferably in a public place. Far away from the aptly named Museum of Torture.
“The Specter” by Horacio Quiroga in Eleven Horror Short Stories , translated by Joaquin de la Sierra
You know how, in movies, the dead or dying husband gives their blessing when his wife and his best friend fall in love? This is not what happens here. Wyoming is displeased enough to let his wife, Enid, and best friend, Grant, know about it â by sending a message all the way from the grave. Or does he?
“A Girl of Nails and Teeth” by Hannah Yang in Nightmare Magazine , Issue 120
Some of the most terrifying horror I’ve ever read is a mere expansion of real-life phenomena. In this case: what happens when a mother’s love for her child goes too far?
“Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson in The Best of Richard Matheson
Forget vampires and ghosts, there is no creature more terrifying than human beings. In this story, it’s not the child narrator’s apparent monstrosity that creates the horror. It’s his parents’ cruelty.
“The Secret Life of Insects” by Bernardo Esquinca in BOMB Magazine Issue 94 translated by Hector Luis Grada
I’m going to go ahead and let the story’s opening paragraph do the talking this time: “Two things to mention: 1) I am going to speak with my wife, two years after the last time. 2) My wife is dead; she died two years ago, in odd circumstances.”
“The Vampyre” by John William Polidori
Before Dracula and Carmilla, there was The Vampyre. This 1816 short story introduces us to a young Englishman named Aubrey, who befriends a stranger but charismatic man…only to find out that he isn’t what he seems.
“A Ghost” by Guy de Maupassant in The Dark Side: Tales of Terror and the Supernatural , translated by Arnold Kellett
Every time I read this story, I’m left with more questions than answers. A classic ghost story.
“Sometimes Boys Don’t Know” by Donyae Cole in Nightmare Magazine, Issue 106
Have you ever been struck with horror by some male authors’ descriptions of women’s bodies? Cole has too. In her own words: “I just took what they started to its monstrous extremes.” The result is a wonderful horror story with an underlying thread of dark comedy.
“The Sunflower Seed Man” by Priya Sharma in All The Fabulous Beasts
Both a horror story and a tale of grief, resilience and love, this short story taught me a) to be careful what I wish for, and b) that maybe my inability to grow most plants is a good thing after all.
Would you like more horror short stories before you go? What about horror novels ?
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Top 10 horror short stories
With Halloween looming, these tales by authors from Shirley Jackson to Stephen King are guaranteed to keep you awake as the nights close in
I n the foreword to his anthology Skeleton Crew, Stephen King launched a memorable defence of the horror short story. No, they werenât failed novels. Neither were they ideas he couldnât bring himself to bin. Comparing a novel to a long affair, he saw the short story as a âquick kiss in the dark with a stranger ⊠but those kisses can be sweetâ.
He is right, of course. Some of literatureâs most enduring nightmares are short-form. MR James never wrote a novel. Neither did HP Lovecraft . I would argue that their enduring appeal is also ingrained in our childhood: theyâre the bedtime story, the vicious Grimmsâ fairytale, the ghost story shared around a crackling campfire.
Along with the Pan horror anthologies I inhaled as a kid, it was those memories I tried to recapture when I wrote my own collection, Silverweed Road . Set on a cursed suburban street, the horrors lurking behind each door unlock tales of were-foxes, predatory swimming pools, vengeful urns and a darts playerâs pact with the devil.
While all of the stories interlink to form a weird horror ecosystem, I was never chasing a sustained chill. What I was after was that brief, pleasing trickle of fear only a short story can deliver: what I like to call the pleasure shiver. As the sun sinks, the nights close in and spooky season creeps ever closer, what better time to experience a pleasure shiver or 10?
Horror is a many-tentacled beast. From phantom staircases to sinister taxidermists, here are some favourites â but I readily admit to some painful omissions (no Poe, no Kafka, no Blackwood, I could go on) so I eagerly await your comments.
1. The Tower by Marghanita Laski âš On a stifling tour of Florence, newlywed Caroline breaks free from her controlling husband to explore the Italian countryside. Beyond a dusty track, on a distant hill, a stone tower beckons ⊠As Caroline journeys up its spiral staircase â counting each step, relishing her freedom â the walls close in on her impossible ascent. Or is it descent? While the phallic tower as a patriarchal totem feels a little obvious, what Laski recounts in sparse prose is anything but: the horror is abstract, the fear suffocating, and Carolineâs fate lurks long in the mind. By the end, youâll be gripping the page like a rusty handrail. Laski was best known as a vinegary literary critic. The Tower was a rare foray into horror. I wish she had written more.
2. âšIn the Bag by Ramsey Campbell âThe boyâs faced struggled within the plastic bag ⊠His eyes were grey blank holes, full of fog beneath the plastic.â So begins the haunting of Clarke â a militant headmaster who feels no guilt for suffocating his playmate during a childhood prank, long ago yet not forgotten ⊠There is something distinctly, darkly Nabokovian about Campbellâs fiction: a shared obsession with the enigma of memory, and how we cope with it. In the Bag is a masterful example: his blurring of past trauma with the supernatural is the literary equivalent of knitting fog. Clarkeâs cruel fate is exceptionally nasty. Like all great horror stories, it ends with a gasp.
âš 3. Survivor Type by Stephen King âš Of Kingâs 200-plus stories, I always come back to this one. Offering a day-by-day narrative drive, the diary is perfect for short stories. In Survivor Type, disgraced surgeon turned drug smuggler Richard Pine finds himself marooned on a barren island. As he awaits rescue, entries in his lifeboat logbook pass the time. Nobody comes. Thereâs nothing to eat. He sharpens a knife and looks at his leg ⊠Oh boy. No ghosts, aliens, or killer clowns. Just auto-cannibalism and stark human horror. King at his most transgressive, and best consumed on an empty stomach.âš
4. The Landlady by Roald Dahl âš Poor Billy Weaver. Just turned 17, sent to Bath on a work trip, lost, tired and with nowhere to stay. A cheap B&B and a smiling old landlady offer salvation. And she must be nice because she has pets ⊠Dahlâs unflashy prose is his secret weapon. The simple style disarms you, only before Dahl plunges in the knife. I wonât ruin the twist but the foreshadowing is exquisitely devious. The silent dachshund by the fire. The guest book with only two names. The landlady praising Billyâs beautiful teeth. Dahl wrote The Landlady as a ghost story, scowled at it, then changed the ending. Wise move.
