Ghost Stories For Writing Novels & Stories

Epilogue: Now that I have written several of these stories, I find that my old ghosts have started to haunt my dreams yet again. It is amazing that once things are written down, they begin to take on a life of their own. Just remember, if you don’t want things to go bump in the night, don’t tell anyone else about them.

had stopped caring about their descriptions. "You can't do this!" I roared, my violet-silver fire erupting in a blinding arc. "The Audit is over! We are the Un-Written!" "You are the Un-Edited," the Ghost replied, its form stabilizing into a tall, faceless figure draped in a cloak of Liquid Ink. "And an un-edited story is a failure. I am here to provide the Final Edit." The Ghost raised a hand, and the "Sovereign Static" began to Solidify. The lavender fog turned into Iron-Hard Lines of Text that wrapped around the villagers, pinning them to the ground with the weight of their own pasts.

Text crawled over their skin in places, dissolving and rewriting, never landing long enough to become fixed. “You cut us apart when it hurt too much to look,” the girl from “Salt & Silence” said. “When you got close to something raw, you slammed the laptop shut and told yourself you’d ‘come back to it later.’” “You made us suffer so you didn’t have to,” the villain said. “You exorcised your ghosts into us and then left us holding them.” The words hit harder than they should have. Because they weren’t entirely wrong. I wrote horror to survive.

“There’s no bathroom! I was lying.” “Mia! You’re way too evil!” “Thank god… I wasn’t scared,” someone muttered stiffly. “How about we tell ghost stories?” Goselle suddenly suggested. “One person, one story—how does that sound?” Dwyn immediately chimed in. “Sure. I’ll go first. I’ll tell you a ghost story from when I was filming in Aeriflux.” The moment everyone heard it happened overseas, they visibly relaxed. For some reason, as long as it wasn’t a story that happened domestically, it just felt less scary.

I had no choice, so I dug through every gift Zoe had ever given me, but I found nothing. Just when I was about to give up, I shook a pillow, and a tiny paper figure floated out. Its face was drawn to resemble Lucas, and his birth details were written on the back! The fortune teller exclaimed, “That’s it! The lock and the paper figure work together, and since you've touched the lock, the effect on you is stronger. Luckily, you found it early.” I broke out in a cold sweat. That same day, I slipped the paper figure under Miles’ pillow and instructed my parents to watch him while he slept.

"I've seen a few. I know there are different kinds of hauntings. Some ghosts are really just...echoes, I guess, of some traumatic event. Those just repeat the same actions over and over, which rules you out since we're having a lucid conversation. Others are spirits who've chosen, for good or evil, to remain on this plane for some reason, whether it's protecting their descendants, guarding a sacred site or seeking revenge. Finally, there's the type who are here with unfinished business. My guess is you fall into that category since you asked me for help." "I do. You know a lot for such a young man." "Not so young. I'll be thirty-five on Halloween." He stepped out of his chair. "Can you sit?

'People really have so much time in their hand that they could even make ghost stories as past times, huh. She shook her head in dismay. The claim was just plain ridiculous. A work of people who couldn't think of anything but gossips and nonsense. And fine... It's actually her fault for suddenly getting side-tracked when all she was thinking about prior to the ghost rumors was the quietness of place.

He drove with purpose, and I, like a phantom shadow, drifted along in his wake. I followed him as he made his rounds in a department store, buying things he had never once considered buying for me. It wasn't hard to see the distinction between love and indifference. My ghostly form seemed to grow heavier with every step, weighted down by the bitterness of seeing the man I had loved so deeply pamper another woman so thoroughly.

The ghost asked casually, while appearing to be pacing the floor. "What? Like the human who turns into a giant man-wolf during a full moon?" Miranda demanded, but she didn't let the ghost answer, "yeah I've heard about it. So much so that people write books about young girls falling in love with them, and those books have so much smut, its ridiculous." Miranda laughed. It was now the ghost's turn to send Miranda a deadpan look. "What?" Miranda asked when she noticed the look. "And what do you think of vampires?" The ghost continued to quiz.

Thus, they ended up talking about mundane things with Nerine, laying it on thick. Talk about gabby. Even bone-dry and thirsty, they would not stop yapping. "Ever hear about the Ghostly Mansion? They say it's full of weird, spooky stuff," one piped up. "Don't freak us out! Those are probably just tall tales," another countered. "Who cares? If we run into something, we'll just snap a few pics with our eyes shut and make a killing selling them." They were all off to the Costa family's place for some 'adventure', but each had their own angle. What they were really up to, well, that was their little secret.