COUNTDOWN TO 2025 TERROR: 50 Words of Horror Contest
Due: October 28th, 2025
The veil grows thin as Halloween approaches. Welcome to our spine-chilling horror micro-fiction contest, where your darkest nightmares take form in 50 words or less. No entry fees, no complex rules. Just pure, distilled terror from the depths of human imagination as we count down to the most frightening night 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 October 28th, 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- Original work only – previously unpublished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 announced on Halloween night! Our top selections will receive free advertising on our site for one full month – a $500 value! Each winning story will also receive:
- Premium ad placement reaching over one million visitors monthly
- Featured placement on our website homepage
- Social media promotion across all our platforms
- Exposure to our massive horror-loving audience
Why This Matters: As Halloween night approaches, we’re celebrating the power of pure terror. 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 October 28th deadline. The most bone-chilling tales will be selected based on originality, impact, and technical execution. Our editors have the final say in determining which stories will make readers sleep with the lights on. Winners announced Halloween night!
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 win $500 worth of free advertising and share your nightmares with our vast audience.
The darkness awaits your contributions. Submit by October 28th – if you dare.
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I’ll Tell You About a Time
I’ll tell you about a time. But before that someone should bring a clock. To this rotting blue swimming slide. A gang of swimmers and sailors guard the waters. They remember a time when girls and babies stared into eyes. The girl’s watch still swims and tells the time.
“Mommy, I had a bad dream. Can I sleep with you?” Without thinking I agree and usher my daughter into my bed. My daughter? I don’t have a daughter so who’s in my bed? I’m scared to open my eyes because I think I know exactly what it may be.
It was a stormy midnight, the power went out as the lightning flash .Luckily I had some candles to light . Since my husband didn’t get any new batteries for the flashlights. When I felt the blanket pulled off me, opening up my eyes to a ghostly figure looking at me .
“Mother’s Mirror” “
Never look after midnight,” she warned. I did. My reflection blinked first. Then smiled. It stepped out—skin sloughing, voice perfect. I screamed. No sound. It wore me like a costume. Now I watch from the glass, mute and starving. I pray someone else breaks the rule. I need to eat.
Earlier, the drifter yelled back when Hazel had ordered: “Get out of my fenced garden!”
Tonight, it’s silent—eerily so.
So many things had gone missing off her porch; she became confrontational.
Her home felt unsafe now.
From behind, between her and the couch, a deep voice growled, “Still here!”
IT won’t let me leave.
I reach a trembling hand to the door as my phone *ping*s (Jay: “WRU?!?!”) and the slavering entity before me howls.
>>>TAP<<<
Obedient, I tap the doorknob in ITs rhythm…
IT simply leers.
I’m trapp-
*THUD*
-and there’s Jay (“Dude, HURRY!!!!”).
I’m free.
…for now.
She looks at the fairy ring.
Looks at him.
“Don’t.”
He sneers…
…then stomps.
——-
>>>DON’T<<<
She jolts awake to the scent of night.
She’s outside.
Before her, an abyss – where the fairy ring stood.
…and a Black Figure, dangling his limp body.
It asks.
She answers.
…and watches them disappear.
It beckons…
The winged shrine.
Behind me, Collette frowns.
“Don’t!”
But I do, crossing the sacred threshold.
Next morning, Collette looks at me – strangely.
“My dream…” she murmurs. “It possessed you…the shrine.”
I laugh.
She doesn’t.
Night.
Collette enters…
…sees me…
SCREAMS.
I turn to the mirror.
Wings.
…and claws.
Scratch, Scratch:
I thought the scratching was coming from my door. Then it moved to the floorboards. A little later, it sounded like it was coming from my ceiling. Soon enough, it was everywhere. Only now do I realize the horrifying truth. The scratching is coming from deep inside my own head.
Hide & Seek:
Davie was still counting as I climbed the fence into the construction zone. I scrambled into the hole and covered myself with dirt. I heard the sound of the excavator. The machine was piling more dirt over me.
I smiled. This time, I was going to win hide and seek.
Head Count:
Billy Franks – Present
Mary Rodgers – Present
Thomas Benz – Present
Thad Baker – Present
Paula Hall – Present
Candice Rice – Present
Chris Wilson – Present
Nicole McDonald – Present
Ricky Smith – Present
All are present and accounted for: the heads of Ms. Steven’s first grade children.
The Perfect Day:
It had been the perfect day. We’d spent the day doing the things we loved. Spent time at the beach and ate our favorite pizza on the dunes
But as the clock struck twelve I saw the sadness in her eyes.
“I have to go” my late wife told me.
GROCERY LIST:
I found my wife’s grocery list in her purse, it had some odd things listed after bread and eggs:
Rope
Knife sharper
Tape
Buckets for liquid
A shovel
Bleach
We had a fight last night and she hasn’t said much today.
I think she might be planning to kill me.
Fleeing To Safety:
As the soldiers stormed the village, in a panic we quickly packed up whatever we could get our hands on and fled safely into the woods. Some of our neighbors were not so lucky. As I watched the soldiers burn our house, my wife asked me where the baby was.
Room 666:
They say that the motel room is haunted. No one has yet survived until morning,
but that hasn’t stopped horror lovers from trying to spend the night.
As the motel owner, I know the truth.
The room’s not haunted…
There’s a hidden door that leads me right to my victims.
The explorer finally stumbled upon an abandoned hut in the mountains that night. “Finally,” she exhaled. As she opened the door, she noticed strange portraits hanging on the wall—disfigured human heads, distorted and unsettling. It wasn’t until morning that she realized they weren’t portraits at all. They were windows.
Since the nuclear war, my son and I have lived in our basement. He always complains about the meager food rations, and today I caught him devouring everything in the pantry. But I’m not worried – I’ll still have enough meat for myself.
After my twin brother died under strange circumstances, my parents started giving me presents. The latest was a mirror. Last night I woke up to a putrid smell from my closet. When I opened it, I saw myself. Same face, same eyes. But something felt wrong. The reflection was… uncanny.
The barrel had that new plastic smell. Kelly didn’t like it. Besides, he was just playing a game with her anyway. He wasn’t really going to bury her alive. Then she rolled and tumbled then fell what felt like five feet. The sound of dirt starting hitting the plastic.
Terms Of Service:
I watched in horror as the claws of the machine lowered, the cold steel pressing against my belly.
“You know, you really should have read the Terms of Service agreement before you signed.” The doctor told me, “You’ve allowed us to harvest your organs at any time. Dead or alive.”
The Lost Boy:
The child came to me because children know police officers are there to help. He’d lost his parents somewhere in the park. So I drove him to my house. I walked him downstairs and place him in a cell with several other children.
This one should fetch a good price…
Vegan:
The smell of his neighbor’s cookout triggered a memory. One that he’d suppressed for so long. One he avoided…
A memory that made him turn vegan.
The memory of the last time he ate meat, and the last time he saw his father.
Or a piece of him at least…
The tearing started one boring night. He woke me with his heavy breathing and bucktooth grin. I felt it in my stomach, but the pain grew. More and more. I gasped, and he disappeared. But I couldn’t feel anything. I stood over my body, and it grinned back at me.