5. The Forbidden by Clive Barker âš When Books of Blood was unleashed in 1984, Stephen King said: âI have seen the future of horror â and his name is Clive Barker .â With six volumes and 30 stories, what do I pick? The man-made giants of In the Hills, the Cities? The Body Politicâs army of skittering hands? The demonic slapstick of The Yattering and Jack? To hell with it: letâs go with The Forbidden. Candyman is a fine Hollywood adaptation, but in relocating it sacrifices the cold, wintry dread of Barkerâs Spector Street Estate: a graffiti-ravaged brutalist pit of social-realist despair where its urban legend looms.
6. Oh, Whistle, and Iâll Come To You, My Lad by MR James âš Quintessential James. A callow academic unearths an artefact (a bronze whistle on a shingle beach). An ancient, unknowable force is unleashed (in a two-bed room at the Globe Inn). The subtly uncoiling doom is very Jamesian: a white figure glimpsed in a window, a freshly made bed, mysteriously twisted. Oh, Whistleâs final reveal of âa horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linenâ left me petrified the first time I read it, and my battered copy of his Collected Ghost Stories suggests Iâm a glutton for punishment.
7. The October Game by Ray Bradbury âš Halloween. A suburban house. Mich shuts the gun back in the drawer. Too fast. Too neat. He wants his wife Louise to suffer ⊠From The Veldt to Free Dirt, Bradbury was a master of creepy slow-burners, but he really reached into the abyss for this one. Gouged out in 1948, The October Gameâs portrait of a sadistic spouse remains shocking. When Mich invites his wife, daughter and neighbours to play âthe witch gameâ in their pitch-black cellar, Bradburyâs maxim of âhint, donât showâ hits full-force. Dread mingles with the sound of childrenâs laughter. You darenât look. Then the cellar lights flash on. At which point, Bradbury abandons you, leaving you alone to your squirming imagination.
âš 8. The Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft To the domed hills of Arkham and an unseen entity, growing in a farmhouse fit to burst. Reducing mankind to an insignificant speck in a malignant universe of cosmic gods, Lovecraft is a sub-genre unto himself, and Dunwich is practically Lovecraft bingo: there are rituals, tentacles, summonings, the Necronomicon, ineffable evils and, in mutant Wilbur Whateley, his greatest character. No matter how many times Iâve read the description of his dog-mauled corpse, I still fan my armpits in feverish confusion (âThe goatish, chinless face ⊠coarse black fur ⊠tentacles with red sucking mouths ⊠on each of the hips, deep set in a pinkish ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eyeâ). Some find Lovecraftâs decadent prose a turn-off. Iâd say itâs key to the madness.
9. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson In The Haunting of Hill House, the incomparable Shirley Jackson delivered horror litâs scariest line (âGod! Whose hand was I holding?â). The Lottery is, for my money, her most terrifying vision of all. Itâs a bright, blooming summerâs day in a bucolic village. Laughing children play with stones as the villagers gather around a box. Old Man Warner speaks: âLottery in June, corn be heavy soon âŠâ There are no winners in Jacksonâs chilling parable of blind faith. Every interpretation â be it organised religion, capital punishment, mob rule â remains both valid and depressingly timeless. Ironically, Jackson weathered a truly frightening aftermath post-publication: hate mail by the sack-load, as viciously unthinking as The Lotteryâs villagers.
10. The Horla by Guy de Maupassant âš Featuring a vaporous vampiric entity whose persistent, ever-watchful presence drives its genteel protagonist into madness, it was actually a Frenchman who popularised the malevolent, bump-in-the-night, kneel-on-your-chest ghost story. The climax is ruthless but The Horlaâs lasting power is in its understanding that terror comes from the unknown and unglimpsed, and went on to inspire Lovecraftâs Cthulhu mythos.
- Horror books
- Short stories
- Stephen King
- Clive Barker
- HP Lovecraft
- Guy de Maupassant
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100-word horror story
Since tomorrow is Insecure Writers’ Support Group day, I’ll make this post short and sweet.
I was recently challenged to write a 100-word horror story. Feel free to write your own and share it in the comments, if you like.
The questions began every evening. I tried my best to answer them.
 âdaddy, why is the sky blueâ,  i sighed with reliefâthis one i knew. âit isnât reallyâitâs colorless. the reflection of the sunâs rays makes it seem blue.â,  she paused for a moment. her next question was a little harder.,  âdaddy, where did mommy goâ,  the thought of her mother still made my chest tight. âmommy got sick, and the angels took her away so she wouldnât suffer.â,  her last question was the most difficult.,  âdaddy, why did you kill meâ,  i wish i had the answer., 1 part newsletter, 1 part unnerving updates, 2 parts sneak peeks of new projects., 35 comments.
That is chilling. Didn’t see it coming.
Thanks so much, Alex! You ROCK.
yikes, totally out of left field!
I’ll take that as a compliment, Susan. đ
Wow, I’m like Alex. I totally didn’t see that ending coming. Makes me want to know more.
Thoughts in Progress and MC Book Tours
Thanks so much, Mason! Who knows…maybe, like the best horror movie characters, they’ll come back.
Wow. Just Wow!
Aw, thanks Denise. Everyone is being so kind. I didn’t expect such a wonderful response–I’m a little overwhelmed. đ
That was amazing, and horrifying. I’ll have to play with something really short like this. I’m surprised how powerful it could be with so few words.
@mirymom1 from Balancing Act
Thanks, Samantha. I’m glad you liked it. The PR team at Samhain asked me to write it, and when they first suggested it, I thought, “I can’t do that–a horror story in 100 words? That’s crazy!”
Turns out I can! đ
If you try it, tag me.
*chills* *chills* *chills*
That is SO creepy!
Aw, thanks Heather! *hugs*
Totally chilling!
And you know how much I love micro fiction AND horror. đ
Thanks, Madeline! It’s great to hear from a master of the genre.
It begs for an encore. Nicely done. đ
Thanks so much, Henry! And thanks for posting your own on my Facebook page . That was awesome.
You’re welcome. It was a fun challenge. I wish more people would give it a try.
You and me both!
Creepy. Makes me want to hear more.
Thanks, Lisa. You never know…maybe these two will speak to me some more one day, demanding a novel of their own.
Thanks so much, Adam! Welcome to my blog. đ
That ending is chilling! This reminded me of something I read before. I swear I’ve read something before about a child asking a dad questions and each one was harder for him to answer. Hmm…I can’t think of where I read it, though. Oh well. Great job! I should try 100 word stories. đ
Thanks, Chrys. Is it possible you read it when I promoted it for Samhain? They were the ones who asked me to write it initially, and I shared it back then.
