The landscape of writing contests has changed. With AI making traditional competitions increasingly difficult to moderate, we’re transforming our popular horror contest into something new – a year-long celebration of human creativity and terror, where authenticity matters more than ever.
Welcome to our 2025 horror micro-fiction challenge, where your darkest imaginings take form in exactly 50 words. No AI filters, no entry fees, no complex rules. Just pure, distilled horror from the depths of human imagination.
What We’re Looking For:
- Stories that haunt long after reading
- Tales that make us afraid to turn out the lights
- Psychological terror that burrows deep
- Supernatural dread that feels all too real
- Unspeakable horrors captured in exactly 50 words
- Most importantly – stories that could only come from a human mind that knows true fear
The Format:
- Post your entries directly in the comments below
- Submit as many stories as you wish throughout 2025
- Each story must be exactly 50 words or less
- Must be horror/dark themed
- Must be a complete story with beginning, middle, and end
- Original work only
How It Works: Throughout 2025, we’ll be featuring the most chilling tales as voted by our community. While we can’t currently offer monetary prizes, each month’s top stories will receive:
- Community feedback (with votes, so please vote and responds!!!)
- Feedback from the editor
Why This Matters: In a world where AI can generate endless content, we’re creating a space that celebrates authentic human creativity. Your stories – born from real experiences, genuine emotions, and true understanding of fear – are what make horror resonate. No algorithm can replicate the chill that runs down your spine when you read a truly great horror story written by someone who understands darkness.
Ready to share your nightmares? Submit your entries in the comments section below. Make us check the locks twice. Make us afraid to look in mirrors. Make us question reality itself. Show us what genuine human horror looks like in exactly 50 words.
Let’s prove that the most terrifying stories still come from human imagination. Welcome to 2025’s celebration of horror micro-fiction.
The darkness awaits your contributions.
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The Last Chat
She kept getting messages from her sister’s phone. “Miss you.” “Can’t sleep.” “So cold down here.” She’d finally blocked the number last week, after the funeral. Now, at 3 AM, her sister’s phone sits on her nightstand, screen lighting up: “Why did you block me?
Bruh that’s low key!!
“Ghost Auction”
I followed Esther to the highly secretive Ghost Auction as her companion. Later, I overheard whispers in the restroom, saying that companions’ souls would be extracted, trapped in glass tanks as ghosts. I ran back, but it was too late. Esther smiled, holding a new tank with my soul inside.
This is great, I love the tie up at the end.
Same bro
Imagine this, you come home from a long day work and you are really tried so u get settled in and you go to bed and your wife or husband comes in and goes to bed with u and they whisper to you saying “I love u” then you realized you live alone.
I woke up feeling cold and exposed. Panic fell over me like a shiver. Trembling, I reached up to feel my face, touching my muscles and bones. There was no pain. I examined my hands, and there was no blood on my fingertips. Trying to scream, no sound escaped me.
In my bathroom, brushing my teeth. I looked at myself in the mirror, watching my reflection look back and wave someone over. It looked like a woman, but the features were wrong. Too many teeth and the smile, the ends touch her ears. She reaches out and caresses my face.
This is fun. I’ll think of it tonight before bed I’m sure…
If you love the 50 word horror stories, we just started our Halfway to Halloween contest. https://www.everywritersresource.com/halfway-to-halloween-50-words-of-horror-contest/ You can post in both 🙂
The news says women are disappearing. I encounter a woman in my yard, reaching out to me, silently. Her horror-stricken face falls, then her hands, arms, and the rest of her disintegrates into a puddle on the ground. I hear footsteps behind me, then feel a hand on my shoulder.
The moonless night was as black as coal. Nocturnal creatures scavenged the forest.
A young lady reached the top of the peak and surveyed the valley below. A small, faint light appeared in the distance. This would be her salvation.
As she turned around, she locked eyes with the beast.
I hate Halloween. I flee to my country house to avoid the trick-or-treat silliness. Yet, someone knocks at my door, wearing a witch costume, silent, grinning, with blackened teeth. I apologize, I have no candy. I reach out to give her an apple and my hand goes right through hers.
“I noticed some strange new buds on that plant in the back yard,” Roberta gushed to her best friend Gloria. “You gotta come over and look.” Gloria found her friend’s head, eyes bulging in terror, next to her limbs and empty dress, the red-stained pods above her, engorged and pulsing.
The Awakening
She came to me in a dream, a huge hood atop her cape, faceless, moving fluidly toward me, holding a knife. I snatched it and stabbed her. She fell down, then disappeared. I awoke, happy it was only a dream, until I turned on the light and saw the blood.
Death upon the congregation
Sunday morning service has begun at valley bottom church ;The Lord’s Shepherds.
Congregations of all the ages from diverse backgrounds are here for the message; “The word of God. “
Pastor Zander began prophesying his words as if he’s God himself. That’s when the smell of death emerged upon the congregation.
Oh what horror humanity felt, what perpetual panic. The entity that entered our realm was a dark wave that crashed over the light of decency, of goodness, snuffing it out. Those who perished, died screaming. They were the lucky ones, for the rest discovered what the entity was fleeing from.
I really like this! So many dimensions, great twist.
‘Natural causes, my arse,’ said the policeman at her door. ‘Coroner’s wrong. Dunno how you did it, but If I had my way, you’d be charged with fifteen counts of murder.’
‘Sixteen,’ she said, and the policeman dropped dead.
I watch my Scottish village ceremonially install a plaque of apology to the woman hanged as a witch here in darker days.
Amid mutters of, ‘Sentimental nonsense,’ and ‘Woke foolishness’ (whatever that is), the vicar prays it’ll free her soul.
Oh, foolish man, it will.
And I do not forgive.
Brett saw Zachary clear as glass. Sitting in the kitchen. Though Zachary’d been dead five years.
#
All their friends responded with gentle disbelief.
‘I did. I saw Brett, at the kitchen door, a look of shock on his face,’ Zachary insisted. ‘Though he’s been dead five years.’
I bound the enraged entity to me, to do my bidding, bestow great fortune, long life, far from Louisiana swamps.
Now I’m dying, one of you must bind it, I tell my family.
But raised far from Louisiana swamps, they cannot believe.
God help them when it gets free.
The maidservant follows me downstairs, eyes respectfully downcast.
My husband clutches my hand. ‘For God’s sake, Vicar, it is killing her.’
The Vicar tries, he truly does, but when he finishes, I go up to my chamber and the maidservant follows.
As she follows me everywhere.
A girl walks by a black river. A man catches her, violates her, and kills. She returns—silent, wet, unblinking. He repeats the murders, cleans, disposes, yet she always comes back. Days pass. He starts getting intimate. Police find him dead. No girl, no footprints. death by masturbation.
My Doll
In my room, my dog kept barking at something beneath my bed. I looked under and saw my labubu doll. I picked it up, “It’s just a doll, Jack.” My dog whimpered. A voice spoke, “Can he stop staring?”
I’m the only person in my room. I didn’t say that.