Scary Halloween Writing Examples - written between 2012 and 2026

 

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Upon that road with the wolves at our heels, in the wind that howled and chilled us, we saw a sign. Its face was so blistered with bloody rust that no words could be read. As the encroaching darkness stole every comforting sight, so too did the rust eat away at our hope of escape.

 

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Crudely nailed to the rotting bark was a sign, framed in spreading spots, each a different hue of old blood. Even in our torch light, in that fog-embattled beam, the bitten writing told us nothing. What was once clear lettering, a promise of a way home, only whispered of decay.

 

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A book of leaden bulleted type, of cruelest coldest ink, sat mired in table dust. Around it there were no marks, no lightening of the dirt. Time had passed unremarked. The ‘snow’ was both clock and calendar. Traffic droned mere feet from the grimy panes, muting birdsong to almost nothing at all. Ariah inched closer to it, closer, closer… Until the stench of its mouldy cover dared encroach on her brain. 

 

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In a cover of scarred animal hyde, every page end was a filthy grey. The once gaudy writing was vanishing in the meanest of twilights. Ariah turned it in her hands before holding it up to the age-bitten mirror. Curious. The book had no reflection. Every ounce of her screamed, Don’t open it! Just don’t open it! But reading books, opening them, was a habit. Creak!

 

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The headphones spluttered on and on in a morbid fickle whisper. Crackle spit. Crackle spit. At times Ariah thought the plastic had melted into a strange arrangement of stalagmites, only for them to reform into the wan scratched cinnamon. She turned them over and over in her hands. Why did they make her sweat? What was that odour? Why were they so much colder than everything else in the room? Crackle spit. Crackle spit. Dropping them, she backed away so fast that her head struck the crumbling wall.

 

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Ariah awoke with a scream. The headphones that had been on her bedside table were crawling toward her spider fast. In a blink they’d clamped onto her head, stalagmite teeth digging in, breaking her skin, drawing blood. Crackle spit. Crackle spit. Pain. Pain. Pain. Is it growing into my skull? She roll-tumbled to the mirror. Headphones no more, instead it was a warped plastic mask with a breathing filter. Then it began, a song, a happy song of better days that stuttered and screeched even as the stalagmites grew. 

 

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In that dreary place, behind panes of years encrusted grim, squatted a room of mean proportions. It was entirely bare, bereft of any comforting thing. As Alice stepped in, her form eaten by shadows, she spied a mug. It sat with only used syringes for company and was plastered with brown-smeared silver scales. Upon it scratched writing declared, “I’d rather be fishing.” Closer she edged, into the gloom, immersed in a wave of deathly stench. Within it, under a crest of mould, lurked a rusty slime. Her stomach lurched and she turned for the door, her spin smashing both mug and rotten guts against the indifferent wall.

 

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In Travis’s hand the cup was snakes. Clay was not clay, yet scales. The handle was woven from frozen serpent tongues. Looking at it straight on it could have been a tacky thing from any supermarket shelf, yet in the mirror it was a thing of horror - suspended between life and death. More than that, when I caught sight of its true reflection, I could hear it scream a shrill and painful hiss. Yet as if in contradiction to the blindingly obvious, he stood before me as normal as can be, sipping with a soft twinkle that extended from eye to lips.

 

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Fanged icicles suffocated the sagging beams of that old house. Paint blistered and flaked from window frames and doors. Surrounded by overgrown trees, trees that leaned and loomed, even in daylight it existed in grim darkness, in grim solitude.  Some say it whispered to the mean wind, meaner things than even a bad wind can bear, that evil spirits skulked its dank and dismal rooms. Spiders and rats were in residence, as were roaches and maggots. Even the shadows flinched on approach, and moonlight took an avoidant path.

 

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The old church wore a dark cloud halo, one that swirled thick and fast. ‘Twas as dark as mountain rock. ‘Twas as turbid as fields mid-flood. To the rustle of fervent trees came no nightingale song. To the echoes of thunder’s roll came no owlish hoot. ‘Twas as if the words of nearby pages had bled from white leaves to dovish clouds and turned them to an oil slick scowl. The air took the aroma of the land, licking all with fall’s chill. Eerie. Eerie. So Halloweeny. As if the gargoyles dreamed it so. 

 

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Beneath a banana peel moon, amid the scuttle of rubbish and the stink of God knows what, it was halloween on Benny Hill. Near the junction of Beadle Street and Carthage Avenue a black cat of greenest eye lurked, tail switching this way and that. Hiss. Hiss. Was it the cat or the ghostly wind of spectral howl? Did the stars shift above? Were they in on the joke too? I swear they moved. I swear they did. Then the lamps flickered an eerie morse code and the street cratered as a lunar surface. Each house stepped back from the street as if on well shined black shoes. A bell struck. Car engines - driverless - spluttered to life. What was left of the colours - drained to monochrome. Halloween this year was different. Very different indeed.

