‘Tis the season… no, not that season. The other one. The spooky one. The one with witches and pumpkins and yellow-eyed cats and headless horsemen.
And ghosts.
Oh, we all love a good ghost story, don’t we? Those stories that send little tingles running along the back of our neck? Or that have us glancing behind us as we ascend the stairs from our darkened basement? Or that make us giggle nervously around the firepit with our friends?
What’s more fun than hearing a good ghost story? Writing one, of course.
If you’re in the mood to create a ghost story this Halloween, here are some prompts to get you in the spirit. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
- A grandparent (or aunt or uncle) who died before you were born has started showing up in your dreams at night, asking you to do something. Why you and not one of their other grandchildren? What do they want? Will you do what they ask of you?
- You keep seeing a gray cat disappear around the corners in your house/apartment, but you don’t own a cat. One night, the cat’s eyes glow red, and the next morning, a streak of white has appeared in your hair. What do you do now?
- The ad on Craig’s List says “Haunted diamond ring, 3 carats. Must agree to wear it continuously for exactly one year. $1 million reward if you complete the year.”
- The bottle of nail polish in the medicine cabinet keeps changing color. When Dana bought it, it was pink. Then it turned red. Then purple. Now it’s blue. Each time Dana puts it on her nails, she feels a little… different.
- The scoreboard at the high school basketball court hasn’t worked right all year. Tonight, at the final championship game, something’s happening to it. It’s lighting up in strange patterns, and the numbers it’s displaying spell out a message nobody was prepared for.
- Running a pumpkin patch with a pumpkin-lined maze for kids should have been easy. But every morning, the pumpkins have moved so that the maze is different than the night before. Tonight is Halloween, and the kids are already lined up for the maze. The maze owner is desperate for the income to pay medical bills, so he doesn’t want to close it down. What’s going to happen in the maze tonight?
- A woman stuck in a bad relationship finds a message written in the mist on her bathroom mirror after her shower. “This isn’t your fault,” it says. What does it mean, and who left her this message? Should she be more afraid of her bad boyfriend or the message-writer?
- Three times a house has been built on the unassuming lot in this unassuming neighborhood. Three times the house has burned down. Now the person who’s bought the lot has built a new house on it and is going to spend their first night in the house tonight. They just have to figure out where that smoky smell is coming from.
- There’s a big math test tomorrow, and Jade isn’t ready for it. Failing again means getting kicked out of this school and sent back to the school where Jade was bullied before. Jade’s pencil keeps falling from the kitchen table to the floor and rolling towards the back door, no matter how many times Jade picks it back up. Why does this keep happening?
- Everyone in the bar is having a good time—it’s Halloween, after all. But there’s one person in the back corner dressed as a cowboy who is sitting quietly, alone, nursing a beer. When the lights flicker out for a few seconds, everyone squeals, then laughs when the lights come back on. But the cowboy is gone, and there’s a pool of blood where he’d been sitting. Then the blood soaks into the floor, disappearing completely, not even leaving a stain. What happened in the corner of the bar when the lights went out?
Happy Halloween, everyone. And may the only ghosts you see be the adorable ones at your door chanting “Trick or Treat!”
[Image by Nancy Sticke from Pixabay]