Yep. That ending was chilling all right. Oh, the ghost of Mark Twain just followed your Twitter account — on account you were pretty he said, wagging his eyebrows! Sigh. Forgive the old rascal. He’s mostly harmless except to himself!! đ
Well, I’m flattered, Roland. And you can tell Mr. Twain I said so.
Wow! I did not see that coming and that is downright creepy but it would make a great book and movie
Wow, you’re too kind, Birgit! Thanks so much. đ
Horrifying, really. Well done.
Thanks so much, Mary!
CREEPY!!!! I love it. =) <3
Thanks, Nikki. I adore you!
That was great. I didn’t see that ending.
Thanks, Patricia!
i lovgfe your pageeeeeee
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The Night (1908) by LĂ©on Spilliaert. Courtesy Vincent Everarts/Collection of the Belgian State, in deposit at MusĂ©e dâIxelles, Brussels
Terrifying vistas of reality
H p lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror stories, was a philosopher who believed in the total insignificance of humanity.
by Sam Woodward  + BIO
In July 1917, Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island wrote a short story called âDagonâ. âIf you donât care for this,â he wrote to one editor, âyou wonât care for anything of mine.â In the tale, a sailor lost at sea in a wooden rowboat finds himself abruptly stranded on a vast stretch of seabed that had risen to the surface, pushed up by volcanic activity. As the territory of marine muck hardens in the sun, the sailor begins to walk across it, heading westward towards a distant hummock. But after days of walking, he realises the knoll is in fact a high hill. Camping in its shadow, he awakes one night in a cold sweat and endeavours to climb it. But at the summit, he looks over the side âinto an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine.â
As the moon rises higher, he sees an enormous carved monolith on the far side of the water-filled canyon, an object âwhose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.â As he watches, the moonlight catches ripples moving across the water:
Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.
âDagonâ has all the elements of a classic Lovecraft tale. Here, as in many of his later works â including âThe Call of Cthulhuâ (written in 1926), The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927), and At the Mountains of Madness (1931) â optimistic endeavours for knowledge, even the simple act of seeing whatâs on the other side of a hill, are thwarted by incomprehensible terrors and a horrifyingly arbitrary cosmic order. These revelations shatter the minds of Lovecraftâs truth-seeking characters, including doctors, archaeologists, lost sailors, metaphysicians and scientists of all kinds.
Lovecraft honed these elements through his short stories (along with two novellas and a single novel), developing a unique version of the weird fiction pioneered by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe , Arthur Machen and M R James. However, Lovecraft did not enjoy mainstream success during his lifetime. He barely survived on a measly wage brought in by his short stories (which did not sell well) and freelance editing services before he died of intestinal cancer in 1937, aged 46. Some continued to appreciate his strange stories after his death, but others found them distasteful and ineffective. In 1945, the literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote that the only real horror of Lovecraftâs fiction âis the horror of bad taste and bad artâ. None of his contemporaries, nor perhaps even Lovecraft himself, could likely have imagined the influence he would come to exert over literature and thought as the 20th century progressed. Today, Lovecraft has become the father of cosmic horror and weird fiction â Stephen King considers him âthe 20th centuryâs greatest practitioner of the horror taleâ. But his influence is not limited only to literature. His more enduring influence may be as a philosopher .
This might come as a surprise since Lovecraft was, first and foremost, a writer of the weird tale, and he would have said as much himself. But underneath those weird tales was a distinctive philosophical project, one that can reveal as much about our anxieties today as about those of a man living in Providence in the early 20th century.
L ovecraft captures the spirit of his philosophy in the opening paragraph of âThe Call of Cthulhuâ, a story about an expedition to the sunken dwelling of a tentacled Old God worshipped by an ancient cult who pray for their deity to awaken from its slumber and resume its control over mortal-kind. How would Lovecraft start such a fantastic tale? Like this:
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Most of his stories, however, are less philosophically explicit. Lovecraftâs thought is often obscured in his tales, and must be pieced together from various sources, including his poetry, essays and, most importantly, his letters. Lovecraft wrote an estimated 100,000 during his life, of which around 10,000 have survived. Within this substantial non-fictional output, the volume of which dwarfs his fictional writing, Lovecraft expounded the philosophical concerns â whether metaphysical, ethical, political or aesthetic â which he claimed underpinned his weird fiction. These tales, he wrote, were based on one fundamental cosmic premise: âthat common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-largeâ.
In H P Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (1990), the scholar S T Joshi analysed many of those letters and essays to create an image of âLovecraft the philosopherâ. Joshi claimed that Lovecraftâs identity as a philosopher is a direct outcome of the genre he mastered: weird fiction. This genre, Joshi writes, is inherently philosophical because âit forces the reader to confront directly such issues as the nature of the universe and mankindâs place in it.â Not everyone has agreed that Lovecraftâs thought should be so elevated. The Austrian literary critic Franz Rottensteiner, in a review of Joshiâs book, attacked the idea of Lovecraft as a philosopher: âThe point is, of course, that Lovecraft as a thinker just wasnât of any importance,â he wrote âwhether as a materialist, an aestheticist, or a moral philosopher.â
However, in the 21st century, Lovecraft has been resurrected as a philosopher again and again. This resurrection has been performed by, among others, the French author Michel Houellebecq, the pessimist philosopher Eugene Thacker, and the speculative realists Ray Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, Quentin Meillassoux and Graham Harman. The latter states that âalthough the four original Speculative Realists do not share a single philosophical hero in common, all of us turned out independently to have been admirers of Lovecraft. Though the reasons for this are different in each case, my own interest stems from my view that his weird fiction sets the stage for an entire philosophical genre.â
âWe are all meaningless atoms adrift in the void,â he wrote in a letter
But what did Lovecraft the philosopher think, in his own words? In his letters, he referred to his philosophy as âcosmic indifferentismâ, which he also called âcosmicismâ. He derived the three main tenets of this doctrine â materialism, determinism, atheism â from the work of philosophers and scientists writing between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana and T H Huxley were all on the reading list; so too were Ernst Haeckelâs The Riddle of the Universe (1899) and Hugh Elliotâs Modern Science and Materialism (1919). Lovecraft also embraced the ancient atomists (Democritus and Leucippus) and Epicureans (Epicurus and his Roman disciple Lucretius). And he read The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn (1905) by William Benjamin Smith, which would have reinforced the stubborn xenophobia and racism inculcated by his upbringing. Although Lovecraftâs views on race were antiquated even while he was alive, and seemed to denote a lack of attention to philosophical currents of his day, his philosophy is otherwise surprisingly holistic and unified, combining metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics.
