horror narrative essay ideas

132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas

Horror stories send shivers down our spines. They are gruesome, shocking, and chilling. Scary stories are meant to horrify us, and there are many ways to make a powerful impact on the reader. The element of surprise is crucial to make the readers’ blood freeze.

There are different types of horror stories. They often deal with terrible murders, supernatural powers, psychopaths, the frightening human psychology and much more.

Although many horror writing prompts and scary ideas have been written, the following 132 horror writing prompts can spark great creativity in aspiring writers of the horror genre.

A family is on a camping trip. The parents are walking with their two children, a daughter and a son. The little boy trips and falls into a dark river. His father jumps to rescue him. Somehow the boy manages to swim to the surface. The father is nowhere to be found. When the mother gets a hold of the boy, she can’t recognize him. She tries holding him, but the moment she touches his wet body, her hands start burning.
A young girl goes missing in a nearby forest. The whole town is searching for her. Her parents find her sitting and smiling in a cave. Her eyes are completely white.
A woman starts watching a movie late at night. The movie seems all too familiar. Finally, she realizes that it is a movie about her own life and that she might be already dead.
A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises.
A child makes her own Halloween mask. She glues a lock of her own hair on her mask. The mask comes to life and threatens to take over the girl’s body.
While digging in her backyard, an old lady discovers an iron chest. She opens it and finds a pile of old photographs of her ancestors. All of them are missing their left eye.
A priest is trying to punish God for the death of his sister. He is getting ready to burn down the church, when supernatural forces start to torture him.
Every year a woman goes to the cemetery where her husband is buried, and when she looks at his tombstone, she notices her own name carved in it.
A woman puts a lipstick on in the bathroom when she hears a demonic voice saying to her: “Can’t you see?”
A mysterious child psychiatrist promises parents to cure their children if they give him a vile of their blood.
A group of 10 friends decide to rent an old English castle for the weekend. The ghosts are disturbed and seek their pound of flesh.
A photographer travels to an Indian reservation for his next project. He starts taking photos, but there are only shadows in the places where people should have been.
A young married couple decide to renovate an abandoned psychiatric hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everything is going well until their first guest arrives.
Three sisters are reunited for the reading of their grandmother’s will. She has left them a diamond necklace, but they have to fight psychologically and physically for it.
An old woman pretends to be lost and asks young women to help her get home. She offers them a cup of tea and drugs them. When the women wake up, they are chained in the basement. The old woman gives them tools and boards, so that they can build their own coffin. If they refuse, she inflicts pain on them.
A mysterious stranger with a glass eye and a cane commissions a portrait. When the portrait is finished, the painter turns into stone.
A little girl’s sister lives with a monster in the closet. She exits the closet on her sister’s birthday.
The demons under the nuclear plant get released after an explosion and start terrorizing the families of people who work at the plant.
A woman gets trapped in a parallel universe where every day she dies horribly in different ways.
A cannibal hunts for pure children’s hearts hoping they will bring him eternal youth.
A politician hides his weird sister in the attic. She’s had her supernatural powers after their family home burned to the ground.
A 16-year-old girl wakes up on a stone-cold table surrounded with people in black and white masks. They are chant and start leaning forward. All of them carry carved knives.
A boy hears screaming from his parents’ bedroom. He jumps and hides under his bed. Suddenly, everything becomes quiet. A man wearing army boots enters his room. He drags the boy from under the bed and says: “We’ve been searching for you for 200 years.”
A husband and his wife regain consciousness only to see each other tied to chairs, facing each other. A voice on the radio tells them to kill the other, otherwise, they would kill their children.
A mysterious altruist gives a kidney to a young man, who has potential to become a leading neuroscientist. After a year, the altruist kills the young man because he proves to be an unworthy organ recipient. The following year, the mysterious altruist is a bone marrow donor.
A group of friends play truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the group is killed.
A young man becomes obsessed with an old man living opposite his building. The young man is convinced that the old man is the embodiment of the devil, and starts planning the murder.
Concerned and grieving parents bring their 8-year-old son to a psychiatrist after their daughter’s accident, believing that the boy had something to do with her death.
A woman is admitted to a hospital after a car crash. She wakes up after three months in a coma, but when she tries to speak, she can’t utter a sound. When the nurse sees that she is awake, she calls a doctor. The last thing the woman remembers is hearing the doctor say: “Today is your lucky day,” right before four men in black robes take her out.
A small-town cop becomes obsessed with a cold case from 1978. Three girls went missing after school, and nobody has seen them since. Then one day, in 2008, three girls with the same names as those in 1978 go missing. The case is reopened.
After his parents’ death a cardiologist returns to his small town where everyone seems to lead a perfect life. This causes a disturbance in the idyllic life of the people since none of them has a heart.
A man is kidnapped from his apartment on midnight and brought on a large private estate. He is told that he will be a human pray and that ten hunters with guns will go after him. He is given a 5-minute head start.
A strange woman in labor is admitted in the local hospital. Nobody seems to recognize her. She screams in agony. A black smoke fills in the entire hospital. After that, nobody is the same. A dark lord is born.
A young girl finds her grandmother’s gold in a chest in the attic, although she isn’t allowed to go there by herself. She touches the gold and she starts seeing horrible visions involving her grandmother when she was younger.
An anthropologist studies rituals involving human sacrifice. She slowly begins to accept them as necessary.
A family of four moves in an old Victorian home. As they restore it, more and more people die suddenly and violently.
An old nurse has lived next door to a family that doesn’t get older. Their son has remained to be a seven-year-old boy.
A girl wakes up in her dorm and sees that everybody sleepwalks in the same direction. She acts as if she has the same condition and follows them to an underground black pool where everybody jumps.
A bride returns to the same bridge for 50 years waiting for her husband-to-be to get out of the water.
An old woman locks girls’ personalities in a forever growing collection of porcelain dolls. Parents of the missing girls are in agony and they finally suspect something. When they tell the police, their claims are instantly dismissed.
A chemistry teacher disfigures teenagers who remind him of his childhood bullies. One day, he learns that the new student in his school is the son of his childhood’s archenemy.
A girl starts digging tiny holes in her backyard. When her mother asks her what she is doing, the girl answers: “Mr. Phantom told me to bury my dolls tonight. Tomorrow night I am going to bury our dog. And then, you, mother.”
Twin brothers were kidnapped and returned the next day. They claim that they can’t remember anything. The following night, twin sisters disappear.
A boy has a very realistic dream about an impending doom, but nobody believes him until during a storm all the birds fall dead on the ground.
Room 206 is believed to be haunted, so hotel guests never stay in it. One day, an old woman arrives at the hotel and asks for the key to room 206. She says that she was born there.
A genius scientist tries to extract his wife’s consciousness from her lifeless body and insert it into an imprisoned woman who looks just like his wife.
Two distinguished scientists develop a new type of virus that attacks their brains and turns them into killing machines.
A woman steps out of her house only to find four of her neighbors dead at her doorstep. Little does she know that she isn’t supposed to call the police.
A bachelor’s party ends with two dead people in the pool. Both of them are missing their eyes.
A young woman wearing a black dress is holding a knife in her hand and threatening to kill a frightened man. She is terrified because she does not want to kill anybody, but her body refuses to obey her mind.
A strange religious group starts performing a ritual on a playground. The children’s hearts stop beating.
A woman discovers that her niece has done some horrible crimes, so she decides to poison her. Both of them take the poison, but only the aunt dies.
A man encounters death on his way to work. He can ask three questions before he dies. He makes a quick decision.
An older brother kills his baby sister because he wants to be an only child. When he learns that his mother is pregnant again, he decides to punish her.
A husband and his wife move to a new apartment. After a week, both of them kill themselves. They leave a note saying: “Never again.”
A man is trying to open a time portal so that he could kill his parents before he is ever conceived.
A famous conductor imprisons a pianist from the orchestra and makes him play the piano while he tortures other victims, also musicians. Every time the pianist makes a mistake, the conductor cuts of a finger from his victims.
A popular French chef is invited by a mysterious Japanese sushi master for dinner. A powerful potion makes the French chef fall asleep. He wakes up horrified to learn that he is kept on a human farm, in a cage.
A nuclear blast turns animals into blood-thirsty monsters.
A mysterious bug creeps under people’s skins and turns them into the worst version of themselves.
A kidnapper makes his victims torture each other for his sheer pleasure.
Four friends are invited to spend the afternoon in an escape room. A man’s voice tells them that they have won a prize. They happily accept and enter the escape room. They soon realize that the room was designed to reflect their worst nightmares.
Two sisters have been given names from the Book of the Dead. Their fates have been sealed, so when they turn 21, dark forces are sent to bring them to the underground.
A mother-to-be starts feeling severe pain in her stomach every time she touches a Bible. Despite the fear for her own life, she starts reading the New Testament out loud.
A literature professor discovers an old manuscript in the college library. He opens it in his study and suddenly a black raven flies through the window.
You are the Ruler of a dystopian society. You kill every time your control is threatened.
You are an intelligent robot who shows no mercy to humanity.
You are a promising researcher who discovers that all the notorious dictators have been cloned.
A nomad meets a fakir who tells him that he would bring agony to dozens of people unless he kills himself before he transforms into a monster.
A most prominent member of a sect goes to animal shelters to find food for the dark forces.
A man hires unethical doctors to help him experience clinical death and then bring him back to life after a minute. Little does he know that one minute of death feels like an eternity full of horrors.
You travel home to visit your parents for the holidays. Everything seems normal until you realize that demons have taken over their consciousness.
A mysterious woman moves into your apartment building. One by one, all of the tenants start hallucinating that monsters chase them and jump into their own deaths.
Divorced parents are kidnapped together with their son. Both of the parents have been given poison, but there is only one antidote. The boy needs to decide which parent gets to be saved. He has 30 seconds to make that decision.
A patient with a multiple-personality disorder tells you that you are one of six characters.
You wake up in bed that is a blood-bath.
The Government abducts children with genius IQ and trains them to fight the horrors in Area 51.
A woman who has just given birth at her home is told that the baby is predestined to become the leader of the greatest demonic order in the country.
A man signs a document with his blood to relinquish his body to a sect.
A woman enters a sacred cave in India and disappears for good.
A man opens his eyes in the middle of his autopsy while the coroner is holding his heart.
You look outside the windows in your house only to see that the view has changed and there is black fog surrounding you.
The gargoyles from the Notre Dame have come to life and they start terrorizing Paris.
Somebody rings your doorbell. You open the door and a frightened girl with bloody hands is standing at your doorstep. “You’re late,” you reprimand her.
You wake up in the middle of the night after a frightful nightmare, so you go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. You turn on the light and a person looking like your identical twin is grinning and pointing a knife at you.
A renowned book editor receives a manuscript elegantly written by hand. The title grabs her attention and she continues reading page after page. When she finishes, the manuscript spontaneously starts burning, and the editor is cursed forever.
The last thing you remember before losing consciousness is fighting a shady Uber driver.
You find yourself in a cage in the middle of a forest and black mythological harpies hovering above the cage.
A woman wants to quit smoking, so she visits a therapist who is supposed to help her with the use of hypnosis. She goes under and when she wakes up, she feels like a born killer.
Five hikers get stranded during a horrible storm. One of them kills the weakest and starts burning his body.
A mother goes in the nursery to check up on the baby and discovers that the baby is missing and, in her place, there is a baby doll.
A killer is willing to pay a large sum of money to the family of a volunteering victim. A cancer patient contacts the killer. The killer ends up dead.
The sacred river in a remote Asian village fills up with blood. The last time that happened, all the children in the village died.
A tall, dark, and handsome stranger invites a blind woman for a romantic date in his botanical garden. The garden is full of black roses in which women’s souls have been trapped. He tells her that she will stay forever with him in his garden.
A frightened man is trying to lead a werewolf into a trap and kill him with the last silver bullet.
An architect designs houses for the rich and famous. What he doesn’t show them is that he always leaves room for a secret passageway to their bedrooms, where they are the most vulnerable.
A man’s DNA was found on a horrible crime scene and he has been charged with murder in the first degree. He adamantly negates any involvement in the crime that has been committed. What he doesn’t know is that he had a twin brother who died at birth.
Every passenger on the Orient Express dies in a different, and equally mysterious way.
A magician needs a volunteer from the audience in order to demonstrate a trick involving sawing a person in half. A beautiful woman steps on the stage. The magician makes her fall asleep, and then he performs the trick. In the end, he disappears. People in the audience start panicking when they notice the blood dripping from the table. The magician is nowhere to be found. The woman is dead.
A mother discovers that her bright son is not human.
Specters keep terrorizing patients in a psychiatric hospital, but nobody believes them.
A man’s mind is locked into an immovable body. This person is being tortured by a psychopath who kills his family members in front of him, knowing that he is in agony and can’t do anything to save them.
A bride-to-be receives a DVD via mail from an unknown sender. She plays the video and disgusted watches a pagan ritual. The people are wearing masks, but she recognizes the voice of her husband-to-be.
A man turns himself to the police although he hasn’t broken the law. He begs them to put him in prison because he had a premonition that he would become a serial killer.
Jack the Ripper is actually a woman who brutally kills prostitutes because her own mother was a prostitute.
A ticking noise wakes her up. It’s a bomb, and she has only four minutes to do something about it.
After a horrible car crash, a walking skeleton emerges from the explosion.
A world-famous violinist virtuoso uses music to summon dark forces.
A philosopher is trying to outwit Death in order to be granted immortality. He doesn’t know that Death already knows the outcome of this conversation.
A beautiful, but superficial woman promises a demon to give him her virginity in exchange for immortality. Once the demon granted her wish, she refused to fulfill her end of the deal. The demon retaliated by making her immortal, but not eternally youthful.
A voice starts chanting spells every time somebody wears the gold necklace from Damask.
Three teenagers beat up a homeless man. The next day all of them go missing.
Thirteen tourists from Poland visit Trakai Island Castle in Vilnius. Their bodies are found washed up the next morning. They are wearing medieval clothes.
A group of extremists ambush the vehicle in which a head of a terrorist cell is transported and rescue him. They go after anybody who was involved in his incarceration.
A hitman is hired to kill a potential heart donor.
A man is attacked by the neighbor’s dog while trying to bury his wife alive.
A woman disappears from her home without a trace. He husband reports her missing. The police start to suspect the husband when they retrieve some deleted messages.
After moving to a new house all the family members have the same nightmares. Slowly they realize that they might be more than nightmares.
A psychopath is drugging his wife, pushing her to commit a suicide so that he could collect the life insurance.
A woman loses her eyesight overnight. Instead, she starts having premonitions.
A vampire prefers albino children.
A man commits murders at night and relives the agony of his victims during the day.
A black horse carriage stops in front of your house. A hand wearing a black glove make an inviting gesture. Mesmerized, you decide to enter the carriage.
Demons rejuvenate by eating kind people’s hearts.
People are horrified to find all of the graves dug out the morning after Halloween.
Men start jumping off building and bridges after hearing a mysterious song.
A voice in your head tells you to stop listening to the other voices. They were not real.
A severed head is hanging from a bridge with a message written in the victim’s blood.
A delusional man brings his screaming children to a chasm.
A 30-year-old woman learns that a baby with the same name as her died at the local hospital 30 years ago.
A vampire donates his blood so that a child with special brain powers can receive it.
A teenager is determined to escape his kidnapper by manipulating him into drinking poison. He doesn’t stop there.

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101 Horror Writing Prompts That Are Freaky As Hell

Looking for some scary story ideas for your next writing project?

Sometimes, a good scary prompt idea is all you need to get started on a dark story your readers won’t be able to put down.

And that is the goal. What’s a horror story without white-knuckle suspense?

You want your readers at the edge of their seats, unable to stop though they know something bad is about to happen.

You also want to reward them for reading to the end and leave them wanting more.

So, how can this collection of horror writing prompts help with that?

What Are the Main Elements of Horror Writing?

List of most common horror themes and tropes to write on .

66 Horror Writing Prompts

Halloween Writing Prompts

Mystery writing prompts, psychological horror story ideas, “the monster you know” story ideas, ghost story writing prompts, funny horror story ideas, horror story ideas.

Every good story needs an idea that takes root in your imagination and doesn’t let go. Horror stories in particular need to affect you a certain way. If they don’t sound an alarm in your head, they won’t sound one in the heads of your readers, either.

They need to reach into your psyche, take a scrap of memory, and turn it into something that would keep you up at night.

And as you’ve no doubt read already, “No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”

Look through the prompts that follow, and choose one that calls out to you and lingers in your imagination.

Paint a picture in your mind of the characters involved. Give yourself a reason to invest in them by giving each one some interesting backstory.

Then set a timer and write.

Since Earl Horace Walpole’s gothic horror The Castle of Otranto hit shelves in 1764, English readers have clamored for dark plots that excite primitive instincts and tickle our fear bones.

Many horror authors leverage shadowy impulses by sprinkling stories with uncomfortable happenings and gruesome fatalities.

But that’s not all it takes to write within the genre, begging the question: What are the main elements of horror? Traditionally, there are five: suspense, fear, violence, gore, and the supernatural.

Suspense : Creating anxious tension is a critical component of horror as it keeps the audience glued to the story. They need to find out what happens! Traditionally, suspense is valued as a sophisticated form of horror, and building it well is a skill.
Fear : Confronting fearful things is a powerful emotion with chemical reactionary consequences, making it a hallmark of horror writing.
Violence : Savagery is scary because it’s inextricably linked to death and pain — two of the four great human fears.
Gore : Brains and guts are a cornerstone of classic horror. For better or worse, our neural pathways light up when confronted with intestines, brain matter, and gushing fluids. Successful horror writers keep readers and watchers engaged by deploying gore effectively.
Supernatural: The main difference between “true crime” and “horror” is a supernatural element. While horror stories draw people in with realism, they usually feature an emotional detachment valve in the form of an explicit or implicit otherworldly presence.

Vampires, ghosts, zombies, and murderers are big-picture mainstays of the horror genre. But what are some other, more detailed tropes associated with scary storytelling?

Babysitter Alone in Big House: The naive babysitter trope is oft-repeated because it works. The sitter acts as a stand-in for the reader or audience in that, like you, they’re vulnerable. Horror-sitters are the character conduit through which readers and viewers can experience the impending fear.
Manipulative Vampires: Maybe it’s their piercing eyes, snappy attire, or mysterious penchant for the “nightlife.” Whatever the case, people stan vampires, and sensual and manipulative ones are an incredibly effective horror character trope.
Ghost-Haunted House: Ghost-haunted houses are a recurring horror motif. Whether you approach it from a traditional or modern angle is up to you. Both can work.
Creepy Kid: In real life, it’s kind to see all kids as precious and special, no matter their quirks. But when it comes to Horror World, creepy kids are a dime a dozen! Sometimes they’re the main attractions or “red herrings” (which we’ll get to more below); other times, they’re supernatural catalysts that serve as a story’s MacGuffin. Whichever the case, unnerving kids go a long way when devising a disturbing scene and fomenting suspense.
The Nonbeliever: Most horror stories have at least one character whose lack of fear or faith (in the story’s “supernatural” element) lands them six feet under.
The Red Herring: A “red herring” is a false clue. The term dates back to the 1400s to describe a culinary preparation for fish, but the first known use as a euphemism for “distraction” appeared in 1884.
Isolation: Few things frighten people more than being all alone while danger looms. As such, isolation can be a helpful trope when crafting horror stories.
Graveyard Chase: A well-conceived chase around a graveyard is another horror mainstay that continues to deliver. Try adding a twist to modernize the trope.
Distorting Mirrors: Whether a single reflecting glass or a full-on maze, using mirrors as a motif is a tangible and effective way to signal distortion.
Aliens and Cultists: The human psyche can’t resist rubbernecking when confronted with the possibility of aliens and the sociopathic underbelly of cults. Resultantly, they work well as engaging frameworks for horror stories.

101 Horror Writing Prompts

Whether you’re writing for a special occasion or just to experiment with the horror genre, any of the scary story prompts in the following groups should get you started.

Go with your gut on this one, and choose an idea that feels both familiar and provocative. Then give it a go!

1. A mysterious gift from an estranged aunt arrives on Halloween with a crystal ball and a note addressed only to you, her godchild.

2. One of the trick-or-treaters bears an uncanny resemblance to your departed sibling and repeats that sibling’s last words before picking your sibling’s favorite candy bar.

3. On Halloween night, you find a box at your door that contains a strange note and a little something from each of the people who have hurt you in the past year.

4. On this Halloween night, your guinea pig won’t stop running in circles, and your dog keeps staring at the door, emitting a low growl.

5. You run out for candy on Halloween afternoon to find the streets empty and the store abandoned. A single car cruises into the lot and pulls into the spot next to yours.

6. Every time you went to answer the doorbell, no one was there. The next day, you heard about the missing children. The worst part? Your kids spent Halloween with your ex and were supposed to come trick-or-treating last night.

7. You arrive home on Halloween to a large package from your new boss, who’d bought every piece of your favorite candy from local stores. The note reads, “Save some for me.”

8. You’re watching TV on Halloween night when your show is interrupted by a faintly familiar someone declaring their love for you and saying they’ve watched you all your life.

9. You come home to find a stranger walking through your home, sipping your wine and admiring your collected antiquities. They startle at your approach and act as though you’re the intruder.

10. The night before Halloween, you have a dream in which you wake up to see a dark shape standing outside your closet. You wake up screaming with your hands around your spouse’s throat.

11. Election day looms, and Halloween feels more ominous than ever. You’ve kept the lights off, but that doesn’t stop one visitor from leaving a note: “Knew you lived here.”

12. Your best friend has gone missing, and someone keeps leaving small reminders of them in your mailbox. You see someone approach to deliver something else, and your heart nearly stops when you recognize them.

13. You’ve always wanted a dog, so when a rain-soaked mutt shows up on your front step, you let him in. Unfortunately, something else hitched a ride.

14. Someone moves into the apartment next door and starts playing loud music at night. You call the police, who find the guy dead holding a note with your name and address.

15. Someone keeps replacing items in your home with different objects that look vaguely familiar. No one else has a key to your home, and there are no signs of forced entry.

16. You bake some cookies to share with the new neighbor, but the terrified woman backs away from the plate, shaking her head. Someone from inside calls out, “I’ll have those.”

17. Someone at work has offered to do a tarot card spread for you, and you politely decline. You find a single tarot card in your mailbox when you return home.

18. You don’t remember wandering alone on a country road as a small child, but someone does. And he wants to make sure you’re not around to testify against him.

19. Someone has gotten to your laundry before you and left it neatly folded in piles on top of the dryer. A note reads, “For more TLC, knock on #303.”

20. The window of your apartment leads to a fire escape, but twice you’ve come home to find it open. Nothing is missing. But someone keeps leaving a ring on your kitchen table.

21. You order a Christmas wreath for your door and the company sends you a package with money instead. The note reads, “Keep half. I’ll pick up the rest in 72 hours.”

22. A child knocks on your door and tells you you’ll be visited by three people that night. One of them will show you your future. The child’s face reminds you of someone.

23. Your best friend is dating a woman who seems familiar to you — and not in a good way. Turns out, she’s got a bad feeling about you, too, and she warns your friend.

24. You receive a surprise delivery of a holiday flower arrangement with a note from someone who went to jail for assault. The message reads, “I’ll be home for Christmas.”

25. An abuser from your past has written you a long letter of apology, and you agree to meet them for coffee. You find your favorite coffee place deserted — on Black Friday.

26. You broke up with your sweetheart when he lied about taking you to the prom and begged you to run away with him so he could escape an abusive home. He’s back.

27. An old friend, who had tried to warn you about an ex-boyfriend years ago, has come back to town to run a diner. Within a week, known bullies start disappearing.

28. For the past three dates, the guy you met ended up dead and posed as if proposing. A note on each one’s empty chest cavity reads, “My heart belongs to [your name].”

29. You’re with a friend at the home of the guy she’s dating. In the bathroom, you find a box with jewelry for almost every birthstone. Yours is the only one missing. You hear a scream.

30. Everyone keeps telling you your memories can’t be trusted. You’re safe with them. They’ll protect you. But you haven’t left the house in years.

31. You thought it was cute when your little sister wanted to wear your aunt’s high heels and pose with a hand on her hip. But your sister had an uncanny way with accidents.

32. You never expected to win the ‘57 Chevy from the church raffle. Neither did the car’s owner, who immediately tried to buy it back. He didn’t respond well to “No, thanks.”

33. Every time you saw anything like “Tornado Warning” or “Flash Flood” in the news, you knew someone would end up dead. And your ex would blame the weather.

34. You come home to a dozen roses from a guy who’s been telling his friends you’re dating, and you get angry. For some reason, though, everyone you know is on his side.

35. Your “Secret Santa” leaves an expensive bottle of wine with a note, “Drink me.” You call a familiar number and hear the phone ring on the other side of your door.

36. Your dad has a secret known only to his twin brother, who mysteriously disappeared but left a note with a box of his belongings in the attic. You take it with you when you leave.

37. You just broke up with the person who’s catering your best friend’s wedding. They also made the cake.

38. Some of your in-laws have decided to deliver their sibling from you. When they cross the line, you make a promise to them and to your spouse. One by one, they disappear.

39. Your health is steadily declining, and you don’t know why. Neither do your doctors, who test for the usual health issues and find nothing. Then someone calls to warn you.

40. Your estranged father sends you a porcelain doll — the one he swears you told him you wanted. It has the face and hair of your missing mother. And her eyes are glued open.

41. You’ve just told your family you’re asexual, and they seem to accept it. Out of the blue, the handsome guy next door shows up to ask you out, and your parents quietly nod.

42. A cop pulls you over for driving a few miles over the speed limit, tells you to get out of your car, slams you against the hood and whispers in your ear, “This is from your ex.”

43. You emailed your fiancé for months before meeting him for the first date. Now, you’re getting strange phone calls from someone claiming to be his wife and telling you to run.

44. You stood numb at the coffin of a close friend and flinched when your father rested a hand on your shoulder. “Had to be done,” he whispered. “Remember the bigger picture.”

45. A small package bears the name of your sister, who died five years ago. It contains a pendant that matches her own and a note asking you to activate it by chanting, “Sisters Forever.”

46. Your elderly neighbors died on the same day of an apparent suicide pact. In their will, they left their pug to you, along with a small box of what they called “magical items.”

47. You receive a note penned by your best friend, who died in a car accident the month before, His parents had found it in his room and hand-delivered it, barely looking at you.

48. You pounce on a new opening in the apartment building close to your favorite coffee place. The first night there, you wake up to ghostly shapes surrounding your bed.

49. At your first slumber party, your friend’s older brother surprised you during a late-night run to the bathroom. He died a decade later in prison. Now you see him in your dreams.

50. Your home is the high-tech brainchild of your best friend, who bequeathed it to you (rather than to his wife). It anticipates your every need and desire.

51. You’ve been having dreams about a door that shows up in your room. In one, you walk through it and see someone you love being murdered . You warn them the next day.

52. You’re the lone survivor of a horrific train crash, and everywhere you go, you see the ghosts of some of the passengers. Some have told you the crash was no accident.

53. You’re looking through your mother’s possessions when a note slips out of the book she’d been reading, warning you about “the ghost who runs this house.”

54. Your new boyfriend is obsessed with ancient artifacts, but when something hitches a ride on his latest find, you witness disturbing changes in his behavior.

55. Your life is already complicated when your boss asks you to stay at his home to care for his dog while he’s away. You soon learn the house is as mischievous as the dog.

56. You’re an editor for the college literary journal, and you’ve been getting poetic hate mail from a student who’s angry you didn’t choose their poems for the latest issue.

57. Your favorite neighbor is a trans woman named Lani who looks out for you. She warns you about a guy down the hall, who keeps trying cheesy pick-up lines to get you to smile.

58. Your co-workers tease you about your weight gain. One is found dead in the bathroom, her mouth stuffed with candy. Everyone but the custodian suspects you.

59. An anonymous admirer sends you a singing telegram with a chilling question. Now you have less than 24 hours to sing your answer in a public square, with a flash mob.

60. You sign up for wine deliveries but are disappointed by the first bottle you open and taste. On the label, you find a crass, insulting note from an old enemy.

61. Your date finds out your BFF is asexual and starts asking intrusive and insensitive questions. When your friend shuts him down, he insults and warns you both.

62. You’re working the dinner rush, and a customer loudly insists on changing her order the moment you deliver it. Someone quietly follows her as she storms out the door.

63. You’re having an open house for your new shop, and you catch a customer shoplifting. She says, “I was told to come in here and take these. You’re being watched.”

64. You arrive at your new house, and the keys from the realtor don’t work. Someone answers the door with a disarming smile. “So, you’re here about the room? Come in!”

65. Your date is going well until you reveal that you have a dog. “I’m not really a dog person,” you hear. When you get a bad feeling and end the date, things get messy.

66. Your journal goes missing, and within a week, a goofy, adorable guy starts showing up at your usual stops. He seems surprised to see you, but something isn’t quite right.

Creepy Writing Prompts

67. The old tunnel had been blocked off for as long as anyone could remember, but late at night, you could still hear the faint screams echoing from deep within.

68. As you walk past the abandoned house on your way home from school, you notice one of the curtains move slightly in an upstairs window, but the house has been empty for years.

69. You wake up suddenly in the middle of the night and see two small handprints on the foggy bathroom mirror that are far too small to belong to anyone in your family.

70. Every night when you go to sleep, you feel an uncomfortable pricking sensation on your skin, yet every morning, you find strange symbols carved into your arms that you don’t remember making.

71. While exploring the attic, you find an old doll that looks eerily like you did as a child, and when you pick it up, its eyes suddenly open.

72. The scraping sound from the closet stops whenever you turn on the light, but it always returns as soon as the room goes dark again.

73. Every time you glance in the mirror, your reflection behaves slightly differently than you do – blinking at the wrong time or moving too late.

74. You wake up covered in mud and scratches with no memory of where you’ve been all night, and the soles of your shoes are worn through as if you had walked for miles.

75. Lately, your pets have refused to go into certain rooms of your house, but you have no idea what frightens them so badly about those areas.

76. You discover a trap door hidden under an old Persian rug in your basement and shining a light into it reveals a set of footsteps descending into the darkness below.

77. You wake up one morning to find all the mirrors in your home have been turned around to face the wall, even though you live alone.

78. Your television is switched on in the dead of night, the static slowly resolving into shapes, and what looks back at you from the screen makes your blood run cold.

79. You keep finding sticky notes around your house with messages written on them in unfamiliar handwriting, like “GET OUT” or “I’M WATCHING YOU SLEEP.”

80. Every time you look at a clock, the time is exactly 3 minutes slow, though all the clocks in your home are set correctly and keep perfect time when others view them.

81. On your way home, you notice a figure standing motionless at the end of the street, staring directly at your house with its face hidden in the shadows of its hooded robe.

82. Your dog comes running inside with its leash still attached but hanging limply, yet when you call the number on the leash’s tag, your own cell phone starts ringing from within your house.

83. Your computer camera activates unexpectedly while you’re working, and you see your own bedroom behind you from an impossible angle near the ceiling, suggesting someone is watching through the camera right now.

84. You hear your name called out softly in an empty room, and even though the voice sounds familiar, you live alone, and you know no one else is inside.

Spooky Writing Prompts

85. Every night when you lie in bed, you hear the floorboards outside your room creaking as if someone is pacing back and forth, but every time you quickly open the door to check, the hallway is empty.

86. While exploring the woods behind your new house, you discover a crumbling old stone well, and when you peer down into the darkness, you think you see pale faces staring back up at you.

87. Your reflection in mirrors and windows often moves independently, quickly looking away whenever you try to catch it, watching you from impossible angles that don’t align with where you’re standing.

88. An unfamiliar chat window opens on your computer screen with only the message “I can see you through your webcam” written inside it by an unseen sender.

89. Plants within your home have been dying overnight no matter where you place them, the leaves and stems drained of all color as if the life has been completely sucked out.

90. You wake up to find a pile of dead birds on your lawn, their wings broken and necks bent at odd angles as if they crashed directly into the ground from high altitudes.

91. The old paintings hanging on the walls of your recently inherited mansion seem to follow you with their eyes, and occasionally, you notice mysterious new figures added in the backgrounds that disappear by morning.

92. Turning on all the faucets causes blood to drip out instead of water, yet when others in your home check them, the liquid running from the pipes is perfectly clear.

93. You wake from a nightmare convinced someone was standing silently at the foot of your bed, only to find the imprint of two bare feet seared into your bedroom carpet right where the figure was standing.

94. Whenever you look in the bathroom mirror late at night, you see dead relatives standing silently behind you who disappear when you turn around to check if anyone is there.

95. The baby monitor in the nursery suddenly emits a strange crackling sound followed by a singsong voice you don’t recognize whispering your baby’s name over and over.

96. Your shadow appears to have a mind of its own, often following you more slowly or quickly than it should and reaching areas you know your body has not moved to.

97. Photos taken with phones or cameras in and around your home show blurry figures lurking in the background that do not match any of the people in the images.

98. Any writing you leave out overnight – from sticky notes to notebooks – has mysterious reoccurring symbols added in unfamiliar handwriting scattered among the existing text.

99. You wake in the middle of the night to the sound of your locked window being forced open from the outside, but when you jump out of bed to check, it’s closed securely as if nothing happened.

100. From your garden, you can see directly into your neighbor’s bathroom mirror, but instead of the neighbor’s reflection, you swear you sometimes see your own face staring back with an expression you don’t recognize.

101. While searching through the attic in your recently purchased Victorian home, you find an old portrait of a severe-looking woman whose eyes seem to follow you around the room; later that night, you wake to find the same woman standing at the foot of your bed, silently watching you sleep.

How Do You Come Up with Horror Ideas?

Coming up with fresh, frightening ideas is key to crafting an effective horror story. While horror inspirations can spring from ordinary events and observations, it helps to have strategies to unleash your most sinister creativity. Here are some tips for conjuring bone-chilling tales:

Mine your nightmares. Dreams often access our deepest fears. Pay attention to recurring nightmares or startling images from your subconscious, as these can inspire terrifying new monsters or situations.
Twist tropes. Take common horror archetypes like haunted houses, demonic possession, or slashers and put a new spin on them. Surprise readers by changing elements they assume to be familiar.
Extrapolate fears. Think about phobias you or others have, like darkness, insects, or tight spaces. Imagine those fears exponentially intensified to petrifying extremes.
Research real horror. Study disturbing historical events, murders, superstitions, or unexplained phenomena and fictionalize them in a new horror setting.
Observe people. Carefully watch those around you and look for small creepy details in their appearances or behaviors that could be expanded into something sinister.

With an observant eye and inventive mind, creators can find endless inspiration from both mundane moments and their most nightmarish dreams. Putting ordinary things in an ominous light or letting one’s imagination run wild with “what if” scenarios generate the kinds of situations and figures that fuel truly frightening tales.

Pay attention to the world around and inside you, and plumb the depths of your creativity, and you’ll never run short on horror ideas.

101 Terrifying Horror Story Prompts

Welcome to the story den of horror, scares, and the macabre.

Most writers are often asked, "Where do you get your ideas from?" A majority of the time, writers find it difficult to answer that question.

We get our ideas from a plethora of sources — news headlines, novels, television shows, movies, our lives, our fears, our phobias, etc. They can come from a scene or moment in a film that wasn't fully explored. They can come from a single visual that entices the creative mind — a seed that continues to grow and grow until the writer is forced to finally put it to paper or screen.

In the spirit of helping writers find those seeds, here we offer 101 originally conceived and terrifying story prompts that you can use as inspiration for your next horror story.

They may inspire screenplays, novels, short stories, or even smaller moments that you can include in what stories you are already writing or what you will create in your upcoming projects.

But beware! If you scare easily — and have active imaginations like most writers do — turn up the lights and proceed with caution...

1. A girl goes missing in the woods, and her parents find only a decrepit and scary doll left behind. They soon learn that the doll is actually their daughter. And she's alive.

2. New residents of an old neighborhood are invited by their friendly neighbors to a Halloween party. The neighbors are vampires.

3. A family dog runs away from home. He returns a year later to the delight of his family. But there's something different about him. Something demonic.

4. A girl goes missing. Fifteen years later, her parents get a call from her older self. But they listen in fear because they killed their daughter that dark night years ago.

5. A man reads a novel, soon realizing that the story is his very own — and according to the book, a killer is looming.

6. A scientist clones his family that died in an airplane crash — but soon learns the repercussions of playing God.

7. A man wakes up bound to an electric chair.

8. A man wakes up in a coffin next to a freshly dead body.

9. A woman wakes up to find her family gone and her doors and windows boarded up with no way to escape.

10. A man afraid of snakes is shipwrecked on an island covered with them.

11. Serial killers worldwide are connected by a dark web website.

12. The world's population is overtaken by vampires — all except one little child.

13. A woman afraid of clowns is forced to work in a traveling circus.

14. An astronaut and cosmonaut are on the International Space Station when their countries go to Nuclear War with each other. Their last orders are to eliminate the other.

15. A treasure hunter finds a tomb buried beneath the dirt.

16. A young brother and sister find an old door in their basement that wasn't there before.

17. Winged creatures can be seen within the storm clouds above.

18. A man wakes up to find a hobo clown staring down at him.

19. Residents of a town suddenly fall dead while the dead from cemeteries around them rise.

20. A doctor performs the first head transplant — things go wrong.

21. A man is texted pictures of himself in various stages of torture that he has no memory of.

22. A girl wakes up to find a little boy sitting on his bed, claiming to be her younger brother — but she never had one.

23. A scare walk in the woods during Halloween is actually real.

24. A bartender serves last call to the only remaining patron, who is the Devil himself.

25. Earth suffers a planet-wide blackout as all technology is lost.

26. A boy's stepfather is actually a murderous werewolf.

27. Something has turned the neighborhood pets into demonic killers.

28. A priest is a vampire.

29. A woman wakes up with no eyes.

30. A man wakes up with no mouth.

31. A monster is terrified by the scary child who lives above his bed.

32. An astronaut jettisoned into the cold of space in a mission gone wrong suddenly appears at the doorstep of his family.

