Halloween stories 2026

The House on Alderwood Street

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RDP Wednesday: DIVE

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Poppy and her sister Cleo stood in front of their old family house on Alderwood Street and Poppy was speechless.

“I thought you said it was run down,” Poppy sputtered. “I thought you said it was a dive.”

” Well – ”

“It’s a shell! It’s absolutely in ruins! I wouldn’t haunt this place if I was a chain-rattling, sheet-wearing ghost,” Poppy cried.

” Get up Poppy. A woman of your age on the ground sobbing like a baby. Honestly. It’s not dignified. ”

” I thought someone would take care of it, I thought arrangements were made. ”

Cleo looked down at her sister. She sighed and then took a seat next to her. She could feel the damp from rotting leaves soaking into her backside.

“You can’t expect anyone to have wanted to do that. Nobody wants anything to do with a house where the entire family was murdered in their beds by an axe-wielding maniac.”

“But Cleo—”

” Face it, Poppy, no matter what state it’s in,  this is our home and this is where our hearts are. ”

Cleo stood up and held her hand out to her sister. She thought about the eight hearts that their killer had taken from their family and buried in the side yard after he had made himself lunch and cut himself a slice of the apple pie their mother had made the day before.

“It’s a death trap,” Poppy said sadly.

“Yes, it is, Poppy. It certainly is.”

Photographer Unknown

The Pumpkin Field

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Halloween Prompt #1 

Family choosing pumpkins together at an autumn pumpkin patch

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” Are you awake Gladys? ” Mrs. Bowman my roommate  whispered to me from the darkness.

It was gloomy and a little chilly  in our little house that we have been sharing for  about a month now, my  family were young and had moved on without me .  It sounds awful, but if you want to know the truth it was a relief.

I didn’t like the music my family listened to and Fiona Bowman’s husband and son are in prison for murder. She told me when we first met that she couldn’t get a wink of sleep  knowing those two were out creeping around the neighborhood at night.

” What were they doing?” I whispered as if her son and husband could hear me from cells in the Supermax  prison four states over in Colorado where in all probability they will die.

” They killed people. ” Fiona said so softly I could barely hear her. ” They killed them very slowly and then they’d bury them – what was left of them, in our field.”

” We grew pumpkins out there in that very same field and in the fall we opened up the field and we set up tables with cookies and hot apple cider and people would drive from miles around to pick their own Halloween Pumpkins. But if you want to know the truth, knowing what was buried in our field, well. I guess it drove me here in the end.”

I nodded in the darkness.

” I couldn’t tell anyone what they were doing, I knew of course. But I didn’t want to end up as scarecrow in our Pumpkin patch and I didn’t want parts of me feeding our pumpkins.”

She waited for me to say I understood, and of course I said I  did.

You see, I know that Fiona she was eating one of her homemade Pumpkin Field Pies on the night she had her heart attack. She went heavy on the cloves she said and she used to love to savor each and every bite, so it would take her a half hour just to eat one small piece.

The thing about little old ladies who like to bake and speak softly and wear fuzzy slippers around their houses is that we look so harmless, blameless. Sweet even.

All the same, now just before I fall asleep I reach up and make sure the lid on my Coffin is locked and as I drift off I hope I don’t dream about pumpkins.

Far Away From Home

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Halloween story prompt 2.   Write a story about a character who is haunted by something or someone.

#FOWC- Brother

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Sometimes I  stand under my tree  and I look up into the branches and remember the days when I climbed trees as a girl and  I recall the time my kitten got stuck on a branch and  I climbed up and got as close to my kitten as I could without the branch giving way . I pushed my kitten off of the branch with a broom and my brothers below caught it on a pillow.

My brothers, who never learned to climb trees as well as me,  used to build tree forts and when there were windstorms  we would climb up into our tree  pretend we were on a pirate ship battleing a sea monster.

I like to remember those trees, they were close to our home and each leaf held one of our memories. I know this because whenI stood under the trees the wind blowing through the branches made the leaves sound like they singing.

I grew up and moved  far away and here under my  new tree, if Iook up and  I forget to think about kittens, I see a  frayed weather worn rope, somtimes it twists in the breeze  and when it does, the branch it’s hanging on moans and creaks and sounds  like an somebody with aged and worn bones crying out softly, in pain.

There are dark and foggy  days when I stand under my tree and I look down at the ground, I can see something hidden under leaves and weeds. I don’t need to move the leaves away to see what is creating the smooth outline of somebody sleeping on their side.

I know what is there and it makes me sad.

So I look up into the branches and I think about kittens and I don’t see the noose turning and spinning above my head.

But it is always there, as am I under a tree far away from home.

Aokigahara, the Haunted Forest in Japan Credits: Simon Desmarais