As an absolute determinist, Lovecraftâs metaphysics describes an infinite universe in eternal predetermined motion: âeach human act,â he wrote, âcan be no less than the inevitable result of every antecedent and circumambient condition in an eternal cosmos.â This left no room for teleology, the notion that the universe is moving towards some pre-ordained goal, or that humans and other species are evolving for some purpose. His determinism was accompanied by a strict materialism that, in line with the views of many of his contemporaries, made the immaterial â the soul and spirit â inconceivable. These views shaped the nightmarish figures in his tales, which are not apparitions or spectres, the âsupernaturalâ beings of conventional horror writing, but materially real horrors that only appear supernatural because of humanityâs inability to comprehend their true nature.
However, though Lovecraft may have aligned with some of the philosophical currents of his age, he developed a pointedly pessimistic worldview shared by few of his contemporaries. It was an outlook that he claimed, in his essay âA Confession of Unfaithâ (1922), to have first considered when he was 13 years old. Throughout his life, he maintained in his ethics the total insignificance of humanity in the face of a vast and inherently unknowable universe. âWe are all meaningless atoms adrift in the void,â he wrote in a letter to his friend, the publisher and writer August Derleth. Though he was pessimistic about humanityâs cosmic position, Lovecraft did not fall victim to the fatalist fallacy in his tales; the actions of his characters still have moral value and meaning on the individual level for the purposes of bettering the self and society. In the same letter, he adopted a relativist stance towards moral values. Elsewhere, he attributed this ethical system to his reading of Epicurus and Lucretius. Lovecraftian ethics and metaphysics therefore owes a great deal to the ancient and modern thinkers to whom Lovecraft subscribed during his lifetime. This may seem to suggest that he was merely a bricoleur of philosophical scraps. But something distinct, even anti-philosophical, emerges from his letters and essays: a general ambivalence towards epistemology, in which âthe joy in pursuing truthâ is offset by its âdepressing revelationsâ.
Anathema to many philosophical systems, or perhaps philosophy itself, Lovecraftâs philosophical project fundamentally holds that contemplations of higher reality or the nature of things can never be fully realised. Ultimately, the search for knowledge does not constitute some telos , some purpose, for humankind, but rather leads to the violent dissolution of the self. Higher reality is that which the limited human psyche can never fully comprehend.
âThe Music of Erich Zannâ (1922) is a good early example. In this short story, a student of metaphysics finds himself in a strange, nebulous town while searching for the Rue dâAuseil. When the student happens upon the street, he becomes lost and confounded by epistemological darkness; the contingency and illusory nature of the world is conveyed by the shadows cast by the houses and the smoke from the factories that obfuscate his path. At the top of the street, a high wall, signifying a barrier to higher philosophical understanding, confronts the student. He believes that, if he could just find a vantage point above the wall, he could behold the âwide and dizzying panorama of moonlit roofs and city lights beyond the hill-topâ. To discover whatâs out there â to know the nature of reality â the student rents a room in a house high up the Rue dâAuseil. Above him is an attic rented by the mute viol player Erich Zann. Here, at the highest point on the street, Zann can look through his window and see what is beyond the wall. But when the student finally enters the attic and looks out, all he sees is âthe blackness of space illimitableâ. All that is beyond is an incomprehensible void.
In this and other stories, Lovecraft suggests that higher philosophical knowledge should not be sought, since finding it entails learning of our cosmic insignificance and purposelessness. Zann seems to know this truth. He tries to drag the student away from the window and also attempts to keep the looming nothingness at bay by playing his viol frantically, but the void leaves him catatonic. The philosophy student manages to escape, and descends back down the Rue dâAuseil and into the familiar shadowy streets of epistemological dullness. This return to metaphysical ignorance is a balm against the total ruination of the mind: Lovecraft transforms the studentâs quest for knowledge into a realisation of soul-annihilating cosmicism.
This ânegative revelationâ, as it might be called, is a crucial aspect of Lovecraftâs philosophy and his desire for epistemological quietism. It is what makes his philosophical project distinct. In the sensationalist dreamscapes of his stories, the father of cosmic horror learned to take refuge from the true reality of a soulless and mechanistic universe.
F or Lovecraft, art and literature are the ideal means for individuals to find beauty and meaning, despite humanityâs profound lack of cosmic purpose. If the universe is infinite and indifferent, one can ward off nihilism by seeking solace in artistic self-expression. This idea appears in many of Lovecraftâs stories, but the best example is the author himself. Throughout his life, the act of writing weird fiction became a modus vivendi for finding meaning. Though his letters might describe his philosophy most clearly, Lovecraftâs stories â all written in a single genre â are the primary mode through which he creatively expressed those ideas.
In his essay âSupernatural Horror in Literatureâ (1927), Lovecraft characterised weird fiction as a genre unsuited to quotidian human events and emotions. Instead, he writes that it requires a fervent imagination and sensitivity to ineffable, unknown forces outside of human experience. Lovecraft believed the weird fiction genre itself was innately philosophical because to write something truly weird required engaging with thought itself:
The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint ⊠of that most terrible conception of the human brain â a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.
Crucial to the weird tale is its cosmic, beyond-human orientation. Lovecraftâs injunction that weird fiction authors suspend or defeat the âfixed laws of Natureâ is particularly elucidating. As any strict materialist and determinist knows, violating natural law is impossible in practice. But Lovecraftâs stories are dotted with attempts to describe the impossible within the limitations of human expression and experience. Cthulhu, his ancient cosmic god, is described as constituting âeldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic orderâ and its dwelling comprises ânon-Euclideanâ geometry with angles of masonry seemingly acute but that âbehaved as if [they] were obtuseâ. Through a belief in the impossible, Lovecraft thought we might âacquire a certain flush of triumphant emancipation comparable in its comforting power to the opiate dreams of religionâ. But that would happen only if we had, he believed, âthe illusory sensation that some law of the ruthless cosmos has been â or could be â invalidated or defeatedâ. In that sense, the illusory depictions of nature contravened in weird fiction tales provide some respite, even if only aesthetic, from the rigid and unerring clockwork of the mechanistic and predetermined universe.