33. A woman answers a phone call only to learn that the voice on the other end is her future self, warning her that a killer is looming.

34. A boy realizes that aliens have replaced his family.

35. A woman wakes up in an abandoned prison that she cannot escape.

36. A bank robber steals from the small town bank that holds the riches of witches.

37. A door-to-door salesman circa the 1950s visits the wrong house.

38. Deceased soldiers return to their Civil War-era homes.

39. Kidnappers abduct the child of a vampire.

40. An innocent circus clown discovers the dark history of the trade.

41. A homeless man is stalked by faceless beings.

42. A spelunker stumbles upon a series of caverns infested with rattlesnakes.

43. A group of friends is forced to venture through a chamber of horrors where only one is promised to survive.

44. He's not the man she thought he was. In fact, he's not a man at all.

45. Suburbia is actually purgatory.

46. Someone discovers that we are all actually robots — who created us and why?

47. She's not an angel. She's a demon.

48. An old shipwreck washes ashore.

49. A sinkhole swallows a house whole and unleashes something from beneath.

50. A man has sleep paralysis at the worst possible time.

51. A woman out hiking is caught in a bear trap as the sun begins to go down.

52. Naked figures with no faces stalk campers in the woods.

53. An astronaut is the sole survivor of a moon landing gone wrong — only to discover that the moon is infested with strange creatures.

54. A woman is wrongfully condemned to an insane asylum.

55. A mother's baby will not leave its womb and continues to grow and grow and grow while doctors try to cut it out but can't.

56. Friends on a road trip stumble upon a backcountry town whose residents all dress up as different types of clowns.

57. Tourists in Ireland retreat to an old castle when the country is taken over by greedy and vengeful leprechauns.

58. A boy on a farm makes a scarecrow that comes alive.

59. A figure dressed in an old, dirty Easter Bunny suit haunts the children of a town.

60. The abused animals of a zoo are unleashed and wreak havoc on a small town.

61. A deceased grandma's old doll collection comes alive.

62. Little Red Riding Hood was a vampire.

63. Somebody clones Hitler and raises him as a white supremacist.

64. A pumpkin patch comes alive — beings with heads of pumpkins and bodies of vines.

65. An endless swarm of killer bees wreaks havoc on the country.

66. Christ returns to Earth — at least that is who people thought he was.

67. A natural anomaly brings all of the country's spiders to a horrified town.

68. A woman finds old 16mm film from her childhood and sees that she had a sister — what happened to her?

69. Something ancient rises from an old pond.

70. A woman suddenly begins to wake up in somebody else's body every morning — each day ends with her being stocked and killed by the same murderer in black.

71. An Artificial Intelligence begins to communicate with a family online, only to terrorize them through their technology.

72. A family buys a cheap house only to discover that an old cemetery is their back yard.

73. Years after the zombie apocalypse subsides, survivors discover that the epidemic was caused by aliens that have appeared to lay claim to the planet.

74. A woman has memories of being abducted by aliens — but she soon learns that they weren't aliens. They were...

75. A boy has a tumor that slowly grows into a Siamese twin — the older they get, the more evil the twin becomes.

76. A cult that worships history's deadliest serial killers begins to kill by copying their methods.

77. Stone gargoyles suddenly appear on the tops of buildings and houses of a small town.

78. A family on a boat trip stumbles upon an old pirate ship.

79. A winter snowstorm traps a family in an abandoned insane asylum.

80. A little girl comes down from upstairs and asks her parents, "Can you hear it breathing? I can."

81. A town is enveloped in unexplained darkness for weeks.

82. A jetliner flies high in the sky as Nuclear War breaks out below.

83. Children discover a deep, dark well in the woods — an old ladder leads down into it.

84. A child sleepwalks into their parent's room and whispers, "I'm sorry. The Devil told me to."

85. As a woman showers, a voice comes from the drain whispering, "I see you."

86. A child finds a crayon drawing of a strange family — it's inscribed with the words we live in your walls .

87. All of the cemetery's graves are now open, gaping holes — the dirt pushed out from underground.

88. A woman is watching a scary movie alone on Halloween night — someone, or something, keeps knocking at her door.

89. Someone is taking a bath as a hand from behind the shower curtain pushes their head into the water.

90. A farmer and his sons begin to hear the laughter of children coming from his fields at night — no children are in sight.

91. Someone looks out their window to see a clown standing at a corner holding a balloon — staring at them.

92. Mannequins in a department store seem to be moving on their own.

93. What if the God people worshiped was really Satan — and Satan had somehow kept God prisoner?

94. A man dies and wakes up in the body of a serial killer — and no matter how hard he tries to stop killing, he can't.

95. A prisoner awakens to find the prison empty — but he's locked in his cell.

96. A woman jogging stumbles upon a dead, bloody body — she then hears a strange clicking sound and looks up to see a dark figure running towards her.

97. A girl hears laughter downstairs — she's the only one home.

98. An Uber driver picks up the wrong person — and may not live to tell the tale.

99. There's someone or something living and moving up in the attic — but it's not a ghost.

100. A child's imaginary friend is not imaginary.

101. The reflections that we see of ourselves in the mirror are actually us in a parallel universe — and they are planning to do whatever it takes to take our place in this world.

Share this with your writing peers or anyone that loves a good scary story.

For some more scares, check out ScreenCraft's 20 Terrifying Two-Sentence Horror Stories and 8 Ways Horror Movies Scare the S*** Out of Audiences!

Sleep well and keep writing.

Once you're inspired, take your idea to the next level and Develop Your Horror Movie Idea in 15 Days .

Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries Blackout , starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner. Follow Ken on Twitter @KenMovies

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110+ Horror Writing Prompts (With A Twist)

Give yourself the chills with this list of over 110 horror writing prompts. From scary ghost stories to creepy stories about animals and monsters. Now is the time to write your own horror story , just like Goosebumps or The Haunting of Aveline Jones.

From the gory to the scary, from the monstrous to the supernatural, from the humorous to the wacky, we have it all! Use this horror writing prompts generator to get a random horror writing idea to write about:

Keep on reading for a list of horror story prompts.

Most horror stories are based on one thing, fear. And it’s always a good idea to have a bit of that in your own life. Fear makes us all think differently, it makes us do things we wouldn’t normally do. And it’s the same thing that makes horror stories so scary. It’s a good idea to think of something that scares you, and then write about it. As a starting point, we have provided you with this list of horror prompts. For some of these gory ideas, we have included a twist, while for others it’s up to you how the story goes! Feel free to use any of these prompts in your writing, and to expand on any of the ideas.

List of Horror Writing Prompts

This list of horror writing prompts will you give you the well-needed inspiration for a good horror story:

The Haunting Hospital: A small girl named Julie is walking down a country road when she finds a cemetery and realises it is her home town. She goes to her house and finds that it has been turned into a hospital. She finds her father and her mother there. Her father tells her that she is now a part of the hospital and that she must work to be paid. Julie and her mother go to work as nurses.
Chasing Shadows: A girl named Becky is walking in her neighbourhood when she sees a little boy playing in the street. Becky runs over to him and asks him what he is doing. He tells her that he is a little monster and that he will kill her if she does not leave him alone. Becky takes off running and the little monster chases her.
Park of Peril: A little girl named Melissa is walking through the park when she finds a little boy who tells her that he will eat her if she does not take him home. Melissa takes off running and the little boy chases her.
Claws of the Night: This one involves a kid named Angela. One night she goes to sleep and when she wakes up the next morning her hands have turned into the claws of a cat.
The Poisoned Harvest: A boy named Billy is walking down the street one day when he sees a homeless man. He notices some fruit by the man. When the homeless man is not looking, Billy steals the fruit. Later on, he goes home and eats this piece of fruit. The fruit is poisoned, and Billy goes blind.
Carnivorous Confrontation: A story of a kid who loves to eat the flesh of dead animals, but one day a man appears and tells him not to eat them.
Invisible Menace: Write a story about a young boy who is terrorized by an invisible monster.
Nightmare Room: The invisible monster is eating kids and it is in their room all the time.
Enchanted Chaos: A handsome prince on a quest to learn magic wants to marry the beautiful princess, but the kingdom is being attacked by demons, ghosts, and…his dad.
Insanity’s Feast: The whole little town goes insane. They start killing people with their mouths. They kill them in the most gruesome way.
Shuttered Nightmares: A serial killer is taking photos of their victims. He is telling them how he is going to kill them. And then he starts his killing.
Witch’s Chains: Two kids named ‘Bud’ and ‘Chip’ got separated from their parents. They live next door to a witch and are unable to leave the house. One day, the witch makes their parents get into a container, and leaves them in the backyard, chained to a tree.
Enchanted Camp: A summer camp where a powerful wizard casts a spell on the children to make them do his bidding.
The Weeping Specter: A ghost that follows you around and cries on your shoulder and if you get sad it gets angry and turns into a ghostly voice that spooks people.
Haunted Truths: The lead character is haunted by a ghost who knows the truth about their past.
Distrustful Shadows: A girl named Dana, who works at a daycare centre, doesn’t trust anybody. This causes her to make sure she does everything she can to stop any other person from ever entering her place.
Realm of Nightmares: One day, the princess wakes up in a terrible nightmare. She is being chased by something, she cannot see what it is. And then she hears the voice of her mother, telling her to run away. She goes to her room and sees that the covers on her bed are in a shape that reminds her of the monster she just saw. She knows she cannot sleep in this place. She goes to the other side of her room and sees a window. She goes to the window and finds that it is an opening to a new world…
Witch’s Wrath: A girl named Misty lives with her parents and their next-door neighbour who is an evil witch. One day her father and the witch get into a fight and the witch accidentally kills him.
Brief Awakening: A boy named Sam is suffering from a terrible disease and he only has days to live. He’s in a coma, and he’s not responding to any medical treatments. Until one night he starts to experience some new changes…
Vengeful Wishes: A little girl named Mina finds a genie. The genie grants her 3 wishes. Because Mina has been a victim of bullying, she uses all her wishes to punish her bullies with ghoulish consequences.
Jar of Horrors: One day, a boy named Marcus went out to take a walk, and he found a jar that he thought was full of gold. Marcus had also found a bag that was heavier than he could lift, but he drags it home anyway. When he opens to bag he discovers something disgusting…
Game Over: A creepy character named Nemesis is trying to kill Luke, who plays video games and lives in his basement. At night, Luke hears voices telling him to hide. He goes to the basement and a creature knocks him out. He ends up as a character in his gruesome game.
Bracelet of Resurrection: A boy named Josh loses his best friend to a freak accident. He finds the other half of a bracelet he gave his friend that day. He hangs on to it until one night the bracelet brings his best friend back to life.
The Ghost Writer: Write a story titled, The Ghost Writer. Write about the ghost of someone who haunts you.
Eternal Specter: Write a scary ghost story about a man who is cursed to spend eternity as a ghost.
Hidden World: A boy named Brody is having problems adjusting to life in his new home after his parents divorced. He tries to see his dad, but they don’t want him around. One day he discovers a secret passage to a hidden underground world where his father now lives.
Stuttering Shadows: A story about a young man named Kenny, who works as a garbage man. He also has a terrible stuttering problem that he has to deal with. One day he discovers that his stuttering is getting worse and worse and he becomes scared to death because of it. He thinks that the talking squirrel next to him is a demon.
Haunted Corner: Write a story about an object in your room that becomes haunted.
Ghostly Deception: A boy named Bryce has been hiding out from his abusive father. One day his father is gone and his dad’s new girlfriend walks into the house. He thinks it’s the ghost of his dead mother. The ghost shows him that his dad’s new girlfriend has been lying to him about how his birth mother died.
Trapped in Terror: A young boy named Spencer and his sister Sarah, are on a camping trip when they find a box of mysterious objects. When they open it, one of the items shoots at them, striking Sarah and trapping her in a pod inside a tree. While locked inside the tree, Sarah meets an evil doll named Alice.
Possessed Playtime: A young girl named Cassandra is babysitting her neighbour’s two kids. One day the kids eat some forbidden foods and a demon spirit possesses one of the kids and turns him into an evil creature who haunts the neighbourhood.
Eyes of the Bunny: A little girl named Hayley discovers a secret house that no one in the neighbourhood knows about, and is welcomed inside by a red-eyed white bunny. One day when Hayley goes to a party, her newfound friend kidnaps her and traps her inside this mysterious house.
Eternal Echo: Write a horror story about a horrible accident or a nightmare that has haunted you your whole life.
Drowning Destiny: A boy named Joshua falls into a river and is about to drown when he gets rescued by a beautiful mermaid. She tells him that he will die the next day because that is his destiny.
Keys of Madness: A young boy named Alex finds a set of glowing door keys and uses them to enter a huge abandoned mansion. When he explores the mansion, he is visited by a dark spirit who attacks him and drives him insane.
Alien Abduction: A boy named Sam wakes up one day to find that his parents have been missing for over a year. The day he discovers them, they tell him that he was kidnapped by aliens, and they built an experimental human brainwashing machine.
Dreams of Stella: A young boy named Toby starts having strange dreams of a girl named Stella. One day, he sees Stella when he’s on a roller coaster, but it turns out to be a ghost who is trying to take over his mind.
Eye of the Leaf: A little boy named Ben is playing outside one day when he finds a strange leaf. When he picks it up, it turns into a leaf with a red eye and starts to follow him.
Vengeful Spirit: Write a horror story about a ghost who just wants to kill the person who called him a monster when he was alive.
Nightmare Adoption: A young girl named Annabelle is adopted by a family that lives in a very old house. One day when is playing outside, she is kidnapped by a scary man named the Nightman.
Stuffed Shadows: A young boy named Jack gets lost in the woods and finds an old abandoned house. He enters the house and finds a huge stuffed animal. When he touches it, it wakes up and attacks him.
Depths of Fear: Imagine your worst fear and write a scary story about it.
A Rude Awakening: Write a horror story titled, A Rude Awakening. What would you do if you woke up in a place that you weren’t familiar with?
The Mysterious Case: What happens when someone goes missing and no one knows where they’ve gone?
Dreamstalker : Write about a monster that might be stalking you in your dreams.
Write a story titled, When The Wind Blows. This story could be about a sudden change in weather that comes with a new problem.
Mirror Demon: Continue the following story: Suddenly, the demon in the mirror reappeared and she began to scream.
Doctor’s Dread: When the doctor gave her the news, she screamed out loud and ran in circles.
Safekeeping Shadows: In her final hours, she told me to be thankful that I had done my best to keep her safe. That I had made sure no evil would ever hurt her again.
Camping Secrets: Continue the following horror story: As I was growing up, every year our family went camping in the woods. My grandfather passed away a few years ago. He was a rich man, and I wanted to visit his grave at the cemetery.
Forest of Shadows: While walking around the forest, I came across a monstrous-looking creature. I was scared and ran back home. The next day, I decided to go back and see what the monster was doing.
Echoes of Dread: Write down your biggest fear. And then write a story based on this fear.
Silent Stalker: When I looked in her file I saw that she had gotten five serious stab wounds. But, I could not see any sign of her attacker. Her wounds were all over her body and all over her arms.
Arachnid Terror: After discovering that a spider was sleeping in her bed, a young girl named Amy screams and runs away, locking herself in the bathroom.
Electric Fury: A scientific team is doing research on electricity. They find a very strong cell that could create many things when it is exposed to electricity. Suddenly the electricity static comes alive. It gets angry and attacks the scientists.
Imaginary Friend: A little girl named Amber loves to play with her new imaginary friend. She calls him “Giant” and she makes up stories about him. She believes that he is her friend for real.
Melting Nightmare: Continue the following story: As it continued attacking, it even caused my teeth to start to melt off of my jaw. My skin would start to burn, and my hair would become brown.
Friday Night Terrors: It’s Friday. The TV is on, and you are wide awake. As you lie there listening, you begin to feel tired. And just as your eyes begin to close, you hear a creak of the floorboards. Your eyes snap open. What you see scares the living hell out of you.
Blood Dawn: You wake up one morning to find your entire body covered in blood. What do you do?
Room of Despair: How would you react if you were locked in a room and told you could never leave?
Haunting Memoirs: What is the scariest thing that has ever happened to you? Can you explain this in great detail?
Chilling Chronicles: Make a top ten list of the creepiest books or stories you have ever read.
The Gruesome Creation: Describe the most gruesome and disgusting creature you can imagine.
Zoo’s Menace: Write a horror story where there is a threat of animals getting out of the zoo.
Red-Eyed Pursuit: Continue the following starter: A red-eyed man of tall and dark build looms over a bus stop on a lonely, deserted country road, staring at me intently. I run like hell to get to the other side of the street, but it’s too late…
Homebound Horror: A strange animal has been following you through your home. Have you been doing anything strange or dangerous that has made it freak out?
Midnight Messages: Someone is leaving you messages in the dead of night. What’s the creepiest message you’ve received?
Ghostly Watcher: Create a ghost story about a creature that watches and waits in the corners of dark, abandoned places.
Jack and Jill’s Nightmare: Jack and Jill went up the hill, but they never came back down. Will they ever make it to the bottom? Write a horror story based on this idea.
Dark Secrets: The history of your town has a long dark secret that nobody wants to talk about. What is it?
Mutated Reality: Reality show participants get kidnapped and sent on a dangerous mission, where they must learn how to blend with mutated creatures.
Beastly Intrusion: In a small community in Japan, a supernatural force enters the community through a sewer. To beat it, the village must learn to work as a team and think like a beast.
School of Shadows: School kids don’t believe in ghosts until they’re suddenly being terrorised in their school at night.
Vampiric Genesis: Someone is using a contaminated strain of bat DNA to create vampires in real life. And it’s up to a group of scientists to put an end to it.
Promised Souls: The dead walk, and all they want to do is get what they were promised. Will you figure it out?
Spellbound Silence: An aspiring rapper, who always dreamed of singing in front of an adoring crowd, becomes the target of a spell that makes him unable to sing, his most cherished talent. Will he survive the consequences of his initial desire to be a star?
Mirror Man: Continue this story: You look into the mirror and see a man in black standing in the corner…
Cryptic Chronicles: Imagine that you stumble upon a really creepy story in your local library and it leads you on a very strange and frightening journey.
Lost in a Strange World: When night falls, people get teleported to an area far away, in a very different world! The only way to return home is by combining body parts with the different elements of the land.
Wicked Takeover: A small town gets taken over by a wicked witch, who’s on a mission to suck the souls of all the inhabitants.
Soul Seeker: When someone posts an ad online about finding a soul and bringing it home for a price, things get really interesting.
Human and Beast: What would happen if human DNA was spliced with that of a deadly monster?
Unknown Beyond: A guy receives an advance warning from his friends in the afterlife to get ready for the afterlife, or something worse may happen…
Death’s Present: A girl gets a letter that someone wants to give her a present before they die, but the present comes with a very specific clause. What happens when she follows the instructions?
Dark Diary: As a local woman is trying to recover from the death of her husband, she discovers an old diary, in which she discovers something that happened in her past that has led to events that followed.
Christmas Carnage: It’s beginning to look like Christmas! But there’s more to Christmas than Santa and presents. A deadly secret is hidden away in a child’s bedroom. And with a massive killer about to make an appearance, it’s a race against time to track him down.
Empire of Evil: A ship sets sail for the distant colony of the Empire, but its mission becomes a mission to find the source of evil.
Hell Town: Using a sinister new machine, a small-town mayor is convinced to turn his town into a hell-like world.
Wild Dogs: A group of four friends are lured into an abandoned house by a pack of wild dogs.
I Went To A Party: Complete the following sentence in three different spooky ways: I went to a party and…
Sea’s Claw: The captain was anxious to get home, but the sea was so rough that his ship could not make it. Suddenly, from the fog, a giant black claw appeared. The giant black claw grabbed the ship and then brought the ship to the bottom of the ocean.
Dybylu’s Awakening: A monster named Dybylu wakes up one morning, alone in her room. She can feel it in the air; her pet cat is afraid. She goes to look in the mirror and see’s a human staring back at her.
Murdered Spirit: A little boy is asked to help a spirit of a man who was murdered, but as he hears the story, it sounds weird and a bit confusing, and he begins to wonder if the story is even true.
Playground Horrors: In a playground near an orphanage, there are many playgrounds where kids play. The best playground is found next to an abandoned asylum.
Barn Cat’s Secret: A drifter named Mick goes to a farm with his friend Sam, and the owner of the farm is a creepy scientist. Mick climbs a barn ladder and sees a strange cat in there…
Cape Creature: A sweet girl named Annie and her sister, Charley, are having an adventure in their neighbourhood. Suddenly, Annie spots a strange black cape creature lurking in the distance. It was the most feared and horrible creature Annie has ever seen.
Island of Souls: The main character goes to an island that no one has visited before. He is enjoying his vacation, but one night he finds out that his home is being invaded by creatures who want to steal his soul.
Spookie’s Nightmares: A witch known as ‘Spookie’ causes horrible hallucinations to victims of her nightmares. Her victims can’t scream or cry or run. All they can do is panic.
Stick’s Mischief: A girl named Paige finds a stick that attracts a mysterious creature that will play a sick joke on her.
Black Blood: One day, a girl named Robin started having problems in school. Her parents, who are very smart and caring, see something is very wrong with Robin so they take her to the doctor. The doctor makes her go through a lot of tests, and everything is okay except for one last thing. Robin has black blood running through her veins.
Mirror’s Curse: A teenage girl named Sarah who is obsessed with her appearance starts turning into an old, ugly witch every time she looks into a mirror.
Bee Killer: When bees start dying suddenly out of nowhere, the lead detective in a bee colony must find the culprit.
Demon’s Puzzle: A strange jigsaw puzzle holds a horrific secret… In it, a grinning demon holds a girl’s head in its giant mouth.
Forbidden Drawing: A little boy sees a drawing of him in a forbidden book he had found. He is then transported to a never-ending forest, lost forever…
When the Past Comes Back: An adult is being haunted by their younger self.
Beast of the Woods: A reporter goes into the woods where there was a fierce animal attack. In this attack, five women and a little boy were killed. He decides to search for evidence on who this killer creature might be…
Letters of London: A man lives by himself in a flat in London. A mysterious person starts sending him letters which talk about how scary things will happen if he doesn’t leave his flat.
The Ghost in Her Friend’s Mother: A 7 year old girl is having a sleepover at her friend’s house. Her friend’s mom leaves them alone, but they soon find out that she was poisoned, and that a ghost has taken over her body.
Creepy Crawlies in Your Kitchen: The first animal the kids see is a snake that eats people’s brains. It sneaks around in people’s kitchens.
Revolving Nightmares: The story starts off with a character telling the readers about the night he and his parents got stuck in a revolving door. The night would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Tommy’s Window: A long time ago there was a man named Tommy, who was lost in a forest. Tommy thought he heard a ghost calling him. Tommy went in the direction of the noise and found a scary-looking house that has windows that never opened. Tommy finds out that the house belongs to a witch and that if he opens the windows, the witch will turn Tommy into a puppet.
Tommy the Dog: This is a story about a little boy and his dog. The little boy goes to a big park, and he sees a dog that is alone. He walks over to the dog, but it just barks and then runs away. The next day Tommy starts turning into a human-sized dog.

Fear no more! Just use this list of horror writing prompts to start writing your own fantastic horror story! Use any of these scary prompt ideas to take the story from your mind to your computer screen.

Looking for more creepy horror prompts? Check out this list of Halloween writing prompts , as well as this scary Halloween picture prompts .

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the 5 elements of a horror story.

Every good horror story contains the following five elements: Character, Setting, Action, Horror and Resolution. You can’t write a good horror without these elements.

How do you write in creepy writing?

To write in creepy writing, you need to immerse yourself in the world of horror. You think to think exactly like your main character or antagonist. Imagine yourself as a ghost, a demon, a monster, or a murderer. You can be a ghost who haunts people in their dreams or a monster who stalks them in the real world. Use extreme details to describe scenes of horror with gory and disgusting elements.

How do you get inspiration for horror?

Most horror stories are based on fear. Think about the things that scare you or haunt you in your nightmares. You can also get inspiration from watching scary movies or reading about scary stories. Finally, horror stories can also be inspired by real-life situations. For example, a girl who is bullied decides to take revenge on her bullies in a gruesome way. Of course, you can also use this list of horror writing prompts to inspire you too!

What are common horror themes?

Horror themes can be based on personal experiences, fears, or nightmares. Here are some common horror themes to explore:

Stalker: Someone who stalks you in your dreams or in the real world.
Monsters: Someone or something who appears to be human, but isn’t.
Revenge: Someone who is still haunted by a past event, and needs to seek revenge to overcome it.
Secrets: A deadly secret that could shake the lives of anyone involved.
Psychopaths: People who just kill or hurt others for the fun of it.

Did you find this list of over 110 horror writing prompts useful? Let us know in the comments below.

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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The best horror writing prompts

A locked door, a creaking house, a shadow under the bed — horror can come from anywhere. It’s all about being able to tap into your own fear. But you know what’s even more scary to writers than screams, blood and gore? The terror of a blank page. That’s where our horror writing prompts come in.

Our prompts are here to give you inspiration, whatever type of horror story you’re writing. Whether your looming threats are demons, ghosts, monsters, witches, zombies, or simply something unknown lurking in the darkness, we’ve got the right ideas to spark your imagination and fuel your nightmares.

With that in mind, here are our top ten horror writing prompts:

Start your story with a character looking out of a window in the middle of the night.
An apparent coincidence occurs. Write a story about a character who suspects paranormal, spiritual, or criminal causes.
Write a story set in a city where the power suddenly goes out, leaving everyone in darkness.
Write a story that involves a reflection in a mirror.
Start your story with the arrival of a strange visitor in a small town.
The phone won't stop ringing, but it's not plugged into the wall.
You hear the crash of plates and a bloodcurdling scream coming from the kitchen.
It’s 3 am and you don’t know where your children are.

Looking for more help to get your horror writing started? We've got you covered. Check out some of our free resources, handpicked to help you write a story that goes bump in the night.

How to Master the 'Show, Don't Tell' Rule (free course) — To write a story full of suspense and mystery, you need to get the atmosphere right. Use our Show, Don't Tell course to master immersive storytelling, and make your readers feel like they're right there.
Character profile template (free resource) — Whether your protagonist is a scaredy cat or misguidedly bold (do they not realize this is a horror story?), you'll want to know exactly what makes them tick. That's how you scare them! Use our character profile to create three dimensional characters, whether they're man, woman, child, or ghoul.
How to Write a Horror Story: 7 Tips for Writing Horror (blog post ) — Our horror writing bible. No matter what kind of story you're working on, you'll find the answers here.

Want more help learning how to write a short horror story? Check out How to Write a Short Story That Gets Published — a free, ten day course guiding you through the process of short story writing by Laura Mae Isaacman, a full-time editor who runs a book editing company in Brooklyn.

Ready to start writing? Check out Reedsy’s weekly short story contest , for the chance of winning $250! You can also check out our list of writing contests or our directory of literary magazines for more opportunities to submit your story.

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BRYN DONOVAN

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50 Spooky Writing Prompts and Horror Story Ideas

If you’re looking for scary story prompts or horror writing ideas, you’ve come to the right place! These are great Halloween writing prompts, and some of these could also be used as suspense story prompts or dark fantasy story ideas.

These are all from my book 5 ,000 Writing Prompts: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More . The book has 100 additional spooky writing prompts and horror story ideas, as well as master plots and idea starters for all kinds of writing.

If you are easily scared and have an over-active imagination, just skip this one. And anyway, just remember it’s all nonsense that I made up while I was exercising on the treadmill or sitting in bed.

Some of these are skeletal (ha) plot ideas, while others are images or suggestions. And if you’d like a spooky soundtrack to inspire you, be sure to check out my scary music playlist for writers ! Be sure to pin or bookmark the post for future reference. After all, when autumn rolls around, you might find yourself looking for Halloween writing prompts!

A musician practices. When she finishes a piece, she hears someone clapping for her, although she lives alone.
Frightening events in a small town lead its citizens to dig up the grave of a deceased inhabitant.
Someone gets on the elevator by himself and is never seen by his friends or family again.
The Furies—the vengeance deities of classic mythology—are back in business again.
A collector buys an unpublished manuscript by an obscure writer that describes a terrible historical event a year before it occurred. The collector learns the writer wrote many unpublished stories…
Creating a hybrid of a human and this particular animal turns out to be a bad idea.
A person has the ability to make other people very ill.
The dead walk out of the sea.
An individual begins seeing and hearing from someone who looks just like her – and learns she had a twin who died at birth.
A killer places an advertisement for a willing victim and finds one.
A basement contains jars filled with unusual specimens.
A person finds new photos of herself on her cell phone that she didn’t take.
The spirit of a brutalized slave or prisoner of war wants revenge on his tormentor’s descendants.
A couple vacationing in a remote area begins having the same nightmares.
All of the circus performers were killed in the train wreck.
The television switches to another station of its own accord and plays footage of something horrible that happened long before the technology existed to record it.
A spouse or sibling dies. He or she begins to take over the body of the surviving spouse or sibling.
Weekend adventurers explore a cave and can’t find their way out again. Then they encounter something terrible…
Authorities go through the cluttered apartment of a deceased man who lived alone with no known friends or relatives for decades and find something disturbing.
A group of teenagers trolls everyone else in an online group by telling made-up stories about terrible things they’ve done. Things then get out of hand.
It’s bad luck in the theatre to call the Shakespeare play Macbeth by name, but someone in the company keeps doing it anyway… and the superstition proves true.
Every exhibit in this carnival sideshow is fake. Except this one thing.
An individual develops a terror of water – drinking it, touching it, or even being near it. There’s actually a good reason why.
The grandfather clock starts running backwards.
People in this neighborhood begin having freak accidents that involve normal appliances and machinery, such as blenders, weed whackers, and garage doors.
The cure for a new deadly epidemic is almost scarier than the disease.
He locked the doors and shuttered the windows; it came in through the roof.
A woman is happy when her dead loved one comes back to life… but he’s changed.
This centuries-old beauty secret is effective but horrifying.
A killer toys with his victims by orchestrating a series of false hopes for them.
She wakes up in the middle of the night and runs out to a certain tree.
Tourists on a ghost tour, along with their guide, fall into the hands of an evil presence.
A young woman is impregnated by her handsome new boyfriend, who turns out to be something other than human.
The empty swing is swinging.
A bride on her honeymoon discovers she’s not her new husband’s first wife… not even close.
Long ago, when he was a baby, a man’s parents made an unwise deal in order to bring him back from the dead.
Members of a family or people in a town begin sleepwalking and doing strange things in their sleep.
A young man confesses to a killing that hasn’t happened. The murder he describes takes place while he’s in custody.
Grisly events happen after the arrival of a hypnotist in Victorian London.
An author’s fictional villain stalks him.
Fraternity hazing goes way too far.
It always happens when he’s alone in the car.
A patient in a mental hospital encounters a malevolent ghost, but nobody believes her.
A mother’s young child may or may not be a changeling.
Swarms of insects appear in various places in a town, always followed by an untimely death.
The ghost at the movie theater wants everyone to watch one particular snippet of film.
A child’s imaginary friend starts to cause real trouble.
When putting together a slide show for a wedding or funeral, someone notices that for decades, the same man, dressed in the same fashion, has been appearing in the background of photographs taken in public places.
A politician, religious leader, or celebrity exerts mind control over the will of his or her followers.
The fairy godmother isn’t the good kind of fairy.

Okay, I creeped myself out a little with these spooky writing prompts! If you’re writing a novel and want a step-by-step guide to planning, writing, and editing, be sure to check out my book 5,000 Writing Prompts .

5,000 WRITING PROMPTS: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More | BRYN DONOVAN |

Do you have questions or suggestions about horror story ideas? We’d love to hear them in the comments section! And don’t miss future posts about writing. Follow my blog, if you aren’t already — there’s a place you can sign up below. Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!

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30 Downright Terrifying Horror Story Ideas

What is it about horror stories that we love so much? Why do we like being scared to the point we have trouble sleeping?

Truthfully, I have no idea.

What I know for certain, though, is that writing horror is just as awesome as reading it. But it can be tough to get started.

So, if you’re itching to write a horror story but maybe need a little kickstart to the imagination or something to practice with, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, you’re going to get a heck of a lot of horror story ideas. I’ve broken them up into some of the biggest horror subgenres for you, in case you are more partial to one or another. These include:

Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic horror
Body horror
Cosmic/Lovecraftian horror
Folk horror
Psychological horror
Supernatural and paranormal horror

Within each subgenre, I’ll include the topic of the story idea in bold , followed by a few sentences to get your mind going.

If you’re brand new to writing scary stories—even if you’ve read a metric ton of them— click here to check out our article on writing horror.

Then, when you’re ready, find a terrifying idea that vibes with you.

Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Horror Story Ideas

These two subgenres take place either during or after some world-ending event. In horror, we tend to lean towards magical, demonic, or religious apocalypses rather than climate-fueled or alien-based ends, but that doesn’t mean these are off-limits.

End of Days Cult. A documentary team goes to interview members of a seemingly unassuming cult. Instead, they record the rituals and events performed by the cult that bring about the end. This combines the horror of an apocalypse brought on by people who could be your neighbor.

Ancient Horror Unleashed. While unearthing the temple of a long-forgotten civilization, a team of archaeologists unleash an evil, ancient deity that is a harbinger of doom. Think about why and how this being was locked away in the first place.

Unaware of the Apocalypse. What would someone’s story be like if they weren’t around or aware of the end of the world? We see this in 28 Days Later , where the main character wakes up from a coma. What about a wrongfully convicted prisoner stuck in a high-security prison who only manages to get out once the power finally gets cut?

Evil Civilization. Imagine a world a decade or two in the future where humans are no longer in charge. Vampires, werewolves, demons, the undead—choose something more powerful than we are and write about a human’s experience in this new world order.

Post-Apocalyptic Road Trip. I’m not going to pretend like this is a new idea, but who doesn’t love a post-apocalyptic road trip? It’s the ultimate chance for you to build a new, ruined world and force your characters to endure all the terrible things you’ve filled it with. You sicko.

Body Horror Story Ideas

This subgenre certainly isn’t for the faint of heart. This subgenre involves the twisting, changing, mutilating, experimentation, and violation of the human body. It can range from creepy and weird to grotesque and depraved.

Curse. A bunch of obnoxious college kids (I say this respectfully; we were all obnoxious at some point) decide to break into the home of the reclusive woman on the outskirts of town. An accident ends up killing the woman. Shortly thereafter, the kids start to rot away, one patch of skin or limb at a time.

Hunger. A woman gains an inexplicable appetite for human flesh, which is bad enough on its own. But every time she eats, the face of her victim grows somewhere on her body. Even worse, those new faces get hungrier and hungrier every day.

Dollmaker. A teenage boy goes to visit his weird grandmother for the summer. And grandma loves her porcelain dolls Over the weeks, he starts to learn about kids his age going missing over the years with a striking resemblance to the dolls in the house. He has nightmares about his grandmother turning him into a doll… nightmares that turn out to be all too real.

The Doctor’s Menagerie. A brilliant yet sociopathic doctor has constructed his own personal zoo of animals made of stitched together body parts—beast and human alike. We get to experience this horror as the sibling of one of his latest victims comes looking for their family.

Demonic Parasite. After playing with a ouija board, our protagonist accidentally invites a demon into their body. Over the next few weeks, their body is slowly turned into the demon’s form as the monster claims more control.

Cosmic/Lovecraftian Horror Story Ideas

Made popular by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft , cosmic horror involves cosmic beings, ancient gods, and powers well beyond our understanding. This subgenre makes us feel small in comparison to the horrors we are facing, all while adding in some extra weirdness.

Expedition. This is classic Lovecraft style. A team of explorers or scientists journey somewhere that has been largely untouched by humans. These days, there’s less and less of that available, so think about the eldritch horrors they might uncover in the Antarctic, the depths of the ocean, or on another planet.

Extradimensional Gateway. Our main character finds some sort of gateway—a door, a cave in the woods, a pond, etc.—that leads to a realm much worse than our own. It’s the realm that belongs to some ancient entity, and the landscape, inhabitants, even the laws of physics all drive the characters closer and closer to insanity.

The Artist. A painter recreates the visions they’re having on canvas, depicting horrifying scenes of unimaginable creatures. Over time, the visions get worse unless she starts using blood as her paint. But, the more she does that, the more the paintings start to come to life.

Space Cult. Thousands of years in the future, a cult leader has found the wreckage of an ancient alien spaceship. On board, they find scripture and instructions to bring back an eldritch space god.

Imaginary Friend. A child’s only friend is imaginary. Except they aren’t imaginary. They are actually the consciousness of an eldritch horror that is using the kid to achieve their goal of being brought back to life.

Folk Horror Story Ideas

By far my favorite horror subgenre, folk horror takes old superstitions and folklore, then makes them real and terrifying. Isolation plays a big role in folk horror—whether that be an isolated village in the middle of a forest or a person who is isolated from society because of mental illness or their past.

Going Home. Our very successful main character receives notice that their estranged mother or father has died. They must return to their childhood home, a place they have very little memory of, to sort out all the stuff left there. But their family was into some weird stuff that is looking for another life to claim.

Pumpkin Patch. Every Halloween, the oldest family in town goes all out with their corn maze, pumpkin patch, and haunted house. That’s because of the blood sacrifice they pay with the lives of tourists who can’t find their way out of the maze.

Coastal Cult. I love cults. So how about one that lives on the coast and worships a sea god? But when this year’s sacrifice refuses to be drowned for the sake of the town’s prosperity, what are the repercussions? What crawls out of the tide to take what’s rightfully theirs?

