Sir Thomas Sharpe: “A house as old as this one becomes, in time, a living thing. It starts holding onto things... keeping them alive when they shouldn't be. Some of them are good; some of them bad... Some should never be spoken about again."—Guillermo Del Toro, Crimson Peak Writing Prompts: The house held on to …
Tag: Horror
Crime Scene Investigation
"Trent imagined the boy's mother inspecting him prior to his departure for headquarters, checking his fingernails, perhaps. Checking the fingernails himself as they shook hands, Trent found that there was no evidence of their having been bitten. An indication. Everything was an indication." -Robert Cormier, The Rag and Bone Shop Writing Prompt: Charles had been …
Campfire Stories
“You have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories that you are told.” ― Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative Writing Prompt: The camping trip was going well until the teens started telling stories around the campfire. At first they didn't notice anything strange, …
Monster Makers
"Our attitude to the monster is frequently ambivalent: although society teaches us to be morally appalled by its terrible deeds, rarely is the monster presented as wholly unsympathetic. Indeed, part of us takes delight in its actions and identifies with them."—Shohini Chaudhuri, The Monstrous-Feminine Writing Prompt: Today, we're making monsters! Monsters vary wildly from humanoid …
The Man of Fate and Chaos
Dan: “There's a man... in back of this place. He's the one who's doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face, ever, outside of a dream.”-David Lynch, Mulholland Drive There's a man who can change the fate of anyone in the universe by simply …
How to Keep the Dead in the Ground
“To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.”― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow They knew it was coming, it happened every year. Halloween night the graves would start to quake. Decomposed hands would burst from …
The Teeth Fairies
“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie When she was a kid, Charlie was convinced she actually saw …
Staying Inside
“At about 10 o'clock in the morning the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows and in and out of the beam flies shot like rushing stars.”― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men After years of being trapped inside, Mari has taken to watching the small things. Sometimes an ant will wonder …
The Chat Room Stranger
“Hurry up and wait. Wait for other people to change. Wait for the world to become kinder, gentler, while you remain unchanged. Sit. Look out a window occasionally, perhaps, but avoid interaction.”—Leanna Glenn Markham He had been waiting forever and was starting to get sick of it. He wasn't even going to show up to …
The River Bones
“And I will look down and see my murmuring bones and the deep water like wind, like a roof of wind, and after a long time they cannot distinguish even bones upon the lonely and inviolate sand.”― William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury Tristen has been dead for a long time, but he often liked to …
LAMP 