These gods are uninterested in human affairs, reflecting the indifference of the universe and our insignificance
For Lovecraft, horror is found in what we think could be out there in the universe, given our glaringly deficient knowledge about reality. âThe oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,â he writes in his 1927 essay, âand the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknownâ. It is ironic, then, that Lovecraft couldnât see past his own racist prejudices (which he might have seen as utterly trivial on a cosmic scale). Fear of the âunknownâ informed many of his worldviews, including this ugly blemish upon his legacy. In Lovecraftâs fiction, the âunknownâ often manifests through âOld Godsâ. In the surreal odyssey The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath , Azathoth is the instantiation of primordial chaos, who lives beyond âthe bright clusters of dimensioned spaceâ. In âThrough the Gates of the Silver Keyâ (1932-33), Yog-Sothoth is the infinity of all that is, an entity resembling âcongeries of iridescent globesâ that encompasses the past, present and future. In addition, these and other gods are all amoral and utterly uninterested in human affairs, thus reflecting the indifference of the universe and the insignificance of humankind more broadly.
One might think it strange that Lovecraft, an atheist, created a pseudo-pantheon of primordial gods, but they perform a distinct function within his fiction. Such metaphorical, âsupernaturalâ terrors appear only through humanityâs ignorance of the universe: these horrors represent the âcosmic spaces which would otherwise be an ambiguous and tantalising voidâ.
L earning of these gods and their kin leads only to ânegative revelationsâ that shatter epistemological optimism. For Lovecraftâs characters, such revelations often enkindle a desire for quietism, causing them to take refuge within their own self-constructed dreamscapes to avoid the revelations of cosmicism. Across his fiction, Lovecraft portrayed these stunned characters, who urge others to avoid seeking knowledge of true reality. This theme is nascent even in his earliest short stories. In âCelephaĂŻsâ (1920), we follow as Randolph Carter visits a man calling himself Kuranes, who seeks the titular city in his dreams to shut out the ennui of daily existence. For him, everyday human concerns are inherently meaningless; life is a cosmically trivial existence. So, Kuranes searches for CelephaĂŻs, his own internal source of self-constructed aesthetic beauty derived from fancy and illusion. To aid his search, he prolongs and intensifies his dreams with drugs, but in the process happens upon a deep recess of boundless and unknown space âoutside what he had called infinityâ, which causes him profound anxiety. Eventually, an entourage of knights from CelephaĂŻs leads a nervous Kuranes into the abyss, where he reigns as regent within his own dream-space. As ruler over CelephaĂŻs, he also controls his existential cosmic anxieties by revelling in his own illusory aesthetic delight. This mirrors at a metatextual level the enjoyment and relief from cosmic anxieties that Lovecraft likely derived from weird fiction itself.
Negative revelation is fully fleshed out in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Randolph Carter, Lovecraftâs recurrent protagonist, hopes to journey in his dreams to the city of Kadath to obtain esoteric knowledge from the Great Ones. Before commencing his dream-journey, he is warned by two priests of the dangers that lie ahead. Most hazardous is the possibility of happening upon the âboundless daemon-sultan Azathothâ, the deific cosmic centre of chaos and infinity accompanied by the Other Gods who dance along to the insanity-inducing music it makes. Carter, naturally, ignores the priestsâ warnings.
For him, knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety
Upon arrival at Kadath, he finds the city empty. A pharaoh approaches him, explaining that the gods have abandoned it. He sends Carter to return the gods to their rightful seat. But the pharaoh, who is really Nyarlathotep, the intermediary between humans and Old Gods in Lovecraftâs Cthulhu Mythos (and who relishes in meddling in mortal affairs), deceives him. The disguised Nyarlathotep addresses the dreamer in an extended monologue. He tells Carter that the city he ought to seek is not Kadath wherein lie the secrets of the Great Ones, but Providence, Rhode Island, which contains the beautiful and delightful memories of Carterâs youth. The mind-shattering void that is Azathoth (a revelation of cosmicism) should be avoided in favour of self-constructed internal beauty derived from memories relived in dreams. Nyarlathotepâs advice is sound, but he has no intention of allowing Carter to leave. Carter is sent plummeting towards Azathoth, past the âvague blackness and loneliness beyond the cosmosâ. He attempts to escape, falling ceaselessly through void and infinity, and wakes in his Boston home.
For Lovecraft and his protagonists, knowledge of the boundless and unknown is a profound source of anxiety eased only by taking refuge in illusory dream-space.
T he aesthetic liberation of the weird tale comes from its depiction of the impossible. But, as the history of science shows, not all unimaginable and unexplainable realities elude us â consider the discovery of quantum mechanics or black holes in the mid- 20th century. Lovecraft understood this relationship with the impossible: he suggests that if science, hypothetically, were to explain at some point in the future any phenomena depicted in the weird tale, then the story would cease to represent the suspension of natural law. It would cease to be âweirdâ. This might go some way to explain why a lot of Lovecraftâs later fiction made efforts to reconcile the weird tale with modern science, not by providing what he terms âcontradictionsâ of natural law, but rather âsupplementsâ to it. The conventional supernatural elements of horror â werewolves, vampires and other supernatural phenomena (variations of which appear in Lovecraftâs earlier tales) â are aesthetically inadequate in the face of our understanding of modern science and the universe. The Old Gods even seem to take a back seat.
âThe Colour Out of Spaceâ (1927) exemplifies this development. This story follows the Gardner family, who see a strange, glowing rock-like entity, the âcolourâ, fall from the sky into a field near their property. This âcolourâ begins to spread throughout the Gardnersâ property, infecting the flora (rendering it grey and crumbly), the farm animals (who turn feral), the water supply, and the family themselves. Mr Gardnerâs oldest son goes insane, and his other son goes missing while fetching water from the well. He and his wife become hideously physically deformed and lose all sense of themselves. When the farm is eventually inspected, all living things within it have perished and nothing remains but blighted land. The âcolourâ had siphoned life from the landscape.
Eventually, the âcolourâ launches itself from the ground and flies upwards from wherever it came. Upon scientific examination, the residue it leaves behind defies all known chemical and physical laws. It tests negative for any known metals, does not exhibit any sensitivity to changes in temperature, and no chemicals react with it. This rock-like substance emits only an iridescent glow, the shade of which is not identifiable on our colour spectrum. In fact, it is not a âcolourâ at all; it is only referred to as a âcolourâ because this is the category that most accurately describes it.
There is no telling what we might find in the deepest recesses of the universe
In this tale, contradictory apophatic descriptions, reminiscent of the properties of Lovecraftâs Old Gods, are now firmly focused through a scientific lens, marking an integration of the weird with scientific reason. But for the weird tale to remain truly âweirdâ, it must be cosmic in the science fiction sense, involving only the boundless and unknown phenomena for which science has not (yet) accounted. In this sense, the negative revelation of cosmicism is rendered more acute in this story because Lovecraft reveals his ideas through the cold and logical rationalism of science, without any of the quasi-religious embellishments of the dreamscape, which might otherwise provide relief from the harsh realities of the universe.