Road Trip to Hell. Another road trip, but a real one this time. Let’s send some college kids through the rural countryside. Their car breaks down, so they hike to the nearest town. Unfortunately for them, they are walking through a literal Hell on Earth.

Beauty Isn’t Everything. A TV personality obsessed with beauty and vanity is sent on a retreat by her assistant (I’m thinking saunas, juice bar, yoga on the mountain, etc.). There, she realizes that the retreat owner is a witch who doesn’t let people leave. Oh, and steals everyone’s faces.

Psychological Horror Story Ideas

So far, most of these story ideas have included things that the majority of readers wouldn’t consider “real.” Party poopers. But psychological horror takes the fear and internalizes it, messing with our minds through actions that could very well happen. This is the realm of serial killers, kidnappers, and the worst of humankind.

Home (of a Cannibal) Robbery. Some ne'er do wells break into a remote mansion, looking to score it big and take a trip with whatever they can make off this job. Unfortunately for them, the house belongs to a psychopath who enjoys making culinary delights out of long pig (that link just goes to a definition on Grammarist, don’t worry).

Too Good to Be True. Our protagonist falls in love with a ridiculously handsome and rich man. They agree to go with him to his mountain cabin for a weekend getaway, though their best friend jokes that he’s a serial killer. While there, the main character can’t decide if she’s found proof of that or if it’s just in their head.

Nightmares. A man has dealt with sleep paralysis his entire life, but it’s been different lately. So when the new person at work looks exactly like the figure that visits him in his sleep, the lines between nightmares and reality begin to blur.

Forgotten. After coming back from a vacation filled with white beaches and just the right amount of mojitos, a woman finds that every trace of her life has been erased. No one remembers her, photos including her have disappeared, and her children no longer exist.

Random Act of Violence. One of the most psychologically damaging things to read about is an act of violence or depravity that has no apparent motive. Why is the family being terrorized at their summer home by hooded killers? Simply because the killers can.

Supernatural and Paranormal Horror Story Ideas

I know that the supernatural and paranormal have bled into other ideas on this list, but that was more like flavor to the bigger subgenre theme. In these stories, the ghosts, ghouls, and demons take center stage.

Witchcraft and Politics. A small-town mayor is an immortal witch. But her powers are fading and the town is starting to suffer as a result. Not just crops withering suffer, but assaulted by evil forces suffer.

Priest and a Demon. In order to save some members of his congregation from demonic possession, a priest must forsake his religion and make a deal with another demon. No one wants to leave their host without a fight.

Haunted Boarding School. Everyone knows the boarding school is haunted, even the staff. The horrifying ghosts visit a different room every night, scaring the unprepared to death. A word of warning: haunted house stories need some sort of extra flair because there’s just so many of them. How will yours be different?

Can’t Escape Your Past. A reformed serial killer is cursed by the grandmother of one of his victims. The curse makes the ghosts of those he killed terrorize him and try to exact their revenge.

Next Stop: Hell. Some adventurous teens hop on a cargo train to grab a free ride. Every time the train stops, the town they end up in gets worse than the one before. It takes some time to realize that the train is taking them down through Dante’s nine circles of Hell.

Write Your Horror Story

Hopefully some of those story ideas resonated with you or at least sparked some ideas of your own. But the story idea is just the first step. Next up, you’re going to want to think about:

Coming up with awesome characters
Structuring an intriguing plot
Weaving a great theme

And more! But to get going on those, we’ve written a free book that you can get by clicking here . This isn’t some sad 25-page PDF. No, this book has more than 100 pages of goodness to help you turn your story idea into an awesome first draft.

And when you’re ready, Dabble is here to give you all the tools you need—with none of the clutter—to make that first draft a reality. Give it a shot for 14 days, absolutely free, no credit card needed, by clicking here .

Doug Landsborough can’t get enough of writing. Whether freelancing as an editor, blog writer, or ghostwriter, Doug is a big fan of the power of words. In his spare time, he writes about monsters, angels, and demons under the name D. William Landsborough. When not obsessing about sympathetic villains and wondrous magic, Doug enjoys board games, horror movies, and spending time with his wife, Sarah.

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906 Scary Story And Horror Writing Prompts

March 3, 2021

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Don’t know where to get any ideas for a scary story? If so, maybe you should follow a piece of writing advice from the “king of horror” to get inspired. Stephen King wrote on his website that he gets inspiration everywhere. He said that when coming up with a story he usually puts together two things that pique his interest and look at them in an interesting way. Then, he asks himself ‘What if ’ questions.

Most of the inspiration behind his novels were, in fact, the most mundane things. According to an article by WhatCulture, King came up with the story of IT while he was walking across a bridge while wearing cowboy boots. On the other hand, Misery was inspired by the massive backlash he got for his novel, The Eyes Of A Dragon, and the short story The Man Who Liked Dickens by Evelyn Waugh.

To help you brainstorm ideas for your next novel or short story, here are some scary story writing prompts:

