The Supernatural Fiction Award . . . Ten Years Ago . . .

The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
WINNER, Summer 2015

Illustration By Rachel Wyman

BY RACHEL WYMAN

It was in June, 2015 when TGS published the first winner of The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award: “Guédé,” a story of love and voodoo in New York City, by Rachel Wyman, a Brooklyn dancer and artist who had never previously published a work of fiction. Wyman also painted her own illustration for the piece.

Along with all the other winners and honorable mentions over the past ten years, “Guédé” has remained on the TGS website, and is available here.

In June of this year, with the publication of the Spring TGS Fiction Award winner and two honorable mentions, we will have completed a full decade of biannually providing cash awards and publication to the finest short fiction submitted to us on a supernatural or magic realism theme. [continue reading…]

The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award

As we’ve done every spring and fall since 2015, The Ghost Story is running a competition for full-length short stories on a supernatural or magic realism theme—and we are now accepting submissions.

The winner receives $1,500 plus publication, and we also publish two honorable mention pieces, the authors of which each get a $300 cash award.

If you’re thinking of entering, please read the complete guidelines. The guidelines page also includes a link to our electronic submissions system.

And, if you’d like to read some of our past winners and honorable mentions, they’re all available for your reading pleasure here.

Cheers — The Editor

WINNER, Winter 2025
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

BY KYLE PLACET

The last time I saw my sister was at a family dinner where she was showing off her new boyfriend. I remembered thinking that this was the first guy she had brought around who actually seemed to fit her. She seemed happy.

She went missing in the spring. The first real rain to break the drought had come that winter, which led to a wave of wildflowers bursting from the ground, painting the hills like pastels. She vanished with the changing season and the flowers continued to bloom like nothing had happened.

I had a dream that she wandered into the hills to enjoy their beauty and lost all sense of time and of self and forgot about her home and her life and couldn’t come back. Standing at the foot of the hills, I watched her go, calling her name. But she ignored me and kept ascending until she was out of sight.

It hit everybody hard. The boyfriend especially. The poor guy was the number one suspect in her disappearance, too. How can you properly mourn someone when you’re being blamed for what happened to them? My mother never really stopped thinking he had something to do with it.

She was declared legally dead a little over a year later. For a while it still remained hard not to think that one day she would just wander on home and everything would be all right again, simple as that. I finally understood that wasn’t going to happen.

I felt lost. Life going forward did not seem to make sense. I would never even get to know why.

I became friends with the boyfriend, out of mutual grief. We helped each other through our loss. Told each other memories of her and made it seem like she wasn’t fully gone. We started dating for a bit but that didn’t last. We could just never feel comfortable together.

He showed me a place that had been special to her. A short hike through the woods and you found yourself at an abandoned railroad station. All that remained was a wooden platform, a small boarded-up ticket office, and a bench. You could hardly see the tracks for all the overgrown greenery. She had found it and had loved its natural beauty and its melancholic serenity. It was where she went when she was stressed and wanted to get away from the world. Now it was where he went to try to feel close to her. [continue reading…]