HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN: 50 Words of Horror Contest
Submissions Due: July 1st, 2025
Do you miss Halloween? Here is your chance to indulge. Welcome to our 2025 Halfway to Halloween horror micro-fiction contest, where your darkest imaginings take form in 50 words or less. No entry fees, no complex rules. Just pure, distilled horror from the depths of human imagination as we mark the midpoint to the spookiest day of the year.
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:
- Submit your entries by July 1st, 2025
- Each story must be 50 words or less
- Must be horror/dark themed
- Must be a complete story with beginning, middle, and end
- Original work only – previously unpublished
- Submit via comments section below
The Rewards:
Winners will be featured in our special double-size Halloween print issue this October. Our top three selections will receive premium placement in our popular sidebar, which reaches over one million visitors monthly. While we can’t currently offer monetary prizes, each winning story will receive:
- Publication in our Double Halloween print edition
- Exposure to our audience of over one million readers
- Featured placement on our website homepage
- Social media promotion across all our platforms
Why This Matters:
As we reach the halfway point to Halloween, we’re celebrating the year-round appeal of horror. Your stories – born from real experiences, genuine emotions, and true understanding of fear – are what make horror resonate.
Selection Process:
Our editorial team will review all submissions after the July 1st deadline. The most chilling tales will be shortlisted based on originality, impact, and technical execution. Community votes help, but fear and terror determine final winners, with announcement of selections by August 15th, giving us plenty of time to prepare for the Halloween issue.
Ready to terrify?
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 50 words or less.
Don’t miss this opportunity to be featured in our Halloween issue and share your nightmares with our vast audience.
The darkness awaits your contributions. Submit by July 1st to be considered for our Halfway to Halloween celebration of horror micro-fiction.
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“Just sleeping,” I whispered, stroking my wife’s cold cheek. The mortician nodded sympathetically. I kissed her goodbye and left. That night, my phone buzzed with a text: “They’re trying to put me in the ground. Please help. I’m still here.” My wife’s number.
I forgot my own rule: no water before bed. Now I’m awake at midnight, dreading a trip to the bathroom. Like always, the tall man is there, peering over the shower curtain. I pee quickly, trying to ignore him, hoping he won’t follow me back to bed. Tonight, he does.
The ritual each Halloween was always the same: after trick-or-treating, my parents meticulously checked each piece of candy for needle holes and entry slits from razor blades before we could eat them.
Tonight was different, however. The police arrived to arrest my parents after several neighborhood children died.
Fawna was trapped among the twisted trees. No matter where she ran, she lost her way. The wind howled around her; the screams of nature shook her to the core. Then the darkness consumed her, she was staring into the darkness of a gun barrel.
The heat, unbearable, craving something cold. She wasn’t imagining it, an ice-cream van appeared in front of her. Rushing over to be greeted by a skeletal hand in the blackness. She could feel it in her gut as she was pulled inside by the creature, never to be seen again.
He lays a rose at your grave. You’ve been buried eight days. He thinks he hid the truth well and pretends to grieve. But, we know better. He can’t see us here on the other side. I wait for your nod. My scythe swings nicely.
The murmurs start and dread sews me stiff into the sheets of my bed. Mine is not the only shadow here. I struggle to breathe as they creep closer with their gaping maws pleasured by fear. Dead things are always hollow. These are hungry for me.
I withered beneath the violent stare
of my enemy.
Icy diamond daggers dripped
within his bloodshot eyes.
He whispered that his next stab
might be the one to kill me.
My gun aimed at the mirror.
“Not if you’re the one who dies.”
The real horror was in her avid determination.
“Mom, if you pass those out my life is over.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Kids don’t want those on Halloween.”
“They’re just like candy.”
With a bewitching smile, she tore open a box and popped a few raisins into her mouth.