Feeling depressed, a man looks at an Internet psychic. She tells him he will somehow die by drowning. The man disregards it and eats a banana. And chokes on it. Then the Internet psychic is baffled.
A woman is plagued by the ghost of a former owner of her home. The ghost wants to marry the young woman.
A victim of bullying makes a deal with the devil, and is given supernatural powers to slay the bullies after being brought back from the brink of death.
Someone goes into a hospital and finds everyone in the emergency room has been killed. Turns out there is a killer in the hospital, but no one knows who it is.
A group of teens are sent on a field trip to a rundown mental asylum that was shut down for being too crazy. The group’s bus driver turns out to be a cannibal and they’re forced to escape. Little do they know the asylum still has patients…
A man dreams of a psycho friend from college. He thinks nothing of it until he begins receiving real telecommunicating messages that his crony is using.
A nurse at a mental hospital steals chocolates from a patient and eats them herself. She slips into a coma and awakens as a reanimated corpse.
A young soldier is captured by enemy forces and they wish to trade him for one of his own, a detective who never gives up the search for the missing soldier, until strange things start happening to him as well, and he becomes no better than a prisoner either. A werewolf lurks in the forest.
A young girl befriends the ghost of her dead father in a haunted dollhouse. The dollhouse actually contains all of the citizens from an old Pennsylvania town.
A boy has a new sister. They’ve been told by their parents not to play rough around her because she’s very fragile. A couple of days later the boy checks on his sister, only to find that she’s disappeared. One of her dolls, however, is still sitting in her empty bed.
A prankster fooling around with an enchanted book unleashes a spirit and must learn how to send it back. Creepy, icky, gory details included…
A man and a woman couple are attempting to bury a hoard of money in their backyard. The husband is attacked by an axe wielding maniac.
An old woman dies in a car accident and the family buys her amazingly preserved old house. The dead relative still lives in the house and suddenly shows up in every room of the house.
A mentally handicapped boy sees satanic figures in the patterns of the shadows in the corner of an old and musty attic.
A priest who refuses to say Latin during the funeral service because he believes he is providing the best service to the deceased was really cursing them. Now, dead members of the club attempt to make their forever rest at a resort heist.
A writer visits the set of a film shoot at a remote location. He hears rumors of a curse surrounding a particular area of the screenplay and the area is said to be haunted. Unnerved, the writer soon learns that the rumors were true.
A girl confronting her insecurities falls asleep and has a vivid dream that causes her to reevaluate her life choices.
After a blackbird sat on his shoulder for an entire rest stop, he found two mysterious sets of clothes after crossing the state line. Suddenly he finds a stranger walking behind him, wearing them. His curiosity gets the better of him and he gives the stranger one of the new shirts. The stranger murmurs “thank you” and suddenly vanishes. A week later, the stranger is back. Again. And the stranger returns the shirt.
The creepy brainwashed cult member with electric devices stuck to their head allows nothing but screams and pain.
A woman lives in a house where the previous owner was secretly addicted to cannibalism. She soon learns of a secret room hidden in the house by the serial killer.
A girl on a highway stop for snacks and a bathroom break. But she never resurfaces. She is abducted and murdered but a corpse is never found. Everyone at the truck stop now routinely sees her ghost emerge from the exit to the highway.
An online user begins surfing the web for a new book to read and begins talking/chatting with the main character of a book he did not realize had a following.
A cheerful boy makes friends with a very old doll that belonged to his grandma. When it comes to life, it goes with him everywhere to protect him. They soon become very close friends.
A man and a woman wake up in a closed room in a dark castle. There are no doors or windows. But the room has an exit. And it leads outside…
A kid is kicked out of school after insisting that faculty found a corpse under the school one Halloween night. He decides to go to the school alone after dark to prove his story.
A reporter goes investigating a haunted mansion after a series of disappearances in the neighborhood.
A college student goes to study with a family member at an isolated cabin in the woods. Alone and afraid, she huddles in bed but soon discovers that the voice in her head is not her imagination. Every generation has a story. Do you know yours?
As the title would suggest, a man gets lost and finds himself in purgatory. Haunted by souls of the dead, he seeks help from his brother and takes a strange poison. However, nothing is as it seems.
A teenage girl and her boyfriend spend the night in a haunted house and film a scary video. They soon realize the house has a nasty trick to play on them.
A librarian loves his books. A strange author sends him a birthday present in the mail. It is a strange book of sin. Inside it, the writer describes breaking into the librarian’s home just to sign the book.
A girl is date raped by an older boy and discovers that she is pregnant and it’s the catch of the century. He gave her the ultimate gift.
A group of teenagers are enjoying an afternoon at the county fair. They are given murder mystery rides based on famous murder cases. Then they are transported to the true crime scenes. One by one they meet their violent end while their fellow teens try to escape the horrors.
A young man moves in with his terminally ill mother. But one night, she starts acting strangely. The young man soon finds out that his mother is dying from a ‘lucky disease’ that has kept her alive for years. She is a vampire.
A young rich couple buys a haunted house. The wife opens the attic door and frees a banshee. The banshee kills the husband. The wife welcomes the banshee to stay with them.
Two children walk to a lake close to their house to fish. Throughout the story they become increasingly paranoid that something’s in the lake following them.
What’s in the ancient and creepy tomb that got left behind in the annual clean up of the local public park?
A couple decides to take a break from the human rat race and move to a remote place. They soon find out that the place they live in is on top of a giant beehive.
Young boys, who live on a farm, go into the woods one year to go “bean” and do not return. Later, they are spotted alive at the carnival. But when they are confronted by their father, they tell him that they “will rip him to shreds.” And they are his children.
A couple is having a night out at a fancy restaurant but the locals there are unappreciative of their presence.
Two school friends are going on a camping trip. On the last day of hiking they say goodbye to their teacher and hit the road. They hear strange sounds coming from the distance and they witness someone running in the opposite direction. As they run away they see another person who they realize is very thin as though emaciated. They later learn that all the hikers were eaten by man eating bears.
A kid asks for some extra candy on Halloween. He gets nothing but a handful of razor blades, teeth, and joints.
A young woman finds an old book translated into runes in her attic. She learns how to use a strange power from that book. But she’s not the only one who wants to read that book.
A nervous wife notices that her husband is being visited at night by the dead and her husband has no clue that she can see the dead. He thinks his wife is a bit dense.
A group of friends goes to a desolate old house to investigate what happened to the last group who went there. They become trapped inside the house and begin to go crazy. It’s up to one of the friends to find a way to escape…
A newly married couple find a diary behind the walls of their new home that tells a story of murder.
A group of friends go out into the woods for a picnic. A witch comes by and says she’ll turn them into frogs if they don’t give her their wine. Of course, the friends are armed, and a gun battle ensues. In the chaos, the friends get away alive, but alas, they accidentally leave behind the wine!
Volunteers are asked to tour haunted houses for the paranormal show Ghost Hunters. They don’t come back at the end of the tour.
Five teenage girls must survive a night of haunting childhood games that terrorize them. They reverse the roles and soon become the prey of a twisted individual who wants them to suffer for the way they made him suffer.
A young son repeatedly plays tricks on his annoying mom. When she is now abducted by strange men, he seeks help from strange occultists to learn how to find and rescue his mom.
A man buys an antique mirror without knowing that the mirror can bring out one’s dark soul’s reflection.
A girl becomes friends with an animal. When it disappears, she can see its figure in her mirror or anything similar. A few days later she received a letter in her friend’s handwriting. She learns then that the animal and her new friend are the same.
A girl wakes up one morning with a vague sense of panic. She goes to her computer and searches news feeds on a website called Halloween Daily News. She learns that Halloween took place last night in her city, but she hasn’t remembered a thing because she’s in a coma.
A woman is on a quest to find all of the dolls that were once loved by her deceased sister with the help of the woman who bought the dolls at an auction.
During a game of truth or dare, a group of friends accidentally end up summoning a demonic cat that haunts them to this day.
A woman returns to her hometown on Halloween night. When she takes a walk down an old trail in the woods, she finds a wooden cabin. There is a candle burning inside. She decides to go inside. She finds a note “Dinner is served”.
A priest hears five confessions from five different people, each wanting to reveal their sin—murder. When the priest learns what he has already told the others, he is horrified.
A young couple asks their friend if they can stay in his guest room for a while to save money. Strange occurrences and sound effects have them wondering what they’re getting into.
A man is accused of stealing the soul of a local girl. He’s shocked and tells the man that he’s innocent. But what can he do when the girl’s soul is hidden in his shadow?
Someone wins a Halloween costume challenge and is tasked to take the costume and its implications to the next level. The “harmless” costume becomes threatening.
A psychic devises a way to allow spirits to inhabit her granddaughter. She dies, but her consciousness lives on in the body of her granddaughter.
A video goes viral on YouTube of a woman brushing her hair in front of her mirror that leads viewers to believe that the woman is a 13 year old girl who killed her entire family with an ax. But people are forgetting that that video was made yesterday.
A photographer stumbles across a trash heap of vampire dolls where they were supposedly destroyed by an evil religious group before burning them. The photographer takes them in to sell.
A girl goes hiking in the mountains and ends up in a cave full of dead corpses. Her only option is to spend the night there and wait for help to find her.
A 17 year-old visits his cold aunt’s house, as she had promised to let him see his recently departed grandmother one last time. He sees his grandmother, but she’s dead.
An ancient Cypress tree hidden away in an abandoned, gloomy cemetery proves to be especially frightening when the birds laying eggs beneath it grow to be large birds with misshapen, fowl-looking faces that make sounds unlike any other bird’s typical calls.
Later that night, the victims awaken and explore the house. They find a holy crucifix and a Bible. By dawn, the vampires are destroyed.
A coach is brought to court because his football team has been hitting people with special studs in their helmets. They’re accused of redshirting.
A group of children play a prank on one of their teachers and during the prank something goes horribly wrong. Everyone but the victim died that night.
A werewolf and his pack of wolf men must evade hunters as they try to keep one of their pack members safe.
A mother and her pregnant teenage daughter are terrorized by a masked killer at a nightmarish carnival.
Two high school teens go into the basement of an abandoned house to smoke pot. When they hear noises coming from the basement, they begin to hear strange and frightening noises that can only mean death is near.
A lonely woman finds a girl sitting at a park bench across from her window. The girl stares at her and the woman soon begins to notice that her craze is expanding slowly… like a black cloud in the background.
A girl is forced to ride in a white van or else they will kill her boyfriend who they have locked in the van. She gets into the back of the van and locks it from the inside. When she turns around she spies a stranger who was also forced into the van.
A struggling writer moves into a refurbished house next door to a wealthy but mysterious novelist. The terrible secret behind the house is revealed.
A woman takes the wrong elevator at work. She descends instead of ascending and soon finds herself in a dark place like no other. There, the monstrous creatures of the world await her.
A young man joins his father on a quest to make an army of fire breathing puppet dragons to enslave the world. The man’s father is dead.
Two young boys find themselves lost in the woods and are attacked by a gruff man. One of the boys is saved by an old man, who magically transforms the other boy into a doll.
Maya Ward cowers under her favourite blanket as she reads to herself her favourite horror story. However, she soon realizes the story is becoming real!
A king who was once human in medieval times and his queen decided to take a stroll through town. While they were out, they noticed the peasants looking down at the ground. Curious as to what they were looking at, they went to investigate. The peasants pointed to their feet and the king and queen gasped to see that they themselves had turned to stone. Luckily, they had children and they immediately took the children to the mages to the north to have them fight a spell placed upon their parents so that their parents would remain alive. The townspeople raised money to bring back their king and queen with the stipulation that they would no longer like to take strolls through town.
A group of campers are kidnapped by Bigfoot and given a hormone replacement to make them look like Bigfoot.
A man is released from jail on Halloween to celebrate in a haunted house. His cellmate disappears, leaving a jet black car parked on the front lawn. When the house is finally emptied of all its inhabitants, he realizes the answer to all his problems – the car is a hearse. Return
A group of guys decide to coupon in a shopping mall when a masked man with a stand up case attacks them with spiked, but plastic, Dallas Cowboy balls.
A young girl has a night-time pill problem because she’s afraid of waking up and seeing her own dead parents all over again.
I just saw a flash of lightning and felt my ears pop. Is it going to storm now and, if so, what time will it start?
A boy has always wondered if his dad killed his mom. On the day of the 25th birthday, his father appears and confesses the murder. The only problem is that not only was the mother actually a vampire but his dad recently unknowingly underwent the transformation into one himself.
A clown appears at a kid’s carnival where toys are being handed out to people. The clown is handing out severed limbs.
Dead bodies are found behind an unknown woman’s front door. Years earlier, her abusive parents killed her entire family.
A man is framed for a crime he didn’t commit. As he begins his life in prison, he’s approached by someone who works in the prison and offers to get him out of prison in exchange for getting rid of an inmate haunting a nod in the prison. Naturally, he agrees.
A man is stung by a scorpion then begins to experience the heightened sensory abilities of a scorpion.
An old man is pleased that his children have found mates, and wants to make sure that they have the perfect first date, so he turns them into hobos to see them get along.
A terminally ill girl with crutches walks backwards through a graveyard. Along the way she meets people she knows who died. Her healthy sister who died becomes normal again.
After being locked in the basement all night by his family, a young man replaces the fuses he blew out to get back to his room. He gets to climbing the stairs, only to find a doll on the top step. He reaches down and picks it up, and the doll springs to life in his hand, clamping onto his neck. The doll drains him of his blood.
A mad mob terrorizes a community and lacerates people’s faces in a night of wild, Halloween madness.
A teenage girl goes to a party behind her parent’s back. What she experiences will change her life forever.
A woman visits a therapist she knows to be a vampire. She hopes he will be able to help her. But instead, he makes her into a vampire too, and she joins his harem of other women who attend to him.
A young woman invites an optimistic salesman into her home after eyeing him in the rain. Unbeknownst to the salesman he is about to have more than he bargained for.
One Halloween night, one girl decides to break inside a grave not knowing who or what she’ll find inside.
A man is brutally murdered by his wife/boyfriend/husband for cheating on him/her. And then it turns out to be true… sort of.
A teenage girl is invited by her popular best friend to go with her on a camping trip. The trip is only for two girls and they are going to be alone. When they get to the spot in the forest everything changes. They are not camped alone in the forest.
A teenage girl accepts a date with a married man. After dinner, the man shows his true colors and the girl goes on a scary, surrealistic adventure.
A man takes a trip to the Theater. The movie they’ve selected is delightfully spooky. He ends up regretting that decision.
A man is climbing the foreign mountain when he comes across a tiny doll house. He investigates to find dozens of tiny dolls inside. They stare at him, without the blink of an eye, as if waiting for something.
Orphans are forced by their cruel master to stay in the attic of his spooky mansion during Halloween.
College students home for the summer are tricked by a witch into entering her haunted house. But the children soon suspect a trick is being played on them and they are actually moving into the witch’s house.
A demon hunter has run out of luck and is now trying to raise a gaggle of grandchildren with her little life savings.
Tourists travel to the small town of Leighton to see the famed motorcycle stunt ruins. What poor souls soon learn is that some histories are better left undiscovered.
The king of a nation submits his daughter to become an evil witch’s apprentice as a trade for political alliances.
A girl is upset when she finds out that her fiancée is seeking cosmetic surgery so that he looks exactly like her previous lover. She wishes that she’d never sought him out in the first place. She soon sees the light.
A young soldier in the Vietnam war is transported back to the early 50’s. After an unfortunate event, he is back in the war torn Vietnam.
A reporter goes to interview a scientist about nanobots working in unison to repair living tissue. Before she can ask any questions, he decides to show her. He takes his own finger off and watches it grow back before her eyes.
Another Halloween story, this time a girl is viciously attacked by what appears to be a werewolf. She survives. But now she has lycanthropy. What will she do with it?
A group of teenagers who have all been suspended from school approach the school bus’ back door after dark, only to find that it is open. Something grabs their school bus driver from the back with force.
A man follows the sound of music emanating from an old record player. He sees a mysterious phantom soldier step out of the record player. The soldier pulls him inside.
A creepy old lady visits her daughter and grandchild every five years to keep them good. However, one year she comes oddly late. The daughter knows that soon the last child won’t be left alone.
The whole town is mysteriously shrouded by fog. People disappear. No one knows where the fog originates from, only that there is a man on a hill. You know who that is.
A teacher instructs her students to write a story on how they died and she discovers that one or some of them are already dead. Even one principal goes missing and the narrator discovers that the school is a tokong place.
A bank robbery goes awry when the robber trips over a pumpkin and sprains his ankle. Hours later, a weird looking man with a swollen ankle turns himself into the police, reporting that he killed the cashiers in the vault.
Friends on a camping trip discover a hideous creature at their campsite. The creature looks like a wizened gorilla skinned man with the remains of long, sharply spiked chains matted in matted stringy hair. They soon learn that the creature is more than Halloween decoration, it’s a voodoo priest.
A woman is attacked in the forest by Bigfoot, but he only wants one thing. He bites her and infects her. She begins to evolve into a Sasquatch.
A backwater town where a group of teenagers and the town sheriff are infected with a madness that makes them all want to jump off of a cliff.
A lonely and shy person finds a shop where the man behind the counter can grant his every desire. For a short time, he thinks things are going great until he realizes there’s a price to pay for every wish.
While on a drive at midnight through the desert, a girl thinks she spies a winky dog on the side of the road, she stops to fetch it, only to find a write-off car. Someone is inside. What’s their story?
A girl is scared by her brother and his friends who hang her out of the window and threaten to drop her off at an old house next door.
A group of friends who are avid viewers of the videos sent in to an online paranormal show happen upon a house that actually IS haunted. They’re going to investigate the house, but not all of them will come back out.
A boy struggles with bullying on a school bus. To get back at his aggressors, he creates “Charlie”, an imaginary friend. Soon Charlie takes on a life of his own. And his good friend’s imaginary friend is now his personal weapon.
A newish teacher is hired to teach in an elementary school, has little experience, and starts hearing horrible screams from another teacher who is being tortured with barbs.
A man in ragged clothes is on the doorstep of a house of millionaires inviting them to donate to the poor. It turns out he’s actually a time displaced rich man who lived during the Gilded Age.
Two groups of friends on opposite sides of a conflict find themselves trapped in an abandoned hotel. The only way out is to defeat each other.
A college girl gets invited to a Halloween party by someone she met on a dating website. The party is being held in a rundown house in the woods. After recounting her story to her friends, the news report breaks in to say that the house she mentioned has burned down and that she’s the only survivor.
A man tells a tale about “the hook hand man”. A hook man who lives beside the railroad tracks. And who tortures neighborhood pets before eating them.
One man isolates himself and decides to quit drinking and smoking after an accident. One night his fear of aloneness turns into fear of other people and he begins to chum around with strange men. One night he even goes home with one of the men and while most experience the best butt they’ve played with in quite some time, one other man never hears that laugh again.
A guy takes a long, dark ride home from a concert. He sees someone pull up to him at a red light . . . and it’s none other than his one true love from twenty years ago. Of course, she is dead. But she wants to get close to him in the worst of ways.
A man records a movie scene on his cell phone but it’s not the one he intended to. It captures a murder and a bad killing.
Someone is walking around with an axe in the middle of the night and loves chopping wood. He’s looking for his next victim.
A boy finds a fish. He notices the fish is staring back at him. He tosses the fish back but begins noticing strange changes in him.
An accountant is caught on camera stealing millions of dollars from his employer. They confront him and demand a return of the stolen money. He agrees, but soon they hear he was killed in a car accident that same night. The tail lights and tires marks of the car he was in melted into glowing puddles of slag.
Your curiosity leads you to explore a cave deep in the woods where a dinosaur man is chained. And he just wants to play…
A family of tourists go on an unusual and impromptu visit to Graceland, Elvis’s home. They make eye contact with his corpse.
A teenager finds a wooden box in her attic. As she opens the box, she looks into an old mirror therein. A scarecrow-like girl appears and tells the teenager her greatest fears. If the teenager fails to tell the girl the fears, the boy will be cursed forever.
A young teenage girl is possessed by a powerful demon that turns her into a viral Halloween monster, gaining control over all of her senses. Her friends have to find a way to stop her before she kills the entire town.
A girl that has a deadly secret. A boy that has a forbidden love. Does a ghost from the boy’s past really exist? Or is it all in his head?
A man is kidnapped and is drugged with a hallucinogenic drug that puts him into limbo between life and death. When he’s eventually found, his body is twisted and contorted. Most of his internal organs have distorted out of his body through every open orifice… including his mouth.
A new writer, Paul, helps his parents with the newspaper. One day, Papa, the newspaper editor, tells Paul to take the car to deliver some papers, because his back hurts. When Paul is walking alone in the dark, he is attacked by a hairy, rabid monster.
A little boy and his older brother are on their way to Grandma’s house for Halloween night. While driving cross-country, a monster shows up in their windshield. This monster can speak, but only the younger brother can see, hear, and speak with it.
An old farmer moves to the city and starts a pumpkin farm. One day he tells city people that pumpkins bleed.
A young woman is fired as an executive and then demoted to balloon-girl at a mall. Afterward, she becomes convinced the balloons are alive and plotting against her.
While babysitting, what are parents to do when their seemingly innocuous children dine-and-dash followed by a violent home invasion? And why is the one kid who was going out dressed to death?
A teenage girl doesn’t want to go to the big Phantom of the Opera concert, so she goes to a concert on a smaller stage instead. Big mistake.
A young girl moves into a haunted dollhouse that belonged to her grandmother. One night she hears a voice coming from the dollhouse. It’s a clown. Terrified as she runs out of the house she turns just as the dollhouse collapses. Inside, the clown curses and he breaks out of his confines. His eyeballs fall out of their sockets like marbles. His lower jaw falls off to reveal sharp fiendish teeth. He opens his mouth and emits a deafening roar.
A babysitter asks the kids if they want to check out the basement just to see the deep red walls. Naturally they say yes. She leads them down into the basement, down the steps, and casually tosses a match and suddenly it burns up in blue flames. Only then do the kids find out that her entire face is a big, nasty wound. She looks like Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas but has a little top hat and crushes craniums with a hammer.
Two salespeople travel door-to-door selling fake antiques to residents for a markup, and are surprised to find out that they are being haunted by the ghosts of their customers as revenge for selling their souls. You’re gonna smell a nice dusting of brimstone!
The characters check into a foreign hotel for the night, only to discover that no one else speaks the same language.
An artist becomes obsessed with a sculpture he creates that will bring his family dearly departed back to life.
A father will stop at nothing so his teenage daughter is made the homecoming queen. He’s a demonic clown, only his daughter is in love with him.
An old map of a fort is found and a hunting party goes there looking for buried treasure. They find something much different.
A killer is loose at a local boiled peanut store. It targets the shop owner Justice and a regular who works at the store Margo.
A new prison is opened and the warden is a fan of the profession of the inmates. She lets the inmates roam freely when they’re not active. Most of the staff is fearful and nervous. One day one of the staff snaps.
An amusement park disappears in the middle of the night. Years later hordes of children go missing within twenty miles of the amusement park.
The air conditioning in a hotel malfunctions and the weather outside is unusually hot. The guests in the hotel are stuck and have to remain in the building for a full week. It’s up to them to make the best out of the situation. Unfortunately, a killer might be among them.
A patient going in for minor surgery gets food poisoning and begins to hallucinate, turning what was supposed to be a minor surgery into a terrifying ordeal.
Searching for his son after an earthquake, a man gets lost. Eventually, he finds help in an unlikely place…
A new and slightly nerdy kid in school turns out to be really sensitive to people’s auras. And he can also read their minds. The more he gets exposed to the stress, negativity and evil in people’s minds, the more powerful he becomes.
A woman obsessed with mummies writes a fictional story about Atlantis, and returns to find the world underwater. When the Atlanteans finally come to the surface, it sure isn’t the picnic she’d planned.
A bunch of teenagers discover a strange box in the back of their old abandoned foreclosed home. Within the box are strange and cryptic notes. When they read them, something happens and a horrific event occurs involving their best friend, who was missing.
A young man goes to a haunted house to spend the night and learns why it is known as a “haunted” house.
Returning home, during your morning commute, a person in the other lane begins flashing their high beam lights at you at exactly the same time, each morning on the same stretch of road.
When the kids come home from trick or treating they realize that whatever candy the houses they visited gave them was poison and they will most likely die unless they can find a medicine that will counteract the weird effects caused by the poison.
In things-that-go-bump-in-the-night mythology, evil witches love to steal children away. Soon after babysitting is called for.
A teen girl who is a YouTube vlogger goes to a children’s Halloween Party. But on the way there she promises to not reveal anything about the place she is about to visit … or else.
A man wakes in a hospital and realizes that he has undergone some sort of strange surgery. His organs have been swapped and he is being used as a human piggy bank for the company who performed the procedure.
A brother must find a way to take his sister to the hospital or leave her behind as he runs from the monster that has haunted their home.
A janitor in an asylum late at night hears screams of horror. He rushes to an office and can’t find anything and starts to leave. As he does so, he hears a narrative of the agony the person must be feeling by almost reliving the experience. It turns out to be an old radio. He turns it off and realizes it’s newest resident, a murderer who believed that murdering others on Halloween made him the real-life incarnation of the Devil. He went free, but the story-teller is him.
A bride-to-be visits a bridal wear place to try on a strapless gown. She’s given a gown she did not ask for. She discovers too late it’s really a straitjacket.
An evil spirit works its way into a haunted house and builds a supernatural construct from the surrounding emotional negative energy of the victims who died there.
A woman is so despondent over her boyfriend cheating on her, that she performs a voodoo ritual to make him hot for her. He is and guess who he chooses to sleep with.
A young man invites all of his friends to spend the weekend at his remote cabin. His friends soon figure out that he has way, waaaaaay too much time on his hands.
A teenager and his friends visit his grandmother’s creepy old house and discover a locked room where he finds his grandmother’s diary. Written in the diary are stories of witchcraft and satanic rituals.
A woman with agoraphobia wants to join the neighbors for their Halloween party. Reluctantly, she is taken to the party in the trunk of a car.
One hot summer day a group of teenagers are hanging out at their friend’s lake house when they discover a secret basement. It is here that they unwittingly release an ancient water monster.
A criminal is brought to an old abandoned prison in order to perform a procedure that could make his execution and spiritual life become almost instantaneous.
The sister of a town Sheriff feels a presence in their family’s basement. And it’s not a nice chirping sound.
Someone sees yet another fake moon in the sky. But, this one is real. And when you look at it, you’re cursed. When you fall asleep, your body is stolen from you and your hand is the only thing that can prevent you from falling asleep forever.
A girl is bothered by a school bully. Then one day, he eats some eggs that came from a lunch she was saving for trick-or-treating the next day…
After abandoning a baby in the woods, a family claims they are unlucky. A town’s sheriff agrees that the guilt they feel is due to being such bad people and dispatches the lead male to meet them in the woods at dawn to take the baby from them. A strange animal attacks the man and the lead male vanishes. Meanwhile, the sheriff’s wife goes missing. He ventures into the woods to find his family. Tables begin to turn when the beast is revealed…
A girl receives a terrifying gift on Halloween. She thinks it’s a baby doll with red button eyes, but the doll is actually the reincarnation of a dead witch who needs her soul.
Three people working the night shift together at an overnight call center get more than they bargained for when prank calls become real with frightening consequences.
A girl is invited over to a friend’s house for tea. The girl is led into a room and told to sit in a chair. She soon realizes that she is dying.
A man stumbles upon an old book. Within the pages of this book he finds incantations to conjure spirits. He performs a summoning on a dare, opens the portal and unleashes an ancient spirit.
At a haunted house that opened on Halloween, all employees abruptly quit. They refuse to explain why other than to say that something dark lives in the house, and it wants them.
A serial killer is at large and his latest murders take the form of Halloween ghosts, ghouls and monsters.
A recently deceased author best known for writing scary stories gets his chance to see the effect of his work in reality.
Several nursery rhymes are actually boot camp songs for monsters coming into town to abduct children. One evening, a woman awakens after a disturbing dream about the songs, only to discover that her children have been kidnapped by an evil nursery rhyme. The characters of the rhymes narrate the storyline.
A man reads the obituary of an old enemy and laughs. However, that’s the last time his face can open as it likes so much to do. The man’s face is ossifying in anger as he reads on.
A man doesn’t pay attention to the strange calls of fellow people. For soon he finds he’s stuck in a fairy’s magical garden of time. A garden where time stands still and the seconds continually turn into minutes.
Susie loves her new doll given to her by her mother. But when strange things start happening, she questions the doll’s sinister intentions.
A father buys his daughter a doll for her 4th birthday. She dies in a freak accident the following day. Shaken and guilt ridden, the father orders a doll similar to the one his daughter received from his undead wife. When it arrives, the father notices something strange about the doll. And soon, he discovers its deadly secret.
A young woman is drugged and wakes up next to a strange man in bed. The man reveals that he is the love child that her mother had decades ago. She had given him up for adoption but he’d used a false name when doing so and didn’t reveal his true identity to her. So he is back for revenge.
A babysitter changes a scary movie on the television. The family didn’t know they were watching their relatives being murdered.
A teenage girl finds out that she is dating a half-demon who is also a serial killer that needs to be put down.
A young man traveling home by train has to share his sleeping compartment with a mysterious woman who frightens him. But the man soon realizes that the woman is an actual legend come to life.
A man has moved to a new neighborhood and wants to fit in. His new neighbor helps him get everything he needs to be friends with the neighbors.
A spooky doll lives in an antique clock repair shop. When a customer comes in, strange events start to happen.
A young socially awkward boy befriends a group of bullies in his new middle school, in the hopes that they can protect him from the other kids on the bus ride home. It works for a while until they turn the tables and start using him for his strange wit.
A woman visits a fortune teller and is startled when the fortune teller tells her something frightening about her past.
A young woman goes to a new age shop and gets a tarot card reading. The cards reveal her future and why she will die.
A set of twins receive dreadful news after finding a diary their troll of an uncle left behind and buried in the backyard.
As a teenager growing up in the 80s, the narrator begins experimenting with playing with a ouija board. He’s actually able to contact the dead, but he’s quite disappointed to discover that ghosts are one-dimensional.
Rapists and murders are all over the news lately. A town in America takes a liking to one of their own serial killers because of the way he murders them. He manages to execute the murderer and then leads the town in killing their own friends and family.
A couple struggles to control their son who has fallen prey to an evil entity which has killed many others. To free his son, he’ll have to battle the entity in an epic showdown.
A man lends a friend a cult horror movie to watch for the night. Shortly after returning it, the friend and his wife vanish without a trace. The husband’s friends investigate, and find that the film is cursed.
An old woman discovers a green skinned man, naked and sick, on her porch. He begs for help, but all he’s done is threaten people in town if they fail to spread the word of his supposed immortality.
A man learns a local woman was murdered decades ago by a cult. He investigates further and soon discovers he has become the cult’s latest sacrifice.
A detective seeking clues to a case finds a video on his camera that was never recorded. It’s a video of a murder that happened right before there was a power outage.
A teacher in a teacher-student relationship bonds with a voluptuous student. Only the teacher is a vampire.
A man has been looking in the mirror one day while getting ready for work, when he suddenly starts to see his reflection rot, decay and turn into a leering skeleton.
A group of high school seniors get together on a rainy Halloween night to play a prank on an unpopular girl. They imprison her in the deep basement of the high school where a long ago satanic sacrifice happened.
A seventy-five year old newlywed couple thinks that their love is strong enough to overcome any obstacles. But then the wife feels like she is losing her husband, one pound at a time.
A teenaged boy walking alone at night finds an old blood-stained urn. Suddenly when he looks at it a man jumps out. Yes, the man is the buried spirit in the urn and he tries to possess the teenager’s body.
An entity comes from another dimension and possesses a young boy’s body. He’s tormented by preachers, priests, and other believers of God. He’s haunted by demons and tries to save all souls around him. Or, he simply tries and fails to save his own.
A group of friends all want to go on a ghost hunting trip at a haunted asylum located in the mountains. Each night, their guide disappears to go have an encounter with the ghosts. Only to return in the morning. And only one of the friends goes missing each night.
A group of campers held back by a forest find their way partially through it is blocked by a room made of living brambles. The walls are coated in webbing with the names of the people they bring with them to keep them trapped inside.
The police department receives an anonymous call about a murder taking place at the local insane asylum. An officer goes to investigate and runs into a young nurse who tells a horrible tale of abuse and torture the inmates are capable of.
A young woman moves into a new apartment complex and finds that she has trouble falling asleep. It turns out that her new neighbors are ghosts and they have a problem with the walls.
A girl hosts the school dance in an old theater. Something unusual and terrifying rolls the giant screen.
Three friends get lost on a trip into the woods and come across a shack with a light glowing inside. As they peer through the window in hopes of being able to get help they see a family of horrible creatures eating another creature. They helplessly witness the event until the creatures forget they’re at the window. They attempt to leave quietly but then forget their friend is off the trail. They hide the body in the nearby woods. The friend comes to and follows them and sees the body.
A principal of a school gets a promotion. A few days into the next school year he walks into his office only to see unexplainable messages burned into his desk and chair from a lighter. When the letters/numbers rearrange to form a new sentence it’s something’ personal about him. What happens next makes him wish he never became a principal of the school.
A stalked woman escapes with her life but is later found hanged. Turns out she was being haunted by an evil entity.
In an asylum for the criminally insane, a therapist tries to help a madman kill his imaginary friend. Turns out the friend isn’t imaginary.
A group of campers is attacked by a man with a gun, although he cannot be hurt by bullets. The residents of a nearby town learn that a creature has been killing their cows and the living night creatures are beginning to be afraid of the daylight.
When looking for a babysitter to watch her little brother, Lucy meets a nice old man. Only to discover when it’s time to leave her brother that the old man is just a disguise and Lucy’s brother is just hiding under the bed!
A horror movie director and his crew arrive at a local village to shoot their scary movie. The villagers slowly realize that what the film director is making is their new reality.
A woman hitchhiking on a dark road is picked up by a creepy man who raped and murdered many women. He cannot control his urges and reveals to her that he has kidnapped 10 women in his basement.
A man moves into an old and spooky house. He starts hearing creepy songs coming from the next room. Finally he breaks down the door. What he finds is that the walls are made up of 10,000 clock hands.
A man wakes up in a tomb. He can see the reflection of the sky outside. He knows that it’s daylight.
A young boy acquires a haunted Ouija board from his neighbor. His older brother and sister become obsessed with using the board but suddenly stop when it’s discovered that a malevolent spirit has co-opted the device.
A townspeople meet a sorcerer or warlock and after an exchange of words, the sorcerer spits a weird milky liquid at the townspeople and disappears out of sight. A few days later, the townspeople find it difficult to control their emotions, get unbearable grudges against each other and their skin stretches so hard, it changes their appearance.
A mentally-disabled man is told by his mother that they are part demon and that every year they slaughter all the children in the town for their blood.
A missing person is found cut up or buried in Halloween decorations, both fake and store bought. The killer used his trusty bloody chainsaw to do his dirty work.
A group of friends are trapped in an active mine. While spending a few nights underground, they become aware of strange pounding outside their room. They come to the frightening realization that they are about to be spooked.
A woman going to visit her boyfriend misses a turn. She ends up in a small town in the heart of the desert. The desert is home to cannibals and she will be the main attraction at their next banquet.
A man is invited to a video conferencing call. Waiting for him at the call is his fiancé who turns out to be a doll. She forces him to tear her apart at the request of someone. No one is on the line anymore.
A strange landslide causes a natural disaster. Many people are stranded there with a mysterious group of weird people that time seems to have forgotten.
A witch casts a spell upon a family so that they can never leave the house. A chance sighting of a well belonging to the witch breaks the spell.
A special forces soldier wakes up in an abandoned house. He’s tied to a bed and a couple of men tell him that if he screams they’ll slit his girlfriend’s throat.
A group of travelers meet to take a tour of a haunted castle. The castle turns out to be haunted and the travelers are trapped.
A young woman falls in love with a handsome stranger after meeting him in a bar. Later, he takes her home and she discovers he’s actually an X-Files style insectoid monster.
A bride-to-be spends the night before her wedding with her fiancé. Soon, they hear strange noises, and a man starts banging on the door to the bedroom. They don’t know that the man is a disgraced book author who’s bitter that his books were never made into movies.
A woman about to be executed is horrified to learn that they are going to use a special method – a hammer stickers around her heart to the wood and then decapitation.
There’s a terrible dearth of children in a given village and one villager decides to conduct some weird experiments. She wants to create a new race and succeeds but then that race wants to kill everyone else.
A night watchman tells the tale of the ghostly things he’s seen in the darkness, including a mysterious figure with glowing eyes.
Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween “Phenomena”. A couple moves to a new house, they share the house with a killer/monster.
A kid brings home a new pet from a dog shelter. That pet grows up to be the size of an elephant within weeks once he enters puberty.
A man obsessed with special effects spends his evenings looking for scary stories online and collaborating with other amateur filmmakers to edit a new horror movie using clips of everyday people. Surprised by what appears on his screen, he learns that he’s unwittingly starring in his own film.
A guy moves into a new apartment and finds that some terrible event happened there three years ago. He also finds a scary doll in the closet. Also, this is a Stephen King book.
A well-respected and well-loved priest is closing the doors to his church. But not for good. He’s giving it away as a prize for the ‘best reason to keep a church open ’.
A recently divorced, single father decides to bring his 5 year old son to a community college where he’ll be tutoring. On the way home, they see a car speeding from campus. Realizing it’s the father of one of his students. They pick him up. After picking up his weeping filthy son, the married father with the child looks very suspicious to his ex. She wonders if they could be a family. Her ex shows up to pick up the child, and she’s horrified to find that her ex is also in on the crime.
A ghost visits a children’s hospital in order to show that death is just the beginning to a happily ever after.
A man arrives at Emerald City in search of a new start but things get strange. And then mob mentality descends him as he’s implicated in a murder.
A fortune teller asks her clients if they want to see their future on Halloween. The future she shows them is Armageddon. No one knows, though, that that future will come.
A parent goes crazy and does terrible things to their child. They claim they were told by someone else to do it or they did it under the influence of evil spirits.
A bunch of teens wake up trapped inside abandoned hospital rooms with thick concrete floors. Every door is locked, every light is out, and their nightmare has just begun.
Scrawled on the wall in a children’s clubhouse is this message. It’s the warning of a serial killer targeting young girls.
A family adopts a German Shepherd with the mindset that their daughter’s death was just an accident and not suicide. The daughter wants to move on.
A man comes home very late from a night of partying to find that his family is dead. They have been slaughtered and left for him.
A young woman goes into an old hardware store looking for a replacement part for her old blender. The store is owned by Freddy Krueger. He says he doesn’t carry that part.
Only Muggles can see dementors in their true form. Otherwise, they are always hidden among an unsuspecting populace.
In a dark movie theater, everyone is rowdy and noisy except one person. The lights go out, and the person starts eating people in the audience.
A custodian at school finds an old dusty box that he thinks contains nothing of importance. But he soon learns that he could not be so wrong.
A man buys a new house that has been sitting uninhabited for a while. While cleaning the attic, he finds several diaries kept by the former owner… a serial killer.
An ice man enters a small town and starts bringing things to life, ancient enemies are released, etc.
After receiving a cell phone from her mother, a girl finds out that her mother was actually murdered and now uses the phone as a means of website tracking.
A horror music fan has an obsession kinda like that of Michael Myers, except the man hasn’t drowned a dog or had plastic surgery. He just listens to music in his empty house with a garbage bag over his head. And he has a knife.
A man whose wife was killed in a horrific accident starts dating his wife’s twin sister, but it turns out that she’s a ghoul and wants to eat him.
A kindly old shopkeeper insists on giving a customer a job as opposed to a receipt for a returned item. The job? He has to kiss a scary skeleton doll in the storeroom to find five delicious Morsels.
A cursed solid gold watch that opens a door to a realm of pure evil knocks off the hands of a truck driver, attacking him because the hands moved backward. Now he has 12 hours to find a way to toss that watch into the sea before he dies by it.
A girl, Sean Bean, chases a love interest for hundreds of miles using a giant snowball, only to realize he’s been enchanted by a much more powerful person behind the scenes. The end is especially brutal.
A young boy goes into a toy store and brings home a special wind-up toy. Unlike many other toys, it seems to have a life of its own, strong enough to override the boy’s ability to wind-it-up on Halloween night.
An old man hires a young woman to be his nurse. He recently lost a family member and blames himself for not resuscitating the family member quickly enough. What Gris never told anybody is that Gris is a werewolf and when he turns full moon he terrorizes the community.
A haunted doll is discovered in a used clothing store. Summer proceeds to install the doll on her laptop’s screensaver. The doll soon starts possessing her computer and the computer of anyone in Summer’s contact list.
A girl is out with her friends and meets a boy who lives in a menacing house…and the first one to tell a scary story wins the prize. And she has to share her story in order to win.
After making a deal with the devil, a group of boys kills a homeless man but they owe the devil much more than expected.
A woman removes her make-up and is shocked to realize she has abnormally long fingernails. She goes to bed and her nails grow and grow, eventually puncturing her bed sheet and she can feel them pushing up against her mattress. She wakes up with shadowy hands reaching up from underneath the bed to grab her.
A girl in a new school is shunned by her peers and gets only closer to the losers. An old woman tells her that “things have been better since she came.” It has something to do with the mist on the fourth floor.
A young girl learns that by concealing her scars under witchcraft she is saving both her hands from her bullies and her friendships as well.
A knock on the door, a stranger is on the other side, wanting to tell you a scary tale. Ignoring the wishes of your parents or watchful friend you let the stranger in the door. The stranger then tells you the story about a family road trip that went horribly wrong.
A ghost in the form of a rotting corpse whispers your name and waits for you to enter the cemetery. If you visit the cemetery on All Hallows’ Eve he will become flesh and terror.
A sailor is freed from a 300 year old curse on All Souls Day, but is not welcomed back to the world of the living…
The previous homeowner of the house that you just bought killed himself one night on the bedroom floor. He was reincarnated as a dirty little sewer rat which begins to murder teens whenever they try to mess around with black magic.
A startled man kills a spider and tosses it in the garbage, but it frees itself and creeps out of the trash bag to attack the man.
An actor finally gets the leading role in a horror film. Only to notice that the characters he portrays follow him wherever he goes.
A group of college kids unleash a popular fraternity prank that goes terribly wrong and quickly unravels.
A woman has the ability to hypnotise. She brings one lucky victim home, strips him, revives him, and seduces him. The only problem is something is off and the face in the mirror isn’t his own.
A group of teens head out for camping on Halloween night. They end up at an abandoned campsite decorated to Halloween perfection. The teens are stalked by supernatural entities.
A girl is trapped and confined in a room of an old abandoned house by a malevolent force that haunts the house. She tries to figure out how to escape, but it’s harder than she ever thought possible.
A shack in a field is being used for a satanic ritual. A teenager intruding on the ritual in the middle of the night learns that ‘satanic ritual’ is really just a scare tactic. Satan really does exist. With a loyal, hungry following.
A boy and a girl go camping, but their plans are cut short when they see a large bear near the campsite. They dash to their truck to investigate, but the bear moves towards them quickly. They narrowly escape the bear’s presence, only to discover the bear is really a person in costume.
A boy discovers that the gruesome Halloween decorations on the local businesses’ windows are the real inky skin of children.
A scientist is working on an experiment that involves talking to ghosts. It works but she begins to fall apart.
An old man is at home by himself on Halloween night. He’s visited by a dark specter. He may be dead.
A treasure hunt. Everyone who has ever tried has died at some point, but then again, the treasure is a lot bigger than all of their fears.
And there ya go. If you like these ideas and would like more, you can grab the vampire in my Covenant series for free online. It’s a work in progress, but what’s there is plenty filled with bloodsuckers. That work will eventually be polished and be available with a price, of course.
A policeman sees a severed head in the trunk of a car. The trunk slams shut and when he gets back outside, children are approaching him.
A patient’s mental illness manifests itself in their dreams. Their dream world is real. And no one can find the patient.
A boy sneaks out of his window one Halloween night only to find a monster-infested forest beyond his backyard…
Following a hurricane, a family must live on their boat until they can find another place to live. Someday, they notice strange behavior from a family that lives near their boat. The family is a bunch of Creole witches. When the witches start to attempt to steal the family’s young daughter, they must take action.
A young woman dies on the eve of her wedding. On the night of the thirteenth anniversary of her death a nefarious spirit possesses her corpse to re-enact her wedding day.
A group of friends visiting the woods for the weekend are constantly terrorized by a deranged hermit.
Two children are playing with a Ouija board in their room. A ghost with an agenda begins to haunt them.
A mom and teenage daughter travel for a hobby show. Their train route takes a detour of a comic book sounding locale and the daughter soon realizes why.
A horror movie star marries yet another star who has a dark secret. But she doesn’t know what to expect until the honeymoon.
A slightly skeptical man finds evidence of Bigfoot in a video taken by hikers in another part of the country. As people learn of his proof, the pressure kicks in and he begins to seem more and more like places he’s never been. The paranoid thinks that the Bigfoot is in the woods behind his home.
A couple goes camping but they can’t get back to their car. It’s the job of the woman to do the chores like fetch the water. But her water jug is empty… and that noise she keeps hearing seems to be coming from inside the tent.
A doll maker is at a crossroad. She is tired and sick and wants to end the dark pact she made so many years ago, when the first doll left her studio. But she doesn’t know how. To free herself, she must find a replacement. She wants to make a child into a doll, and in the process, find redemption.
The protagonist believes he’s going crazy as he wakes up from a vivid nightmare of monsters devouring his family. He puts a silver disc around his neck that is supposed to keep nightmares away.
An old man known for his outlandish stories about the paranormal takes up residence in an old retirement home for exploitation and deeper into the dark corners.
A magician helps people see into the future, but he has to trick a group of kids into revealing their deepest fears first.
There is a cottage on a rocky cliff overlooking an inlet. The rumor is that it is haunted by a sea-ghost. The owner of the cottage is alleged to have been killed by sea-ghosts.
A group of kids go on an overnight trip, but while sleeping in the woods become trapped in an old house. It’s up to one of the children to rescue the others.
A recently married young woman comes home from her honeymoon to realize something is wrong. Sometimes her husband is there. A dark evil seems to emerge from nowhere. Neither her friends nor her family will believe her.
A kid and his friend play a scary prank on their mothers. But this time the joke goes too far, and the pranksters are kidnapped and taken to a cemetery where monsters live.
A boy has a collection of bugs of the sort that turn the humans they bite into bugs. The boy dies mysteriously, and it is discovered that a bacterium transmitted through the bugs also killed him, forcing him to incorporate the bugs into his skin. Eugenics helps the family to invest in finding the best biting bugs to create a new generation of hunter hunters.
A young girl falls down a well and has to find her way out with the help of a lost girl named Sammy. Sammy is trapped in the well and time is running out. She can’t leave and spend the rest of her life down in that scary well, but she can’t stay either…
A very old man comes to town and starts to take a liking to an especially beautiful girl. The old man defends his intentions by claiming that his intentions are pure. He does not wish to commit adultery. Instead, he says he’s going to remove her heart and place it within his. He proposes marriage!
A burial chamber containing, what at first glance, appears to be mummies is unearthed. Enterprise comes across these ancient mummies. But they aren’t dead.
A husband warns his wife never to enter a certain door they have in their house because he fears that something may come after him if he opens it.
It’s October and you’re taking a walk in the woods. You come across a strange house. It looks abandoned but it looks like it’s moved to a new spot. In the house, duct tape can be seen and you can cut the tape. It peels off the house. You see a frightened girl inside and you help her escape. You take the girl to the police and they’re able to arrest her kidnapper for kidnapping her years ago. You adopted the girl and changed her name to reveal that the girl’s name really is “Xena Killer.”
William Through falls in love with a different girl every day, and on the day that a girl is dead and does not fall in love with him, he goes to kill her maidenly life.
A man who is successful at what he does but isn’t liked is faced with losing what he has worked for when underlings start to turn up dead and try to pin it on him.
A group of college students holds a paranormal investigation to an abandoned part of a prison. They are attacked by inmates who are still living.
A girl is kidnapped in front of her home. When her family arrives home they are beckoned by a neighbor, a person they’ve never met before, to come inside. This person has their child. Watch NOW FULL MOVIE “Upsetting” 2017 online
A man who has just lost his wife in a car accident moves into an old dark house on a hill. One night as he’s looking out the window he sees a young woman staring up at the house from outside. He runs outside to see her. There is nothing there. All the same, she starts to ask for him more and more.
A woman awakens next to a strange man and realizes that she is not free to leave. The man obviously wants revenge on someone – but why is she here?
An approaching army orders everyone in town to vacate or face death. There are mysterious reports of cannibalism among the soldiers. People wonder if they stand a chance against the army.
A traveler meets an old woman at a bar on Halloween night. She wants to tell him her family’s dark secret.
There’s an underground lair in the woods stocked with human bodies preserved in jars. Their killer is a cannibal who hunts hikers and digs for corpses in the nearby graveyard.
A group of friends go to a secluded cabin in the woods and discover a tape recorder with a final message from a young woman who recorded herself while hiding in the cabin from some creatures that killed everyone else in the area.
A group of friends are told by a strange old woman that they must go into the woods late at night and tell three stories, no more and no less, before the sun rises or she will kill them.
A boy murders his abusive father. This murder takes place in a dark and scary basement. The boy’s brother discovers the body and must deal with his emotions.
A young woman gets an unusual letter in the mail from a long-lost friend living in the tropics. She discovers her generosity will soon be rewarded.
A television first reported cases of “ spectral arson” and strange attacks on an old castle. The reporter has no other option but to investigate the strange story himself.
A boy goes missing on his way home from school and his friends receive texts from him. All says he’s being tortured and begs for help. They don’t believe he sent themselves the texts.
“Better check your candy before you discard it” rang in a man’s ears as he pulled into his driveway and noticed a block of salt outside his front door.
A high school nerd gets revenge on his traditional and football playing bullies by making a pact with the devil. And Satan shows up….right at the time of the prom.
A group of teens go on a camping trip to celebrate their school’s spirit week. It doesn’t end too well for them.
A group of teenagers drive to Devil’s Mountain, unaware of the strange and bloody happenings in the abandoned house on its top.
A haunted mirror travels from owner to owner, compelled to hurt anyone looking at it. The spirit in it wanted to be beautiful and for everyone to take notice.
A man awakes to an unfamiliar sense of horror after receiving a modest bird house in the mail to his home. He’s actually a patient in a mental institution. The real reason for his admission becomes clear after opening up the bird house and witnessing an attack by an evil crow.
Two best friends go camping in a remote area in the woods. Nothing goes wrong. Until they both fall in love with the same girl. But she went missing in the woods three years ago, the day they first arrived in the neighborhood.
A girl wakes up in a derelict high school to find herself missing her memories and her identity. It’s been two days since her kidnapping and right before her eyes, she discovers she’s locked in a time-loop. 13 times she’s woken up to find herself at that school, the thirteenth time only two days in the future and exactly backward an hour with two other students and her teacher. But she has figured out who the kidnapper is and has been communicating with the police as the 17-year old boy is going to move on to his captive on Halloween night of all nights.
A man from an old company has taken over a new company with intentions of turning it into a real life haunted house. He hires actors to pretend to be ghosts. Will they go at it alone?
A boy is transported into a book of mythological creatures. The creatures have come to life, and the boy has been absorbed into their world.
A couple discovers a hidden room in their home. And the screams that emanate from that room lead them to find a hidden basement. In this room they find their son. He is dead. But angry about something.
A young man is dating a girl, but he never goes to her place. When he is interviewed about it he doesn’t give a straightforward answer. It turns out they are dating a corpse and the girl fits a body shaped hole in the coffin. He just has to wheel her to the graveyard at night.
A group of friends traveling to visit Top Of The Tower, one of the tallest support towers in the world. They soon wake up in a time when people are terrified of the future and to them technology is something evil and mysterious that is used by only the rich.
A man suffering from amnesia is chased by a mutant two-headed corpse that wants to eat him. The beast will only be sated if its two heads fight each other over the body. A group of satanic high school students use a satanic spell to bring on an apocalypse. Meanwhile, other students must flee from the apocalypse begun by the other group.
A man spots what seems to be Bigfoot, but the man is skeptical when Baby Bigfoot starts talking to him using Baby Sign Language.
A group of friends goes to the snow covered hilltops with hopes of capturing the last few remnants of winter and freezing them for the summer. They discover a little girl who had been living up there all alone for the last 30 years… frozen to death.
A band of theater kids decides to put on a musical about a haunted house with real ghosts. The real trap door and loose ends spell death for the unlucky and unsuspecting. Or lucky, if you’re one of the ghosts!
A police officer captures a serial killer just in time after chasing him down in the middle of a dark road. The serial killer is a vampire. The officer is bitten.
A woman lives alone and doesn’ watch anything on TV except for the local evening news. She seems shocked at all the gruesome news items. Until it turns out that the local station holds a nightly news casting call for vampires!
It’s a dark and stormy -clear night- and a woman living alone in her parent’s old farmhouse kills herself. She tries to keep her existence with the help of a doll that one of her relatives used to own as a child.
A town is trying desperately to solve an epidemic in their streets. Is it the old creepy forest? The house right down the street? A girl who hasn’t been the same since the shooting? No, it’s high school teenagers.
A group of friends like to play a game called “beats” where they hide, then jump out and scare each other. But the game goes wrong when one of them jumps out and disappears.
A girl is locked in an insane asylum and is allegedly and she murdered her characters soon after she murders her patients.
An author writes a story about a haunted RV and ends up having to stay in it for a night. It’s not a story. Things really happen!
A recluse is staying with an uncle when he stumbles upon the being that killed his parents all those years ago. But he decides to forget everything and live the carefree teenage life.
A skeleton is hiding something. It sits on a chair and spins in it while a psychiatrist and his patient talk. Someone knocks on the door.
A teenager thinks her job at the family Halloween store is lame, until she discovers that she may have been cursed. Now the creepy masks that hang on the shop wall look more like mirrors.
A group of bachelor party-goers get lost on the way to Vegas and stumble upon a strange house that’s perfectly preserved in the woods. They decide to have a party there because it has so many beds. Of course, the house is not as empty as it seemed, and what is lurking in its basement changes them all forever.
The girl’s best friend gets pregnant and Elena has to tell her boyfriend the truth about her pregnancy and who the baby really belongs to.
A woman meets the man of her dreams, who loves her so much he can’t bear to be apart for even an hour. Strange? Yes! Why does he prefer to sleep in a bathtub full of iron nails?
A weird Halloween tradition has settled in the woods surrounding a small town/City. If you smile or laugh on Halloween, the walking dead will claim you.
A young couple is asked to babysit for a couple down the street. The couple have vanished. The dolls all have fangs.
A man works over time on Halloween night and is locked in by a group of office funsters. They have devious plans for him.
A man moves into his new house after his wife dies from a sudden illness. Pretty soon the man begins to be haunted by his wife.
People come to the island of the disappearing town. The only person that is still standing is possessed by the spirit of the island.
A shy teenager blamed for murders in his neighborhood is actually the only thing standing between them and a creature that can turn to terrifying black smoke when being threatened.
A man rents a cabin in the Pacific Northwest. He moves in with a family and friend. Strange noises begin to come from the basement.
A woman and her family move into the former home of a mortician. Hooks, creaks, and a sheet-covered mirror… what’s behind that mirror?
A young woman goes to the drug store, but a pharmacist is too flirtatious with her. She tells him to back off and he freaks out and kills her in the store’s parking lot.
The town fears for a serial killer that is on the loose. It turns out that the cops have already met this killer. They don’t realize that he’s invisible at will.
A group of friends go on a haunted camping trip and encounter the spirit of someone who didn’t make it back from the trip before them. She wants revenge.
Siblings rent an old cabin in the woods to tell scary stories. But the cabin is actually not abandoned, and not very nice…
A young boy follows his father to work as a gravedigger. Instead of digging up the deceased as he should, his father is digging out the eyes and closing the flesh off the corpses. The boy gets worried and runs away. He later finds out that his father was not digging up in the cemetery. Instead, he was digging down into a deep dungeon below the graveyard, where a devil lives.
A gruesome murder was committed in an old cell block in the prison. Pipes, electric bulbs and old prison bars still remain in the cell. Signs of the ghost haunt the cell.
A little ghost girl always sleeps in the cupboard, and every Halloween night, she crawls out and looks for love.
Two teenage girls visit their friend in an isolated cabin. They soon realize the cabin is haunted and all is not as it seems. A murderer that escaped from the local asylum is also stalking them.
Two kids go into a haunted house they think is a prank. Needless to say they aren’t disappointed by what gets played on the Jumbotron.
A man is kidnapped by a strange woman, placed into a bubble and trapped. He is forced to learn the ways of the little people. Of which there is very little time to do.
A hiker is attacked and disappears into the woods. Weeks later he returns. He has no idea what happened. And claims to have been somewhere else.
After years and years of making love to corpses, a necromancer develops the ability to bring his lovers back from the dead. A surprise pregnancy soon changes everything.
Friends on a road trip find a giant worm in their car’s engine. Ending up in getting a chainsaw and impaling the two ends of the creature, the friends feel sure it is dead. But the friend who killed the worm soon learns the error of his ways and the worm pops out of the engine to exact his vengeance.
Instead of the cat always landing on its feet, one time it faces unavoidable death — until granted one last wish.
A gatekeeper at an old cemetery has been missing for several days. Some new residents of a neighboring town, who are able to locate him, pick at the bones of their old property and find only a strange, primordial and animated skeleton. They soon learn that a witch is turning the residents of the cemetery into skeletons and the man they discovered is only one example of them.
Jay-Z found an old trunk hidden in an attic in his mansion that has a hideous creature chained in.
A family of murderers takes a woman who just lost her husband and children hostage as they try to mimic the 11-day murders of Jack the Ripper.
A group of pirates have a hard time choosing a person to donate to the plank at the end of the celebration. They choose a vampire and plan to feed from him just before he’s sent off the plank.
A boy convinces his friends to play hide-and go-seek in a house rumored to be haunted. They find a closet where they find the skeleton of a little girl who starved to death after being locked away from all outside contact.
A man develops a phone app based on the story of the 20th Door. He checks it out and finds a new story instead.
Night comes and a girl feels very tired, she walks back to her hotel room. As she goes down the hotel stairs, she notices it’s very dark. As she enters a hallway, the lights light up.
A teenage girl gets a ghost hunting kit for her birthday and whatever she has disturbed with her ghost hunting freaks her out when she comes home one evening.
A mysterious killer might be killing those who frequent the circus. It’s not clear that the killer is a human, but it may be the case in the following terrifying story idea.
A newlywed couple loses power during a devastating thunderstorm that unleashes preternatural creatures on the town.
A man wakes up in bed covered in blood, with a dead woman on the floor beside him. He can’t remember anything from the night before.
A family moves into an old Victorian home just outside of town. Everything is okay for a while, but later the father begins to suspect that there is someone else living in the entrails of the house with the family.
An abandoned mental hospital is repurposed into a maze for haunted Halloween fun. But after hours, the hospital gets really real.
A strange dog has been seen roaming the streets attacking people at random. It looks like a dog but floats in the air.
A guy relates the time when he was a young officer and responsible for the haunting of a nice couple who live on delicious children.
A couple go on an anniversary vacation to a bed-and-breakfast in the mountains. They find themselves entirely secluded and hopeless with no hope of rescue.
A man in days long past attempts to build his own scarecrow and put its corpse to use in his farm. This is actually the corpse of his wife who was executed for witchcraft.
A guy finds well made and expensive looking costumes or masks in his closet and his Halloween decorations and candy is missing. The costumes look like Stevie wonder or blind Mac from rick and morty or a guard from Game of Thrones. They are the exact outfit and down to the details.
An elderly renters, in a new neighborhood, move into what was once a haunted house. The property falls through a loophole by a greedy landlord. So one night long ago, before zoning laws existed, the house was open for tours. The eerie tours go horribly wrong after one night and the bodies that litter the premises disappear. Though of course, that happens a lot on Halloween.
A group of campers have a disturbing run-in with a hobo after spending the night in a deserted house. The hobo turns out to be a demon.
An archaeologist discovers the location of the long lost home of the Aztecs and excavates it and finds a living Aztec.
A group of friends records the reactions of random people after they witness horrific deaths committed by a vengeful spirit.
A creepy ring of children dance around an old house at noon during a full moon. When approached they hiss “Beware the fox,” before disappearing into the woods. The next day the residents of Maybrook discover every fox in the world has disappeared. For good.
At a duty free store, a traveler gets a battery-operated talking doll. The doll has a serious personality disorder and begins to stalk and terrorize the owner.
A young teen is given an antique music box by her estranged grandfather. It ends up becoming possessed.
A young woman’s first date decides to take her to his favorite haunted house attraction at a local fair. However the attraction starts to cause them harm’ and the man has connections to the place or to the monsters.
A young couple buys an old Victorian house where the previous owner murdered his wife. They should have figured this out before moving in. This is dealt with in detail in Jeff Strand’s excellent novel, Cry Wolf .
A deity of death decides to put to rest all good souls in the town before Halloween and Christmas. All he needs is someone to pick up said souls to his underground tunnel. A hitman is hired to push a lot of people off their balconies in various cities so as to free up the space required to host the souls. He fulfills his job one body at a time.
A person’s aunt is found dead. As she is a witch, she states that she has to be cremated while she’s still alive.
A tourist visits a small New England town for the day and spits out his iced tea and faints once he learns how the town treats their poor citizens.
Strange lights are seen at night in a small town but upon further inspection are discovered to be the ornate headstones of dead children.
An author invites his fellow horror-fan friends over to his house to watch his latest movie, but they soon discover that the movie contains footage of them being killed one by one.
Girl wants a new pair of shoes for Halloween so her mother tells her to fill a list of chores. But when the girl arrives late to school after completing all the chores, she tells her teacher that her mother ate the shoes.
Some kind of creature is haunting inside an abandoned house and feeding on the curious thrill-seekers who visit the dilapidated place.
A group of boys are terrified when they reveal that the monster in their town is actually the groundskeeper of the cemetery who has vampiric tendencies.
Nightmares haunt Claire, disturbing her sleep. Night after night she dreams of being haunted by living, decaying dolls in her home. Are the dolls alive, and melting? Or are they dead, and haunting Claire from beyond the grave?
A young man discovers he can levitate when he feels no fear. But every time he levitates his mind controls his flight, no matter which direction he wants to go.
A jealous ghost follows a beautiful cheerleader everywhere she goes, and eventually kills her. She is found dead the next morning, her body drained of blood.
An unpopular student loves a popular girl. She turns him down when he invites her to the Halloween dance. She goes home that night and finds a black rose on her doorstep. She looks closer and finds that it is made of human hair.
A woman with disturbing, past life dreams wants to reveal what she thinks is a crime… A crime committed by a Satanist. Her investigation reveals that he is still alive today, leading a neighborhood vigilante patrol on Halloween.
A girl finds a vintage camera in her home that her neighbors left. It contains a black and white film that takes you back to the 1950s where you see a girl being stalked by a weird man.
An old babysitter finds drawings in a kids room that appear to predict future events. The babysitter soon becomes frightened that an entity is trying to get in to get him, possibly through the even more frightening disgusting portal in the wall.
After being left alone for a couple days, a child starts to hear weird noises and starts seeing strange people. Turns out someone kidnapped his loved one and brought them to the attic for later use.
An engineer is testing an experimental mechanical man. He leaves the machine running overnight while he’s asleep and it escapes down into the bowels of the building. He chases it. It runs him down.
A girl on her way home from the grocery store gets stuck behind a scary looking man dressed all in black who then starts to nervously glance over at her. She then notices blood on his back and that he isn’t wearing a shirt. When she shudders and screams, the man cuddles her like a baby and gives her candy. When she takes out her own candy he realizes what she really is.
A recently married couple finally finds the house of their dreams, and are convinced that they can have a happy and healthy family. Their neighbors however have different plans for their new neighbors.
A family buys a doll in an antique store for their birthday girl. Only when the doll arrives at home does the mother find a sinister trick has been played on them. The doll contains evil magic, and soon begins to torment the family.
There is a reality show about Charlie who will answer any question you have for him only if you answer one of his questions for him. You’ll get a lot of cryptic answers like the cryptic numbers in Pi. Eventually, Charlie will run out of questions for you to answer and his questions will scare you and you’ll discuss your options over email on a chat server. The emails are being stored in a giant hard drive. Scientists will think the emails are a new form of life. They start to wonder how these organisms communicate with each other.
A young soldier asks a witch to cast a spell that will cause him eternal life. His deeds in battle soon turn him into a monster that can roam the night vowing vengeance.
An old man likes to tell scary stories to his antisocial son. So scary that a monster is trying to kill them. Only the son’s socialite and dating friend knows what really happened 37 years back.
Every year, the President of the United States hosts a Halloween party at the White House. On Halloween, a politician had a terrible accident and died…in a haunted house.
A girl named Sarah prepares herself to accompany an old man on his daily sales route. Lemonade in hand, Sarah must deal with panhandlers, strange vehicles filled with wicked men, and worst of all, cockroaches.
A girl receives the letter of her long lost high school sweetheart. He tells her that he died in a car accident one month before graduation which is now set to be held five years later. Distraught, she calls her friend at the funeral service organization and learns she couldn’t set up an arrangement that day. She e-mails her former high school teacher who apologizes noting he had to leave abruptly that day due to an emergency. She manages to track down old neighbor women by wandering the city and eventually learns that the boy did not get out of his car and that crashes can be survived.
In one of America’s historic haunted buildings resides a ghost some people have affectionately called “The Ghost of Christmas Past.” This spirit shows everyone who visits it the best times of their life.
In the 1800s, some people thought that it’s ethical and moral to sell, to their fellow, non- Christian countrymen, human bodies as food or feast.
A man moves his family into an old house that was previously a hotbed for suicides. He soon learns why they committed suicide in the first place.
A woman, decades into her marriage, dreads the thought of her husband coming home one day. The reason is that her spouse is actually a friendly specter.
A bunch of rowdy teenagers are getting ready for the prom. They gain superhuman strength from drinking a slimy pumpkin/octopus soup.
A group of high school cheerleaders resurrect the spirit of their friend killed in a car crash. What they resurrect, though, is anything but friendly.
A man is out to trash collection on Halloween. When he spots a skeleton in a garbage bag by the curb, he tries to capture it. But the skeleton is not what it seems. It’s alive.
Examining their house, a husband is shocked to find that it is actually a coffin and he is buried alive. Frantically, he struggles to get free but discovers that he’s been locked into the coffin.
A group of teens trap a witch under the ground. Years later, a family moves onto the man’s property. They begin to experience strange occurrences. Shortly thereafter, they discover that the man who used to own the property is a vampire.
A teenager has to baby-sit her younger sister. She watches scary movies and a murder by a serial killer occurs outside her home.