 

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Into the crepuscular dim edged the lamplight. Tip toeing. Breath held. It was the most strained of beams. Were it a sound, it would be a strangled whisper. Was it a scent, it would be a fading bleach tincture. Ariah crouched, her eyes on it. How long had it been this way, a lone light in ever-grim? To its base insects scurried. To its surround of paper, cobwebs hung. Dust motes paraded in languished twisting drafts. Then her eyes saw the plug, resting on the floor. No power. Her breath caught in her lungs. Cold sweat lay slick on her paling skin. Then what was it? What was this spectral glow?

 

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In a spectral shuddering cry, coldest metal wheels screech-smacked rails that were both chains and cage. It was one of those nights that imprisoned the sun. It was one of those nights that robbed its rays not for solace, yet for greed. It was one of those nights that sent a pseudo-dawn, a pseudo-dawn of unforgiving fluorescent harshness. The whole world was underground the day it rolled into every station. Peeling paint, shattered grime-smothered glass, worn out numbers so scratched and dim. From the doors came phantoms in well starched shadows, pressed, ironed, rustling. Clomp. Clomp. All around was a crowd of spectral jack-boots. The wind was not wind, yet whispers that twisted into almost-words. That train vanished only to arrive again and thus the night rolled on and on.

 

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Icy rails whiplashed to the twilight ground, and from them grew shards of ice that sat up as cave-less stalagmites. The heavens lowered, stars erased, so low sat coal-charred clouds. The wind carried not the nightingale, yet a discord of insomniac crows born of vampire’s breath. The trees did crumble to ash, yet no fire did we see. No scent of burning did come. Then to the rails a ghost train was born, not fashioned in the usual way. It was scratch-slashed into the ether with jagged gouges of rough form. Scritch. Scratch. Slice. No Christmas train was this. No carriages of mirth would such a beast ever bring. No! No! This was the nightmare train. This was the rattler that bore dread’s very name. 

 

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Moonlight raised the night to a perma-gloam; the gathering thunder clouds muted dayshine to nought but the same. In the strain of darkness, in the foggy obfuscating swirl with a tincture of pollution, the roads travelled-leaked from memory and the path ahead shut down rational thought. Instead nightmares swirled as if they were the ghosts of terrible times, dislocated, unsettling. With the world drained of colour, in the shock of bleak mid-winter as frosty winds did blow, earth hardened around stony ice.

July 30, 2026.

 

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‘Twas the sallow orange of rotting jack o’lanterns, that flame-scarred kettle. In the hut, long devoid of either gasoline or electricity, it was a cold and dead thing. Splatters of long digested meals were burnt-on moles, not pretty as freckles are, yet a blight on its enamel. Its handle bore grease. The spout cover hung loose. Capless, the open top gap-tooth, under shadow’s breath, was a gleeful monster gape. Leah backed away, taking in a sharp juddering breath. 

 

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The kettle was dried-blood brown, as reddish as rust upon iron infested steel. Sallow in the dim, it warped into an eyeball, watching, staring. Leah blinked. No. Just an old and cold stove-top kettle - barely different to a pot or pan. Closer. Closer, she edged. With a shaking finger she poked it. Screech. It grated across the burnt grease hob. Tap. Tap. To the striking of her nails it had a tinny hollow ring. Smoke and mirrors. Jump and growl. This entire stinking pit was one hoax after another. 

 

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In that sunken brittle soil, rotting roots clung. As a withered necrotic hand, each winter wind exposed it to the creeping light. Even the most feeble sigh of icy breeze rocked it, taking it to an ever more precarious angle. Creak! Sinews once vibrant with life snapped, heard only by the beetles that burrowed. Of leaves, none would it bare. Of berry banquets,  none could it grow. And, so it sang a collapsing lament to the earth, its soft landing and grave.

 

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On a crow-black night, the tree met its last. Beneath conspiratorial clouds of purple edge, it creak-groaned. Long had it been the home of owls, sanctuary and nesting place. Long had it been the king of trees. Yet even the strongest can fall. Even the most mighty can be felled. That night in a chainsaw wind, in an electric lightning swarm, it made its last salute to the forest it loved. Acorns. Acorns. Grow! Grow! Were its final words and wishes.

