Halloween Writing Prompts 2025

Etched In Stone

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Experience Writing Flash Fiction Challenge #11/ Photo Challenge

There are times when we are so scared, when we are so confused that we stand there and turn to stone.

When I’ve had moments like that, I can’t hear anything and when I pull that memory back up I remember the images in black and white. FYI I have learned that memories work better when you remember them in color, so I’m guessing maybe this is my brain’s way of trying to delete the file.

However, there have been times when I turn a corner when I’m out for a walk, or taking a drive and I see something –

odd.

I don’t turn to stone, but the feeling is there all the same…I stand there and ask myself what am I really looking at?

Photo AM. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Photo A.M. Moscoso

 

The Wonder Stars

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Inspired by Writober Flash Fiction Challenge#6

Back in the early days of Vaudevill my Great Grandfather toured the world and even performed in shows where the Great Harry Houdini appeared.

The show my Great Grandfather toured in was called,  ‘  Captain Victor Chalmers and his WONDER STARS!’

My Great Grandfather wasn’t a Magician,  and  his claim about seeing the world may have been an exaggeration  his talent as a comediane  wasn’t and he was well known  in those circles as being a truly funny guy.

He told us liked Harry Houdini- he liked his tricks and he liked his showmanship but  Great Granddad had a way of figuring out the how in things- like pulling the wool over people’s eyes and he said at the end of the day Houdini’s greatest talent was his ability to make you look where he wanted you to look.

Did I mention my Great Granddad was also a Prosecutor when he was a  young man?

He sent more people to prison or the gallows then he would ever have admitted to out loud, and those numbers are probably the reason he quit law.

AI Artwork By Cursejourney

There was one act that sort of stuck in Great Granddad’s  craw, it drove him to distraction my Grandma said, and that act was Marlie Ellison- she was a fortune teller and she had the ability to call Spirits forth.

Marlie didn’t use a lot of props, but she always appeared with her cat- an inky black cat with a white mark that ran from just between his eyes to the nape of his neck and it was jagged- like a lightning bolt.

He was an impressive animal and Great Granddad was certain her cat served as a distraction to whatever slight of hand Marlie may have been using.

So,  Marlie and Zeke  would take the stage- Marlie and Zeke under  their real names, and she would conjure up  dreadful apparitions who knew all kinds of secrets about people sitting in the room and after the show, for a tidy sum, she would meet you in the nearest cemetery with her faded deck of hand painted and inked tarot cards and she would tell your fortune.

I’d say future, but in some cases the people who meant Marlie didn’t have a future and after she told them the good news or the bad news she would leave them there in the dark to contemplate their fate.

Sometimes Zeke, who rode on Marlie’s shoulder would swivel his head around and watch those doomed or enlightened figures get swallowed up in the darkness and when they were gone, he would put his muzzle next to Marlie’s ear and purr and Marlie would look down and smile a sly  smile that nobody could see.

But it was there. You didn’t have to see it to know it was there.

You could feel it.

Before he passed away my Grandma asked her Dad if it bothered him that he never sussed out Marlie Ellison and from his death bed he said,

” I did. I figured it out.”

My Grandma sat down on the side of his bed. ” The Devil you say. ”

” No. It was the cat. ”

Grandma thought that her Dad’s mind was going a little soft and she asked, ” her cat? ”

” It was the cat who could call the Spirits forth, it was the cat that could see through the veil. It was the cat who could look at a card, see your death and without missing a beat pass that information right along to Marlie. ”

” I figured as much- that it had to be the cat and one night I met them in the cemetery. I told her I was getting married- which was true and could she see what my future held for me? ”

We went to a masouleum and she sat on the steps and spread out her cards, Zeke was sitting on her should  and he looked down at the cards and then he looked up at me and I heard him say, ” go on, ‘fess up Marlie. He knows. ”

Marlie looked up at me. She smiled. ” Leave it to the hangman to get to the bottom of my secret. But its here. In the cards. On the day you die, you’re going to tell your daughter our secret.”

” On the day I die? ”

Marlie nodded. Zeke closed his eyes and when he opened them, they glowed deep and green.

