The Halloween Story Competition is our most recent event in which the winners will get copies of all of our published books, plus a special winner digital certificate, and a big announcement placed permanently on our website.
It might not seem like much, but you will get all the brag rights you would want with the permanent announcement on our site.
What is the competition about?
Write a short story, between 600-2000 words, in any genre, may it be complete fiction or based on a true story. The only requirement is that your story should have an element of horror. It could be about a risky encounter, a dangerous stranger, things that go bump in the night, seven-headed aliens, anything you think will cause our skin to crawl. Surprise us.
How will the submissions for the competition be judged?
The competition will be publicly voted through likes, you will post your story in the comments to this post, or link to it on any platform of your liking. You can even link to a document or a pdf if you like.
Voters can leave comments on only three criteria of each story: Theme, believability, and uniqueness. Any other comment will be deleted.
The Special Winner
As admins of this website, Sherif Guirguis & Isaac Michan will choose an extra winner of their choice. The extra winner will receive the same award as the other three. This special winner will be judged on three criteria, style, skill, and horror level. If the chosen was already within the three original winners, they will receive a special post to analyze their story from A to Z.
Submission window for the competition
Submissions will be accepted from November 10th until December 13th, then we will count the votes and announce the winners.
Who can enter this competition?
Absolutely anybody, we welcome all nationalities, ages, and backgrounds.
Who can’t enter the competition?
Anybody affiliated directly with The Chronicles of Agartha team.
Anything else?
Nope, get to writing and amaze us!
If you seek inspiration for the competition, check these stories: Nightly horror tale 1, Nightly Horror Tale 2, and Nightly Horror Tale 3.
Do you want something more horror-oriented? Check this PAGE.
Talking to Spirits
Do you know someone who can talk to souls who have passed? I do.
[So, a horror story is requested. It was a dark and stormy night. Nope, that’s not right. Scratch that!]
Jim’s two brothers live across the road from an old small family graveyard. One brother has often expressed interest in trying to catch orbs on camera. So here’s a report of the interaction that occurred.
It was a clear, warm, muggy summer night. Jim finally got permission from the spirits for his brother and him to take pictures at the graveyard. It was a small plot—only thirteen tombstones surrounded by a small fence.
Both guys took their digital cameras, hoping to get photos of orbs. Jim told his brother to wait across the road. Jim went into the graveyard and spoke to the spirits. He finally told his brother it was okay to take pictures now.
The spirits started rising from the ground, going to the nearby power lines. “What, why, what is happening,” questioned Jim’s brother.
“They are going to the lines to get the RF, “ replied Jim. “They are recharging.”
“Wait a minute! There are way more orbs than the number of tombstones!”
“I’ll find out why,” says Jim as, once again, he enters the gate.
He turns his head as if listening to someone.
He exits the gate. “The other spirits are civil war soldiers. After they died in battle, they were buried in a mass grave here in a gully. After people forgot it was a confederate burial site, the land was filled in and leveled by farmers. Later still, a family graveyard was started over the site.”
“How do you know that?”
“A soldier just told me when I asked why there were so many spirits,” replies Jim.
The brothers finished taking pictures. Jim when back into the graveyard and thanked the spirits. They left, went home, and downloaded the images to their computers.
I know this is not a 600-word horror story. But how many of you can communicate with the spirits? I can’t.
Oh, and just so you know, this story is a factual recounting of a real encounter—not fiction. Jim is my husband. Truth can be stranger than fiction.
PS. We live in North Carolina–there are many documented civil war sites. This site wasn’t one, and we haven’t notified authorities. It is enough that we know what happened here. Hubby doesn’t want to explain how he knows what he knows.
Beauty and the Beast, revised
What they say is false. I have two sisters, but I was eldest. Yes, my mother died when I was small, sixteen winters gone. And yes, I am Beauty – so Father called me.
He was a merchant, rough and shrewd, wise at barter, and providing for our needs and some of our modest wants.
On the eve of his latest journey he asked each of us what we wished most for gifts. The youngest asked for play-jewelry, quartz and colored glass from the village for her dress-up games. The next, for a pony. And I … I desired but a rose, a living rose to root and tend and grow it in our garden, so the butterflies and bluebirds could gather to it, to gladden our eyes as its perfume would delight the nose.
He looked at me strangely. Briefly I felt a chill, for all the summer sun. But he nodded, and said yes, perhaps, perhaps he would, and I dismissed the odd feeling.
Morrow dawned as it ever does, and he left us busy with our chores. We next saw him a week later, leading a speckled brown pony on a halter behind his cart, and a satchel on the seat beside him.
We greeted him with joy, more joy for his safe return than for the gifts, though my middle sister took the pony most happily. She led it to the stable, made it comfortable, and busied herself with grooming.
Father took my younger sister aside. He dipped his hand into the satchel and like a magician pulled forth a leather bag. From it tumbled jewelry of all sorts, earrings, necklaces, rings, circlets, and I know not what all, all flashing burnished metal and gems sparkling like a waterfall of rainbows.
She cried in delight. Her hands flew out to catch the falling pretties, and Father laughed to see her. He gave her the bag and left her sitting contentedly there on the doorstep, sorting the beautiful tangle, arranging and rearranging each item, arraying herself as a queen.
Then he took my hand.
Father took my hand and smiled, his hand slipping into the satchel once more. “Come, Beauty, let us go within, for the rose I have for you is not yet rooted, and it cannot yet well endure the sun.”
I went in with him gladly, wondering at what marvelous rose he would show me. He led me upstairs to my loft, and sat on my bed, his hand searching carefully in his satchel. I sat beside him, watching, waiting, still wondering.
The chill returned.