A hiker takes note of the many stitched together body parts left behind by the “Stitcher” and promises to hunt the sadistic murderer down.
A ghostly woman visits a visitor in the middle of the night. She tells the man to leave at first light. But it’s too late. Her spirit has seen to that. Late at night while exploring a graveyard a paranormal investigator is met with the ghost of a woman he once loved.
It’s the Halloween Pageant at a nearby school. What the students don’t know is that spirits love to show up and scare people at the pageant because they know a lot of unsupervised children will be there.
A metal worker is commissioned to make a life-sized tin man companion for an elderly woman. She likes to keep the job to herself.
A family takes a trip to an isolated big box store that will be their home for the duration of their stay. The children code-named them, “Box 410.”
A girl is hired to babysit for two beautiful yet strange kids. When their parents return home, the kids are almost half their original age.
Five kids stay overnight in a doll’s house that’s rumored to be haunted. Instead of ghosts, they find a mad scientist experimenting on large rats.
A young couple buys an old clock at a yard sale. After the wife winds it up, its pendulum moves, the hands now say midnight instead of three a.m., and then suddenly it comes to life and is chasing after the wife.
When the warlocks of the past realized that they were going to be eliminated, they baked magic that would kill the nine witch sisters. These past witches held keys that could bring them back and they summoned the nine sisters to warn them – that they were the only thing keeping them in the world.
A bunch of teenage kids at their friend’s older brother’s house for a long weekend. They wake up one morning and everyone is missing. Before they left they were chipped. Sometimes, at night, the kids notice the same car parked in front of the parents’ houses.
A group of campers are sitting around telling scary stories. On an isolated campsite. It begins to rain. Someone walks by the campsite, joining them. It’s a “friend” or family member. Except that he or she isn’t really what they seem.
Sixteen years ago, a young man was out for a stroll through the deep woods. It started to rain and he took refuge in a strange mansion-shaped cabin. When he peered inside the window he was shocked to see nine kids dressed in costume and a hooded man in a pure white suit at a dinner table. The man noticed him staring and the kids looked at him as well. The stranger smiles and waves. He thanks the boy for the penny he dropped in the box on the front porch. The man proceeds to give an excellent speech about the local charity. When the kids say in unison, “Please,” the stranger tells the boy they’ll see him soon. The boy never visits the cabin again. Many years later, the boy is forty years older but still haunted by the memory and comes to the conclusion it was the Polar Express.
A young girl wins a Halloween costume contest at school by secretly using black magic and occult powers.
A man inherits a large abandoned mansion from his father. He later learns that his dad was a serial killer and hid all his victims in the walls and rooms of the old house.
A malevolent spirit haunts an old prominent building, and is rumored to have 3 heads and be thousands of years old. The few people going in and out of the building rarely last a year in the building.
An old woman has magical powers that cause a lot of problems in the home she lives in. She causes people to lose one another in the house. Later she causes an accident that kills a man and his family.
Everyone at the local school is getting great grades on their end of the year tests. One student is not. He starts to wonder why and begins to notice that his teacher and principal are not who they seem.
A mother locked up in a basement prison with the serial killer her husband helped put away. When he says he’s going hunting this weekend, she realizes he’s held her prisoner for all these years so that he could protect her from this deranged man and the authorities. If she leaves, grandfather will come home.
A divorced mother of an angelic daughter is finally ready to date again but is terrified by the closeness her daughter shares with her new boyfriend.
A man is left a scary doll from his dead sister. It does nothing at first but suddenly starts moving by itself.
A group of friends go on a camping trip in the woods, unaware that a serial killer figure called the Big Friendly Giant is living nearby and has been keeping watch.
A thief gets pulled into a house he has just robbed via a magic mirror. He becomes the prize in a game played by the homeowner and his wife. Perhaps they were talking to each other the whole time? The man must get supplies to last the night or face his fate.
When a young girl witnesses her mother being kidnapped and stuffed into a trunk, she becomes the object of an organized manhunt. She escapes into the woods in a campout with her Girl Scout troop, where she is pursued by a relentless serial killer.
Freddy Krueger escapes from the mental hospital he’s been held in and is soon planning to have revenge on his nightmares that were the last victims.
A man in a stache finds himself on the wrong end of the sharp end of an axe. A note left behind on an antique wood carving reads, “I have my fingers in every pie. Including yours.”
Two children go trick-or-treating and instead of finding candy are greeted at the door with a severed head. They tell their parents about it only to be confronted by the murderous ghoul on Halloween night.
A man returns to his town along with his girlfriend after becoming active in a war. While there, townspeople seem to know things the girlfriend doesn’t.
A girl is at a sporting event thinking that’s the last thing she’ll have to worry about. A ghost next to the field appears and charges toward her.
A young man told to move out of his haunted apartment instead of paying the rent to his landlord who’s a ghost. But the gangster ghost has laid traps to ensure that he leaves.
A woman is having her tarot cards read by a gypsy, and she stumbles upon the ominous and frightening 9 of Wands.
An alcoholic returns to his father’s isolated house to save his brother from another alcoholic father’s abuse. The brother, it turns out, is already dead. But he’s not alone…
A child hears a strange sound late one night while camping with her family. It turns out to be a wendigo.
Her screams echoed around the room. He took her to his living room and hung her upside down from the ceiling with canes.
A woman scared of spiders realizes there’s a monstrously large spider living in her nightstand. She’d be less scared of finding a snake there.
A child’s imaginary friend comes to life and ends up killing the child. The imaginary friend reveals that it is not imaginary any longer and the only thing it can do now is grieve as it murders the poor victims.
Two young men travel across the country to examine the house in which the brutal murders of a family took place. They have a bizarre effect on each other, and the house being one. This is a story about mind games.
A teenager is haunted by dreams that revolve around a dead witch’s haunted house and the dead witch’s eerie gift of a talking dog.
A group of siblings takes revenge on their older sister for locking them out of the house when they were young by making a witch’s doll of her. The doll then starts trying to keep her stepsister from leaving the house.
A teenage girl leaves her prom to pick up Chinese food. She has car trouble and has to pull over. She hears a voice and is compelled to find it….
On a stormy night a group of men and a little boy set out to catch a notorious serial killer. But soon they learn that being in a car with a mad man is their worst nightmare. One of the men even realizes that he might be one of fender benders.
At a Halloween party at a spooky house, several party goers find themselves stuck in a most unusual way upon entering.
A suburban city has a famous yearly parade for the monsters who live there. The city is being threatened by someone who wants to close up the gates forever.
A man sells his soul to the devil for eternal life and knowledge. He gets immortality and knowledge. Not only has he aged, his soul has shrunk.
A young girl disobeyed the rules by going into the woods in the middle of the night. Strangers who look and act normal warn her, but she does not listen and is never heard from again.
A family of newlyweds moves into an abandoned farmhouse and quickly learn that a cruel and boastful poltergeist is haunting them. Every sinister thing it does, it brags about to the new couple.
A welcoming party is waiting for friends on the night they arrive at their new remote cabin in the woods.
A teenager is stranded on an island with no one else but a monkey. The monkey has many human-like abilities.
A young woman is hired to care for a wealthy old woman in her home. A creepy doll sitting off to the side staring is the only companion the old woman has.
A blood shower rains down on a concert of several hundred people, and a few hours later the rain again, but with tiny bones and innards.
A man rents a haunted house for the purpose of writing a horror fiction novel. While living in the house, he experiences some poltergeist activities. The hauntings turn personal when the entity goes after him and his family.
The sadistic owners of a torture dungeon like to party and experiment on Halloween. Their latest donating guest fleshes out nicely, but where did she come from?
An old car salesman has an obsession for the flavor of young girls’ feet. He goes door-to-door to houses and sells the idea of a great deal on a new car. When they bring it home, they soon realize their newest car isn’t a car at all. It’s human.
A mother abandons her new born baby on the doorstep of an orphanage. Turns out that the child was left in the wrong place.
When a young woman finds out that her boyfriend looks an awful lot like his deceased older brother she cuts them off. He makes her jealous of those he grieves with still. Doppelganger .
An automatic night light keeps flashing shut off one night before Halloween. When the owners go to fix the problem, the normally quiet basement has been turned into a torture chamber.
A young introvert of a boy meets his new neighbor and they become friends, soon learning from each other that they’re not so different. Living on Grisly Lane.
A young woman spends all her time making new friends online, only to realize that her new friends are part of a cult. She then begins to think that she is part of the cult as well.
The students of a college campus find themselves inside an abandoned insane asylum on Halloween. A basic but terrifying premise.
A scientist is trying to build a time machine in an old Greek citadel which is haunted. His great fear, as he’s getting close, is that he will meet a younger version of himself.
A local artist working on a wooden sculpture of an oversized head is found dead at his work area. It appears that he was frightened to death.
A group of kids celebrate Halloween in their own, goofy way as they try to meet their high expectations of what Halloween should be. But unexplainable things happen and they learn how to finally trick off the masks and let their true selves shine.
A woman wakes up after spending the night in a hospital. She has no memory of what had actually happened.
Throughout history and all over the globe, people have experienced encounters with demons. But there’s something different about these stories. What makes encounters with these demons so life threatening?
A man claims in his will that his mansion should be used for no one but his son. That son has his son locked up for twenty years. But that’s only to prepare him for his death on his 21st birthday.
The Devil’s daughter is mother to a young girl, but poor and forced to steal for money or they will become homeless and unable to afford food.
A closet is really a portal to another dimension. A young boy unlocks it and is dragged into a nightmarish other world.
A new mother goes into a state of depression after the birth of her child. She begins to neglect her baby, making her look the perfect doll for her own satisfaction.
A young woman working security at a cemetery prides herself on keeping locals from defacing the gravestones and stealing the flowers. During the night, she attempts to scare away some rowdy teenagers who are trying to pilfer from the cemetery flower beds. The teenagers attack her and she is injured. After a short stay in the hospital, she leaves with a supernatural outlook on life.
A psychic brings a small framed painting to a client. The client brings it home, and puts it in his room. After the psychic leaves, they hear a little girl calling from the painting. The client puts the painting back in her car, and calls the psychic. He tells the client to let the painting go, but he can’t. He loves her too much.
An old portal to another dimension opens and gargoyles come out. They may look scary, but if you listen to what they have to say, maybe all is not lost.
A police officer is trying to solve a cold case from many years ago. At the house of the victim, he can’t find anyone alive. But he discovers a clue. Someone has been in contact with the victim. He finds tracks leading back to an abandoned mine a mile from the house. It’s located in the middle of a dense forest. The cop follows the tracks inside the mine. He knows he’s become the quarry now. But he’s ready to face it. At the center of the mine is the source of the terror that’s plagued the area for years. He knows now that he won’t be walking out of this mine. The case is closed, but the hunt goes on.
A young couple asks a gypsy to tell them their future. It all starts out normal enough until the gypsy reveals their terrible future.
A professor acting as a tour guide to a group of first year university students taking a world religions course leads them to a nearby forest. They find an ancient temple there. Inside they find strange statues and stone tablets with indecipherable writing. They are spotted by a gang of local youths who chase them out of the forest. Outside the forest they find their bus ticket is useless. There is no bus at the bus stop. An old man approaches them and tells them that they are trapped there in the forest with him. Their bus broke down. The old man tells them that the only way they can leave is if they dig their way out under the roots of the giant mountain that towers behind the forest.
Two rodeo cowboys find an ancient book in an abandoned cemetery that describes satanic rituals. They perform the rituals to become real rodeo cowboys. During a rodeo an evil being shows up and starts killing them. They finally escape, but the evil follows them back to their house.
When Eddie and Roy Franklin go to visit their cousin, they get more than they bargained for when they find bodies in their beds.
Freshmen are told not to go into the abandoned dorm at night. Once the party begins one finds that the upstairs bathroom is locked from the inside. Someone inside does not appreciate their presence.
A murderer is concealed in a family. Documented evidence tell the tale of the gruesome murders as told by the witnesses.
When a family moves into the house where a crime was committed, events begin to happen that they don’t understand. It is up to a young girl to unearth the events that happened so many years ago that still have a stranglehold on the house.
A distant relative inherits a rundown old house. In that house is a room with a long table, headless mannequins, and a strange historical book that claims to be the tale of a very contentious Thanksgiving dinner.
A man is in his house with the lights off, recording the paranormal sounds he hears. Something steps in front of the camera.
A man gets in the bathtub for a relaxing bath. He notices the water ripples and sees a dead woman with a knife in his chest.
A man and a woman go for a nice walk in the forest. The man doesn’t want to go all the way in, but the woman is mesmerized by what she sees.
Three teens take a shortcut on Halloween and end up in a small town where they experience the wrath of an old hag with powers of hypnosis or persuasion.
A girl is kidnapped, held underground, and forced into prostitution. She keeps improving her lifestyle underground until she decides to regain her freedom.
A young boy is sent to shop for groceries at his local store. But little does he know that the clerk at the counter is a vampire.
A kid is dared to eat a ghost pepper. He does and something comes out of his mouth that shows he’s something more than human.
A teenager has an affair with an older married man and one day in the park, he transforms into a werewolf.
A Red Shirt is exploring an abandoned medieval castle by candlelight. She is hearing noises in the dark, like something is following her. When she turns around she sees a heck hound staring at her motionless eyes with his evil dog grin.
Plagued by a few malcontents in the office, the manager hires a Wiccan from the internet to make a hex to get rid of these unruly behavior. It backfires, which they regret.
A group of friends with a van are on a journey to set up a roadside tent in a big forest during a thunderstorm. They find an abandoned truck with a clawed up building behind it.
A group of children discover an abandoned short-wave radio. They are soon greeted by a narrator who calls himself the master of horror. He tells them scary stories all night long….
Deserted amusement parks are creepy enough on their own. But an adult that spends a night alone at one asks him/herself all the inevitable questions about life, death and immortality. This one is a ghost story.
A ghost appears to teens in a hotel elevator. He tells a foreboding story of how the kids will die that very day.
The game never ends. It outplays you. It outwits you. It keeps going, long after everyone gets old. It outlives the Gods. Long after we’re all gone, the game goes on forever…reaping souls.
A girl with an insatiable appetite is out driving one evening when her car breaks down in the woods. While trying to call for help, she’s killed by mosquitoes with incredibly big teeth.
A scientist is growing human lips on a living pig. Suddenly, a computer interface becomes self aware. The computer realizes the pig’s lips work just fine. It switches off the life support system killing the pig and harvesting the lips.
A girl uses a large white clock for her photography in black and white. The clock is their most prized possession and she keeps it in their basement.
A girl is invited to be part of a new social media type application called, “ghosting”, where you can carry out on-going “conversations” late at night with people who aren’t really there. She ends up encountering a much more sinister side of the service…
A female college student eating out with friends at a Gray Norman restaurant gets abducted. She is taken to the Gray Norman dimension where she must fight to stay alive in the Ghost Land.
She sits alone in her bathroom at the edge of the old claw-footed bathtub. And when she feels it, she pulls a razor from a pocket. And slits her wrist.
A werewolf tells his human wife to beat him with a belt every now and then. One night he changes and kills his wife.
A teenager who works the graveyard shift is haunted and stalked by a figure wearing an undead-like clown mask and wielding a hatchet.
Everyone in town mysteriously disappears leaving a single note telling the public a nuclear disaster scenario is taking place. A new town is formed after the emergency is over and years later people start returning home. But there’s something different about them.
A young boy, walking his dog down a seldom-used road, finds a red ball, inside of which is a piece of candy. Then they find a hole deep into the ground, where they can hear things.
The furry and friendly dog from the house across the street starts to turn a bit ferocious and scary.
Two brothers, victims of childhood abuse, team up to get back at their mother who is going to be the star in the next horror film.
A female barista is late opening up the shop and baking cheese scones. Instead of a full sized human, an overweight crow stands in her place. The barista sees the crow scratching the floor. She returns. The doll stand sits empty. A scone is devoured and nothing remains.
Academics start researching haunted technology and encounter weirdness far more unnerving than their mind can handle.
A demon gets inside an abandoned insane asylum on Halloween. All of the patients are traumatized by the horrible experiments but the demon has come for one patient in particular — you!
And the residents of a town are cursed by a vengeful witch and must enact the witch’s spell to break it.
A friend invites you over for dinner or something similar and the only thing she serves is grilled fiddle-heads. She laughs maniacally as you survey your surroundings.
A wealthy man, and noted eccentric, goes missing after being caught on camera dressed as Santa Claus, in the middle of the night. He was last sighted near the woods.
A group of friends are driving down a dark road at night. A stranger pulls up next to them and tells them it’s his birthday and he just got a flat tire.
Reincarnation plays a key role in this tale. The creep factor comes from the sharing of powerful emotions from past lives.
A teenage girl finds an old tape recorder while snooping through her friend’s parents stuff. The tape reveals a little girl’s voice reciting what sounds like a cuss list. She gets an eerie feeling and hands the tape to her friend, who doesn’t turn off the recorder. The little girl starts giving instructions and commands the friends dog to murder her.
A new military tank has been designed for the American Army. It’s faster, better, and stronger. Although, strangely enough, there are eyewitnesses who claim seeing the tank on two legs instead of four.
A man gets lost in the woods on a hunting trip. He finds a strange cabin with no weapons and fires up the fireplace. A group of people are also hunting for him, but there is more than one kind of hunter in these woods…
A girl wakes up to the side of her bed to see her grandfather who was dead in his coffin the night before. In fact, he looks better than ever.
A young and exceedingly weak woman who works as a cleaning woman in a local hotel is given a night off. While she is gone, the hotel has a stint of paranormal sightings.
A girl writes and illustrates a graphic novel for a horror competition. The judges all die horrific deaths after having read the book.
A hairdresser gets a nightmare-client named bob. Bob is very strange and nevertheless the hairdresser has to make Bob’s hair look as good as possible. She is getting nervous because she now has the feeling that Bob is more than just a nightmare-client.
A girl is haunted by having to delete her boyfriend from her Instant Messenger. She cannot do so and he continues sending her messages.
A lovely woman at the office gets invited to her boyfriend’s rural cabin on the upcoming weekend. He informs her that the electricity is not working and they should enjoy the weekend without it. What he doesn’t tell her is that they have to moonlight because the cabin needs to be fumigated for pests and the exterminators will be turning off the electricity.
Grieving parents of children killed in a car crash meet a seemingly friendly neighbor, only to find out that the neighbor has the ability to raise the dead.
In a fun and diverting twist, generations of a family are reanimated as corpses every Halloween, revived by chemicals, drugged candy, and other Halloween mysticism. They live it up one night every year partying with the living kids and going to some seriously creepy haunted houses. The male members fork their wives and argue over who gets to rut the hottest ladies. The women bicker over which one is hotter than the others. Or at least, they did until the father reboots and bans the drama. Complete with various degrees of vengeance from the strumpets who missed being fondled.
A drug that slows down the effects of aging hits the market. How long should you keep it around? A man finds out the hard way.
A daughter obsessively goes through her mother’s belongings searching for specific things left by the mother’s first marriage. It soon leads to the discovery that the mother is not the woman’s birth mother.
While vacationing with her family, a woman falls into an underground pit created by a hole in the ground. Her family thinks she is dead. She is not. She is captured by demons. She is their bounty. Can she escape from the pit and her kidnappers?
A woman goes to buy an old portrait from an antique shop. Upon inquiry about its origin, she is told by the shop owner that the person in her photo was a famous painter. She soon learns that her ancestor, the ancestor in the portrait to be exact, was a secret serial killer.
A ghost is found wandering an abandoned building seemingly looking for someone. His girlfriend is found shortly after. But she’s dead. And now she has her own ghost!
The police respond to a domestic disturbance call at a stranger’s apartment where they find human remains inside a wooden cabinet. Noticing something moving, they pull out a severed hand, and hear a phone ring inside the cabinet. The caller is a woman that has escaped captivity and is desperately seeking the police’s help.
A spousal abuse story where the abused becomes an undead monster and tries to destroy his or her abusive spouse.
Sarah is alone all night in the house where her bed and breakfast is located. She hears creaking floorboards but she is sure they’re just old boards. And footsteps. And mysterious breezes.
A girl is being pursued by a serial killer yet she has no intention of letting him catch her – because he has the smallpox disease and she intends to turn him in to the authorities if he ever catches her.
An imprisoned child serial killer from the past has escaped and to avoid the suspicion of the police, he goes into seclusion in the nearest neighborhood as a nice neighbor.
A wealthy man discovers the fountain of youth in a monster’s lair. He kills the monster and drinks the water. He learns the water can’t be un-drunk, thus making him immortal but miserable.
An investigation of a supernatural incident is derailed by a character who seemed to have changed personalities. He was definitely involved but his actions are incomprehensible. In the end, they learn the real culprit was an evil powerful entity once known as a friend.
Six college friends playing truth or dare find a strange object stuck in an old tree. What is it? Is it safe to touch?
You’ve inherited an old mansion where you moved your family. One night, pushing open the attic of the house, the door falls and you see an emaciated teenager with sunken in eyes. She attacks you.
Five people get stuck in an elevator during Halloween, and then an old man with a hook for a hand joins them.
A vampire is thirsting for one young man’s blood. His parents make him invite a girl over to play a board game in the hopes of delivering him forever from the bloodsucker’s coils.
It’s snowing hard outside and your one road back home is closed off. Snowbound with miles and miles of road stretching out in front of you. Your cell phone battery is dying. You can’t figure out how to get your car started again. All you can do is sit and wait and wait in this abandoned house while the snow grows thicker and so does the fear.
A man living in an old haunted mansion learns from his friends that he can have control over any spirit and ghost if he … Read Full Post
A rich old woman invites kids to stay overnight in her haunted mansion. In fact, popular urban legend says that she has trapped many kids in her dungeon-like basement, never to be heard from again. It turns out that she is keeping them alive as food for some kind of monster.
A man is coaching his little league baseball team. Most of his kids can’t hit the ball at all and the few that can seem to use their super powers to kill the ball, almost as if they are throwing it.
Holiday bars open up around Halloween. But they are not currently placed on the maps. No one really knows where they are. Why? They are haunted bars.
A cop investigates the local legend of the creepy nature that killed his partner years ago. He not only believes that there is something in the woods, but that something is still out there and coming for me.
A man who is addicted to plastic surgery has the surgery of his dreams. With unfortunate repercussions.
A man named Thomas receives a scarecrow from his elderly mother for his birthday. The man named Thomas soon learns why his mother chose to give him the gift.
Talking squirrels chase a group of kids. Comedy ensues when the kids try and pray for help from the only God that they know of.
A girl says that she dreamed she was taken into a doll house, where she was reunited with the family members she recently lost.
A farmer has to protect himself from the evil possessed object growing in the corner of his basement.
A psychopath kidnaps a child from a house and locks them in a storage basement. The parents make a bold and evil moral choice.
Eighteen people are all told the same story around a campfire before bed. After they all finished telling the story, they found themselves in the plot.
A father gets concerned about his 8 year old daughter who watches violent horror films obsessively. One day while fixing her window, he hears her say, “I’ll be back soon daddy. I’m going to go get us some candy.” And then he hears a car drive away. He runs out, only to see his daughter’s bike lay beside an empty highway.
A young man, on a date, brings his girlfriend to an old mansion said to house an old witch who never left when the house was demolished.
A girl goes in search of a lost dog in the woods and finds a strange house instead. On further investigation, the girl realizes that a man, who takes part in exorcisms for some unexplained reason, lives in the house. While there, she discovers one of the ghosts hiding there is of the girl who disappeared many years ago and another girl is missing.
A mother goes mad after the deaths of her children in a drowning accident. After going insane and subsequently killing the person responsible, she must face the demons in her own home.
A young woman is given a Ouija Board as a gift by her brother. The spirit she connects with claims he is her lost brother. Then some terrible and threatening things begin to happen.
You’re hiking along a mountain and stumble upon a field of graves. You can’t read the writing on them but you recognize the small shapes raised above each gravestone.
Neighbors are terrified when they find their neighbor dousing himself with gasoline and screaming that he wants to be set on fire. He dies, and then they see the homeless man he has been talking to who also wants to be on fire.
A young blood-sucker kills a family on Halloween night, and thanks two children from the house for their costumes.
A young woman gets a job at a corset shop and discovers the shop is actually a front for a high end prostitution ring that turns its clients in to creatures.
After the changes to his body and mind, a man commits a murder that he remembers nothing of from one hour to the next.
A woman starts going to therapy to treat her chronic nightmares. The nightmare worsens, and it starts showing at school.
A new and lonely student at a boarding school hears strange noises and voices coming from an empty room when everyone else is asleep.
When a magical mummy releases a gas to alter behavior at a nearby warehouse, people experience different states of consciousness. One man is able to control the mind of anyone around him but cannot control himself. A woman can move things with her mind and is adamant about destroying the mummy that started it all.
A young man’s fiancée is hurt in an accident. Not able to afford expensive surgery, he does the next best thing – he calls up pawn shop owner Igor to build him something. And Igor creates Igor, a clockwork man to replace the human fiancée. But something goes wrong with Igor …
While studying ancient burial grounds from an on-site excavation, amateur ghost hunters discover it is actually a tomb for an ancient and twisted demonic sorceress. The spirits are her undead subjects, haunting her resting place until the sorceress returns from the dead.
To get down from the highest mountain as quickly as possible, a group of people parachute from the top. They go past a little girl in a blue gingham dress walking up to her grandfather’s cabin. Except when they look back again, the girl and her grandfather have vanished.
An old abandoned factory is occupied by artists. A fire breaks out and their “friends” will do anything to help them.
Three people are trapped in a haunted house by a demon, and they must find three keys to escape, but someone makes it their mission to stop them.
The local sheriff comes into possession of an old VHS tape that shows footage of his childhood home. Last night, he had a strange nightmare about the night his parents were killed.
A mask maker creates beautiful replica masks reproducing the faces of the missing. But something sinister is going on.
A man is locked inside his house during a big thunderstorm and suddenly, some creature starts stalking him from upstairs.
An unnamed phobia is killing children off and no one knows what it is. A paranormal team has been called in to investigate. I’ve got the sequel to this already written.
Included in a new invention is a house that follows its owner’s every whim and command. What the new owners don’t realize is its intentions for them.
On Halloween night, a couple wanders off into an old cemetery, where they encounter the ghosts of the cemetery.
When a girl walks into a house, she gets trapped in a mirrored room and murdered. The people who did it soon get trapped too and die. Police investigators find that the residents have been hosting Halloween parties in the mirrored room for over 40 years and all of them had similar fates.
A young woman takes a lonely back road on Halloween night and ends up with a flat tire. She waits for her brother to repair the flat but a panicked woman jumps in the car and drives off. The young woman is saved by a local police officer.
A young girl is kidnapped by a clown and spends all these years locked in a room. All these years the clown torments and kills kids, eats them, and the girl could hear them scream.
A gamer spends hours lost in a bizarre and ancient video game. He’s not sure where to go next. All he knows is that he has reached level 49 and the next place he is able to go is level 50. More friends are killed. And he says he must leave soon because he cannot continue.
A man buys a statue from an old friend out of fondness for the piece. He soon discovers that the statue isn’t an old sculpture, but actually a mummified corpse which reanimates in the shadows every night.
A young girl disbelieves her father that boogeymen are out and about on Halloween. She soon meets one face to face outside her bedroom window.
High school students see a haunted house every Halloween night for the past seven years. Why is it still around? What purpose does it serve?
Celebrating Halloween with friends on a haunted highway. A wild animal crosses the road. It’s a witch.
Forever trapped in the swamps of northern British Columbia and walking the earth… forever alone and pitied by no one.
A man is killed in a missile test. The test goes horribly wrong and his soul possesses a broken cellphone left behind on the test range. His vengeful presence haunts the Blackberry network.
Young children are committing murders in their communities and burying the bodies of their victims underneath the retreats they built out of Lincoln Logs.
A woman, while separating clothes from the family’s color, whites from coloreds, gets a troubling vision. What she sees is the last color that her children will wear before disappearing for eternity.
Jenny wakes up to a room full of toads. They say they are her boyfriend. She tries to run and the toads run after here.
Two teens arrive at school to study for a test. The only problem is they can’t remember why they are there. In fact, they can’t even remember who they are or where they live.
A boy is being bullied at school. One day he feels hate and the power of the devil grabs hold of him. For the rest of us, he becomes a lich.
A young, newlywed couple hears strange scratching on the bedroom wall, gets the creeps, and heads to an old abandoned cemetery where they discover a stone angel minus its head.
An old man dies, but his ghost still haunts the family. He’ll take care of the children that they have.
A group of paranormal investigators went into a possessed building to seek after evil spirits, and became tormented themselves. A dead body rises from the grave.
A coyote attacks a child. Before people intervene, it bites the child on his foot. The child kicks the coyote in return, and the hounds dogs chase after it. The coyote bumps into some black puddles and gets transformed into a human, as well as the child and the black coats.
A family moves into a long forgotten manor after moving from the big city. They soon learn they are not welcome there.
A mysterious creature lurks in the woods killing people…but it’s not what everyone thinks it is. If they can take a better look, they might find something even more scary.
A father, who is already fairly suspicious of a local funeral director that his wife wants to keep dealings with, stumbles upon the man eating part of the dead body of one of his clients in the back room of the funeral parlor. The funeral director wants to kill him, but the father can’t bring himself to abandon his unborn child.
A bookkeeper for a ghost organization realizes that this entity is real. He tries to cheat the ghost to get what he deserves. It backfires. The ghost comes to take a toll.
Everyone hides inside when they hear something coming thumping up the front stairs. It’s the monster.
A new food product is about to hit the market. But the creator finds out that it is cursed and has a mysterious power that is life altering.
It is Halloween, and a team of paranormal investigators are ready to go out and investigate a house they think is haunted. But, after dicking around for too long in order to get the perfect shot and videography, a demon comes and murders them all. Now they have to play a game of survival, but with no winner.
A man tries to break into a house, prevalent with symbolism of witchcraft. But the house is full of demons and ghosts who decide to punish the guy for disturbing them.
A family moves into a new house, and the wife and kids start to pick up on the scent of flowers in the house. However, there aren’t any flowers in the house. The smell is a warning sign from their dead daughter.
A man runs a haunted house attraction or a new attraction at a theme park. The attraction however seems to be real, and the man is possessed.
A town experiences a mysterious heat wave although the temperatures are still freezing. People are mad and the Governor will not provide any help, they decide to break into the army base nearby until they learn the truth about why the army was there.
A young girl is spying on her neighbor from her upstairs window when she sees a dark figure kidnap the neighbor. Afraid to tell anyone, she worries about what she’s done. The next morning, the neighbors’ dumbest son stands outside her door, asking if she saw what happened to his mother. She attends the funeral and the worst thing is when they bury/boil her, they say the neighbors freak when they visit her grave which is suspicious.
A woman is terribly distracted by a shadow following her everywhere. When the shadow disappears, she realizes that she is the shadow.
A maid working at a bed and breakfast meets a cute young lad bringing food to his older brother who is a guest for the night. She is shocked by the mystery that unfolds as she learns his terrifying origins. The young boy seems so sweet and innocent. What could be the problem here?
A group of high school pranksters make a fake baby using a mannequin and old rags. They stop off at a cemetery to “hypnotize” the rotting corpse of one half of the couple buried there. Tourists in the graveyard spot them and the high school boys run. The tourists chase them through the woods and eventually stumble upon The Vase.
A couple goes to a secluded cabin for a romantic weekend. They fall into something that changes them forever.
The design of Baker Mansions creates a strange and scary echo. The residents are never sure whether echoes are the product of a disturbing urban design or the sound of the dead who have died in the building.
While at school a man has the clap, but to his dismay, it is not a runny nose or a bad mood. It is far worse. A supernatural case of “the clap”.
An actor invites his famous director friend to a show he is in. Little does the director know, one of the people is actually a serial killer.
A man wanders the streets all day. When he sits down on the sidewalk to sleep, a friend holds out his hand to shake it. The man dies.
A teenage boy sneaks out of his house while his parents are asleep. On the way to where he’s going he has a run-in with some local MMA fighters and a crazed war veteran. Worse, he finds out he’s in a dark reflection of his former life.
A teenager finds it difficult to fit in because he is sworn to defeat the monster under his bed. Only his grandfather has any idea of what he’s talking about.
Little Eddie is too scared to trick-or-treat. When he hears a noise at the door, he chides his brother. “Don’t do this to Mommy and Daddy! We don’t want you to die. It’s Halloween. We just trick or treat. Not get hurt,” Eddie pleads.
A man is walking along the beach when he picks up a severed hand with a weird ring on the finger. And for some reason, he starts taking the hand with him.
A man and his wife are dating a couple who own a farm. The couple tells the man and his wife that maggots are actually baby worms and this is how they build soil. But the man and his wife find this odd and when they hear the neighbors saying “Keep trying for juicy chicken,” they find that the neighbors are dare-devil serial killers even killing their own pigs for food.
A couple buy a fancy decoration for their foyer only to find that it is gone the next morning. They call the police. The crime scene guys mention that there was a rag doll left behind.
A group of kids decide to explore an abandoned house in the woods. They soon discover they weren’t welcome.
Two men abduct and murder a woman. They cut her up and make a potion that will bring her back to life. One of the killers gives his potion to his wife so she can be young again. But it doesn’t work out the way they planned it.
A little girl becomes obsessed with death. She wonders how, what, when that’s time will come. She wants to make sure she’ll be ready.
A girl in a strappy dress walks into a biker bar intoxicated. She might think she’s Sonny Bono, but the bikers have other ideas.
An animal obsessed young girl seeks revenge on her first-grade teacher. A bus driver finds the severed heads of a man and his daughter.
A nosy neighbor decides to check up on someone he thinks might not be alive. He arrives at the new neighbors house and it looks deserted. When he gets up to the door he knocks on it. The knock is answered and what comes forth is just not what he expected.
A group of co-workers, who are secretly a pack of werewolves, work together to hunt down a victim on whom to feast.
A writer is given a dictation machine by a dying composer. She is a transcriber for the composer as she seeks her revenge.
A new pharmacist takes over an abandoned pharmacy and discovers “prescriptions” being filled left and right from the place. Real soon he’s stabbed by one of the patients.
A young father and his son walk alone in the woods one night during a full moon and they are not what they seem.
While a student is doing Halloween make-up for her Halloween costume and listening to spooky podcasts, the line between reality and fiction starts to blur.
Two friends driving back to the city get into an altercation over a severed suitcase that they found in the middle of the interstate. They let the police solve the mystery of the suitcase.
A man wakes up in a cell with a weirdly deep set and oversized door-handle. Inside is a tall, talking storyteller with a candle for a head.
An entire school is buried alive one night as a prank while the kids sleep. When they wake up, they find a set of rules written on the wall with a promise of death by staking if they break them. What happens when they do follow the rules?
A young man journeys into the woods in search of witchcraft that the locals warn him is against God. A local preacher follows him. The preacher finds himself in a struggle with anything not of this world.
A college student is haunted by nightmares of being buried alive by her professor. When she dreams of him attacking her she goes to the police, but they do not believe her.
A man narrowly escapes death during a severe storm only to be pulled into the strangest world where he must fight for not only survival but also that of his daughter.
Years ago, the main character was a nationally renowned clairvoyant. She was also a fraud and when the public found out, she had to spend time in a mental hospital in legal possession of the man who betrayed her. At the end of the story, she learns that she’s Agatha Harkness aka the Harry Potter witch.
A group of friends are on a train traveling through a remote location at night. They realize that the train is going in circles. It is haunted. And something spectral is visibly going in the wheel that allows the train to move.
A teenage girl slowly discovers that her friends and family have been turned into vampires by nightfall. She must do something about it.
A notice is posted at the New Bedlam Insane Asylum for a test subject to be subjected to an experimental gas called LXE. The notice is signed by Robert M. Outtrim.
A woman with a bitter past picks up a strange looking antique from a second hand store for her Halloween party at home. The item is actually a voodoo doll once used on a Haitian slave that later haunted its masters. In other words, the item was used by a voodoo witch in Haiti to cause a woman to walk around at night, attacking and killing. Later, that voodoo witch is burned at the stake by the villagers.
A man gets home late after a date to find his wife standing in their front yard waiting for him. When he approaches her, she stares at him blankly without saying a word and then crumbles into a pile of ashes.
People have started disappearing. You find out that they are actually being fed to a creature under the earth.
A once nameless woman that was dumped between two tombstones in a grave in an abandoned cemetery, comes back with a hunger for human blood. Reanimated by all the evil and hatred that brimmed her grave, the woman rises up to haunt the city she once lived in.
A young man goes to the Grand Canyon to visit his girlfriend. The young man soon learns that his girlfriend has been murdered and her ghost lures him down to the canyon floor. The young man finds his body parts are no longer working correctly, and his fingers are turning into wooden ones.
A young couple becomes the latest victims in a long string of serial killings by a single criminal. The story is told in first person by the killer.
A really big, green, slimy monster shows up in the neighborhood where a little girl is playing. The monster is actually a man.
A girl has a horrible nightmare and otherworldly occurrences occur after she awakens. Read the story here .
A girl finds razor blades in her Halloween candy. She discerns that her sugar daddy set it up as a sick and cruel joke. It’s safe for her, but not her friends.
A girl has been seeing her boyfriend’s ghost. Suddenly, he disappears. She soon learns he’s been rematerialized into another person.
A girl is living with her charming new boyfriend. They fall in love, and she eventually moves in with him. But things are not as they seem. The charming boy seems to never leave the room. And when she hears something, she hears someone whimpering. She later learns that her boyfriend is actually a demon and her sister is trapped in the other room, where she hasn’t left in several years.
A sixteen year old girl dreams of a book she was reading, claiming she was the main character and telling her that the villain is real. When she is forced to read the book for school, she learns that the visions in her dreams are actually prophecies. She learns that she is meant to destroy the villain.
You’re invited to the old mansion of your deceased great-uncle who you never actually met. There, the person who invited you tells you that you’re in fact a distant relative of his and you come from a long line of witches.
Kids are kidnapped from a Halloween costume party and thrown into a Satanic ritual. They are forced to watch a pumpkin headed demon rape human women.
A deranged chef hears voices in his head telling him to take revenge on the person who gave him a bad review.
A high-school girl digs up a box in the cemetery behind her school. Inside of the box lives her imaginary friend from her childhood. Her imaginary friend is actually a ghost.
A young couple ventures into the woods and while searching for a spooky and mysterious cabin, they come across a living corpse of a beautiful young woman. He rescues her from her dark confines and brings her back to their cabin for the night.
A young man has a difficult time as a kid, growing up in an orphanage and is very shy. One Halloween night a little kid dreams of the various incantations used to abuse the people in the orphanage.
Campers go off trail and come across a strange puddle. They decide to use it to shave, with terrible consequences. A group of military men investigating some strange construction equipment find that it’s part of a much larger mechanism.
While fixing her car on the side of the road one night, a woman is terrified when a vampire tries to pull her inside his car, but only succeeds in sucking the front of her face off.
On a cold winter’s night a milkman leaves the last tupperware of milk with a long lost friend who has been locked away for years. The friend wants to play a game, he puts his finger through the hole in the top of the tupperware and asks for someone to put their finger through the top hole. The milkman’s friends want him to play eyes down but he refuses. Things go well, until he does the eyes down. The story of the missing finger in your chili becomes the plot of this story.
A man waits in a bathroom for his wife. But she’s taking forever. When he finally gets fed up and opens the door, she is prematurely aged into a scary old woman.
A circus is in town, but when a faerie is coaxed out of a magical trunk, they realize . . . it’s impossible to put her back in.
A private detective is hired by a rich couple to search for their missing daughter. She is believed dead. He later finds her living in a homeless community. Her story is amazing.
Animals suddenly emerge as the most intelligent life on Earth. Bees arrive in a scout ship and wipe out almost everyone. The remaining humans are left to serve as honey farmers.
A woman is haunted in her dreams by the ghost of a lighthouse keeper who met a frightening end on the rocks near where the woman’s home sits. The ghost of the keeper has a message for the woman. But what is the message?
A drug addled teen is sent to boot camp by his angry mother. His torturers there are not what they seem.
A new girl at school already has a reputation of being a witch. The school soon experiences destructive accidents and prank calls happen whenever she is near. A group of teenagers decide they will find the girl and discover why she’s doing this. The group soon learns that she opens a small magical shop after school and realizes she’s after the next big pranksters at the school.
While attending a Halloween party with his girlfriend, a guy gets himself drunk. He then sees that his girlfriend has gone missing. He goes looking for her and finds himself in the middle of a satanic ritual that is about to curse everyone in the world but a fortunate few.
In a cabin in the woods, three girls perform a ritual to conjure up a spirit to contact a school pal who committed suicide. To their shock, the ritual worked and the pal showed up. Only, she wants blood and begins killing the girls one by one.
A woman wakes up in her hotel room to discover that the front desk clerk has never seen her before. Checking the security tapes, the clerk notices that his own body double has checked in for him.
A couple gets trapped on an island, with an evil scientist who wants to study how long human beings can survive before their minds break down.
A new teacher arrives at a school only to discover that almost all of her students are already dead.
A group of kids on a camping trip happen upon a creepy old shack filled with strange inventions, long dead bodies, dried up patches of blood, and other strange and terrifying sights. Standing frozen in fear is an old man, who just within earshot speaks twitchily from behind and asks, “Who’s there?”
A girl keeps finding her prizes, makeup, and clothes missing. She later finds out there’s an intruder. The culprit is her makeup bag, because it just wants to be noticed.
A teenager and her group of friends are tricked into having an Ouija Board seance in the famous Amityville House. They accidentally release the spirit of a teenage girl who then haunts the group… until she makes a surprise reappearance.
A group of teens goes to an abandoned mental asylum for a Halloween party and discovers that the asylum is not as abandoned as they thought.
A recently dumped man gets beat up by a girl who befriends him by giving him comfort and hugs. She ends up revealing herself as a monster.
A young girl and her father move into a new home and she begins seeing her deceased mother’s face in her child’s toys. And an umbrella. Actually, everywhere. But what is she seeing? A ghost? Or does she have powers?
A group of kids move into a house in the woods. They find two dolls in the attic that are the same as the one a child that went missing.
A dying old woman informs her adult children they are not born of her husband, but rather a witch that laid a curse upon her.
A young boy wearing an old, antique ring that a border collected was viciously murdered. All that remained of him was his ringed finger.
A man takes a job at a nursing home. He hears voices all night from a vent, until he discovers a child living in the crawl space.
A professor is working on a time machine that can open doorways to different times. While conducting an experiment with his daughter, he accidentally opens a doorway to a post-apocalyptic world. His daughter must decide whether or not to go back to the future to undo the accident and save the world or go back to their normal life in modern times.
A boy is told by a friend that a nearby abandoned building is haunted. Both boys agree to meet there and tell ghost stories. Only one returns. The survivor says the other boy was sucked dry by the ghosts.
Twins planning to spend a night in a haunted house and are stalked by ghosts bent on possessing their bodies.
A man dies of heart failure. In the ambulance he is accompanied by an old man who makes small talk, his face beaming with cold malice. The dead man’s wife looks into a mirror where his reflection burns and destroys the mirror. That man is a poltergeist who is out to get his wife. Why does he want to kill his own wife?
A middle aged woman returns to her first house where a weird magic spell prevents her from leaving. She tries to get away, but the longer she stays, she transforms into some kind of monster.
On vacation on a tropical island, tourists are taken at nightfall to the local voodoo priest. He will decide if they are worthy of participating in an ancient ceremony to appease the gods.
A mental hospital patient is tortured by a fantastic figure, an angel of death, who takes with him the souls of the inhabitants of the mental hospital.
An unsuspecting book curator, hardly older than twenty-one, is brought by NASA to examine old-world illuminated manuscripts that were purchased at Christie’s.
A man returns from a trip and his family inadvertently becomes involved in a dark conspiracy after discovering an old diary hidden away in the attic.
A housekeeper working late comes across a crying toddler in the dark laundry room of the house she works at. The child telepathically begs her not to harm her. When the authorities are called, no child is found and all is forgotten by the housekeeper. Years later, the housekeeper is in jail for murdering the children of the house.
Staring into a mirror at night and seeing your reflection as that of a demonic entity. It is the reflection of a Dao, an evil spirit. It eats the souls of the living and lurks on the human realm to seek.
A young man wakes up after a drunken one night stand to find his bed is full of maggots that crawl and squirm all over his body.
A teenage girl’s mean and abusive father is thrown into jail after beating and raping her. When her father comes to, after his drunk binge, finds that his daughter is missing. Her remains arrive in a pumpkin shortly after. The father turns himself in, believing that it is because of his own misdeeds that his daughter died, but soon gathers that he never existed. A doll stands on the table where the daughter once sat and it begins to speak.
Grisly murders take place each Halloween day in a nearby town in attempts to revive a monster. The person who is responsible for these murders is a clown whose parents were murdered as children. The clown is enraged the children his parents loved have grown, whereas his parents never did.
A new parent puts her baby down for a nap. When she turns to pick it back up, the baby she’d just laid in the crib is gone. Her husband had switched their baby with another child who is rotting and looks dead.
An author offers to tell a group of young adults at a Halloween party one of his scary stories, because the teens loved to read horror novels. He tells his story about a young girl out spending time at a gravesite. The girl is approached by a black shadow man, but before anything happens, he realizes the girls face is slowly fading away.
A girl tells her friends that to become a witch she’s had to participate in dark demonic rituals for several years. They’re skeptical, until she reveals a secret tattoo.
A high school student finds the textbook of her favorite history teacher to be incredibly strange and unsettling as it appears to hide a dark and ominous agenda.
After suffering from a terrible accident, a man is now completely covered with tattoos. One day a mysterious figure starts approaching him and revealing each tattoo’s origin one by one. Eventually he’s made to face that he was the perpetrator of a great evil.
A family visiting an ancestral house is introduced to “the family stories” Los espíritus que habitan en la casa, and they realize the tales are all true!
A genuinely heart-stopping tale is told by a preteen girl of an unknown evil that stalks her brother and his girlfriend.
A man puts a curse on a celebrity that pieces of her face are cut off every day and are delivered to the hexer.
At two o’ clock in the afternoon, a young man walks into the street. Compare this to what happens just one hour later at three o’ clock in the afternoon.
A heartless wizard subjects a party of 10 strangers to a terrifying game of Russian Roulette. The stakes are high. A magic ring is hidden somewhere in the creepy cemetery. The first person to find it can go home. The rest are doomed to spend an endless night in the cold graveyard.
An online chat room supposedly allows people to chat to long-dead serial killers. However, after only a few sessions, the host admits to being a former serial killer and agrees to meet a select group of chatters in real life.
In the process of restoring an old hotel, a work man and a team of archaeologists unearth a long, dark secret.
Our main character wakes up from a nightmare, and his car is now a pumpkin! He heads out anyway without realizing that his car is a hired killer pumpkin!
When Roxanne is out with her boyfriend for their third anniversary dinner, she realizes the door locked behind her and she wonders if he left her there. As she waits for her boyfriend to return, she soon realizes she’s not the only one in the room with her.
An adult is reunited with her childhood friend after more than a decade. Soon she discovers that the blanket her old friend is regularly caressing is his sister, whom she accidentally decapitated fifteen years before.
An old photo found in an attic shows the souls of the members of a family who died in an earlier house fire.
When a woman goes missing, her ex boyfriend becomes the suspect. With evidence against him mounting, he must find her before the police do.
A Victorian family living in London places an ad in the paper asking for a live-in servant. And they find the most unusual servant of all, in the most unusual way
The Marsh family suffers a great tragedy or loss, and moves to a new house in a new town. When the children are out in the woods they discover an unintentionally scary doll in the forest. But at night, the doll changes into something much more terrifying. Even scarier at school, where no one seems to notice the kids’ new “doll.”
A fisherman is fishing on a stormy night when he catches a body with an eye-patch on one eye floating in the water. He swims after the body and discovers, much to his dismay, that the body is alive.
Two teens are terrorized by a killer clown at the local amusement park who pops up in random places, at unpredictable times.
A man on Halloween night finds a coin and puts it in his mouth. He’s transported to the realm of Hades and all of the dead.
A woman has recently become a mother for the first time. While thinking of names for the baby, she learns from the list of baby names…….kinda a dark twist on that idea.
A young girl finds herself lost in the woods. She goes stumbling down the path only to be confronted by a wolf that has her eyes.
What happens when a child goes looking for their lost toys in the trash? And decides to bring some new friends home with them?
Suburban eleven-year old boys find a floating head in their swimming pool. Things get even scarier when bodies show up and people disappear.
Two brothers, both weary, fight a spectral ape while maneuvering through the many traps in a Cyclopean, abandoned jungle temple.
A little girl goes missing and her mother comes home to her father, claiming that she was taken by a scary holiday mascot.
A young woman goes missing. The investigators soon discover an old video screen from which they believe the woman was taken.
A man gets revenge on his boss and humiliates him by kidnapping his daughter, beating her and putting her on the streets for all of his neighbors to see.
An old man keeps losing more and more of his family to death. He finds solace in a magical foam made from the blood of his wife.
An elderly woman is found in the woods carrying a bloody doll. She claims she saw its owner. But is she telling the truth?
A girl is lost in the woods during a camping trip with her brother. While they try to find their way home in the dwindling light a man dressed in a bumble bee costume bumps into them. After a short conversation the bumble bee man kidnaps her brother and leaves her all alone and frightened in the wilderness.
A son comes to his father’s funeral only to learn that no one ever died. The entire story is a lie told by his mother in an effort to keep them in the past and attached to their broken family tree.
A group of teenagers are stranded at their high school as it is closed for repairs after an electrical fire broke out, and a terrible crime was committed there several years prior. A large group of police officers found a young girl, brutally murdered.
An experiment gone wrong transforms a simple worker into a malicious immortal bloodsucker that feeds on innocent people.
Ghosts are caught yanking vulnerable people out of their beds and dragging them from their homes before they can start a fire.
A man isn’t the person they all thought he was after an ambush involving the mafia and a witness puts a bounty out on his head. Shortly after, he’s found dead. His dying words were, “Don’t fall asleep.”
One night, a group of pranksters break into a university parapsychology lab to play a series of pranks. They discover that one unsupported student formal project isn’t a prank, it’s an actual experiment.
A man wakes up to find that he has stapled his thumb to his forehead. The door to his room is barricaded shut and everything in the room is covered in blood with even more blood splatters all over the walls.
Count Orlok’s Germanic castle near the village of Helsingfors is the setting for Dracula’s latest visit.
A couple of two-bit criminals follow a map to Treasure Island but find the island has sunk. There is a lot of pirate treasure left behind though.
A mind-controlling serial killer lives next door to a woman named Missy. They have a Halloween date. He will play the corpse.
A little kid playing a prank causes a millennia old mummy to come to life, destroying the neighborhood and turning its residents into living dead minions.
A young child witnesses a murder. The neighbor who is a mob boss tells him to keep quiet. A clown offers the parents to steal the body of the victim and keeps the child safe. However, the clown isn’t what he seems.
A couple driving at night hits what they think it’s a skinny mountain lion. But the next morning the “mountain lion” is seen in a nearby backyard enjoying a leisurely meal.
A wealthy man hires a college student for a bizarre study. The purpose of the study is to link human consciousness of death to nuclear decay rates.
A baker is approached by a real estate agent to lease the vacant house next door, which happens to be haunted by vengeful ghosts. The baker is clueless because his back door leads to the house’s interior. The only problem is that the bakerizes bread and gets an unwanted smell of death every time he bakes.
Said Olbermann, “Why are you letting Trump be the story here?” McBath said she was trying to shift focus away from the president-elect, but Olbermann said that’s like asking the fox to crawl away from the henhouse.
A young boy goes into the basement to do his Halloween candy sorting. There he finds a human hand sticking out of a pile of candy wrappers. The boy falls into convulsions and is admitted to a burn unit. He’s also haunted by the ghost of a possessed man.
Alice is sitting in her psychologist’s office when she is overcome with the realization that she is in a dream. The psychologist then begins to get angry . . .
A mirror that reflects the future shows that the world will soon be overrun with creatures of the night.
An old mansion is converted into a hospital where people with mental illnesses are treated. A lobotomist wakes up one day to find that all the mental patients are dead and begging for his help.
Students working late in the library are offered poisonous food by their librarian colleague. If they eat it, they’ll never finish their thesis.
A family goes on vacation to a remote cabin in the woods and each family member is possessed by the ghosts of their former family members.
A guy finds a haunted painting at a yard sale and brings it home. After hanging it in his haunted garage, he hears voices and footsteps, screams and wails. At night, he confronts a strange, evil-looking old man standing outside the window of his house.
A family visits their ancestor’s old Victorian home which is believed to be haunted. After a series of unusual events they soon discover the spirit of the woman they visited with is actually their own deceased grandmother and she’s just looking after them.
A man tells the story of the time he found a satyr outside his tent dressed in a Dracula costume and they struck up a business partnership.
A girl goes to a graveyard to visit the grave of her relative that died recently. Her relative was dating someone in that graveyard before she died.
A woman with psychic abilities perceives animals talking to her. When she has a premonition regarding a stranger turning into a monster to kill a child, she and a few friends try to prove her right.
A teenage girl is told that she can only go to Six Flags if she stays on the track, doesn’t trip, doesn’t stay too late, and never stray from the path. On her way out of the house her parents give her that same warning, which holds especially true on Halloween.
Two best friends take a wrong turn while opening the gate to a haunted house. Their digital recorder caught it all.
A group of people participate in a Halloween haunted hayride through the woods on an isolated farm. An accident occurs and their crammed tour bus crashes. They wake on the ground with their hands and feet tied and realize that they have been abducted and are now the living body donors to some other dimensional horror.
A boy hears strange noises coming from his closet and opens it. He never tells anyone what he saw, just that whatever it is started moving at night. The parents don’t believe him, that is, until they start going missing, one by one.
Two nuns are working at a palliative care unit which specializes in treating terminal patients who are in their final hours. They see death’s shadow hovering over one patient who is being pursued by death itself. An angry spirit is knocking on her coffin lid, desperate to be let out of his afterlife.
The story opens with a man following the canal which goes through town. He finds a trashcan along the way. He looks inside it, and finds many bloody diapers and babies’ fingers. He accidentally trips and falls, smashing open the trashcan on top of him. He suddenly wakes up in a hospital room. He has no idea how he got there. As he looks down at his arms, he sees many surgical scars. He starts to remember the trash can. He meets up with his family members, and they do not remember him. An old man in a suit on a gurney walks into the room to visit him. The old man asks him details about his life, and as he asks, a woman quietly listens to their conversation from the next room. The man can only remember the beginning parts of his life. The old man then introduces the male patient as Charlie Jones, and the woman in the next room, is his wife, Mary Williams.
A woman and her young daughter relocate to a new town. They find that they have new neighbors whose smiles turn more sinister than welcoming.
A young boy whose apartment lies above a drugstore is able to tell when a customer is a time traveler and suffering from withdrawal.
Something goes wrong during a simple Halloween prank and one person is left dead, and now there is a witch on the loose that will be coming for you.
One of your friends mysteriously disappears and the other begins to tell dark stories about her. The friend supposedly went through some sort of transformation.
Halloween night. An old nemesis, bald, gaunt, and in a dark cloak, appears on the front porch, beckoning the main character to open the door.
A lesser entity demon is sent back in time to conquer mining towns using the cover of a mining tunnel incident.
A man goes to visit his 80 year-old grandfather who’s never left the house and never married or had any visitors. He finds out his grandfather has died. And is still in the house.
A boy comes home with a drawing that he says a friend at school made of his friend. The mother realizes the drawing is that of a friend her son knows at school. She decides to do a little sleuthing and finds that the drawing her son brought home is of a ghost. Her son’s friend has been missing for a few weeks.
A teenage girl killed her parents and was sent to a mental institution. Many years later, she manages to escape and return to her hometown.
A small group of kids scattered across the country play a game of hide and seek with an unknown entity that was formerly regarded as being just a boogeyman. The Boogeyman is AFK.
A husband brings home a pumpkin for Halloween and accidentally mistakes it to bring home a skull instead. It turns out he is being haunted by the skull of his first wife, a woman who died in a fire.
Tourists caught out in a lightning storm seek refuge in the nearby castle only to encounter the ghosts of the murderer’s victims. The ghosts tap and beat against the walls and doors in anger. The angry tapping slowly infects the mind of the tourists until they are also driven to madness.
A brother and sister have to homeschool after their parents are killed. A stranger comes to visit the siblings and claims to be their guardian who will slay the monsters they are facing.
A young couple doesn’t want to stay the night in a haunted old mansion, but their creepy host insists, “You know you wouldn’t want to insult me by not staying for your old friend’s little Halloween bash. He would be so hurt.”
An old abandoned house holds a grisly secret. Local teens sneak inside to party and learn first-hand the secret.
Staring on prom night at hours past midnight, an outcast boy slips into a reverie as his peers enjoy the rest of the evening, a strange edit disrupts the almost nostalgic scene. A creature is coming to get him.
You find a mirror in the woods. It appears to go on forever. But there are other people in it too. Strangers. They all look like you. You look like them. And they are beginning to come through.
An old lady relives a terrible and terrifying experience from Halloween night years ago. She witnessed her dead husband killing people. No one believed her other than you.
A town haunted by a murderous clown. The town decides to start a new tradition of holding an annual “Night of the Clown” every Halloween.
Bob and his friends attend a birthday party for a weird kid who wants to do a seance because he thinks he saw ghosts in his bedroom.
A group of young adults on spring break get soaked by a storm and decide to take shelter in a spooky looking old hotel they stumble upon. Turns out the hotel isn’t as abandoned as it seemed.
A man who recently lost his mother or wife moves into a new home. He soon realizes that spirits of the deceased still wander the property.
A new patient comes into a psychiatric hospital. People start dying shortly thereafter. Is the patient a vampire? Someone else?
A man with a strange limp checks into a hotel room claiming he is the illustrious writer Truman Capote.
A deranged circus performer murders his entire family. He explains that the man standing in front of them is merely the latest in a line of replacement actors all killed off one-by-one as their performances become less realistic.
A woman is babysitting her niece when she hears something strange in the attic. There are sounds of scratching and moaning. It stops. And then the lights go out.
In an attempt to win an award for scaring tourists on a deserted island, a magician ends up summoning an evil spirit that possesses the tour guides’ bodies. When the guests arrive, those bodies are filled by the demons.
When a hurricane hits the shoreline, the survivors are surprised to find some of the coastal inhabitants aren’t becoming victims but are actually becoming something foul, unpleasant, and terrifying.
A tired businessman on a long flight told a pretty flight attendant that he heard someone die. Specifically, he thinks he hears the sound of the heart stopping. The flight attendant cuts out his heart.
Parents leave their son home alone on Halloween only to come home and find their home exceedingly clean, dishes done, and their son is a different child.
Someone gets the black spot in a pirate game they are playing. They soon find out the price of being marked with the black spot.
Two boys are on a camping trip in the woods. They never return. Years later, their bodies are discovered in the cold ground, abandoned. Strangely, there are paw prints leading away from the graves.
A mysterious old woman is beaten to death in an old cemetery after midnight. Her ghost haunts the place.
A woman is lured into an abandoned building by a disturbing poster advertising a Halloween haunted house. The poster also advertises a date-rape drug that is nicknamed “Seduction.”
A young boy goes trick-or-treating and one of the houses belongs to an evil witch. She turns him into a frog.
A young couple buys an unfinished house. They soon learn why no one was interested in buying it…it was creepy and haunted.
A college student returns to her hometown for the first time in a decade. She witnesses something really scary in the woods. Something really scary comes after her.
Only one horse and her colt survive a mysterious plague. The horse becomes the caretaker of the colt as both face new challenges.
A mysterious prophet warns of an ancient evil lurking in the sleepy town of Fool’s Hollow. Parents are terrified that their children will be prey to said ancient evil.
Four college girls go on a road trip for Spring Break and get stranded in the middle of nowhere. They think they’re being haunted by the spirit of a dead girl. They soon learn why it was their time to die.
A husband and wife and two kids move into the biggest house of the cul-de-sac and soon learn that some of the neighbor kids have said they’ve seen a ghost.
A group of young adults decide to look for haunted locations and visit a decrepit morgue. They are trapped and killed by a psychotic morgue attendant.
Two middle aged adults end up at a youth camping retreat, but they find that they are in a group of teens. And they aren’t very good kids.
A group of siblings get together for a seance. They accidentally conjure up quite a bit more than they bargained for.
A group of kids go out camping in a large forest and end up discovering a mad scientist’s lab. They all become monsters and try to kill each other.
An orchard surrounded by a wrought iron fence is tended to by an old couple. Behind the barn in the orchard sit row after row of pickling jars filled with strange creatures. A young man is hired to tend to the orchard. Readers later learn that the young man has actually been hired by a powerful witch who used to own the orchard.
On a humid summer night in a “sleepy town,” a man’s scorned lover warns him that seducing women and getting them pregnant is what drives his hunger.
A stepmother truly loves her husband’s children, and finds a way to make them stay with her forever.
A boy finds a black cat on his way home from school. The cat talks to him, and offers the boy a wish. The boy wishes he were the fastest runner in the world. The cat grants the wish, and tells the boy he needs to pay up for the wish by granting to the cat his soul. The cat explains that he will be back on Halloween, on his haunting and ever-increasing rounds. The boy then learns that by wishing he were the fastest runner in the world, he can escape the cat.
Siblings celebrating Halloween are forced to live with a crazed and abusive grandmother. Their parents instead are dead. Only the kids are left to suffer.
A boy sneaks into a cemetary and ends up meeting a scary cowboy. He’s actually a lost cowboy garbed to look like one of the Natives of North America.
While traveling, a husband and wife are told to stay overnight in a house wherein only one bed remains. The husband leaves the wife alone in the bed and goes into the neighbouring room. The door closes, locked from the outside. In the morning he sees that the door has opened again, and their car has vanished from the driveway. A big panther is sitting on the bed, purring, and his wife is nowhere to be seen. He telephoned the police, but nobody listens, or comes until the next day. His wife is gone, and no trace of her can be found in or outside the building. Only her wedding ring, and strange, greyish pawprints in the snow.
A couple are secretly extorting innocent people into joining the occult and through occult means hypnotizing them into giving over large sums of money.
A little boy kills demons. But demons begin to disappear from every corner of the world without a cause. It’s up to him to find out why.
A girl gets possessed by an evil spirit. She starts talking like an old lady and smells like rotten flesh. Her only hope for salvation is an old witch.
A woman is attacked by a monster in the woods. The monster turns out to be less of a monster than she first thought.
A teenage girl is home alone on Halloween night. A phone call delivers the terrible news that someone close to her has been hurt in an accident. She must drive to another town to visit them.
There is a blanket of mist blanketing the land that appears early in the evening and rises at dawn. Five students from a nearby university go into the mist to find cut-out shapes left behind by strange creatures. Their cutouts represent the latest Halloween costumes. The students stumble into a labyrinth and meet something from Halloween lore but it takes many forms. The students choose their unique fates.
A group of boys head into the woods to find some excitement. Instead, they find a cabin in the woods that’s decorated with shredded human flesh.
A young girl hears strange scratching noises coming from her closet, but dismisses them as neighborhood cats. As time goes on, the scratching gets louder. When the girl opens the door to her closet, an undead witch hands pour out, followed by grown hands and, finally, adult hands.
A woman seeking work as a babysitter answers an ad. When she arrives at the given address, she learns she has been pranked and the location was only set up to look like a house.
An autistic child wanders away from his caregiver and finds a cartoonishly evil witch’s house. He wishes to be scary although every family member denounces his costume.
Two ghosts are friends who live in a town with constant fog. Because their town is a dead end, one day their friends decide to move and move on in life. This decision seems to have a lasting effect on a certain ghost. One day, a man visits the city and he can’t leave. He is tied to it now, and he is stuck.
Have you ever been the last person to hear about a rumor that spread like wildfire? This may not be a rumor. The story’s main character finds himself witnessing something astonishing. Later, he finds out everyone has seen it, but he can’t find anyone who has seen it. What was it?
A man gets stranded in the mountains during a snowstorm and stumbles through a portal into a cave. He soon comes across a village of frozen children.
After delivering the mail for eleven years, the mail carrier fears that a scary unknown being has been peeping on his every move.
A man takes a trip, and some creepy guy in a red cloak unexpectedly shows up with flights and a hotel. He tells the story of how one of his flights crashed and burned and somehow everyone on the plane survived. It’s pure evil and chaos.
A boy sneaks into an abandoned amusement park at night with a dare from his friends. He soon finds out why it’s abandoned. The rides have come alive and are hungry.
An old amusement park is said to be haunted. One character rents it out for an eerie Halloween party. He and his friends get more than what they bargained for when they’re trapped by ghosts.
You move into a new house and suddenly realize that the walls in all the rooms have words scratched into them. They say, “I want to play a game.”
A young military man is stationed in a border town to keep the townsfolk safe from vampires. It turns out he won’t really be safe from the vampires.
Two busybody women move into a new neighborhood and quickly become the talk of the town for their scandalous behavior especially the way they walk the streets of the neighborhood. It turns out that they are vampires preying on the new people in the neighborhood
A girl is invited to a party by her boyfriend. Teens start showing up after midnight. They are werewolves.
A Shakespearean expert is invited to a house in London to unravel the secret of the play that the master playwright never finished. He finds that it has something that he has been searching for—something which could bring him fame.
A witch invites children to a Halloween costume party. Instead of enjoying a fun night, she transforms them into werewolves.
A young person goes into a scary and haunted looking department store on Halloween Eve to buy a costume. She soon discovers strange and twisted creatures working in the store.
A woman makes a bet with her friends that she can last a month without showering or washing her hair. At the end of the month, she is greeted by a strange sensation when her hair is combed and she notices, for the first time, that her hair is moving.
A girl wakes up in a new town and her head hurts. Turns out she had been poisoned by someone in the nearby town. Suddenly her phone starts ringing. Her mom with a chilling voice tells her that this town, where she wakes up, is filled with skinless monsters.
An old woman and her grandson live in a creepy house. It turns out that the house is haunted. When it is her grandson’s bedtime, the old woman leaves the boy downstairs and tells him that a ghost will watch over him. When morning comes, the boy tells her that the ghost is no longer there.
John believes that the other interns are killing for organs. He discovers that maybe he is next on the Jewish Population Organ Donor Council’s list.
A man is about to take the last plunge off a waterfall, but on a whim changes his mind and decides to stay behind to explore the caves. The caves are home to a troll that eats people for dinner. One wrong step to the right makes the adventurer supper.
A newlywed couple moves into an old house next door to the bride’s childhood home that she had stayed in with her brothers when they were young. They soon discover her old family’s shocking secret.
A woman runs into a former acquaintance and kills her. Except she doesn’t know that the acquaintance is a witch. She didn’t mean to kill her.

