Project Athena | Challenges

October Challenge(Horror) - CLOSED

In honour of this being the spooky month for most, we summon you to embrace the spirit of the Halloween season and partake in our thrilling writing challenge. Craft a captivating short story, limited to a maximum of 5000 words, that will send chills down our spines.

Your story has to be primarily Horror, but it can be any subgenre you like. You have until midnight on 31st October(EST) to submit your entry.

Once you've completed your story and published it here on Wattpad, please post the link to your completed entry in the comments at the bottom of this page so we know you've entered. If you don't post your link, or if you post the link later than the mentioned deadline, you won't be considered entered.

The interpretation of each prompt is entirely left to the writer, so we highly encourage you to unleash your curiosity and creativity with these prompts.

Co-writing is allowed, and it has to be a new story, not one that you've previously posted on Wattpad. English is the only story language we can accept as of now.

You can publish the story as a chapter of a short story collection if you have one of those.

Prompts

🕸️ While sorting through Halloween decorations, you find an old, dusty jack-o'-lantern that you don't remember buying. You light a candle inside it to test its glow. The next morning, the candle is still burning, but now there's something small moving inside the hollowed-out pumpkin.

🕸️ Every year, your neighbourhood sets up a haunted corn maze. This Halloween, you join a group of friends to go through it, but halfway through, you realize the people in costumes aren't from the maze. No one in the group recognizes them, and they won't stop following you.

🕸️ On a chilly autumn evening, you find an antique doll sitting on your porch. Its eyes are strikingly lifelike, but what's even more unsettling is that every time you leave the room, the doll is in a different position when you return.

🕸️ You've been renting a small apartment for months, but recently, you started finding unfamiliar items in your home-keys, a pair of shoes, a half-empty coffee cup. No one else has access, and when you confront the landlord, they simply say, "I thought you knew."

🕸️ Late at night, you receive a frantic call from your best friend asking for help. When you get to their house, they are nowhere to be found. As you search, you find their phone on the floor, still connected to the call, but no one is on the other end.

🕸️ You're hiking deep in the woods when you stumble upon an old, abandoned cabin. You decide to investigate, but when you open the door, the interior looks brand new, like someone is still living there. There are even fresh meals on the table, still warm.

🕸️ You find a journal in the attic of your childhood home. It's in your handwriting, but you have no memory of writing it. As you read through the entries, you realize they're describing events from the future-your future-and none of them end well.

🕸️ Your reflection in the mirror smiles at you when you're not smiling. The first few times, you brush it off as a trick of the light. But one day, your reflection mouths words that you haven't spoken, and you swear you hear the whisper of those same words behind you.

🕸️ Your phone vibrates with a notification: a live video call from an unknown number. You answer out of curiosity and see yourself on the screen, but you're not holding the phone, and the version of you in the video is looking directly at you with a blank expression.

🕸️ You inherit a family heirloom: an antique locket. Every time you open it, there's a different photograph inside. The people in the photos are unfamiliar, but over time, they start looking more and more like you.

🕸️ After a long day, you settle into bed and drift off to sleep. When you wake up, you realize you're lying in an unfamiliar room. There's a note beside you that says, "Welcome back. You've been gone a long time."

🕸️ You're driving late at night on an empty highway when your GPS suddenly reroutes, directing you to a small, unmarked road. Despite the GPS' insistence, the road doesn't appear on any map, and the deeper you drive, the more the trees around you start to look unnatural-twisted, almost human-like.

🕸️ The number thirteen.

May the spooky odds ever be in your favour!