EXPERIENCE Halloween Challenge 2026

The Caretaker’s Cottage

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

I was inspired by this Poetry  Prompt to write a short story.  : Is harmless the same as friendly when it comes to ghosts? 

There’s an abandoned caretaker’s cottage on the very edge of Gordon Wood and it is covered in moss and ivy.

Part of the roof gave away and the rain and snow get in and sometimes the sunlight does too.

Nobody lives there and it’s hard to imagine anybody ever did.

The Caretaker’s Cottage looks like a tomb.

I walk my dog near the Caretaker’s Cottage but I never looked through the doorway, I have never peaked through the windows not even on the days when I hear a phone ringing from inside the Caretaker’s Cottage.

Sometimes the phone stops ringing and I can hear someone whisper, as if they are afraid someone might hear them, ” Yes, yes come as quick as you can. I think someone is outside. Please hurry. Wait. Wait. She’s out there again, with her dog. It’s a big beast and it’s looking right at me. Please hurry. ”

I pull on my dog’s leash and we run as fast as we can out of the wood and up to the road without looking back.

We stand up there  on that long dark road for hours and hours, sometimes we stand there for a few minutes and when cars drive by, they never stop for us. Sometimes they slow down, but they never stop.

Ever.

But we always go back to the cottage, sometimes we go back a day later, sometimes a month, sometimes it feels like minutes.

We always go back because it preys on my mind, is the Caretaker’s Cottage is haunted by human, or beast or a monster?

What haunts me above all is is the thought: which of three I am?

Trick or Treat?

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

Experience Writing Writetober Prompt: CASPER

An Imp, a cat, a ghost and a witch took a ride on a horse drawn hay wagon one night before Halloween.

Their horse was black as a tomb  it’s fur was soft as a bat’s wing and it walked on the hard icy road without a sound. A Witch sat behind the ghost, with moonlight shining into her eyes and out the back of her head. The moonlit ghost sang off key, and the inky black cat sitting in front of her pinned her ears behind her head and squeezed her eyes shut in pain.

” Do you have to make that sound? ” the cat asked.

” I’m not making sounds, I’m singing. In life I had a beautiful voice. “

” You’re in death now, ” the Cat grumbled low in his throat, ” so cut it out. You’re making my eyes water. “

The Imp with the soft autumn leaf filled body held the horse’s reigns carefully in his hands and wished he had walked the long road from the Cemetery out to  Gertie Webb’s house instead of traveling with his friends. On most  nights he enjoyed being with his friends, on nights like this he wished daylight lasted longer and that curses that they carried in their little orange plastic  pumpkin buckets ran forever instead of for a little while.

As far as they go, curses and hexes are just full of loopholes and get out of jail free cards- nobody was wiser to this fact then the Imp.

” I don’t understand why we have to dress up to deliver curses and potions to Witch who can hop on a broom or a toad and fly to the cemetery and pick them up herself.”  The Ghost said to the Witch. ” Why do we even have to store this stuff for her? ”

The  little Witch, who was actually a seven foot tall Wendigo in a child’s witch’s costume he had found moldering away in an abandoned barn took a deep breath . He tried not to roar and scream and failed.

The horse was actually a real horse named  Tumbles and the Imp horseman  is a Zombie named  Gilbert and the Cat was actually a cat. Of course this cat could talk and shift it’s shape at will, but it was a cat and most of the time he spent his time curled up on the foot of the bed that the Care Taker at Leaning Birches  Cemetery slept on.

The caretaker called him Darwin.

Darwin knew that the reason the Witch sent for her curses from their cemetery and asked the residents to deliver them was that she didn’t want to be too obvious.  She loved to sell potions and curses, but she kept her wares as far away from her house as she could for obvious reasons. Getting caught with those things, even in these modern times could get her burned at the stake alive- again.

Supernatural being or not, Fire hurt.

Gertie Webb, the four times burned at the stake and once buried alive Witch told them to play it cool, so the delivery team from Leaning Birches cemetery dressed up like, giggling trick or treaters and they delivered the  Gertie’s  potions and curses to the houses on her list and when they were done they stopped by Gertie Webb’s house and collected their rewards which were  the  brightest candied apples this side of the grave covered with caramel,  nuts and marshmallows and so much sprinkles that the toppings ended up outweighing the apple in the middle.

When anyone claims they’d crawl to hell and back for a great candied apple, sometimes they really do mean it.