Zeke, said in his own voice ” And then she is going to tell your story to her Granddaughter and she is going to write about us. ”

And that’s exactly what happened.

Hazel Sharp’s Notebook

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Inspired by Writober Prompt: WHO CONTROLS OUR MINDS

Artist Unknown

Hazel Sharp died two days before her birthday last year.

Her family said it was a shame she didn’t go the day after her birthday because Hazel Sharp was born on Halloween and leaving this world on All Souls Day would have been a hoot.

It may sound like Hazel’s family was indifferent to her passing, or maybe they didn’t care that she died but nothing could be further from the truth.

Hazel’s family understood her you see- they knew who she was was and more so- they understood what she was.

 

In her younger years Hazel had made her mark in the world by writing crime and horror  novels.

In her books, people chopped and peeled and skinned and ate and burned and buried each other alive with reckless abandon. And as you wandered down the very dark path she set you on as you took her words in- you tried unsuccessfully to not laugh and when you did you would slam your hand over your mouth and hope nobody saw what you were reading and the merry laugh that pushed it’s way up from your chest and passed  your lips.

What  you need to know is that Hazel’s characters weren’t charming, they weren’t clever the human monsters that populated her mind weren’t exceptional in any way and their crimes were never well planned  and as you got to know these people, by the end of the story you were glad most of them were dead.

Still. Hazel was fond of her characters. ” I’d send them Christmas cards if they had addresses ” she would say when the holiday rolled around.

 

Hazel’s son, William was responsible for her estate after she passed away.

” You’ll carry on my works for me William, I know I can trust you to do that.”

He promised he would. He swore it to her in fact.

 

Three days after Hazel’s well attended Funeral William was sitting at her writing desk in her office that was located in her basement- and when I say he was in her office in her basement  I don’t want you to think it was decorated with art or sculptures or that it was anyone’s idea of a writer’s retreat.

The only pieces of furniture in her office was a kitchen table that used to be painted a light sea foam green, a metal folding chair with a wonky leg and a shelf that used to be used to hold canned goods in a grocery store, but it was empty now and rusting.

Her desk faced a rough stone wall that sweated water and housed bugs and mice.

This is where Hazel wrote her stories and books in long hand , so there wasn’t any need for electrical outlets- the only light source was a naked dusty bulb hanging from a cord above her desk and occasionally it popped off and then back on.

This time when the light popped off and stayed off longer then usual and William was sitting there in total and absolute darkness. He waited patiently for the light to pop back on and when it did he looked down and saw  his Mother’s  notebook.

It was a plain light blue spiral bound notebook covered with Hazel Sharp’s initials worked into little doodles of birds and flowers.

William sighed.

He opened the notebook and on the first page he read,

” My to do list ”

On each line on each page was somebody’s name, a date and a few words like

poison, or knife or car or pushed in front of a train.

William closed the notebook.

He stared at the wall and he wondered if he were to go home and look up these names on the internet would he find out they belonged to real people who had died real and terrible deaths?

He opened the notebook back up to the page that said,

” My to do list ”

he laid his hand on the page and stared at the wall for a few more minutes and then the light popped off and when it popped back on there was a surge of brightness that made William wince.

William blinked his eyes, he rubbed them and then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen he leaned over his Mother’s notebook and he wrote.

It was a name, just one name that belonged to a face and a person that William sat next to on the bus each day.

William pushed his chair back and got up from the table and as the light above his head blinked out, he made his way up the stairs with slow and heavy steps.

 

The True Story of Frankie Felonwood

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Inspired By Writober Picture Prompt #5- Its In Our Blood

Her name is Frankie Felonwood and she became a Vampire on Christmas day-it was snowing and Frankie was taking out the trash when she slipped on a patch of ice in her driveway.

She banged the back of her head on the curb and the last thing she heard with her own ears was the sound of a storm -crashing thunder, then she smelled the lightning before it began to flash and she realized the storm was in her head.

Frankie’s  mouth filled with blood and she tried to spit it out, but she couldn’t because her tongue wouldn’t move and that’s when she knew that she must have bit some of it off when she fell and now she was choking on it.

