Category: 250 words

The house was gigantic; far bigger than any house I had ever seen, much less spent any time in.  Walking up, I could see why Joan thought it was haunted.  It was old, it was dark and it had a slightly dingy quality about it.  I had banked on her ability to exaggerate and told myself nothing…

As soon as I walked into the house I knew it was haunted.  But I knew better than to bring it up to my aunt.  She was obsessed with ‘spirits’ and explained her bizarre behaviors by telling everyone that she was overcome by my dead mother.  Her sister – my mother – died when I was five and asleep…

My first Halloween as a ghost was a full range of emotions – I went from despair to happiness to anger repeatedly and quickly.  I never knew which emotion would show up next and never knew to what extreme I would feel.  I had been very alive and fairly happy up until the moment I wasn’t.  My parents weren’t…

Everything changed the night before Halloween.  My parents got invited to an event of unknown origins on Halloween and left us alone to our own devices.  They were being evasive on where they were going, but tried to play it off like nothing unusual was happening.  Which made me even more suspicious.  My brother could barely contain his excitement about…

As night became day, he started to understand the truth. He knew nothing could go back to how things were.  never again could he be happy and care free Halloween had always been his favorite holiday growing up, partially because his parents had always been against it.  Told him it was such a ‘dark’ holiday. That it…

My brother wanted to go trick-or-treating for the first time when I was sixteen years old and he was only six.  I had avoided such events in the past since my parents always went a little over the top with every holiday except for Halloween.  They always thought it was a dark holiday with witches, rituals, werewolves – everything the “church” says…

They are sending me away.  Again.  The last time didn’t go so well so I don’t know why my mother and father think all my problems will be solved by another round of boarding school.  I think they just want to get me out of the way so they can go on vacations to Europe…

I didn’t realize what was happening until Jake nearly yanked my arm out of its socket.  The smoke – why didn’t I notice it before?? – was slowly curling up the stairs.  Jake flung himself down the first few stairs, dragging me behind him, only to stop halfway down.  The heat was becoming more pronounced the longer we stood there.  What…

I’m not sure I’ll ever even know what happened that night.  Grandma came for dinner, had one too many glasses of wine, yelled at dad and I never saw her again.  Her phone didn’t work, her lights were always off at her house and she stopped showing up her yoga studio.  I know these things because…