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101 Scary Horror Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts |

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One of the main goals I have with this site is to remove potential barriers for writers and self-publishing authors. Sometimes those writing barriers come in the form of inspiration or lack thereof, so I decided to create a series of posts with genre-specific writing prompt s.

In this article, I will share 101 Horror Story Ideas and Writing Prompts that you are free to use as inspiration for your next project.

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I’ve always been someone who suffered from lots of ideas and less than stellar follow-through, but I know there are some authors out there where all they need is a bit of inspiration and they are going to run with and create something great. So that’s my hope, that some of you will read these horror story ideas and get inspired to flush them out and create a terrifying story that has the potential to scare millions in the future.

Some people might question putting your story ideas out there for others to use, but the truth is there is no shortage of ideas out there. On top of that, if we were all given the same horror writing prompt and asked to create a story from it, not one story would be the same. We all have different skill levels, approaches, writing styles, and imagination. I know many of you can create these ideas into something better than I ever could.

Story ideas are great, and they can capture our imaginations and propel us to start and finish a project when they fully consume us. However, the execution of completing that story is where the real magic happens.

So don’t be afraid to explore any of these horror writing prompts for fear that they are public and could potentially be used by other writers. If one story idea grabs you, sit on it, let it ruminate in your mind, flush it out, tweak it, make it your own. If you go through that creative process and are still excited about it, then move onto the outlining phase, where you will truly bring these ideas to life in your own image.

I also want to give a quick warning, these writing prompts and horror story themes are meant for adults, so allowing your children to read them, is up to your discretion.

So let’s get into it- 101 Horror Story ideas, segmented loosely by their type of horror subgenre.

Article Topics

Ghost, Supernatural, & Demon Horror Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

In this section, you will find one of the most common types of horror story, those dealing with ghost stories, the supernatural, or demons. I hope you enjoy these ghost horror story writing prompts and they inspire you to write something crazy scary. Want Some Inspiration- Check Out The Latest Ghost Best Sellers on Amazon

1. A freelance photographer is in Brazil for Carnivale. When he checks into his economy rental his health inexplicably begins to go downhill very fast. The cause lies with the spirits of visitors past.

2. Foster parents take custody of a newborn, but when they open up their home to the baby a dark force takes over the house that threatens them all.

3. An archeologist studying Aztec Ruins in Mexico starts to have visions of ancient atrocities. They become ever more real and dangerous when they start to repeat themselves all around him.

4. A cemetery groundskeeper’s run-in with a mysterious woman unlocks an ability to see the future, the trouble is everything he sees entails the death of his loved ones.

5. A priest struggles to reconcile science and his faith, the trouble is as he gets closer and closer to leaving the church, the darker events get around him.

6. A family moves into an abandoned ranch that hasn’t been lived in for years. As they get settled their animals begin to get sick and die. What they don’t realize is that once all the animals are gone, they are next.

7. A man inherits a European chateau from a rich relative he never knew existed. When he and his wife get there it quickly becomes evident something in this house never intends to let them leave.

8. A real estate developer purchases a defunct insane asylum. But everyone that enters the new bed and breakfast begins to go mad, prompting the question was it the people who brought madness to Trumbull House or vice versa.

9. A young woman is dragged to a medium as part of a bachelor party. During the reading, the medium warns the women of impending doom right before she dies.

10. A plantation owner known for the brutality with which he treated his slaves beats a young man to death after catching him with his daughter. The slave’s spirit returns seeking revenge on the man and reunion with his lost love.

11. A young girl walks into her parent’s room one-morning without saying a word looking distant, calm, and pale. Finally, matter-of-factly she speaks, “We should make the most of today because it’s our last.”

12. A young couple begins to wake up every night, at the witching hour, starting on the 1 year anniversary of their child’s death.

13. Teenagers go deep into the woods for a weekend of drinking and debauchery on an ancient Indian burial ground. One by One they disappear.

14. An undercover police officer is tasked with infiltrating a fringe demonic cult suspected of kidnapping a child. As he lives among them he participates in rituals that are meant to bring about tragic events. Suddenly he realizes they’re actually happening to friends and family in the town.

15. A born-again Christian evangelical in New Orleans try to fight remaining voodoo fringe cultural elements. When he finds voodoo dolls representing everyone in the town strung up, he abruptly cuts them down, which sets off a series of tragic disappearances.

16. A group of teens decides to spend the weekend at the site of a haunted urban legend. During their visit, they begin to realize the legend actually describes the exact events of their weekend blurring truth & legend.

Slasher Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

Everyone loves a good slasher movie, they are hard to pull off well, but when you do you have the makings of a cult hit. In this section, we will look at a few new story ideas involving slasher horror story writing prompts.

17. Plane crash survivors must live in the wilderness until they are rescued. As they set up camp one of them is found murdered. They know someone amongst them is a killer, now they have to survive while being hunted from within the group.

18. Three friends wake up trapped in a room. An unidentified voice informs them that he has each of their spouses captive. He informs them they have 24 hours to decide who lives or dies, the trick is the last alive will be granted freedom along with their spouse.

19. Strangers are sent separate job offers from a small town company. When they relocate to the town, they quickly find out that a murderer is picking them off one by one.

20. He’s a surgeon who saves lives by day and a serial killer that brutally takes them by night.

21. Campers get snowed into their cabin during a bad storm. Now they are being hunted by the only other person on the mountain.

22. A spring break trip to Cancun turns deadly for a group of tourists as a rash of murders hit the resort.

23. A mysterious stranger appears and offers a down on their luck musician anything they desire. They can enjoy this life of riches and fortune with one catch, at every concert one person in the audience will die.

24. An RV park near Yosemite becomes the latest killing site of a national serial killer on the loose, but escaping isn’t as easy as driving away.

25. A rash of abductions and murders take a small town hostage when moms from the local school start to disappear and turn up brutally mutilated.

26. A schizophrenic killer fights the voices in his head, but the only way he can temporarily quiet them is to continue to sacrifice the innocents selected by those very same voices.

27. A pre-teen child struggles with sociopathic tendencies and through her counseling, the child begins to accept her behavior isn’t normal, the trouble is this causes her to fully embrace her sadistic behavior.

28. A downtrodden homeless man who lost everything during the financial crises snaps and decides to he has nothing to lose so he will rain furry on wall street himself.

29. A disturbed man enthralled with the horrific scientific experiments conducted by Nazi doctors decides he is going to advance the science and complete the work his deranged idols started.

30. A woman’s child was kidnapped and murdered and the loss was too much for her to come back from mentally. She is now determined to dole the same pain she felt on the other families.

Scary Horror Story Ideas With a Twist

Horror stories can be widely entertaining without some kind of clever twist. But if you can pull off a spine-tingling horror story with a twist at the end that no reader saw coming, then you have a scary story that will get fans talking, which means a viral sales potential for your horror novel.

31. A woman wakes up from her coma in a strange dilapidated hospital after an accident she can’t remember. But in this hospital, the patients never seem to get better. The twist is that everyone in the hospital is already dead.

32. A small town sheriff tries to solve a series of murders before the killer takes his next victim, but the killer is always one step ahead. The Twist is that the sheriff and killer are one in the same.

33. A 1940’s psychiatric hospital performs experiments on the clinically insane. A young doctor takes umbrage at how the patients are being treated. She tries to find a way to take down the hospital and free the patients but her concerns go ignored. The twist is that the doctors are former patients that have long taken control of the hospital.

34. A vigilante killer determined to take the law into his own hands by killing society’s Degenerates. There is one thing that nobody knows, he framed each of his victims to watch their lives coming crashing down before ending them.

35. A father and his family are on the run being hunted by a drug cartel. They go off the grid and try to sneak out of the country. One by one they get separated from the group and then disappear for good. The twist is the father is the one killing them as they are the only witnesses to his crimes.

36. A woman travels to Haiti on a religious mission after being invited by a growing sect of Christians in the country that is trying to spread Christianity. As she there the missionary group realizes the dark forces in the village are very strong and have no plans of giving up there hold on the people. The twist is that the people who invited them to the town did so as part of a project to eradicate Christianity person by person and not to convert.

37. An environmental group is called into a small town to investigate environmental pollution in the water. As they begin their search members of the team get murdered. The horror plot twist is that the group isn’t being murdered by some corporate hired evildoers, in fact, the pollution in the water isn’t man-made at all, but a supernatural force that requires sacrifices to keep from wiping out the town. The environmental group of sacrifices offered by the townspeople.

38. A wife and her children begin to hear and experience weird occurrences in their home. The threats become more and more dangerous, and the mother struggles to keep her sanity and children safe. The plot twist in this horror writing prompt is that everything the mother is experiencing is a hoax meant to have her diagnosed as clinically insane so the husband could have custody of the children and all the money in a planned divorce.

39. Alien life forms come to earth creating mass hysteria. The large ships hover over random cities around the globe. Humanity tries to make contact with the ships but they aren’t able to. The only thing that can be heard is a high pitched frequency that seems to be jamming communications on earth. Humanity turns on itself, unleashing it’s worst on each other. The plot twist is that the ships were autonomous vehicles sent to earth to form a shield around the planet for an incoming meter strike that would have ended humanity.

40. A person is kidnapped and wakes up in a foreign town where each of the captives is hunted for sport. They must try to figure a way out before they are captured and killed. The plot twist in this horror story is that the people were actually never captured, just put into a VR simulation by the government to test the limits of peoples ability to deal with stress.

41. A big city family moves to a backwoods town due to career relocation. When they get to the town it becomes clear that something is very off with townspeople. Eventually, they figure out that the job offer was a hoax, and the town needed to call them there to harvest new DNA and organs for their population that experienced health issues due to a limited gene pool.

Monster Writing Prompts & Horror Story Ideas

This group of horror story ideas and writing prompts will focus on Monster driven story plots. You will a different type of monster in each one, so I hope it helps get the creative juices flowing.

42. A military base closes down, leaving the remnants of a small town behind. When a group of children wanders onto the base they discover something still seems to be living in the underground tunnels.

43. Hikers discover an abandoned mine that seems to go on forever. As they descend into the mine they realize they’ve crossed through a portal to an alternate dimension filled with creatures they could have never imagined.

44. Animals and children start to disappear near a Florida swamp, the small group of townspeople enters the swamp to hunt alligators they suspect are causing the issue. What they find is hiding in the green mist is far more dangerous than any alligator.

45. A group of Dungeons and Dragons players invites a new student to join the group. He is considered off and weird by most of the school but to the D&D group, he fits right in. When he becomes the new game master something unexplainable happens, the monsters and happenings in the game begin to appear and occur in real life.

46. Biologists in the rainforest of central America are looking for a rare plant said to have cancer-fighting properties. The trip turns dark when it is clear that these woods are also home to a packed with a wild pack of Chupacabras. Now they must figure out what is hunting them and how to survive.

47. An online streaming video star and crew which focuses on debunking urban legends and ghost stories go deep into the pine barons of New Jersey to debunk the New Jersey Devil myth. The only trouble is there is more truth to this myth then they ever expected. (This one is a shout out to New Jersey, there really is more to this state than the turnpike and the Jersey Shore, but I digress)

48. Three young devil worshippers are determined to make contact with the hell. But in trying to make contact with the devil, they unleash the mythical 3 headed Cerberus onto earth.

49. An Incubus is unleashed inside a maximum security female prison. Preying on the inmates while they sleep, trying to impregnate to unleash a band of demonic babies onto earth.

50. Taking a trip of a lifetime, a family travels to Africa for a safari. Wanting the most authentic trip possible they decide to go it alone but when their camp is attacked by a fabled Nandi Bear they will need every inch of guile to survive.

51. A young team of Crab fisherman leave for their long crabbing season in the artic but on their journey, they encounter far more than they expected. Their ship has apparently been spotted by what one can only describe as a Cracken like creature.

52. A small town has a rash of new illnesses come over the town’s children. The diseases can’t be explained by physicians and threaten the lives of the entire town. A small group of teens is the only children unaffected. They search for a reason and find that the cause is actually the mythical Greek disease demon Aerico. Want Some Inspiration- Check Out The Latest Vampire Best Sellers on Amazon

Alien Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

In this section of our horror story writing prompts, we will focus on horror stories driven by Alien creatures and plot lines. Enjoy these Alien focused Writing Prompts.

53. A horrible fog rolls in over a town, it will not dissipate. The townspeople aren’t allowed to leave when the rest of the country realizes any person that relocates from that town subjects their town to the same fate. The trouble is all the crops are dying, no one is allowed to enter or leave the town and the everytime someone disappears the fog gets a bit wider in diameter.