Just as her last breath was leaving her lungs a crow flew over her body, it’s shadow broke away from the crow and landed on her face .

From it’s perch on her chin, it folded it’s shadow wings tight around it’s body and then hit flew straight up her nose.

There was a crack as it made it’s way into her skull through her nasal cavity, but luckily Frankie was dead by then. That sound shouldn’t be the last thing you hear before you die.

When Frankie opened her eyes a few non-heartbeats later, she was a vampire.

Nothing about Frankie Felonwood’s new life was like the stories and movies about Vampires she had heard all of her life- she wished  it had been because all around being a Vampire wasn’t what one would call a dignified existence.

I mean, how many vampire stories start with a woman choking on her own tongue?

That’s right.

Not one.

Photographer Unknown

She may have been a clumsy Vampire ( she never mastered the flying thing and turning into other animals like bats and rats and crows) but Frankie did have a refined palet when it came to blood.

In turn that taste drove her to become a good hunter because she would only drink what  smelled good-

the lady who worked at the  Gas and Go had rich fragrant blood- have you ever walked into a kitchen when a freshly baked pie was being taken out of the oven and you can smell the apples and sugar and cinnamon? That’s what the cashier’s blood smelled like.

The homeless man who lived behind the building where Frankie worked- his liver was destroyed by cheap booze and his arms and the space between his toes was an endless landscape of needle tracks, but his blood smelled like Fish and Chips with a splash of vinegar.

How could she resist him?

That night Frankie sat on his chest and sipped away slowly, so slowly that she was almost caught in the first rays of Sunlight-which indeed would have fried her on the spot.

Frankie guessed that the smell of charred Vampire was probably pretty nasty  so she took extra care to avoid anything that even came close to mimicking sunlight.

Finding tasty smelling blood wasn’t as easy as it sounds, Frankie almost starved to death last Halloween because blood smelled like blood- all she could smell was wet copper pennies and it turned her stomach.

Then one evening, if you could get by the smell of Vanilla body spray and hairspray- which Frankie did- because under that all her long waited for meal smelled like theater popcorn with extra butter.

Dinner was walking up the steps from the train platform and Frankie swooped up from the railroad tracks where she had been sitting.

Do you know what happens when a Vampire gets hit by a train? Nothing. All of her parts crawl back to each other and in her case thread themselves back into Frankie The Vampire.

Once she found she had somehow picked up an extra eye and it was now at home just above her left ear.

It’s blue.

Anyway the process  doesn’t take long. So Frankie does this to kill time.

Now,  before I got off track I was telling you about Frankie and her Popcorn Girl.

Frankie grabbed her as she flew up the metal steps and in her frenzy driven by the need to taste that popcorn, she almost splattered them both against the glass ceiling over the  staircase

. She didn’t think it was possible for Popcorn Girl ( A tub of theatre popcorn with extra extra butter girl) to scream louder- but she did so Frankie broke her neck midflight with one hand and then she swooped higher and higher and she landed them both on a building over looking the railroad tracks.

Frankie couldn’t pace herself and enjoy her meal like she did with Homeless Man who smelled like fish and chips with a splash of viniger.

Frankie was in a frenzy,  driven by  uncontrollable  thirst for theatre popcorn.

Frankie tore and chewed and licked and slurped until all that was left of Theatre Popcorn Girl were her clothes, her lower jaw and her right foot- minus her toes.

Now chock full of theatre popcorn Frankie went to the ledge and spread her arms out wide.

THIS was what being a  Vampire was supposed to be about.

She felt powerful, feral, she felt as cunning as a thousand cunning criminals and as dark and evil as the Devil himself.

Frankie through her head back and when she laughed the smell of popcorn filled the air.

This new and improved Frankie spun gracefully on one toe, she stepped off of the ledge and into a puddle of Theatre Popcorn Girl- then she slipped and fell face first into the goo-

and when she lifted her head up she threw her head back and spat out part of her tongue.

The Dracula Parrot
Photographer Uknown