Though Lovecraft embraced scientific rationalism wholeheartedly during his life, his fiction still comes with a pessimistic warning to those who engage in unbridled scientific endeavour: there is no telling what we might find in the deepest recesses of the universe as our understanding of reality grows. Real knowledge, Lovecraft suggests, is impossible; humans have a limited capacity to think in truly rational ways. This perspective might explain why Lovecraft was not an evangelical atheist and accepted the usefulness of religion for the vast majority of the population, for whom a godless existence would be intolerable: âIt helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could,â he wrote, âand gives them an emotional satisfaction they could not get elsewhere.â And besides, if we ever discovered that the universe really was as cosmically purposeless as Lovecraft imagined, then delusions of Cthulhu-esque gods might seem reasonable â or even desirable.
So where does this leave us today? Lovecraftâs legacy at present is truly astonishing, especially when we consider the state of obscurity in which he died. Crucially, his philosophy has endured, outlined through bewildered protagonists who watch their sense of self dissolve as they gain a (limited) appreciation of how things truly are. At the end of âDagonâ, his story of one manâs ill-fated journey to see what is on the other side of a strange hill, we see this philosophy in action. For Lovecraft, âmanâ is not the measure of all things. Humans are not a superior species. Our customs, trivial. Our time, fleeting.
âI cannot think of the deep sea,â Lovecraft writes at the end of âDagonâ, âwithout shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind â of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.â
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AI could lead to new ways for people to abuse animals for financial gain. Thatâs why we need strong ethical guidelines
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Thinkers and theories
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Paul Tillich was a religious socialist and a profoundly subtle theologian who placed doubt at the centre of his thought
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In caring for and bearing with human suffering, hospital staff perform extreme emotional labour. Is there a better way?
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Pioneering sociologist Erving Goffman realised that every action is deeply revealing of the social norms by which we live
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CSUN Professorâs Work Included in âBest American Short Stories of 2023â
Isioma is fleeing her motherâs house after recovering from a suicide attempt when the bus she is on is taken over by armed kidnappers.
The short story chronicling what happens next, âSupernovaâ by Kosiso Ugwueze, an assistant professor of English at California State University, Northridge, has been included in âThe Best American Short Stories 2023,â an anthology of the yearâs best short stories as selected by National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee and series editor Heidi Pitlor and published by Mariner Books/Harper Collins.
âTo have my short story included in the anthology feels surreal,â said Ugwueze, who teaches in CSUNâs College of Humanities . âI was actually in New York when I got the email, and I thought I was being trolled.â
Once Ugwueze realized that the emailed notification was authentic, she said her feelings turned in to âeuphoria.â
âThe story is set in Nigeria, where I was born â though I was raised in Southern California,â she said. âThe fact that a story set outside the United States was selected as among the best American short stories says something about the universality of the immigrant experience. My stories are often weird and sad, whether set in Nigeria or the United States, and sometimes I wonder where they fit.â
In addition to âThe Best American Short Stories 2023,â Ugwuezeâs short fiction has appeared in Georgia Review, Joyland, Gulf Coast, Subtropics and The New England Review. She is the winner of a New England ReviewAward for Emerging Writers and the recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant for feminist fiction. âSupernovaâ was originally published in The New England Review.
Ugwueze said âSupernovaâ was inspired by a grad school creative writing prompt about a character in physical danger.
âMost writers write about what they know, but the idea of a kidnapping popped into my head. Though Iâve never been kidnapped, I had a close encounter in 2010âand I just started writing,â she said. âThe story took a life of its own.â
The first draft of the story was completed in one sitting.
 âI wanted to capture, in the tone of the story, the incongruence between how we react to trauma and how weâre expected to react,â Ugwueze said. âThe main protagonist, Isioma, is doing weird things, and her emotional reactions are not what you would expect in this high-stakes situation.
âI think a lot of my work is layered, even if it does not seem outwardly so,â she continued. âI wanted to capture the general terror, though with some humor, of what itâs often like to navigate parts of Nigeria.â
Ugwueze said that her story made her think of a tweet by a Nigerian publication that noted Nigeria was ranked as the âthird most terrorized country in the world.â
âWe face security issues and I wanted to talk about that experience,â she said. âI wanted to talk about that Nigerian experience of kidnappers and vigilantes, etc., and people just having to continue living their lives, going to work, and serving their country. I wanted to explore the bravery in that.â
It’s that sense of having to continue to live oneâs life, regardless of the circumstances, that may appeal to readers, Ugwueze said. That, and the simplicity of her word choices.
âAccessibility is very important to me as a writer,â she said. âI want people to get what Iâm doing.â
Media Contact: [email protected] - (818) 677-2130
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Watch Official Miles Morales Horror Short ‘The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story’ Here!
An official Spider-Verse short film from Sony Pictures Animation, The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story brings a little horror to the world of Miles Morales this morning.
Watch The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story below!
The animated short film sees Miles Morales’ anxieties and pressures taking the form of nightmarish threats, leading him to finally do the most important thing anyone can do in a situation where they’re personally overwhelmed and at their breaking point: talk to someone.
What’s the story here, you ask? Sony Pictures Animation has teamed up with the Kevin Love Fund on The Spider Within , which uses horror elements to send its important message to young audiences in particular. The short film will be incorporated into the Kevin Love Fundâs new mental health focused lesson plan, âThe Hero Within.â The lesson plan invites students to tell their own story through the lens of mental health awareness via an interactive curriculum including a creative storyboard activity. Visit kevinlovefund.org  for additional information.
In The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story , Miles Morales struggles to balance his responsibilities as a teenager, friend, and student while acting as Brooklynâs friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. After a particularly challenging day living with these pressures, Miles experiences a panic attack that forces him to confront the manifestations of his anxiety and learn that reaching out for help can be just as brave an act as protecting his city from evil.
The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story  is directed by Jarelle Dampier  and written by Khaila Amazan . Dampier had teased the short film last year, âMy favorite genre is horror. I think itâs the perfect envelope to give great messages out, especially to younger audiences, and I think itâs something that weâve kind of shied away from for a long time.â
Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.