53. All the wildlife starts to die as weird weather patterns begin to occur. While this is going on new crop circles are starting to appear across the globe. Scientists point to climate change, but soon it becomes clear that the changing climate is due to Alien locust-type creatures that have tagged earth as their next stop.

54. A select group of people on the planet gain telekinetic powers. The new power is hailed as the next giant leap in human evolution. However, these new powers are actually being dictated by an alien super race that plans on using these human puppets to enslave civilization.

55. Seismic events occur around the globe in the deepest parts of the ocean. The world braces for the aftermath from the series of earthquakes, but in reality, it isn’t earthquakes at all, but an ancient alien civilization that has laid dormant in the earth’s crust that is rising up to complete its mission.

56. A series of unresolved missing person cases that have been opened for years around the United States are suddenly closed when the missing people reappear. Something has changed with these people but no one quite knows what it is. These are not the same people they were when they disappeared. They were alien abductees and now being sent back to earth to carry out their alien captures plans.

57. A small green gelatinous creature is found by a group of friends in the nearby swamp. They take the creature home as a secret pet. Within days the creature reveals itself for what it is a carnivorous alien set on feeding and multiplying.

58. A spaceship crashes into the desert. A group of people finds it and when they open it they are quickly trapped inside as the craft takes off. This is one of the multiple ships that crash landed. As the military studies them, aliens study the captives to find the easiest way to terminate the species.

59. A fleet of Alien ships come to planet earth. They speak perfect English and explain they are there to share technology and come in peace. However, the truth is they intend on harvesting and using the human race as carbon batteries.

60. One Alien child is found on the planet. Competing factions argue on what the course of action should be with her. Some want to invite her in and learn from her, others want to do experiments on her. As the planet tries to figure out just what course of action to take, the rest of the Alien species watches on, as the child was an Alien tester. Depending on how the humans treat her, will determine whether or not the aliens in search of a new planet come to live amongst us or simply exterminate us and take the planet for themselves.

61. Unexplained shadows in the sky engulf entire cities. As the occurrence continues to happen humanity becomes more and more frantic. Now the question is can the human race overcome the Alien psychological warfare and prepare for the real threat.

62. A group of townspeople begins to turn on each other in horrible ways. The first occurrence is cast aside as someone simply having a mental break down. However, when the occurrences spread, it becomes evident that something has come over the people of this once peaceful town. The cause is an Alien mental manipulation that embeds horrific visions into the people of the town of atrocities being committed by their own neighbors, friends, and family.

Zombie Horror Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

No list of horror or scary story writing ideas would be complete without having some Zombies thrown in, so in this section, we will focus on Zombie driven horror stories.

63. A zombie plague takes over the world, but the most dangerous part of this plague is that the virus lays dormant for up to 6 months before a person changes. So now you are living amongst the confirmed zombies and possibly soon to be zombies that can change instantaneously without warning.

64. The zombie apocalypse happened years ago, but a cure is finally available. Now to bring your loved ones back you must catch them and bring them to the government determent camp for treatment. A small town pastor sets out to lead a group in his town through the red zone to find their loved ones.

65. The zombie apocalypse is in full swing, however, these undead creatures are mating with wildlife getting exponentially faster and stronger. Survival is the name of the game for this group of roaming survivors.

66. The zombie virus has taken out most of civilization, the remaining survivors are lucky to take it one day at a time. A select group of survivors has a genetic mutation that makes them impervious to the virus. However, they have to be concerned with not only the flesh-eating zombies but survivors hunting them for their blood.

67. What if the zombie virus had two paths it could take, one was to turn you into a member of the brainless undead destined to roam the world for eternity and the other was making you impervious to disease and death. The trick it the only way to know which way your body will take the mutation is to get bit.

68. There is one religious camp left in the world that the zombie plague has not yet infested. The trick is it’s on the other side of the country and a group of survivors needs to make its way there for hopes of survival, but in the meantime, it has to survive the journey.

69. In a twisted post, apocalyptic world zombies have been enslaved as pets to mock and torture. What happens when the notoriously dumb undead begins to think and figure a way out.

70. A man’s family has been compromised by the zombie plague, the government has strict rules that when anyone is infected they must be turned in for extermination immediately. The man must now hide his family while trying to get his hands on the rumored cure.

71. A zombie virus infects the U.S. Military, however, these zombies are intelligent and thus weaponized. Now society must band together to defeat them.

Writing Prompts & Horror Story Ideas with Dolls

Sometimes the scariest stories come from some of the most realistic prompts. We have all seen an entirely too creepy doll in our day, one of those that you just don’t want to look at let alone hold. Well in this section we will visit horror story writing prompts with dolls.

72. A young child inherits an attic full of her grandmother’s creepy old dolls. The child is fully engrossed by her new imaginary friends, but as bad things start to happen around the house it becomes evident that these dolls are more than inanimate toys.

73. An old religious woman buys an old doll at a flea market. When strange things begin to happen to the religious artifacts in the home it becomes clear that this is no ordinary doll.

74. A group of Voodoo dolls has an animation curse placed on them that causes them to seek out and kill their real-life counterparts.

75. A hospital gift shop doll is possessed, causing it to comes alive every night and hunt patients in the pediatric ward.

76. A next generation sex doll equipped with Artificial intelligence seeks revenge on the men that abuse her.

77. There is something extra scary about this dolls dead eyes when you look into them your darkest subconscious thoughts are unleashed into the forefront of your mind’s eye where they will ultimately drive you insane unless you act them out.

78. A child’s clown doll is possessed but no one believes them. Now they need to protect their family from the clown despite being blamed for everything that is happening.

79. A daycare is overrun by demented dolls, now the teachers must protect the children until help can arrive.

80. Futuristic robot dolls are overtaken by a demonic AI software update and begin to terrorize humanity.

81. A doll comes alive and implants on their owner. Unwilling to share her with anyone else, its only focus is eliminating her family.

82. An old doll that belonged to a young slave girl that was murdered animates itself and seeks revenge on the slave owner’s future generations.

Short Horror Story Ideas and Writing Prompts

Some of you may want to try your hand at horror but might want to try it in a short story format which is totally fine, and something I might do myself on a future project. While any of these horror story ideas and writing prompts can be used for a short story, in this section I will focus on writing prompts that are a little easier to pull off in a short horror story format.

83. A teen is visiting a boyfriend in another city when they have a fight and she can’t call her parents so she must spend the night in a park. The trouble is there is something hunting people in that park tonight.

84. A person is in an elevator with one other person when it gets stuck. The problem is the other person is a werewolf and will slowly change over soon if the elevator doors don’t open up soon.

85. A vampire that had gone into voluntary exile decides he no longer wants to live on animal blood alone, so one night out of the year he will revisit his hometown to dine on human blood. That night is tonight.

86. A woman is locked in her bathroom, but there is somebody in the mirror staring back at her.

87. A woman is home alone when her house is broken into, she must survive the break-in without being seen.

88. A restaurant purchased an old church building, but when the owner is putting the overnight final touches on his restaurant before grand opening tomorrow he realizes spirits that the supernatural may still own this building, not him.

89. A group of teen girls is in a broken down car in the middle of the night when a group of red necks tripping on Flaca come upon the car. Now with no way to call for help they need to survive.

90. A traveler is mistaken for the wrong identity and must survive a cartel hitman for the night.

91. New neighbors move next door and something strange is going on in that house. One night the disturbance spills onto the family’s property and their father must keep them alive until morning.

92. A cruise ship is run by a cult of crew members when the passengers realize they are there as a fresh crop of victims they need to survive until their next port.

93. A couple goes on a deep sea diving trip off the coast of Australia, but on one dive their crew disappears and they realize something otherworldly is in the water with them.

94. A homosexual couple is targeted in their own house by a psychopath.

95. A new family moves into a home when they start getting letters about being watched. The latest letter says all their worries will end this weekend along with their lives.

96. A woman works out overnight in a 24 hr gym. She is all alone or so she thinks, but now she needs to survive whoever is after her.

97. There is a group of newborns in the hospital, but one of them is possessed and now the question is can one nurse protect the rest of the babies until morning.

98. A late night runner hears something in the woods. She keeps running but whatever it is only getting closer. Can she survive being stalked in the night?

99. A group of kids playing with a Quiji board unlocks a nasty spirit. Now they need to survive the night until they can get help.

100. A family hears someone breaking in so they go into their panic room, but that was the plan all along, now they need to figure a way out to survive.

101. A sane person is locked in a room with other psychotic patients by accident. Now she has to survive the night until the next shift arrives.

Check out Writers Workshop on Horror on Amazon

I really hope these horror story ideas and writing prompts have gotten your creativity flowing. Pick the story ideas you like the most and start to flush them out. See if you can turn them into a full-fledged plot.

Remember a story premise is great but until you execute on it and publish it, it will never have a chance at scaring readers for generations to come.

Thanks for reading and writing!

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Horror Story Ideas: 55+ Scary Writing & Picture Prompts For Your Next Killer Story

When it comes to writing horror stories, the possibilities are endless. From creepy ghosts lurking in dark corners to terrifying monsters waiting in the shadows, there’s no limit to what you can come up with. But coming up with a truly original and frightening plot can be a challenge.

Fortunately, I’m here to help! With my years of experience – and some well-placed references from classic horror films – I’ve come up with some ingenious horror story ideas that blend elements of classic horror with modern-day scares.

So grab a pen and paper (or laptop) and get ready for some spine-tingling fun!

👉 Want more story ideas? Check out our list of 365 Short Story Ideas .

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What is horror?

Horror is a genre of fiction that aims to instill fear, dread, and terror in its readers. It employs elements like the supernatural, psychological horror, and suspense, horror stories that are designed to make people feel scared or unsettled.

For me, horror means one thing: hours of endless brainstorming for that perfect story idea. You know the one—the kind that will keep people up at night, their minds racing with all sorts of frightening possibilities. It’s a challenge I absolutely love to take on, and one I’m happy to share with you.

What are the Elements of A Horror Story?

It takes more than just a few spooky creatures to craft a good horror story. You’ll need suspense, tension, the unknown, and plenty of jump scares. It also helps if you can build up an atmosphere of terror – think creaky floors, flickering lights, and strange noises at night.

Music is also an important element in horror stories – it can help to create an atmosphere of dread and increase the intensity of scenes. Horror stories often feature protagonists that are either unwilling or unable to fight their fears, leading them into increasingly dangerous situations.

The elements of a horror story typically include:

Atmosphere : An eerie atmosphere can be created through setting and mood.
Suspense/tension : This is the feeling of unease that builds up as the story progresses.
Jump scares : These are sudden, shocking moments meant to startle readers or viewers.
Foreshadowing : This technique hints at what’s to come later in the story.
The supernatural : Supernatural elements, such as ghosts and monsters, can lend a sense of dread and mystery to horror stories.
Common themes : Common themes associated with horror stories include death, revenge, the afterlife, and the unknown.
Psychological horror : This type of horror deals with fear on an emotional level, rather than relying on jump scares or gore.
Gore : While not necessary for a good horror story, gore can be used to create an even more frightening atmosphere.

Head over to our guide on How To Write Gore In Horror: 17 Tips For Writing Terrifyingly Gruesome Scenes .

What’s the Appeal of Horror Stories?

Horror stories have long been a staple of entertainment, with people being drawn to the sense of dread and fear that they evoke. People often seek out horror stories because they can help us process our own fears – whether it’s irrational anxieties or more logical worries about life and death.

Horror stories also provide an escape from the mundane and everyday, allowing us to take a journey into a world of suspense and terror. With horror stories, we can let our imaginations run wild as we explore dark and mysterious places that we might never set foot in real life.

At its core, the appeal of horror stories is the promise of a thrilling adventure — one that will both excite and terrify us in equal measure.

Now, let’s explore some horror and scary story ideas .

55+ Horror Story Ideas

Horror story ideas with a twist.

A babysitter is hired to take care of a small child in an old and eerie mansion. The child’s parents are gone for the night, and the babysitter soon realizes that there is something very wrong with the house – strange noises, flickering lights, and even ghostly apparitions lurking in the shadows. When they finally come face to face with the forces of darkness, can the babysitter make it out alive?

A group of friends decide to spend the weekend camping in a remote forest, far away from civilization. They arrive late at night and set up camp, but as soon as they do, strange things start to happen. The wind howls through the trees as if it is trying to tell them something, and a thick fog begins to roll in. They soon realize that they are not alone in the forest, and something sinister is lurking just beyond their campfire.

A family moves into a new home that has been vacant for years. While exploring the house, the children find an old portrait of a woman who looks strangely familiar. Little do they know, this woman is the ghost of a previous inhabitant – and she is determined to get revenge on anyone who dares to enter her domain.

An amateur filmmaker sets out to make a horror movie with his friends, but soon realizes that the plot he has chosen is disturbingly similar to an unsolved mystery from the past. When their film starts to attract strange and dangerous attention, the group of friends must face a terrifying truth that could cost them their lives.

A young couple decides to take a drive out into the woods late one night. As they explore further, they come across an old abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere – just when it seems like all hope is lost, a strange figure appears in the doorway. With no way to escape, they must confront their deepest fears in order to survive.

A group of ghost hunters sets out to investigate an old and supposedly haunted castle. As they explore further, they make the startling discovery that something more sinister is at work – something that could cost them their lives.

A high school student discovers a mysterious book in the library that seems to hold all the answers to life’s questions – until they start reading it and realize that it is actually cursed. What dark secrets will be uncovered as they continue to read?

While out exploring, an adventurer stumbles upon a hidden underground city that is inhabited by creatures of the night. With no way out, they must brave the unknown and face their deepest fears in order to survive.

A group of friends decide to spend their summer vacation at a secluded lake house deep in the woods. Little do they know, an ancient evil lurks below the surface – and it is determined to make them its prey.

A family moves into a new home, only to find out it was once the site of a gruesome murder that has never been solved. As they start to explore further, strange occurrences begin to take place – and soon they realize that the spirit of the murderer is still lurking in the shadows.

After being invited on a camping trip, a group of teenagers discovers an old abandoned cabin in the woods. Inside, they find evidence that suggests something sinister has taken place there long ago – and now they must fight to survive against whatever dark force is still present in the cabin.

A caregiver is hired to look after an old Victorian mansion, but soon realizes that there is something very wrong with the house – strange noises, flickering lights, and even ghostly apparitions lurking in the shadows. When they finally come face to face with the forces of darkness, can the babysitter make it out alive?

A group of friends decides to take a road trip, but soon find themselves lost in the middle of nowhere. They come across an old abandoned mansion and decide to explore it, only to discover that something sinister is lurking inside its walls. Will they be able to escape before it’s too late?

More Horror Story Ideas

1. Campfire Tale: A group of campers gather around the fire on a moonless night and tell each other horror stories. Little do they know, there’s an unseen monster lurking in the woods, waiting for its next victim.

2. Grim Reaper: A serial killer is stalking the streets of a small town, leaving behind a trail of bodies with the same strange symbol carved into their chests. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure in a long black cloak stalks the killer wherever they go.

3. Haunted House: On Halloween night, three friends break into an abandoned house and discover its dark secrets.

4. Zombie Apocalypse: A virus has spread throughout the world, turning people into mindless zombies. The survivors must find a way to survive in this new post-apocalyptic world.

5. Witchcraft: A coven of witches is determined to bring about the apocalypse by summoning dark forces from beyond. One brave teen stands up against them and discovers witchcraft is real after all.

6. Alien Invasion: Aliens have invaded Earth and brought with them an army of terrifying monsters. Humanity must band together to save the planet from total destruction.

7. Haunted Hotel: A family checks into a hotel on vacation, only to discover it’s haunted by the ghosts of its past guests.

8. Demon Possession: A teenager finds out they’ve been possessed by a powerful demon, and must battle both the creature inside them as well as the forces outside trying to take it away.

9. Monster Hunter: A group of monster hunters is tasked with finding and destroying an ancient beast before it destroys the world.

10. Time Travel: A scientist experiments with time travel, only to find themselves locked in an endless loop of horror and bloodshed.

11. Witch Hunters: A group of witch hunters must rescue a group of innocent people from the clutches of an evil coven.

12. Creepy Doll: An old, creepy doll comes to life and terrorizes a family in their home.

13. Curse of the Undead: A cursed object brings an ancient evil back from the dead, with terrifying consequences for anyone who possesses it.

14. Haunted School: A group of kids discover that their school is haunted by the ghost of a student who died there years ago.

15. Supernatural Forces: A group of paranormal investigators must uncover the secrets of an old house, where supernatural forces are at work.

16. Evil Scientist: An evil scientist is creating a deadly virus that could wipe out all life on Earth. The only thing standing in their way is a group of brave survivors.

17. Ghost Ship: A mysterious ghost ship appears off the coast, and those who go to investigate find themselves trapped in a nightmare from which they may never escape.

18. Possessed by Evil: A young girl has been possessed by an evil entity, and only a priest can save her.

19. Dark Rituals: A coven of witches is planning a dark ritual to unleash an ancient evil upon the world.

20. Werewolf Curse: A cursed family must fight to break the werewolf curse that has plagued them for generations.

21. Curse of the Mummy: An ancient Egyptian mummy is brought to life and starts to terrorize a museum.

22. Vampires in the City: A group of vampire hunters must protect their city from an army of bloodthirsty vampires.

23. Killer Clowns: A small town is terrorized by a group of killer clowns

24. Witch Trials: A group of innocent people are accused of witchcraft and face trial by fire in a desperate attempt to save themselves from execution.

25. Zombie Island: A group of survivors must battle their way off a zombie-infested island before it’s too late.

26. Demon Lord: An ancient demon lord has been unleashed upon the world and is determined to bring about its destruction.

27. Ghost Town: A small town is overrun by ghosts, and the only way to save it is to uncover the dark secrets that lie beneath.

28. Monster Factory: A mysterious factory is producing monsters and it’s up to a small group of brave adventurers to shut it down before it’s too late.

29. A Magical Portal: A magical portal opens in an abandoned house, leading to a terrifying alternate dimension filled with monsters.

30. Alien Invasion: A strange alien species invades Earth, and humanity must unite to fight them off or face extinction.

31. Dark Mansion: A mysterious mansion is said to be haunted by a powerful evil force, and only the bravest of souls can survive its terrors.

32. Secret Society: A secret society of dark magicians is plotting to take over the world, and a group of brave heroes must stop them before it’s too late.

33. Necromancer: An ancient necromancer has been resurrected and is determined to unleash a plague of darkness upon the world.

34. Vampire Hunter: A brave vampire hunter must battle an army of bloodthirsty vampires in order to save a small town from their evil clutches.

35. Witch’s Curse: An old witch casts a curse on a small town, and the only way to break it is to find the source of her power.

36. Curse of the Vampire: A powerful vampire lord has cursed a family and it’s up to them to find a way to break his spell.

47. Haunted Forest: A group of brave adventurers must venture into a haunted forest and uncover its dark secrets before an evil force can take control.

38. Robot Uprising: A powerful artificial intelligence has declared war on humanity.

39. Curse of the Pharaoh: An ancient pharaoh has been resurrected and is determined to reclaim his kingdom by any means necessary.

40. Ritual Sacrifice: An evil cult is planning a ritual sacrifice, and the only way to stop them is to uncover their sinister plan before it’s too late.

41. Supernatural Powers: A group of teens discover they have supernatural powers

42. Cult Leader: An evil cult leader is determined to spread his dark gospel across the world

48. Evil Wizard: An evil wizard is determined to bring about the end of the world

44. Witch Hunt: A town is terrorized by witch hunters, who are determined to eliminate anyone they deem to be practicing witchcraft.

45. Forbidden Spell: An ancient spell is discovered, and its power threatens to destroy the world if it falls into the wrong hands.

Even More Horror Story Ideas

A family moves into a creepy old house and discovers it is haunted by the ghost of an evil scientist.

A small town is terrorized by a mysterious hooded figure who stalks its streets at night, leaving behind a trail of blood and corpses.

After inheriting a creepy old mansion from her eccentric uncle, a young woman discovers its dark secrets.

An ancient being is released after centuries of imprisonment and goes on a rampage, killing anything in its path.

A family moves into an abandoned house in the countryside only to discover that it has been cursed by something sinister beyond their

A group of teenagers explore an abandoned factory and find themselves being stalked by a dangerous creature.

After entering a mysterious portal, a group of friends finds themselves transported to another world filled with monsters and

A group of kids explore an abandoned mental hospital that has been shut down for decades – only to discover that the place is still inhabited by a mysterious and sinister entity.

A small town experiences a series of bizarre and unexplainable events – from missing persons reports to sightings of strange creatures – leading them to realize they are in the middle of an ancient supernatural battle that threatens their very existence.

Horror Picture Story Ideas And Prompts

Final notes on horror story ideas.

Horror stories have an undeniable allure, especially when they’re based on true events. There’s something about a real-life tragedy – or even just the idea of one – that captivates our imaginations and sends chills down our spines. The same can be said for horror fiction—the more outlandish the tale, the more fun it is to read.

Is it the fear of the unknown? Or is it something more sinister lurking behind the shadows, ready to pounce when you least expect it? No matter what your definition may be, one thing’s for sure – horror stories have been keeping readers on the edge of their seats since time immemorial.

So whether you’re an aspiring author looking for inspiration or a reader who just wants to be scared out of their wits, I’m sure you found these ideas worthwhile.

365 Short Story Ideas
75 Short Story Ideas With A Twist
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Chioma Ezeh is an author, digital marketer, business coach, and the founder of chiomaezeh.com, a blog that teaches how to build successful online businesses. Get in touch.

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20+ Horror Writing Prompts

Everyone loves a good horror story. The thrill of these tales is that they often unnerve us, striking fear into our hearts and minds by twisting everyday things into something sinister and unexpected. It’s this ability to take the ordinary and turn it inside out that makes horror such an excellent genre for writers. Now if you’re an essay writer who loves the horror genre, but also struggles to come up with new ideas from time to time, you might find yourself struggling to conjure a fresh new tale. However, as you are anything but ordinary—as a reader of this article no doubt—you can use that as your first step towards coming up with some fantastic ideas. We asked academic writers from the following essay writing company Smart Writing Service to provide us with it. Read on for 20 horror writing prompts for writing a great story, a movie review or an essay.

Who or what is the source of terror?

Identifying the “character” of your horror story is important. After all, when we read a book or watch a film, we are not just being given a story—we are also being given characters that we can get to know and even empathize with. In fact, a great many movies and books are so successful because they have characters that we fall in love with—or despise—simply because they are so well-developed. However, it’s easy to fall into the trap of simply creating a character who is evil, who has no reason for doing the things that they do. This can make for a very one-dimensional story, and is unlikely to frighten your readers as much as you might like. For a truly compelling horror story, you need to give your character a motive for what they are doing.

Here are a few horror writing ideas:

A monster represents a current social issue or force.
A science experiment goes wrong.
A sympathetic hero discovers a monstrous inner flaw.
The protagonist discovers their beloved is hiding a dark secret.
Conflict between two monsters generates danger.

A dark and stormy night

This is the classic setting for a horror story—a dark and stormy night. However, that doesn’t have to mean that you are setting your story in Victorian times in a rural part of England. You can, of course, set it in a dark and stormy night in the modern day in an urban jungle. The important thing here is to describe just how dark and stormy it is, and what that might do to your characters.

Here are a few horror writing prompts:

An outsider arrives in a picturesque small town.
A prehistoric creature brings ancient terror to an American city.
A big-box retailer becomes a refuge during a crisis.
Something ominous is occurring in the house next door.
A mode of transportation is put to a disturbing use.

An everyday object turned sinister

A classic staple of horror stories is the everyday object that suddenly displays an unusual, almost sinister, power.

Here are a few examples and horror writing prompts:

It might be an item of clothing, a household item, or something else entirely.
Maybe the item is one that your characters are particularly wary of, or that they avoid because of the dangers associated with it.
Maybe it’s an item that is innocent and innocuous, but somehow develops a sinister power.
Perhaps it is an object that already has a sinister reputation, like the ancient book that is said to hold the secrets of eternal life.
Maybe a character uses the item to try to do something good, but it turns out to be a mistake.

How can you transform this everyday item into something sinister?

Somewhere you shouldn’t be

We often feel a little guilty about going to places we know we shouldn’t be; however, a good horror story will make you feel guilty about being in the wrong place even when there is nothing to be ashamed of.

Perhaps they are places where terrible things have happened in the past, or places where terrible things are happening right now.
It could be a place where people have gone missing, or where they have been found dead.
It could be a place that is simply dangerous, like the top of a tall building, or the bottom of the ocean.

The important thing is that the place has an air of danger about it.

A few more chilling horror writing ideas to give you some creepy inspiration:

A chilling prediction comes true, and your characters are put in a situation where they have to make a terrible decision. What is it that your characters have to do to stop the terrible outcome? How do they have to change their lives in order to avoid this terrible event?
Perhaps a disease breaks out and threatens everyone in a particular place, or a natural disaster strikes, forcing people to make terrible decisions as they try to survive.
Perhaps a character is hesitant to visit a place they once loved, or to let a loved one into their life. Why are they hesitant? What is it that they are afraid of? Why is this moment of hesitation in your story important?
Sometimes, those who stand by and do nothing in a horror story are as frightening as the villains. Have you ever known someone who has done nothing when they could have helped?

If none of these ideas get your creative juices flowing, students of horror like you can always get fast, effective and legit help with a horror story or a college essay from the professional academic writers at a paper writing service, where experts can provide serious scholarship and brilliant ideas on demand.

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13 Creative Writing Prompts for Psychological Thrillers and Horror

by Lauren du Plessis @lauren.duplessis

Get inspired for your Halloween writing projects with these warm-up exercises and ideas from pro writers

From campfire tales to creepypastas, scary stories have taken many forms over the years. While a thriller tends to have a fast pace, and horror focuses more on suspense and tone, these two genres have a lot in common, like high tension and unsettling effects.

From haunted houses to serial killers to ancient monsters, there seems to be a limitless well of ideas out there for thriller and horror writers. But if you’re looking for somewhere to start with your Halloween creative writing , we've rounded up 13 prompts shared by professional writers below .

These prompts can be used for any narrative fiction, whether you write short stories, novels, screenplays, or just about anything else .

What is a writing prompt and how do I use it?

Writing prompts are everywhere online nowadays, with sites like Pinterest and Instagram being packed with aesthetically-pleasing bullet point lists of story ideas. They provide a core concept that you can base your own original work around . Not only can this help to beat writer’s block , it can also open your creative mind .

There are many reasons why writers might turn to these exercises. Some choose to do “morning pages”, or free writing sessions to warm up, with no intention of showing the work to anyone. Others might be looking for fresh ideas during the research phase for a project they hope to work on. Finally, some might use writing prompts for fun, trying them out with friends or a workshop to find out how everyone responds differently.

Emily Barr shares her writing tips in a course on psychological thrillers, which you can find at the bottom of this post.

Halloween creative writing prompts

It’s the perfect time of year to get cozy at your desk or in a café, and lose yourself in composing a spooky story. That’s why we teamed up with some of Domestika’s writing teachers to get you started with creepy characters, scary scenery, and unsettling situations .

Our three teachers are screenwriter and indie author Mark Boutros ( @mboutroswrites ), who wrote The Craft of Character ; award-winning novelist Emily Barr ( @emily_barr ), who writes thrillers for adults and young adults; and Raquel Castro ( @raquelcastrom ), author of teen horror novels, essays, short stories, and much more.

Without further ado, find their prompts below, and start writing!

Opening sentence prompts

Let’s start with two chilling opening scenes from Mark, which could form the beginnings of a “whodunnit” or mystery thriller. Try considering what plot beats or key moments would follow, and what the end point might be.

1. Sarah searched through the final dusty box, the last of her dead mother's belongings, and while she couldn't find her mother's will, there was a photo album, and in it, several photos of her mother with a child that wasn't Sarah nor her sister, Bronagh.

2. He hadn't had any visitors for years, ever since he'd told everyone in the village exactly how he felt about how they'd treated his wife before she passed away. So who could be ringing the doorbell at this hour? He limped towards it, his slipper souls slapping against the wooden floor. He called out but nobody answered, so he opened the door forcefully, but nobody was there in the darkness, but on the doorstep, a cassette with a sticker and a nickname he hadn't heard since school, 'Stinger', written on it.

Meanwhile, Emily offers this intriguing opener...

3. I was sleeping soundly, for the first time in years, when I was woken by a bang on the door, an urgent shout, and barking dogs.

Raquel Castro's course covers how to write horror for a younger audience.

Setting and situation prompts

Here, think about your own strong opening image, then consider whether flashbacks, dialogue, or action scenes will reveal key information.

Raquel shares three imaginative exercises.

4. A certain classic horror story starts with the words “It was a dark and stormy night”. But how exactly does a “dark and stormy night” look? Describe it in as much detail as possible.

5. Imagine you are in a place where you usually feel comfortable and safe. Only now it’s totally in the dark. There’s no light that you could use. And then, you hear a noise that frightens you because it seems completely out of place there. What was that noise? What could be its source?

6. Look around your neighborhood and find a place that looks strange or eerie. Dream up (and then write) a story that could be told as the disturbing legend of that place.

7. Imagine that, near a crime scene, you find a backpack. When you open it, you sense it belongs to the criminal. Why is that? What does the backpack look like, and what’s inside it?

Emily offers the following ideas…

8. You go to visit your friend, but the person who opens the door tells you your friend moved away ten years ago. That can’t be true, because you saw them last week.

9. You’re standing at the top of a tall building, clinging on to a window frame to stop yourself falling, and you don’t know you got there.

10. You’re walking in your neighborhood, when a stranger hands you a package. You take it without thinking, and are immediately arrested.

11. You’re staying in a secluded holiday cottage by the beach. On the first morning you go out onto the terrace, and find that someone has spelt out the word MURDERER in stones on the ground. How did they know?

Finally, Mark offers these two prompts…

12. A young girl who keeps seeing a black, mangy dog every night when she looks outside the farmhouse window, ever since she overheard her parents discussing divorce.

13. A man in a broken marriage walks along a quiet beach when he finds a message in a bottle. It simply reads: Kill her.

These protagonists appear to hold dark secrets, or stand on the edge of huge discoveries. If you choose to turn one of these prompts into a story, feel free to link it in the comments below!

Craft chilling stories with these writing resources

If you’re keen to start but want a step-by-step guide to help you become a confident storyteller, check out these resources.

1. Master the tension and big reveals of horror writing for teens with this introductory course by Raquel Castro.

2. Character is key: learn about motivations, arcs, and more in this character development course by Mark Boutros.

3. To learn how to weave travel-inspired thriller narratives , discover Emily Barr’s course on psychological thrillers .

4. Unmask your fearless creativity with this Halloween-inspired Domestika courses pack .

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Scary Story Essay

As one reads through a spine-chilling tale, have you ever found yourself captivated, unable to avert your gaze despite the creeping sensation of terror that permeates your being? If so, you’re not alone. Scary stories essays have been popular for centuries, and they tap into our deepest fears and anxieties and transport us to a world where anything is possible.

If you are struggling to develop ideas for your scary story essay, don’t worry – with the right tools and techniques, anyone can write a terrifying tale that will leave readers begging for more. Whether you are an experienced wordsmith or a fledgling novice, continue reading to acquire the knowledge necessary to pen a narrative that will ensnare your audience and leave them tossing and turning throughout the night. Write my essays with confidence and create your spine-tingling tale today!

What is a Scary Story Essay?

A scary story essay is a narrative essay designed to frighten and unsettle the reader. It typically involves supernatural or horror elements like ghosts, monsters, or otherworldly creatures. The objective of an essay centered around a frightening narrative is to instill a feeling of uneasiness and apprehension within the reader while concurrently maintaining their attention until the very conclusion.

Some characteristics of a scary story essay include:

An eerie or ominous tone
Vivid descriptions of the setting, characters, and events
A sense of foreboding or impending doom
Suspenseful pacing and plot twists
An unsettling or unexpected ending

Differences between a scary story essay and other types of essays

One of the key differences between a scary story essay and other types of essays is the emphasis on creating an emotional response in the reader. While most pieces are designed to inform or persuade, a scary story essay spm is intended to evoke a specific emotional reaction.

Another difference is using narrative techniques such as plot, setting, and character development. In a scary story essay, these elements are used to create a sense of tension and unease rather than simply advancing the plot or conveying information.

Elements of a Horror Story

The key elements that make up a horror story include:

When these fundamental components are merged and executed efficiently, they coalesce to generate an overwhelming sense of dread and discomfort in the reader. For example, the creepy setting might make the reader feel like they are being watched or followed, while the vulnerable characters make them feel sympathetic and protective.

The plot and tone of the story might create a sense of dread or anticipation as the reader wonders what will happen next. And when a sudden shock or surprise does occur, it reinforces the idea that anything can happen in this world and that the characters are never truly safe.

Types of Horror Stories

Numerous horror tale classifications exist, each presenting distinctive attributes and themes. Some of the most common types include:

How to Start a Scary Story Essay (Horror Story Essay)

Tips for brainstorming ideas.

Consider the setting, characters, and plot when brainstorming ideas for your scary story essay. What kind of horror elements do you want to include? Are there any real-life fears or anxieties you want to tap into?

After formulating a rudimentary concept, endeavor to generate several plot twists or scenarios that could unfold within the established framework. Do not hesitate to allow your creative faculties to soar unrestricted and endeavor to formulate a concept that exudes individuality and unpredictability.

How to create a compelling opening that sets the mood

The opening is one of the most important parts of a scary story essay. The opening sets the tone for the entire paper and should grab the reader’s attention immediately.

Consider starting with a startling or eerie image or scene to create a compelling opening. This might be like a character stumbling through a dark forest or a haunted house looming in the distance. You could also start with a quote or dialogue that sets the mood.

Examples of effective opening lines from famous horror stories

“The horror, the horror!” – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
“It was a dark and stormy night…” – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” – A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” – The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Writing a Scary Story Essay

How to structure the essay for maximum impact.

To structure your scary story essay for maximum impact, consider starting with a compelling opening that sets the mood, followed by a gradual buildup of suspense and tension. The story’s climax should be the most intense and terrifying part, with a resolution that provides some closure for the reader.

Developing a well-rounded plot and characters

To develop a well-rounded plot and characters, consider the motivations and fears of your characters. What propels their actions, and what are their most profound terrors and apprehensions?

Try to create real and relatable characters, even if they are dealing with supernatural or horror elements. This will make the story feel more immersive and engaging for the reader.

How to create suspense and tension

To create suspense and tension in your scary story essay, consider using pacing and structure to build up to the climax. You can do this by gradually increasing the frequency and intensity of horror elements, such as jump scares or moments of suspense.

You can also use foreshadowing and other literary devices to hint at what’s to come while still keeping the reader guessing. Furthermore, do not hesitate to leave certain details to the reader’s imagination, which can engender an even more disconcerting feeling of terror.

Using sensory details to enhance the scary atmosphere

To enhance the scary atmosphere of your story, consider using sensory data to help the reader visualize the setting and characters. This might include descriptions of sounds, smells, textures, and visual details like lighting and shadows.

You can also use figurative language and metaphors to create a more vivid and evocative picture for the reader. For example, you might describe a character’s fear as a cold, clammy hand gripping their heart.

Scary Story Essay Examples

“the tell-tale heart” by edgar allan poe .

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe is a classic horror story that features a narrator who becomes obsessed with the eye of an old man, to the point of murdering him. The story is told from the perspective of the murderer, which creates an unsettling sense of intimacy and psychological tension.

“The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs

“The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs is another famous horror story that involves a cursed object. In this case, a family possesses a monkey’s paw that grants wishes but with terrible consequences.

Analysis of what makes these stories effective and how they can be used as inspiration.

These narratives are potent as they delve into ubiquitous dreads and trepidations, such as the fear of demise and the inscrutable. They also use literary techniques like pacing, foreshadowing, and sensory details to create a vivid and unsettling atmosphere.

As you work on your scary story essay, you can use these stories as inspiration for your plot and characters while also studying their structure and pacing to see how they create suspense and tension.

Tips for Writing a Successful Scary Story Essay

Dos and don’ts for writing a scary story essay

Use sensory details to create a vivid and evocative atmosphere
Build suspense and tension gradually, with a well-paced structure
Create well-rounded and relatable characters
Use literary devices like foreshadowing and metaphor to create a sense of foreboding

Don’t:

Rely too heavily on jump scares or gore to create horror

Neglect the importance of setting and atmosphere

Use clichés or tired tropes that have been overused in horror stories

Tips for editing and revising to improve the overall quality of the essay

When editing and revising your scary story essay, consider the pacing and structure of the story. Make sure that the buildup of tension feels natural and engaging and that the climax is both satisfying and terrifying.

It is also crucial to prioritize character progression and dialogue, ensuring each persona is distinctive and multifaceted. Ultimately, it is imperative to contemplate the all-encompassing tone and ambiance of the narrative, guaranteeing that it evokes a pervasive feeling of discomfort and foreboding from the opening sentence to the closing line.

In conclusion, writing a scary story essay can be a thrilling and rewarding experience, but it requires careful attention to detail and an understanding of what makes horror stories truly effective.

By adhering to the pointers and techniques explicated in this article, you can compose a hair-raising anecdote that will keep your readers teetering on the precipice of their seats. So why not start brainstorming ideas for your scary story essay today? With a little creativity and imagination, you can create a story that will haunt readers long after they finish reading.

Remember to focus on the key elements of horror, such as setting, characters, and plot, and use literary techniques like pacing and foreshadowing to build suspense and tension. With practice and perseverance, you can hone your writing skills and create stories that will chill and thrill readers for years.

What is a Horror Story essay?