 

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From grandest showroom in all the world, as cellophane wrapped dream, the car drove silently into the twilight hour. Silence, as a coffin lid, loomed over country and city same. Scant and withering sunny beams glinted as garroting wires. Around its blood red sleek form blew wind in icy crowns, wind enough to stretch nightingale song into a strangled cry. And all the while oak leaves fell to its skylight as fingers on piano keys, playing a tune lost on the self-deafening ear. 

 

Upon an oil-dark highway, slick with drizzle’s haunt, the car sped on. Though the hour was waning, of headlights it had none. Shadowless, beneath a star-erased sky of inky wool, it tracked route and target. It was not its predecessor's heir; it had neither hot blood nor pistons roar, yet a front grille to mangled owls and crickets to a static hum. 

 

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Shrouded in ghoulish cloth, sat the lamp. Its light was not light, yet a seeping ooze more similar bat colony barrage. Eyes open, eyes closed, ‘twas the same. I reached for it, lashing out to strike, to smash, to end it. No avail. Yet it laughed without a sound. With an electrical tingle the room washed grimier. There it was. Tentacles. Tentacles forged of ghostly sludge wrapped around the heads of all. Blind seers. Deaf hearers. In a blink it was chintz, floral and sweet, tentacles fading from view. Music resumed. All was so right it was wrong. Then as a static, as a scratchy rustling creep, the ghoul lamp strobed in and out of view. 

 

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As a silenced map, streets yawned into an icy wind. The dark hours crawled slower and slower. Streetlamps slept, nocturnal no more. Onyx clouds erased both the moon and stars. No nightingale sang. No car engines whirred. No alley cats mewed. Such was the oppression of winter’s fist. Skitter-skatter! Skitter scratch! Tom turned. Garbage blew as autumn’s plastic bounty, bright colours that would never be earthen brown. 

 

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Shadows crawled over cracked pavements. Rust bit at old signs, blistering the paint, flakes falling to leave scars. Day or night, it felt dark, the feeble rays only serving to illuminate the filthy decay. Rats scurried. Sewage drains slurped. Birdsong fell as cut kite-strings. Stagnant air had long forgotten how to breathe, and instead cosseted coyotes and wolves, eager to be their pleasing duvet. 

 

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The clock, knife hands juddering, cut the meanest slivers of time. It minced the barking of dogs and the holy choir to the same pulpy noise-trash. As an ever peeled eye, it glared. Cold it was upon a cold wall all winter long. For the warmer seasons, it cared not a jot. To the beauty of flowers, it was blind. To the chirping of baby birds it was deaf. Alas, it wasn’t mute and its bland ticking tocks came with a regimented abruptness. It was a beat never to bare the impertinence of sweet lyrics. Its ticks were its pennies and, as Scrooge, to cooly count them was its raison d’être. 

 

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A clock of austere countenance snubs its nose at gravity, perching upon a crude nail as if it were a plinth of rock. In the dusty grim, behind curtains sewn shut, each second drips as tears miserly metered tears. Each ruthless clang-sob leads its silent apostle, only to self erase, to dissipate, to surrender to the next. Each ruthless clang-sob announces itself as the newest word for pain, the newest name of the newest newborn. This ever open eye blinded itself, witnessed not, spoke not, of what was plain to see. This eye, you see, was the faithful servant of the obscurantism that birthed it and hung it on the wall. 

 

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All twelve points of the clock were demarcated with alligator teeth. Even the trite ticks, the trite tocks, arrived as clouds of muffled edge, soon to dissipate into a formless fog of deep-set cold. No bird of truth could sing, nor take to a fast-frozen wing. Alba watched it. She observed. Her eyes traced its scaly-skin rim, its scaly skin face, its femur and tibia hands - if that’s what they were. It was a gruesome thing built to measure the era of monsters. Flammable, she thought, and her mind sought the location of a match, a lighter, and perchance an accelerator. 

 

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Denuded twigs whiplashed in the gloom. A battery of clouds sank low and lower still, until they fogged each forest-vista as blindfold. What was cold became freezing. What was aromatic became a lurking malodour. What was dingy became pitch dark. No more the happy chirpings, only fevered rustling hurried to silence itself to nought. The moonlight that had played on the lake silently erased itself. Though the fretting sun was consoled by constellations far and wide, evil declared itself ascended. Had they lost? Was it over?

 

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Fog erased the smiling twigs. Ice fractured the few brave leaves who clung. Though the sinews of frost-bared trees, only mean shadows weave-whispered. So violent was its arrival, that old man winter blanched to a new gauntness, paled, wan, sickly. For, you see, his snow was the fresh new page, his ice was Earth's transitory stars… This… This… This new coldness was a fore-poisoning of lady spring, an end to the natural cycle of which he was proud to play his part. No! No! All was wrong. It was not winter that would extend… Yet a far more brutal thing. 

