Weekly Prompt: Your Haunted House
You know the one, it's on a hill. It looms. It broods.
Welcome to the fourth weekly challenge for October, where the theme is Oh, The Horror!
As we said in the Monthly Theme announcement, the goal is to get you to write a truly terrifying horror story. The best of which we want to collect in our first themed anthology.
Maybe you had one of those childhoods devoid of “that house.”
But I didn’t. We all knew it.
It was right there on the side of the freeway. Its tall steeple like tower leering down from above the trees. A style of architecture all its own, more akin to the Adam’s Family than the Herbert Baker homes in its surrounds.
Every one my age knew the house and wondered about it. Every one had a story of a friend of a friend of a friend who did the unthinkable. Or maybe it was a cousin of a cousin. But either way the fool made their way inside and as luck or narrative certainty would have it.
They were either horribly psychologically maimed for the rest of their lives or the went poof and were never seen or heard from again.
No one really took these stories seriously. But then again no one went near that house.
Not even drunk.
In fact being drunk and waddling in the gutter one night I looked up and saw where I was standing. I looked up and the tower and the dark windows and the overgrown garden with sun-bleached children’s toys decaying into the earth.
And walked home straight as an arrow.
No more songs were sung that night.
Challenge Requirements
Your story must:
- Build a horrible house and scare us with it.
- Be min 100 and max 1000 words long, excluding the title, subtitle, and any post-story bio / links. (We use Medium’s own word count feature.)
- Be fictional, even if it includes factual information or concerns.
- Use “Haunted House” as one of your five tags.
- Be sure to read Microcosm’s formatting guide on how to layout your story, especially regarding titles, subtitles, and images.
I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
If this prompt stirred your words, consider supporting Microcosm and our writers by becoming a Medium member or directly by joining our Founder’s Club.
These prompt ideas came from our Lord of Halloween Paul Mansfield. So please direct all tricks or treats in his direction. 🎃