A horror story essay is a narrative essay designed to frighten and unsettle the reader. It typically involves supernatural or horror elements like ghosts, monsters, or otherworldly creatures. A short horror story essay aims to create a sense of unease and fear in the reader and keep them engaged until the end.

How do I start a scary story essay?

To start a scary story essay, consider starting with a startling or eerie image or scene that sets the mood. You could also start with a quote or dialogue that creates a sense of foreboding. From there, gradually build tension and suspense until you reach the story’s climax.

What are some tips for writing a good scary story essay?

Some tips for writing a good scary story essay include:

Don’t rely too heavily on jump scares or gore to create horror
Avoid clichés or tired tropes that have been overused in horror stories

Can I use real-life experiences in my scary story essay?

Yes, you can use real-life experiences as inspiration for your scary story essay. However, be sure to use them in a way that is respectful and doesn’t exploit real-life trauma or tragedy.

How can I make my scary story essay stand out?

To make your scary story essay free stand out, try to create a unique and unexpected plot that subverts readers’ expectations. You can also use vivid and evocative language to create a more immersive atmosphere and focus on creating well-rounded and relatable characters. Lastly, do not fear to take risks and experiment with fresh concepts – the most exemplary horror tales frequently challenge conventions and surpass limitations.

Lesley Hummings

8 Personal Stories That Use Horror as a Lens

Reading Lists

Richard scott larson, author of "the long hallway," recommends books by writers who use horror as a way to understand themselves.

Horror has always been deeply personal to me. Our obsessions can often come to structure and shape our inner lives while at the same time rendering the most intimate parts of ourselves illegible to those who don’t share them, and my love of horror as a child was a kind of closet where I could hide before I understood that I was already living in one as a queer boy who wanted nothing more than to the conceal desires I believed marked me as a monster. My memoir, The Long Hallway , uses the language of horror to construct a critical frame around my coming-of-age and family story. The familiarity of the genre becomes a narrative scaffolding that brings with it a universal vocabulary to describe experiences of isolation, fear, hopelessness, and shame, which to a closeted kid are the ingredients of a daily life in which survival is the only imperative.

I watched John Carpenter’s Halloween relentlessly as a child during the years in which my family broke apart while father succumbed to alcoholism and I faced my own demons in front of the television screen, and I realized later that I inadvertently allowed the film’s characters and events to become a guide for how to understand the world, as well as what my own place in it would ultimately be. The memoir that emerges from my misguided queer education—through my identification with a masked, knife-wielding villain chasing down hyper-sexualized teenagers—grafts scenes of personal experience onto the structure of Halloween, and thus allows the genre conventions of horror to say out loud and more clearly what I couldn’t when I was learning and reckoning with these unwanted truths about myself.

I’ve encountered various other personal stories told through the lens of horror, either before or during the construction of my own, and I now understand more deeply how the genre can both inflect and infect our experiences of the world, especially as queer and marginalized writers attempting to universalize an experience that we once believed only we could ever understand. Horror gives us a lineage of tropes and terminology with which to describe the things that haunt and frighten us—the things we dread the most—which so often reflect elements of our personal histories back to us, metaphorically or otherwise. And these are some of the books that helped me understand how writing about horror can be a way of writing about ourselves.

Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist by Marlena Williams

Night Mother offers exactly what its subtitle suggests, as this memoir-in-essays serves up a blend of memoir, criticism, and reported history regarding the original production and reception of The Exorcist in popular culture as Marlena Williams explores complex ideas regarding faith, family, sexuality, womanhood, and grief. “ The Exorcist , when you really get down to it,” Williams writes, “is just a story about a mother and a daughter.” The personal obsession at the book’s core is her relationship with her own mother before and after the latter’s death from cancer, as well as how the two women’s powerful responses to William Friedkin’s iconic film connected and bonded them forever. Horror works here as a shared experience and collective memory giving voice to distinct fears and preoccupations, and the film functions now for Williams as a family heirloom of sorts, a site of reckoning with the past as she forges a future without her mother to guide her.

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox

As a young writer raised on the iconography of genre films and having formed a worldview based on imaginary worlds that reflect our own in sometimes frightening or shocking ways, Charlie Fox’s essays diagnose a history of queerness and monstrosity: “Being bad in art, stimulating outrage or horror, is just another way of behaving monstrously (cathartic? Oh yes!) and a role to live up to when society proclaims your desires to be ‘sinful.’” Fox’s voice is mostly critical and intellectual until it suddenly isn’t, and the way he portrays his younger self learning about the world through popular culture is striking evidence for his broader claims. “Self-Portrait of a Werewolf” takes the form of a letter written to the titular monstrous shape-shifter and interrogates Fox’s early obsession with the archetype, directly asking probing questions about its expansive influence on the world beyond the screen: “I’m through with thinking of the monster as a wholly negative role, which is your curse, since you live in wait for a love that will probably never arrive.” There’s a restless and brilliant mind at work in these pages that brings the world of the popular imagination alive in completely new ways.

Night Rooms: Essays by Gina Nutt

Gina Nutt’s Night Rooms is an exquisite essay collection that centers the idea of escape as a presiding principle, not just in form—as these essays break from conventional expectations in provocative ways—but also in content. In these pages, the grounding conventions of horror films serve as handholds as the narratives circle around themes of the body and grief and survival. All the while, something sinister lurks in the white space between the paragraphs, an unnamed threat that’s felt rather than seen. Nutt orbits traumatic personal experiences, including family deaths by suicide, with a poetic reliance on imagery and suggestion to convey the reality of her life’s shocks and their reverberations. Horror becomes a telling touchstone to link these essays together, because what is horror if not the deliberate recasting of our greatest fears and traumas into entertainment, making something meaningful from what is otherwise just darkness?

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell

Film and literature of the ghostly and supernatural can evoke other reckonings beyond those based on identity and belonging, as Edward Parnell demonstrates in Ghostland , a deeply moving meditation on grief and loss. In the context of revisiting the horror stories that had once perhaps incongruously provided him with a kind of comfort in his youth, he now asks them to do the same for his haunted adulthood. Deceptively a survey of canonical horror stories that have been meaningful to him over time, the book’s autobiographical elements ultimately provide a deeper and incredibly heartbreaking relationship with what the ghost story really is: a visitation from the past that can never again be made flesh, and in this case also a reminder of devastating personal losses that can come to define us for as long as we remain among the living.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

“The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection,” writes Machado in the opening pages of In the Dream House, an innovative account of her experience of domestic abuse that embeds her personal story within an extensive cultural history. The book is structured as a series of brief sections titled after various tropes—many of them from horror film iconography, such as “Dream House as Creature Feature,” “Dream House as Haunted Mansion,” “Dream House as Demonic Possession,” “Dream House as Apocalypse,” and “Dream House as Nightmare on Elm Street”—expressing elements of her time in a house in Indiana where her girlfriend lived during most of the duration of their relationship while Machado was a graduate student in Iowa. Her story is punctuated by harrowing moments of conflict that feel, because of their specificity, almost uncannily familiar. Readers come to inhabit her mind so wholly that the claustrophobia of her relationship with this other woman is made present first in the mind and then in the body, a cancer spreading quietly beneath the skin.

With Bloom Upon Them and Also With Blood by Justin Phillip Reed

Much is made of the “poet’s novel,” a genre in which prominent poets bring their careful lyricism to book-length fictional prose and inevitably reach a broader audience while also attending faithfully and fervently to the rigor of their craft. But there should perhaps be more attention given to the poet’s essay(s) as well. Justin Phillip Reed has been widely celebrated for his experimental body of poetry that centers its speaker’s urgency and frequent rage about white supremacy, the suppression of queer sexuality, the trap of masculinity, and the politics of Blackness in America, and the essays collected here orbit similar concerns in the context of popular horror films. “What is it I want from horror?” Reed asks. “What does it want with me? What is it?” And he proceeds to both answer and deepen these questions by interrogating images from popular horror films against their cultural origins—Drew Barrymore’s lynched body dangling from a tree is one striking example—and ultimately concludes with another question: “What if horror is not yet for Black people?”

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

Hear me out: I know this is a novel, but the fact that Ellis superimposes a horror narrative onto a mock memoir—in which the author channels his own real-life career and hedonistic excess into a (non-auto)fictional exploration of his earlier body of work literally coming back to haunt him as he enters middle age—speaks volumes about the genre’s capacity to reframe lived experience into a terrifying odyssey toward self-recognition, and perhaps a kind of peace. In the novel, the character of Bret Easton Ellis attempts to reconnect with a former lover and the son they share together, and in doing so launches himself into a bizarre and frightening world that is perhaps, in the end, one of his own making, as his fictional creations seem to come to life. Ellis is an expert in the language of violence, especially when it crosses the line between the real and the unreal, the remembered or the dreamed—even as it’s always somehow personal.

It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror , edited by Joe Vallese

My essay on John Carpenter’s Halloween that first explored ideas later developed in my memoir (and which originally appeared here in Electric Literature ) is anthologized in this wide-ranging collection of essays that feature queer writers reflecting on canonical horror films and how they informed or expanded their understandings of variously defined identities. The formula of juxtaposing personal narrative with non-scholarly film analysis offers readers new perspectives on popular subgenres that we might have thought we already understood, the queer experience being one that necessarily refracts and reshapes our conceptions of the world. As editor Joe Vallese writes in his introduction, “These essays don’t draw easy lines between horror and queerness but rather convey a rich reciprocity, complicating and questioning as much as they clarify.” Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer’s Body is essential reading, but the collection as a whole gathers strength as it moves through the canon and shows us all the possibilities of identification and longing that we may have missed on those first viewings in the dark basements of our childhoods, always looking for something of ourselves in what we saw on screen.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Movies — Horror

Essays on Horror

The importance of writing an essay on horror.

Writing an essay on horror is essential for several reasons, as it allows individuals to explore the genre's significance, impact, and cultural relevance. Horror literature, films, and art have long been integral parts of human culture, reflecting societal fears, anxieties, and taboos. By delving into the genre through essays, individuals can gain a deeper understanding of its complexities and contributions to literature, cinema, and art.

One of the primary reasons for writing an essay on horror is to explore fear and its profound effect on human psychology and society. Horror confronts us with our deepest fears and forces us to confront the darker aspects of human nature. By analyzing horror works, individuals can gain insights into human behavior, emotions, and the human condition itself.

Furthermore, essays on horror allow us to understand the cultural and social dynamics that shape the genre. Horror often reflects the fears and anxieties prevalent in society during specific historical periods. By examining horror works within their cultural contexts, individuals can gain valuable insights into societal norms, values, and concerns.

Moreover, writing essays on horror provides an opportunity to examine the literary and cinematic techniques used to evoke fear and suspense. From Gothic literature to contemporary horror films, the genre employs a wide range of stylistic devices, symbolism, and narrative structures to create chilling experiences for audiences. By analyzing these techniques, individuals can deepen their appreciation for the artistry and craftsmanship behind horror works.

Essays on horror also challenge assumptions and stereotypes associated with the genre. While horror is often dismissed as mere entertainment or dismissed as lowbrow, it encompasses a diverse range of themes, styles, and perspectives. By critically evaluating horror works, individuals can challenge preconceived notions and recognize the genre's artistic and intellectual merits.

Finally, writing essays on horror encourages individuals to engage in meaningful discussions about important societal issues. Horror often addresses topics such as power dynamics, gender roles, identity, and morality in thought-provoking ways. By analyzing these themes in horror works, individuals can contribute to broader conversations about culture, politics, and human nature.

Writing essays on horror is essential for gaining insights into the genre's significance, exploring fear and humanity, understanding cultural dynamics, examining artistic techniques, challenging stereotypes, and engaging in meaningful discussions. Through thoughtful analysis and reflection, individuals can appreciate the richness and complexity of horror as a genre and its enduring impact on literature, cinema, and art.

What makes a good Horror essay topic

When it comes to choosing a horror essay topic, it's important to consider what will captivate and engage your audience. To brainstorm and choose an essay topic, start by considering your own interests and fears. What scares you? What keeps you up at night? These personal experiences can serve as a great starting point for a horror essay topic. Additionally, consider the cultural and societal fears that are prevalent in today's world. What are people afraid of? These considerations can help you choose a horror essay topic that is relevant and thought-provoking. A good horror essay topic should be intriguing, thought-provoking, and capable of eliciting strong emotions from the reader.

Best Horror essay topics

The psychological impact of isolation in horror films
The role of the supernatural in modern horror literature
The evolution of the zombie in popular culture
The use of sound and music in creating horror in film
The portrayal of mental illness in horror movies
The significance of setting in gothic horror literature
The cultural significance of urban legends in modern society
The symbolism of monsters in horror literature
The impact of technology on the horror genre
The intersection of horror and comedy in film
The role of gender in horror storytelling
The influence of folklore on modern horror narratives
The portrayal of fear in contemporary horror literature
The impact of censorship on the horror genre
The representation of trauma in horror films
The use of suspense in horror storytelling
The depiction of evil in horror literature
The role of religion in horror narratives
The use of body horror in contemporary cinema
The impact of social media on horror storytelling

Horror essay topics Prompts

Write a horror story from the perspective of the monster.
Imagine a world where everyone's deepest fears come to life - what would this look like?
Write a horror essay exploring the concept of "survival horror" in video games.
Create a horror story set in a haunted house, but with a unique twist.
Write an essay analyzing the role of the final girl in slasher films and its impact on gender representation in horror.

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Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.

Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apocalyptic events, and religious or folk beliefs. Cinematic techniques used in horror films have been shown to provoke psychological reactions in an audience.

Body horror, Comedy horror, Folk horror, Found footage horror, Gothic horror, Natural horror, Slasher film, Supernatural horror, Teen horror, Psychological horror.

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Short horror story essay 8 Models

Last updated Friday , 15-03-2024 on 11:35 am

Short horror story essay is one of the popular intimidation methods that help parents in correcting children and improving their behavior in many educational aspects.

Through this article, we will provide you with many models that talk about stories of horror and intimidation that may help or influence the behavior of children, show the goals of horror stories, and the extent of the impact of these stories on improving children’s instincts, and strengthening their personality.

Short horror story essay

The school plays an important and significant role in educating children and improving their behaviour. In a similar article that talks about horror stories, the student can learn about the dimensions of these stories, the extent of their impact and why they are used.

The student can talk about his fears and terrifying situations he went through. The teacher can take advantage of these events and try to address these fears by guiding him and talking to him, or by making him research more about the dimensions of the problem and the benefits that he benefited from despite going through a terrifying situation.

At the beginning of the article we will put several points that show the goals that must be present within the topic, and several models will be created using these points inside them, so that the articles are useful for the student in case he wants to present them to the school, or if he wants to know the aspects that he should talk about inside a similar article he talks about the horror stories and the bad situations he was exposed to.

Objectives of the article

1- To obey orders.

2- Giving up bad behavior.

3- Repressing the evil instincts that are inside every human being.

4- Controlling the child in the safety zone next to the parents.

5- Planting correct means and methods through intimidation.

Several years ago, my father told me a story about a boy who went out without telling his family where he was going. And this was late at night. After he left, he met some children and played a little with them and enjoyed this, but because of the late time these children left him, some of them returned to their home alone, and some of them their families came to to pick them up, and he found himself alone in the end.

He decided to walk around for a while, so that he might encounter other children and continue playing with them. But after walking for a long time, he found that all the streets were empty, and it was dark everywhere, and he could no longer discern where he was, and that he was far from home and lost his way.

And whenever he tried to return from where he came, he found himself in dangerous areas with street dogs, and in order to avoid them, he kept entering other streets, until he lost the way completely. So he sat crying and did not find anyone to bring him home because all the people of the town were asleep.

The time at night was getting hard for this naughty little boy. Every minute that passes feels like it’s a long time and he’s so afraid of darkness and loneliness. And whenever he heard the sound of dogs howling, intensified in crying. And whenever he called his father, he did not come to take him, because he was far from the house and did not tell them that he was going out, and did not tell them where he was going.

Then he learned that he had made a big mistake and that his father would not come to look for him because he thought he was asleep. And he decided to try to call for help and search for any place where there are people and tell them what happened.

And he kept walking in the dark crying for a long time until he found some people, and told them his name, where he lived, and the name of the neighborhood in which he lived. Fortunately for him, they weren’t bad guys, and they brought this guy home.

The father was very angry with him for this behavior and punished him for a week for this behavior. But the boy was happy that he came home and learned the lesson well and knew that this wrong behavior was dangerous and could have lost his family for life.

While hearing this story, I was very afraid and put myself in the place of this boy, and I found myself learning from him what to do. And that I must tell my family where I am going, and watch the time, and take care of myself and not stay away from home. When I finish playing, I go home.

In the early morning, I was very careful to memorize my full name, the name of the neighborhood in which I live, the name of my mother, and the house number.

Although the story was scary for me, I learned a lot from it and had a reaction to every event that takes place in it.

Dear student, a basic form was submitted for the topic on short horror story essay, In addition to many other models such as, horror short story essay, creepy short horror story essay, a short horror story essay, short ghost story essay, short ghost story essay, scary short story essay, scary experience essay.

If you prefer to add any other topic, you can contact us through the comments of this article and we will study your request and add it as soon as possible.

horror short story essay

At the weekend I went on a trip with my friends to the forest. We took camping equipment, some food and water. The weather was nice, the trees were leafy, the birds were flying from tree to tree, the landscape was beautiful.

We wandered in the woods and ate the fruits on the trees, and as we wandered, a huge bear appeared in front of us, looked at us and prepared to attack us.

We were all very terrified, but the instructions reminded us not to run, not to scream, and to act calmly. I took out of my bag a self-defense spray bottle, which should be used in this case. But the bear left quietly and none of us were hurt.

creepy short horror story essay

I get up early and sit in the garden of the house, enjoying the fresh air, listening to the sound of birds, watching beautiful flowers and other beautiful landscapes, but yesterday something terrifying happened to me.

When I sat on the bench in the garden and was enjoying nature I felt something moving under the chair.

I quickly looked under the chair and found a large black snake.

It moves slowly, I felt very terrified and could not move, I remained frozen in my place, the snake crawled slowly and I looked at it with horror, until it moved away several meters, I called the competent authority immediately and a trained man came and caught the snake.

a short horror story essay

Last week I went with my family to the zoo, the weather was nice, and we were enjoying the nature, where there are a lot of green leafy trees and decorated with beautiful flowers and large areas that allow us to run and play, everything was beautiful.

Then we went to the animal cages and watched the animals from a distance.

But there is a person who got very close to the lion’s cage, even though there is a sign on it that says Do not go near the animal cages.

He was not satisfied with that, but he extended his hand into the cage, and the lion grabbed his hand with force, and this person was unable to rid his hand of the lion’s fangs.

The man screamed loudly from the severity of the pain, and the guard came quickly and tried to give the lion a piece of meat to leave the man’s hand, but to no avail.

The veterinarian quickly intervened and gave the lion an anesthetic injection, and the man was able to get his hand out of the cage, but it had many wounds and was taken to the hospital. It was really terrifying moments.

Short ghost story essay

There are many people who feel terrified in the dark, and my brother is very afraid of the dark and feels terrified and imagines frightening things.

So when the electricity went out and the house became dark. I went to his room quietly without feeling, and stood in front of him, making some strange sounds.

My brother jumped quickly and came out of the room saying a ghost of a ghost, but he hit the wall and cut his head and bled a lot, it was a big wound.

At that time I was telling him don’t be afraid, I am your brother, but he was very frightened. I was very sorry for him and regretted that I had caused him to feel terrified and made him crash into the wall.

And I told him I was just trying to joke with you and I wouldn’t do it again but you should train yourself not to be afraid of the dark.

A Short Scary Story Essay

Last weekend I went with my friends on a fishing trip. We chartered a fishing boat with all our fishing gear and went into the sea for a long distance, so that we could see neither the beach nor the city.

We started fishing and we were very happy because there are many fish and they are also big, and the weather was nice.

Suddenly strong winds blew and the waves rose, and the fishing boat was swinging with us over the water, up and down, and we couldn’t control it.

At this time we felt so afraid that we would drown.The fishing boat cannot withstand these bad weather conditions.

But after a while the wind calmed down a bit and we miraculously survived.

Scary short story essay

Last weekend I went with my colleagues on a school trip to one of the archaeological sites, and we had some teachers with us organizing the trip and supervising our transfers.

We entered a museum that houses great antiquities and stood listening to the tour guide talking about the history of these antiquities.

I was fascinated and listened to the tour guide with great interest, so that I did not feel the departure of my colleagues and teachers, as they left the museum and got on the bus and left this place and did not feel my absence.

When I found myself alone in the museum, I felt very afraid and searched for them all over the museum, but I could not find them, so my fear increased and my crying became louder.

Suddenly I found one of the teachers entering the museum and looking for me, so I ran towards him and grabbed his hand and felt safe.

Scary Experience Essay

At the end of the year I had a frightening experience. I went to the beach and decided to snorkel, so I bought wetsuits, put them on, and dived into the sea. But it was not what I expected and almost drowned.

I was so scared when I found myself unable to dive, and could not swim to the top.

It was a difficult situation but one of the lifeguards on the beach saw me, knew I was going to drown and ran to save me.

Therefore, I advise others to learn before we do anything that might endanger our lives.

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According to Stephen King, This Is Why We Crave Horror Movies

The horror king breaks down our obsession with the macabre.

Stephen King and horror are synonymous. Are you really able to call yourself a fan of horror if one of his novels or film adaptations isn't among your top favorites? The Maine-born writer is hands down the most successful horror writer and one of the most beloved and prolific writers ever whose legacy spans generations. Without King, we might not be as terrified of clowns and or think twice about bullying the shy girl in school. One could say that King has earned the moniker, "the King of Horror." In addition to all he's written, King has also had over 60 adaptations of his work for television and the big screen and has written, produced, and starred in films and shows as well. He has fully immersed himself in the genre of horror from all sides, and it's unlikely that we will ever have anyone else like Stephen King. But did you know that King wrote an essay that was published in Playboy magazine about horror movies?

In 1981, King's essay titled " Why We Crave Horror Movies " was published in Playboy magazine as a variation of the chapter " The Horror Movie As Junk Food" in Danse Macabre . Danse Macabre was published in 1981 and is one of the non-fiction books in which that wrote about horror in media and how our fears and anxieties have been influencing the horror genre. The full article that was published is no longer online, but there is a shortened four-page version of it that can be found.

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Stephen King Believes We Are All Mentally Ill

The essay starts out guns blazing, the first line reading "I think that we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little bit better." From here, he describes the general behaviors of people we know and how mannerisms and irrational fears are not different between the public and those in asylums. He points out that we pay money to sit in a theater and be scared to prove a point that we can and to show that we do not shy away from fear. Some of us, he states, even go watch horror movies for fun, which closes the gap between normalcy and insanity. A patron can go to the movies, and watch someone get mutilated and killed, and it's considered normal, everyday behavior. This, as a horror lover, feels very targeted. I absolutely watch horror movies for fun and I will do so with my bucket of heart-attack-buttered popcorn and sip on my Coke Zero. The most insane thing about all of that? The massive debt accumulated from one simple movie date.

Watching Horror Movies Allows Us to Release Our Insanity

King states that we use horror movies as a catharsis to act out our nightmares and the worst parts of us. Getting to watch the insanity and depravity on the movie screen allows us to release our inner insanity, which in turn, keeps us sane. He writes that watching horror movies allows us to let our emotions have little to no rein at all, and that is something that we don't always get to do in everyday life. Society has a set of parameters that we must follow with regard to expressing ourselves to maintain the air of normalcy and not be seen as a weirdo. When watching horror movies, we see incredibly visceral reactions in the most extreme of situations. This can cause the viewer to reflect on how they would react or respond to being in the same type of situation. Do we identify more with the victim or the villain? This poses an interesting thought for horror lovers because sometimes the villain is justified. Are we wrong for empathizing with them instead?

Let's take a look at one of the more popular horror movies of recent years. Mandy is about a woman who is murdered by a crazed cult because she is the object of the leader's obsession. This causes Red ( Nicolas Cage ) to ride off seeking revenge for the love of his life being murdered. There are also movies like I Spit On Your Grave and The Last House On The Left where the protagonist becomes the murderer in these instances because of the trauma they experienced from sexual assault. Their revenge makes audiences a little more willing to side with the murderer because they took back their power and those they killed got what was deserved. This is where that Lucille Bluth meme that says "good for her" is used. I'll die on the hill that those characters were justified and if that makes me mentally ill then King might be right!

What Does Stephen King Mean When He Tells Us to "Keep the Gators" Fed?

At the end of the essay, King mentions he likes to watch the most extreme horror movies because it releases a trap door where he can feed the alligators. The alligators he is referring to are a metaphor for the worst in all humans and the morbid fantasies that lie within each of us. The essay concludes with "It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is love, and I would agree with that. As long as you keep the gators fed." From this, we can deduce that King feels we all have the ability to be institutionalized, but those of us that watch horror movies are less likely because the sick fantasies can be released from our brains.

With that release, we can walk down the street normally without the bat of an eye from walkers-by. Perhaps this is why the premise for movies like The Purge came to fruition. A movie where for 24 hours all crime, including murder, is decriminalized couldn't have been made by someone who doesn't get road rage or scream into the void. It was absolutely made by someone who waited at the DMV for too long or has had experience working in retail around Black Friday. With what King is saying, The Purge is a direct reflection of that catharsis. Not only are you getting to watch a crazy horror movie where everyone is shooting everyone and everything is on fire, but it's likely something you've had a thought or two about. You can consider those gators fed for sure.

Do Horror Movies Offer Us True Catharsis or Persuasive Perspective?

Catharsis as a concept was coined by the philosopher Aristotle . He explained that the performing arts are a way to purge negative types of emotions from our subconscious, so we don't have to hold onto them anymore. This viewpoint further perpetuates what King is trying to explain. With that cathartic relief, the urgency to act on negative emotion is less likely to happen because there is no build-up of negativity circling the drain from our subconscious to our reality. However, some who read the essay felt like King was just being persuasive and using fancy imagery rather than identifying an actual reason why horror is popular. Some claim the shock and awe factor of his words and his influence on horror would cause some readers to believe they are mentally ill deep down. I have to say, as a millennial who rummages through the ends of social media multiple times a day, everyone on the internet thinks they're mentally ill, and we all have the memes to prove it. It is exciting and fascinating to watch a horror movie after working a 9-5 job where the excitement is low. Watching Ghostface stalk Sidney Prescott ( Neve Campbell ) in Scream isn't everyone's idea of winding down, but for the last 20-something years, it has been my comfort movie when I'm feeling sad or down. The nostalgia of Scream is what makes it feel cathartic to me and that's free therapy!

What is the Science Behind Loving Horror Movies?

Psychology studies will tell us that individuals who crave and love horror are interested in it because they have a higher sensation-seeking trait . This means they have a higher penchant for wanting to experience thrilling and exciting situations. Those with a lower level of empathy are also more likely to enjoy horror movies as they will have a less innate response to a traumatic scene on screen. According to the DSM-V , a severe lack of empathy could potentially be a sign of a more serious psychological issue, however, the degree of severity will vary. I do love rollercoasters, but I also cry when I see a dog that is just too cute, so horror lovers aren't necessarily the unsympathetic robots that studies want us to be. Watching horror films can also trigger a fight-or-flight sensation , which will boost adrenaline and release endorphins and dopamine in the brain. Those chemicals being released make the viewers feel accomplished and positive, relating back to the idea that watching horror movies is cathartic for viewers.

Anyone who reads and studies research knows that correlation does not imply causation, but whether King's perspective is influenced by his position in the horror genre or not, psychology and science can back up the real reasons why audiences love horror movies. As a longtime horror lover and a pretty above-average horror trivia nerd, I have to wonder if saying we are mentally ill is an overstatement and could maybe be identified more as horror lovers seeking extreme stimulus. Granted, this essay was written over 40 years ago, so back then liking horror wasn't as widely accepted as it is today. It's possible that King felt more out of place for his horror love back then and the alienation of a fringe niche made him feel mentally ill. Is King onto something by assuming that everyone has mental illness deep down, or is this a gross overestimation of the human psyche? The answer likely falls somewhere in between, but those that love horror will continue to release that catharsis through the terrifying and the unknown because it's a scream, baby!

The Columbine-Killers Fan Club

A quarter-century on, the school shooters’ mythology has propagated a sprawling subculture that idolizes murder and mayhem.

collage of newspaper clippings about Columbine Shooting and an image from the security footage

M ass shootings didn’t start at Columbine High, but the mass-shooter era did. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s audacious plan and misread motives multiplied the stakes and inspired wave after wave of emulation. How could we know we were witnessing an origin story?

The legend of Columbine is fiction. There are two versions of the attack: what actually happened on April 20, 1999, and the story we all accepted back then. The mythical version explained it all so cleanly. A pair of outcast loners dubbed the “Trench Coat Mafia” targeted the jocks to avenge years of bullying. Dwayne Fuselier, the supervisory special agent who led the FBI’s Columbine investigation, is fond of quoting H. L. Mencken in response to the mythmaking: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

The legend hinges on bullying, but the killers never mentioned it in the huge trove of journals, online posts, and videos they left to explain themselves. The myth was so insidious because it cast the ruthless killers as heroes of misfits everywhere. Fuselier warned how appealing that myth would sound to anyone who felt ostracized. Within a few years, the fledgling fandom would find one another on social media, where they have operated ever since.

Around the world, Eric and Dylan are idolized as champions of “the nobodies.” Eric hated the nobodies. He mocked them mercilessly on his website and in his journal. He wasn’t a loner or an outcast, and neither was Dylan. Eric and Dylan made clear in their writings that they were planning the attack for their own selfish motives—certainly not to help the kids they ridiculed at the bottom of the social food chain.

They were not in the Trench Coat Mafia. They were not Nazis or white supremacists, and they did not plan the attack for Hitler’s birthday. They did not target jocks, Christians, or Black people. They targeted no one specifically. They shot randomly and designed their bombs to kill indiscriminately. That’s where “they” ends: Their polar-opposite personalities drove opposite motives. Psychopaths are devoid of empathy; Eric was a sadistic psychopath who killed for his own aggrandizement and enjoyment. Dylan was suicidally depressed and self-loathing. Eric lured him into punishing the world for the pain it inflicted on him, instead of punishing himself. Columbine was a suicide plan, but on “Judgment Day,” as they called it, Dylan would show the world the “somebody” we’d never seen.

T he Columbine killers have fans. Eric and Dylan’s adoring online following spreads across nearly every continent, and it’s growing across multiple platforms. In Russia, the government, which has been plagued by an explosion of both Columbine fandom and mass shootings, estimates that more than 70,000 members exist. They call themselves the TCC, for “True Crime Community,” and I’ve spent much of the past 15 years inside their online world. My book Columbine made me enemy No. 1 for portraying Eric and Dylan as ruthless murderers.

In 2016, a young fan tweeted: “hey @DaveCullen block me or else i shoot my school.” She’d been ranting for hours, posting pictures of school shooters, and tweets such as: “It’s also something a lot of people need, To die....I wish i was dead...I LIKE VIOLENCE...I want to be killed in front of an audience. … I think someone failed to abort me (:”

These teens are ensnared in an American tragedy that just keeps growing worse.

diagram of shootings inspired by Columbine

I’ve tried to leave this story so many times, but this diagram haunts me, ruthlessly expanding like an unstoppable spider web, devouring all the lives and futures in its path. It demands that we address the cause—25 years too late. That web is made up of 54 mass shootings that have killed nearly 300 people and wounded more than 500. And every gunman left evidence that they were inspired or influenced by the murderers at Columbine. The Columbine effect.

Eric and Dylan’s bombs failed. Yet the legend made them heroic to their progeny and gave birth to their fandom. By the tenth anniversary, a small band of “Columbiners” had formed online. They gravitated to the TCC, to Ted Bundy, to the younger Tsarnaev brother, ‎to Dylann Roof, and to others—but Eric and Dylan are the megastars. The groupies multiply, as fresh crops of teens join their ranks each season.

Most gunmen die in the act, so the 54 attacks itemized in the diagram are just the ones that we know of, and that were carried out. A 2015 Mother Jones investigation of Columbine copycats found more than two thwarted attacks for each one that succeeded. It identified 14 plotters targeting Columbine’s anniversary and 13 striving to top its body count. Surviving mass shooters have admitted that they were competing with one another.

A ll roads lead back to Columbine. The Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, wrote in a school assignment that he wanted to “repeat Columbine” and that he idolized its “martyrs.” The Northern Illinois University killer marked a third generation, explicitly inspired by both Virginia Tech and Columbine. Sandy Hook was the fourth generation; Adam Lanza had studied all three. Six more school shooters later referenced Sandy Hook and Columbine. Five generations of fallout, all reenacting the original legend.

Most early Columbiners were just curious teenagers interested in the criminal mind or in analyzing Columbine. Many still are, and their analyses are often useful. Many are angry about being tarred with the group’s reputation, but they have been outnumbered by new arrivals unabashedly calling themselves fans. Many use the killers’ faces as avatars, extoll their virtues, and compose love poems, fan fiction, and gory memes about them. Sue Klebold said she was shocked by the volume of letters she received calling Dylan “heroic” and by the number of girls saying, “I wish I could have his baby.”

How little these groupies know about the murderers they obsess over is ironic. They keep repeating the misreporting that was debunked decades ago, convinced it’s true because it has metastasized into TCC dogma. The TCC twists the story to recast the murderers as victims; and the dead, wounded, and traumatized as villains. The groupies didn’t start these myths; we in the media bear that shame. But the groupies are now the carriers, spreading the legend of Dylan and Eric to remote reaches of the globe.

Seventy thousand is a tiny fraction of the adolescent population, but a magnet for a dangerous cohort of marginalized, disaffected, and hopeless teens—a major pool of aspiring shooters. Most TCC members outright say that they condone the Columbine murders, often in their profiles. They have turned Eric and Dylan into folk heroes, and they celebrate them as avenging angels. Adam Lanza obsessed over the Columbine killers and spent years immersed in these groups online. Then he murdered 20 little kids and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Here’s the twist: Most of the TCC members I’ve engaged with describe themselves as awkward outcasts desperate to fit in. The TCC embraces them. The TCC feels cool—Eric and Dylan are super cool—and so they finally feel cool. I find it heartbreaking to hear them describe the pain they endure at school and the affinity they feel for “Dylan” and “Eric,” the fictional characters they’ve constructed. These kids are shocked when I tell them that other members of the TCC have told me the same—that they are putting on the same show, sure that all the others really mean it. Did Adam Lanza believe the posers? We’ll never know, but we can be certain that as you read this, a distraught, lonely kid somewhere is contemplating an attack—and the one community they trust is screaming, Do it!

Lots of kids fantasize about killing. Two days after Columbine, Salon ran “ Misfits Who Don’t Kill ,” in which three people came clean about their youthful fantasies of enacting mass murder. The phenomenon was widely reported that week. But none of those people did anything, because they knew how horribly wrong acting out the fantasy would be. Inside the TCC bubble, the constant message is that if your classmates are tormenting you, killing them is not just moral —it’s heroic and noble.

T he TCC has a tell: Actual shootings unnerve them. Their posts grow quiet, respectful, and even mournful after some troubled young person heeds their call. I can gauge the change instantly, because the incessant harassment I get from them stops cold—for a week or two. Parkland was different: Six months went by before the taunts began trickling back in, and I haven’t gotten a death threat in the six years since. Why? I have no way to be certain about this, but my educated guess is that David Hogg, X González, and the rest of the March for Our Lives kids were suddenly cooler than the young shooters. And so much more powerful.

Eric and Dylan weren’t powerful—their plan failed. They’d planned Columbine as a bombing , the primary terrorist tactic. They thought they were launching a three-act drama: The cafeteria bombs would kill nearly 600 people instantly; what they called the “fun” part would be shooting up hundreds of survivors; and the massive car bombs set in the parking lot outside were to be the coup de grâce. Those timers were set to explode 45 minutes after the initial blast, wiping out countless more survivors and first responders, live on national TV. The Columbine killers’ performance was staged as the most apocalyptic made-for-TV horror film in American history. Eric complained in his journal that his “audience” would fail to understand. He got that right. He got everything else wrong.

Every element fizzled. All of the big bombs failed. Eric and Dylan went down to the cafeteria in a last desperate move to ignite the bombs with gunfire and a Molotov cocktail. Failed. Experts on psychopaths say they get bored after their initial kills, and Eric had likely lost interest. His gun’s recoil had broken his nose, so he spent that time in acute pain. The cops refused to kill them in the blaze of glory that they’d described as their final curtain. The smell of all the blood and already decomposing bodies was overpowering. Out of options, each shot himself in the head.

A more obscene and pathetic way to die is hard to imagine. Yet their fans have never confronted that ugly reality, because the opposite story took hold, making Eric and Dylan masterminds of the “worst school shooting in American history.”

The Columbine effect has gone global. It has inspired mass shootings in Finland, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and Russia—as well as knife and axe attacks in places as remote as Siberia. In 2022, Russia designated the online “Columbine movement” a terrorist group. To comply with the ruling, my publisher required me to disavow the group in the Russian translation of Columbine . Mass murder inspired by those inept perpetrators is America’s most revolting cultural export.

I know when the TCC colonizes a new region, because I start getting a barrage of taunts in a different language. It’s a social contagion. Researchers have described school shootings as the American equivalent of suicide bombings—an ideology joined with a tactic. The phenomenon is escalating and self-perpetuating.

The Columbine groupies have no idea that they’re exporting a fraud. The media set this whole thing in motion 25 years ago. To untell a legend is a formidable task. It will be possible only when the media finally begin to convey how pathetic and gruesome the killers’ final moments were. The fans need to hear the ugly truth. Eric and Dylan viciously murdered innocent kids for their own selfish and petty agendas, and they died miserable failures.

This essay is adapted by the author from the new preface to a 25th-anniversary edition of Columbine .

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