 

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Light fell, failed, withered to a mean and muted gloam. Each hue was robbed to destitution. Each hue was drained to a poverty of grey. Each hue was scheduled for suffocation at the hand of a coal-night, at the hand of coal-cloud, at the hand of a city that would not tolerate the inconvenience of famished faces. Rage. Rage. Empathy is dead. Resuscitation breaks ribs. Pen its epitaph. Of breath, there is none. Of heartbeat, there is absence. Safer, it is safer in the dark oh hungry one, in shadow’s blackest hug, with the knights of night. 

 

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The narrow vein of blue, between ragged cloud edges, blackened as the light drained. Bloodless faces, gaunt, pallid, stared, eyes orbs of strangled insurrection. The landscape, earlier green and bonny, wrinkled as if smothered in satin black, as if beneath her funeral shroud. Soul-light, song-light, aromatic-light were the only compasses left to the open palm, to the sensitive skin. Only in the darkest of days is love a bold rebellious act. So sense your inner light, sense music’s beat, sense the flora, feel merry and bright, cradle your own pilot light and navigate that ragged and closing gap to the stars beyond. 

 

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A cuspid darkness of wolfish stealth stalks city streets with gravest breath. Darkness on silent lupine paws, claws concrete scars, digs out its prey. Darkness silences each aroma to a sallow whimper, to a greyed out shell where once flowers danced. Darkness strangles hearts and souls, crunching them as whiskey stained paper bags, releasing them as tumbleweed on desert sands. Darkness negotiates with none and offers only to arrest the heart, cage its beats, sever vein and artery. Cow to its oppression if that is your must, yet never fool yourself that light’s gold wasn’t both your birthright and destiny. So, brave-heart, dim the darkness. Dim it harsh. Dim it until its own soul sparks, its own heart beats and its aromas rise. Kill it soft, but kill it fast. Stab the beast with your soul-light and make it last. 

 

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A fist of wind pounded darkness’s aeons forgotten name, the one that seeped from synapses as easily as fish-netted rain. Slates cracked. Chimney stacks fell. Doors from aging hinges blew. Windows smashed to shattered shards, sharp edge-glint silenced, aghast. For the darkness was a storm older than the eye of great Jupiter, with power enough to block the sun, to fell grand oaks roots and all make bravest hearts run. It chilled every spine to brittle ice. It cleaved each soul in one foul slice. Darkness then demanded, “Are all the hero’s done? At long last, have I won?”

 

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The zombie woodland was wind whipped, as the wildest staggering horde. Bark slashes were scar-scowls that gnashed, a pathetic frenzy at the fogging gloam. Twisted roots bound them to that desolate scree, that place no heart could beat nor feathered friend chirp. In cool nighttime tones it was rendered black and blue. Bereft of the moon. Bereft of the stars. Condemned to feel their light no more. Zombie rats scurried. Zombie bats screeched. Rot’s stink pervades. Storm clouds are ever coal dark and close. No person of sanity would breach its boundary line, for once crossed there was no way home. 

 

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As if black ink rained upon a window pane were those woodland trees. Twisted tears of things they were, gnarled, contorted, bent. In brackish, sodden, boggy ground, the malodour of rot held hegemony. ‘Twas a decadent decay, bold in foolhardy dereliction. Proud of its detritus, blind and death to beauty, the foul woods were nought but arrogant cadavers.  A kingdom of insects was both its prize and condemnation. This place ‘twas the fate of the damned, where spirits are caged in worthless forms, the eternal prison. 

 

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Oranges and lemons cloaked in a dull-dun veil. A proper pea souper snuffing lamps to wispy light-vapour, as if their very rays could burn cold. Market traders in dawn’s chill breath, fumbling crates in fingerless gloves. Bleary eyed they place their wares amid the ‘grand old dame’ buildings of yesteryears, bricks placed well, strong and good. Raspberries, blueberries, strawberries too, to market, to market, for me and for you. 

 

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Market stalls empty. Winter ice heart-attacks water pipes. Gas pipes carry only fresh air as grand oaks fell pylon wires. All was dark, dank, cowering in frigid misery. Wind moaned. Rubbish scuttle-sulked. Tyres deflated as car batteries died. Clouds sank lower in glower-growl as river scent dominated city air. 

 

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I have a magic jack-o-lantern, it has a secret core. It shines in every gale, laughs at hurricanes and more. It has a secret you see, one I will tell you now. No candle does it hold. No feeble flame doth it cradle. ‘Twas never lit by a simple match. A star simply flew in from the night sky and nestled there within. The impossible was rendered possible upon angelic whim. Long after November had passed, and every All Hallows after, the lantern remained as fresh as the day it was created.

 

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