Cold Winds, Cold Fates

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Experience Writing Halloween Challenge: SCREAMS

Photo A.M. Moscoso – October 2026

In a cold, windswept field under a vast and heavy blue sky is a pumpkin patch—a tangled mass of orange, gold, and green gourds waiting to be harvested by Grim Reapers in heavy winter jackets trimmed with fleece and muddy boots with cartoon characters stamped on their toes.

Some of the pumpkins have warts; some already have faces carved by rain and frost. Some are broken and rotting, slowly in the field because of the cold.

But the one thing all the pumpkins in the cold and windswept field share is that if you were to put your ear to the ground, you would hear them screaming for help—as you would too, if you were to share the fate that awaits them on October 31st.

Photo A.M. Moscoso
October 2026

Not-So-Quiet Exhibits

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Experience Writing Halloween Photo Challenge:  Take a picture of screams

This is a scream:

Photo A.M. Moscoso
From Ripleys Museum

This is a scream too:

Photo A.M. Moscoso
Ripley’s Museum
October 2025

And this is the kind of thing that catches you by surprise and makes you scream out loud in the middle of the night, just when you think you’re safe in your own warm bed.

Pboto A.M. Moscoso
“Jemma-Riplelys Museum, Dells WI USA

A Week Adrift on the Dutchman

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WP asks: If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

Let’s have some fun with this prompt.

Ships are traditionally referred to as ‘she,’ so for this prompt, let’s go with this: The Flying Dutchman is famous, and for the sake of argument, we can say she counts as a person. So, I am choosing to be the Flying Dutchman for one week.

The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship, whose legend says she can’t make port and is doomed to sail the sea forever.

I want to know how she was doomed. Was she cursed by a sea witch? Was she haunted by ghosts attached to stolen goods or treasure? Maybe one night the Flying Dutchman and her crew were possessed by demons, and someone or something is keeping them from making port.

Perhaps that’s the reason why, when she is hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman try to send messages to people long dead—maybe they have to be invited back in by the dead.

The only way to find out is to get into her skin—or in this case, her timbers.

I’m willing to give it a try.

The Fickle Finger of Fate

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Photo A.M. Moscoso

Finger Pointing Up: Represents the soul rising toward heaven, the pathway to salvation, or the belief that the deceased has attained a heavenly reward.

Circle (Wreath or Loop): Represents eternity, endless life, and a continuous existence that has no beginning or end.

Photo A.M. Moscoso

This gravestone has fallen over, been turned around, and now looks like it’s pointing to three gravestones above it instead of to the heavens.

There’s a story there; I can feel it in my bones.