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‘Wolf Man’ Movie from Universal and Director Leigh Whannell Moves into 2025
Filming kicked off just a couple weeks ago on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which had been ambitiously dated for release on October 25, 2024. As it turns out, however, a Halloween 2024 release was a bit too ambitious.
THR reports that Wolf Man will howl its way into theaters on January 17, 2025 .
Christopher Abbott  ( Poor Things ) has been cast in the titular role.
Wolf Man  stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Julia Garner  ( The Royal Hotel ) will also star.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers.  Wolf Man  is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
The project will mark Whannellâs second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions ( The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3 ).
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannellâs The Invisible Man  has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic  Renfield  and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter . Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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The Latest Stephen King Horror Movie Has A Killer Cast And Director
A Stephen King horror story about a malevolent (sort of) doll almost sounds like something that could've been written specifically for James Wan to turn into a movie. But while the filmmaker behind "Saw," "Insidious," "The Conjuring," and "Malignant" is indeed involved in adapting "The Monkey" -- a short story King wrote for Gallery magazine in 1980 before later including it in his 1985 collection "Skeleton Crew" -- for the screen, he's only lending his services as a producer.
Instead, "The Monkey" is being written and directed by Osgood "Oz" Perkins, son of "Psycho" actor Anthony Perkins and the mind behind such creepily atmospheric and inventively stylized horror pictures as "The Blackcoat's Daughter," "I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House," and "Gretel & Hansel" (an almost phantasmagorical, subversive re-interpretation of the original Brothers Grimm fairy tale that was tragically released to little fanfare right before the 2020 lockdowns). Osgood Perkins is also currently riding high thanks to the buzz around "Longlegs," his upcoming occult serial killer horror-thriller that boasts one of the most intriguing trailers in recent memory. That's all the more reason to pay attention to "The Monkey," a film that Black Bear International launched on the Cannes market back in 2023 and was quick to draw attention to itself. Now, Deadline is reporting the film has wrapped production after assembling quite the killer cast.
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Don't Monkey Around In Stephen King's Attic
What do Theo James ("The White Lotus"), Tatiana Maslany (she of "Orphan Black" and "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" fame), Elijah Wood (who apparently starred in some fantasy movie series about wizards or something), Christian Convery (aka the adorable deer-boy Gus from "Sweet Tooth"), Colin O'Brien ("Wonka"), Rohan Campbell ("The Hardy Boys"), and Sarah Levy ("Schitt's Creek") have in common? They're all starring in "The Monkey," with Wan producing alongside his Atomic Monster partner Michael Clear ("M3GAN"). Wood's involvement, in particular, is worth noting as he's appeared in some truly wild horror features (like Franck Khalfoun's "Maniac" and "Cooties") since he dropped off the One Ring in Mordor.
"The Monkey" itself centers on young twin brothers Hal and Bill (Convery) who stumble upon an old monkey toy -- in King's original short story, it's a cymbal-banging monkey toy much like the one who terrorizes Woody and the gang in "Toy Story 3" -- that seems to cause a series of grisly deaths. Years later as adults (now played by James), Hal and Bill are forced to confront their dark pasts when that sinister primate seemingly starts killing once again. It's not widely considered one of King's best works and the horror maestro even ripped himself off with his similar premise for the "X-Files" episode "Chinga" (although Chris Carter apparently ended up rewriting most of King's script draft, which surely colored the final product), but with Perkins calling the shots (plus that cast), it may yet prove to be more than your run-of-the-mill Stephen King adaptation.
"The Monkey" has yet to receive a release date. Meanwhile, "Longlegs" opens in theaters on July 12, 2024.
Read the original article on SlashFilm
Screen Rant
New stephen king horror movie casts lord of the rings & mcu stars.
The new Stephen King horror movie The Monkey adds several names to the cast, including stars of the MCU, Lord of the Rings, Schitt's Creek and Wonka.
- The Monkey movie cast welcomes MCU and Lord of the Rings stars.
- Other additions to the Stephen King adaptation include actors from Sweet Tooth , Wonka , and Schitt's Creek .
- With a diverse lineup of talented actors, The Monkey is shaping up to be a must-watch horror film for fans.
The new Stephen King horror movie The Monkey adds several names to the cast, including stars of the MCU and Lord of the Rings . King’s original short story, featured in his Skeleton Crew collection, concerns a cursed monkey toy whose discovery in an attic by a pair of brothers unleashes a series of mysterious deaths. Producer James Wan’s upcoming Monkey adaptation will star Theo James as twin brothers Hal and Bill, and is set to be directed by Osgood Perkins.
The latest King adaptation has now set several more cast members besides the previously-announced James, headed up by Tatiana Maslany of MCU show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law , along with Lord of the Rings ' Elijah Wood. The movie's cast also adds Christian Convery ( Sweet Tooth ), together with Colin O’Brien ( Wonka ), Rohan Campbell ( The Hardy Boys ) and Sarah Levy ( Schitt’s Creek ) (via Deadline ).
The Monkey Is Trying The Same Timeline Trick As IT
King’s original "The Monkey" story, set in the same Texas town Stu Redman of The Stand calls home, sees young boys named Dennis and Peter discovering the titular monkey in their uncle’s attic, after which it’s revealed that the cursed toy was responsible for killing everyone in their father Hal’s family when he was a boy. The grown-up Hal tries to end the monkey’s curse forever by throwing it in a lake, but the story’s ending makes it clear that this particular evil is hard to kill.
Wan and Perkins’ new adaptation makes some tweaks to King’s story. This time around, the brothers, now named Hal and Bill and played as kids by newly-announced cast member Convery, find the monkey and try to destroy it. Years then pass, and the brothers grow apart. When the monkey returns to once again plague their family, the estranged twins must come together to finally end the terror.
The Monkey marks the first appearance in a King adaptation for Wood, a noted horror fan.
The split timeline structure of The Monkey immediately recalls IT , which takes place both when its main characters are kids and decades later when they are adults. Like IT , The Monkey features the adult versions of its lead characters coming together to stop the evil they thought they had already defeated years before. King adaptations tend to be hit-or-miss, but The Monkey has a solid premise, and the new cast additions make the production sound even more promising than before.
Source: Deadline
Adapted from the story of the same name by Stephen King, The Monkey is a horror mystery film that follows twin brothers Hal and Bill, who discover a mysterious monkey toy in their father's attic that seems tied to several grizzly deaths. After years apart, the twins learn that similar deaths have begun again and must reunite to destroy the monkey.
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2- Giving up bad behavior. 3- Repressing the evil instincts that are inside every human being. 4- Controlling the child in the safety zone next to the parents. 5- Planting correct means and methods through intimidation. Several years ago, my father told me a story about a boy who went out without telling his family where he was going.