Father withdrew his hand. It was empty. Suddenly I was on the bed beneath him, my skirts up about my face, and what he was did below … I could not see, I do not yet know, but a sharp fire stabbed between my thighs, and I cried out, and I wept in pain. Still he held me close, his weight pinning me, his sour breath loud in my ears as I struggled, trying to free myself. “Good,” he said, “Good, my Beauty, very good, you are indeed a flower ready to be plucked.”
Confused, in a haze of pain, I fell silent. Time slowed as if under water. Finally Father’s breathing eased. He raised me up and showed me, the blood on the linen, my maidenhood, my rose.
I stared. “How then shall I root it?” I heard myself ask. “I’ve rooted it for you,” he said with a little laugh, “and I shall root it again and again till it blooms for us. You will see.”
It seemed the night had fallen early, or perhaps the darkness that clouded my sight was a storm blown in from nowhere, though my sisters have said the day remained bright and clear. A red mist tinged the darkness, flowing in from the edges. I saw myself rise, and wash. “You will be hungry, father,” my voice said, almost dreamlike. “Let me prepare you dinner, while you rest.”
Down I went to the kitchen while Father stretched at ease on the stained bed. I gather vegetables and herbs, cutting them up with the large knife. I dumped them into a pot. I half-filled the pot with water. I set it on the stove to bring to a boil.
Then upstairs I went again, bringing a glass of cold cider to ease Father’s thirst.
He slept, and I saw the weariness of travel fading from his countenance. I set the glass down and took up the knife once more. Once across his throat, pressing hard, like the goat I once helped ready for winter’s freezing. His eyes flew open at the first touch, yet he spoke no word, his wind pipe severed, voice gone, drowning. He did gurgle. I remember the gurgling. I remember the blood, spraying and pulsing and spilling like wine on the linens, obscuring my rose, my own beautiful, red rose. I wept, though my hands were steady, and my voice, I am told, remained calm. Then I gutted him.
“I valued that rose above all,” I said as my sisters came in the room, then ran screaming out. I removed his heart when he was properly dead, as I wish he’d had the kindness to do for me. I sliced it up, along with some of the other meat that was unlikely to keep, and added it to the soup now starting to simmer. “I told you, father, that I would make you dinner,” I reminded his memory. “You taught me not to lie, to ever to keep my word.”
Now you sit in judgement as I stand here; perhaps my tale has shocked you, or perhaps you are only sickened. But you are as you are. I am as I am. Nothing will change this. For I am indeed Beauty. And I, Beauty, am also the Beast.
Congratulations!
You are the winner of the competition!|
Please send me your email to receive your award, thank you
Crumbled
A horror story retold.
Candy hated school. Or rather she feared story time. Everyday her teacher Mrs. Langhouse would read a fairytale or rhyme. The children then had to draw a picture. Candy would reluctantly pull out the box of 47 crayons (there had been 48, but one crayon was hidden in the back of Candy’s desk so she wouldn’t accidentally use it).
Mrs. Langhouse always frowned at Candy’s drawings because she would never finish them. How you ask?
Well in Jack and Jill she had left out the hill and the pail. In Jack and the Beanstalk she had not drawn the beanstalk, just the beans.
In hey diddle diddle she didn’t draw the moon.
When the teacher asked her why, Candy would just shrug. How could she tell Mrs. Langhouse the truth.
Who would believe her? Candy hadn’t always been a reluctant artist. When her Aunt had first given her the crayons she had drawn beautiful flowers and bunnies and butterflies using her favorite crayon (the one now stuck in the back of her desk).
Oh how her aunt had laughed as they watched the flowers, bunnies and butterflies fill their backyard. It was magical.
But like most magic there is a dark side and Candy found that out in school. (Why did the teacher read Hansel and Gretel that first day? And why had Candy taken her crayons to school?)
So smiling and anxious to please Candy had drawn the gingerbread house, the witch’s oven and Hansel and Gretel. She had used her favorite crayon. The teacher said what realistic pictures you have drawn. I am sure your aunt will be very pleased.
Candy had rushed home to her aunt.
But she stopped in horror as she looked at her house. It was no longer a pretty little brick house, it was gingerbread. And her aunt was no longer the pretty lady wearing swirling purple and pink skirts, she was a bent and mean looking lady who had grabbed Candy’s little dog (shades of OZ). Candy watched in horror as her aunt stuffed the dog in an oven. Before Candy could cry out to stop her aunt, out popped her dog only now he was a cookie dog and her aunt bit his ear.
Candy had to stop her aunt. She took her picture and tore off the witch’s hands. She rushed to rescue her dog as her aunt, now handless, dropped the dog. But Candy was not fast enough and her cookie dog crumbled into pieces.
With tears streaming down her face, Candy picked up the pieces of her dog. Carefully she drew around the pieces in a doggie shape and the pieces reformed into her dog (only without an ear).
Candy looked with sorrow at her handless aunt. If she drew her hands, then her aunt would just bake other things in her oven. Candy couldn’t let her do that.
So Candy drew a big mitten to replace one of her aunt’s hands. Then she drew a lock on the oven so her aunt could not use it.
So Candy knew she couldn’t let anymore of her drawings come alive. Not finishing them seemed to work. Not using her favorite color seemed to work.
Candy sighed as she reached her home. The roof had crumbled in on one side, her dog limped out with a shorter tale. Candy hastily drew a big stick. Time to face her aunt who was munching on the crumbling gingerbread house that was their home now.
Perhaps, Candy wouldn’t wake up being dragged to the backyard where the locked oven set, but if she did, Candy hoped a quick smack with her big stick would make her aunt let go. If not, Candy feared she would be the next cookie to crumble.
I’ve chosen the Beauty & the Beast retelling because it is truly a horror story. Probably the most awful & appalling betrayal that could happen in a family.
I’m not too sure how many victims would want to eat the defective organ though. ?