25 Horror Writing Prompts. 1. A scary doll comes to life. 2. A scene from a nightmare comes true the next day. 3. Days go by, and your parents don't come home. 4. You feel yourself slowly becoming a monster.
Although many horror writing prompts and scary ideas have been written, the following 132 horror writing prompts can spark great creativity in aspiring writers of the horror genre. A family is on a camping trip. The parents are walking with their two children, a daughter and a son. The little boy trips and falls into a dark river.
4. On this Halloween night, your guinea pig won't stop running in circles, and your dog keeps staring at the door, emitting a low growl. 5. You run out for candy on Halloween afternoon to find the streets empty and the store abandoned. A single car cruises into the lot and pulls into the spot next to yours. 6.
September 30, 2022. Give yourself the chills with this list of over 110 horror writing prompts. From scary ghost stories to creepy stories about animals and monsters. Now is the time to write your own horror story, just like Goosebumps or The Haunting of Aveline Jones. From the gory to the scary, from the monstrous to the supernatural, from the ...
Building suspense is crucial in horror writing. To create suspense, writers can employ techniques such as foreshadowing, withholding information, or setting a time limit on the characters. In this way, you slowly build tension, making readers uneasy about what might happen next. 3. Structure of a Scary Story.
250 Words Essay on Horror Story The Intrigue of Horror Stories. Horror stories have always captivated the human imagination. They are a mirror of our primal fears and anxieties, often personified in the form of ghosts, monsters, or uncanny events. The fascination for horror stories is not merely a pursuit of thrill, but a complex interplay of ...
6. Put your characters in compelling danger. 7. Use your imagination. 7 key tips to writing a blood-chilling horror story đ±. Click to tweet! 1. Start with a fear factor. The most important part of any horror story is naturally going to be its fear factor.
1. Write about what scares you. 2. Use Setting to Your Advantage when writing a Horror story. 3. Choose your character and point of view wisely when writing a horror story. 4. Lay It all on the line when writing a scary story. 5.
Submitted to Contest #243. In a small town in America, there lived a teenager named Alex. He was an ordinary teenager who loved playing video games and hanging out with his friends. One day, his mother, who worked for a big tech company, had to go on a business trip to Inverness, Scotland.
The best horror short story writers do this by only revealing enough information to make readers wonder about the next twist in the plot. ... CSET English Subtest IV Essay Topics & Rubric; English ...
The early summer rainstorm ceased. But, dark clouds remained and hovered above the sparsely populated street. Rainwater trickled into the storm drain below and lured the brown, slimy creature to the surface. Overcast skies and rain-drenched surface created the perfect environment for the underground creature. Conditions were ideal for it to go in search of a meal. It seeped out through a small ...
101 Terrifying Horror Story Prompts. 1. A girl goes missing in the woods, and her parents find only a decrepit and scary doll left behind. They soon learn that the doll is actually their daughter. And she's alive. 2. New residents of an old neighborhood are invited by their friendly neighbors to a Halloween party.
In case you need spooky story starters to write your short horror story, here are 75 writing prompts. Use them for writing sprints, creative fodder to generate new and terrifying micro or long-form horror story ideas, to write creepy fanfiction, or just as a mental exercise to train your mind to see story possibilities everywhere. ...
Writing Bite-Size Horror. Horror stories don't have to be long to create a solid scare. Here are 9 tips for writing sinister microfiction from the September/October 2022 issue of Writer's Digest. We have once again reached that time of year where pumpkins bear their toothy grins and scarecrows threaten to step down from their perches.
For Uwe, who has spent the war caring for his widowed mother, this is a relief. But for others in his village, the fight is not over yet. Inspired by talk of power and his village's werewolf lore, Uwe joins a resistance unit preparing for the arrival of Allied soldiers. But when the men's violent rampage takes a devastatingly personal turn ...
Stuck on your essay? Browse essays about Horror Stories and find inspiration. Learn by example and become a better writer with Kibin's suite of essay help services.
Dahl wrote The Landlady as a ghost story, scowled at it, then changed the ending. Wise move. 5. The Forbidden by Clive Barker. When Books of Blood was unleashed in 1984, Stephen King said: "I ...
100-word horror story. August 2, 2016 | Tales of the Supernatural, The Writing Life. Since tomorrow is Insecure Writers' Support Group day, I'll make this post short and sweet. I was recently challenged to write a 100-word horror story. Feel free to write your own and share it in the comments, if you like.
1005 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. Scary Story I looked up at the black sky. I hadn't intended to be out this late. The sun had set, and the empty road ahead had no streetlights. I knew I was in for a dark journey home. I had decided that by traveling through the forest would be the quickest way home. Minutes passed, yet it seemed like hours ...
1927 Words. 8 Pages. Open Document. English Horror Story - Original Writing. I was driving for about three hours when I realised I had taken the wrong turning and was hopelessly lost. I pulled over to the side and found my mobile phone in order to phone for help. Surprisingly, the battery had run completely low and I began to feel a sense of ...
The Monkey's Paw is a short horror story written by W.W. Jacobs. The story follows the White family who are given a wish granting monkey paw from Mr. White's old army buddy. What seems to be a treasure is quickly deduced to actually be a curse. The wishes all become true, but only do so with a terrible twist of fate.
In this short story, a student of metaphysics finds himself in a strange, nebulous town while searching for the Rue d'Auseil. When the student happens upon the street, he becomes lost and confounded by epistemological darkness; the contingency and illusory nature of the world is conveyed by the shadows cast by the houses and the smoke from ...
The short story chronicling what happens next, "Supernova" by Kosiso Ugwueze, an assistant professor of English at California State University, Northridge, has been included in "The Best American Short Stories 2023," an anthology of the year's best short stories as selected by National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee and series editor ...
An official Spider-Verse short film from Sony Pictures Animation, The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story brings a little horror to the world of Miles Morales this morning. Watch The Spider Within ...
"The Monkey" itself centers on young twin brothers Hal and Bill (Convery) who stumble upon an old monkey toy -- in King's original short story, it's a cymbal-banging monkey toy much like the one ...
The new Stephen King horror movie The Monkey adds several names to the cast, including stars of the MCU and Lord of the Rings.King's original short story, featured in his Skeleton Crew collection, concerns a cursed monkey toy whose discovery in an attic by a pair of brothers unleashes a series of mysterious deaths. Producer James Wan's upcoming Monkey adaptation will star Theo James as ...