The Ghost Story

Home of the Ghost Story Awards

TGS News & Announcements

FLASH FICTION BY JUAN RULFO

posted:

Sudden Fiction By A Mexican Master

Mexican writer Juan Rulfo penned the novel Pedro Páramo, (1955) a chilling ghost story that was one of the main inspirations for the Latin American literary boom that became known as Magic Realism. I recently came across this cool (and rare) piece of short-short fiction by Rulfo and, since our Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition is currently open for submissions, I thought it was appropriate to reproduce Rulfo’s story here as an example of how it’s done. Enjoy:

“It was already late in the night when I arrived at that little, lost town in the mountains. To my surprise, the peasants were waiting for me. In silence, without any explanation, they took me to the plaza. They tied me up to the tree in the center of that plaza, and again in silence, they left. [Read more…] about FLASH FICTION BY JUAN RULFO

SOLSTICE FLASH FICTION CONTEST

posted:

Solstice Dawn, Stonehenge. Photo: Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

Prizes For Short-Short Stories

Winter solstice marks the official start of our annual Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition for short supernatural fiction of up to 1,000 words. And what better image than Stonehenge to use in announcing our competition, given that writers from Britain took all three cash prizes last year? We’re wondering if this was just a fluke, or whether the Brits can do it again. . . .

If you’ve got a short yarn ready to be read, or are thinking of writing a miniature supernatural tale—you’ve got until January 31, after all—you just might want to have a look at our contest guidelines. Good luck!

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

posted:

John Leech 1843

BY CHARLES DICKENS

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my
own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail. [Read more…] about A CHRISTMAS CAROL

FALL 2016 FICTION AWARD WINNERS

posted:

this-is-the-only-way-outImage: Leslie Lawrenson

Halloween Is When We Announce And Publish The Winning Stories In The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award Contest. Happy Reading!

You can skip right to the winning stories. Or, you can read on. . . .

Each time we reopen our biannual competition to submissions—every spring and summer, in other words—we stress very emphatically that traditional ghost stories are just one of the many types of tales eligible to win The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award. In fact, we’re eager to read anything written on a supernatural theme or containing a supernatural element, regardless of whether it contains an actual ghost. What we’re most insistent on is good writing and a gripping story. And our most recent competition perfectly exemplifies these very values.

None of the tales we’re publishing this time around—Not the Winner, Honorable Mention, or Second Honorable Mention—features a single old-school spook. Instead, all of the stories fall into a broader category that perhaps we could call “psychological fantasy.” In other words, most of the supernatural events featured within them appear to occur almost entirely in the minds of the people who experience them. In one of these stories, the protagonist is bedeviled by internal demons he thought he’d left far behind him; in another, a man at the end of his life confabulates a disturbing and unforgiving image of God; and in the last, isolation, uncertainty, and an ancient tragedy cause two characters to be strongly affected by their imaginations in very different ways.

Fiction of any kind is at its best when it’s not predictable, and all three of these award-winning pieces will keep you guessing until the very end. Congratulations to their authors—and many thanks to photographer Leslie Lawrenson for his wonderful illustrations.

Come on inside to help us celebrate our winners, and to enjoy a Halloween read that is at once chilling and thought-provoking.

Our next contest is the annual Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition for stories of 1,000 words or fewer. Keep your eyes peeled, because we’ll start accepting flash fiction submissions in mid December.

And if you’re planning to submit a full-length supernatural story to the next Ghost Story contest, we’ll start taking entries for those again in March—and we’re looking forward to reading yours!

Finally, if you’d like to leave a comment, or to discuss our stories or the contest in general, please visit our Facebook page.

OUR STORY CONTEST: READ THE WINNERS ON HALLOWEEN

posted:

Ghost Train. Photo: Jesse Draper
Ghost Train. Photo: Jesse Draper

Submissions Closed!

The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition is now closed to submissions. Response was fantastic, with story entries pouring in from around the world. Thanks to everyone who participated. We’ll be announcing (and publishing) our winner and two honorable mentions on October 31. Visit our contest page for information about the next Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition.

OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS!

posted:

NOW CLOSED: The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award

With prizes of $1,000, $250, and $100, our fall fiction award competition for full length short stories on a supernatural theme is now open to submissions. Please visit our contest page for guidelines and further information. Good luck!

BTW . . . if you’d like to learn about other international contests for uncanny fiction, Almond Press, in the UK, curates an extensive list.

SUPERNATURAL POETRY

posted:

Folk Horror, In Poetry
Folk Horror, In Poetry

This terrific anthology published in Durham, England contains an entire section of haikus related to ghosts and the supernatural by The Ghost Story’s editor, Paul Guernsey, and many other poets with an interest in the uncanny. Have a look.

OUR SUMMER 2016 SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNERS

posted:

An Illustration For Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream Painted In 1793-1794 By Swiss Artist Johann Heinrich Füssli
An Illustration For Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Painted In 1793-1794 By Swiss Artist Johann Heinrich Füssli

Midsummer Means It’s Time To Announce And Publish The Winning Stories In The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award Contest. Happy Reading!

The international scope of The Ghost Story contest continues to expand. This time around, not only did we receive submissions from eight countries, but our Honorable Mention story is by an Australian writer, and one of our two Second Honorable Mention pieces comes to us from Finland.

There were also more submissions than ever before, and the high quality of so many of them made judging the contest a difficult task. In fact, we wound up with two Second Honorable Mentions not because we planned it that way, but because we loved them both, and in the end, despite the added expense of the extra prize money, we just could not bear to choose between them.

What is especially fascinating about the four stories we’re publishing here is the each one takes a completely different approach to the supernatural, and each uses the otherworldly for a different literary purpose. For instance, our overall winner—and recipient of the competition’s $1,000 cash award—presents us with a protagonist who is haunted by the traumas of his childhood as well as by the ghost of jazz musician Louis Armstrong, who serves as his own personal spirit guide. Our Honorable Mention story gives us a new mother whose fears for her baby’s safety coalesce into the physical form of a pair of strange children who appear on her doorstep in the middle of the night. One of our Second Honorable Mentions speculates about the problems, romantic and otherwise, that might be faced by someone who was born as a ghost, rather than having had to die to get that way, and our other Second Honorable Mention offers a harrowing situation—a mentally unbalanced teenager armed with a butcher knife—that is nonetheless so funny that we find ourselves laughing out loud every time we read it.

Come on inside to help us celebrate our winners, and to enjoy a chilling summertime read.

And if you’re planning to submit a supernatural story to the next Ghost Story contest, we’ll start accepting entries again at the beginning of August—and we’re looking forward to reading yours!

Finally, if you’d like to leave a comment, or to discuss our stories or the contest in general, please visit our Facebook page.

NOW THE REAL SUSPENSE BEGINS

posted:

Ghost HourGhost Hour. Illustration: Alice Popkorn

Submissions Closed!

The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition is now closed to submissions. Response was fantastic, with story entries pouring in from around the world. Thanks to everyone who participated. We’ll be announcing (and publishing) our winner and two honorable mentions on Midsummer’s Eve, in June. Visit our contest page for information about the next Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award competition.

BRITISH GHOST STORY SWEEP!

posted:

The Sun Sets At Stonehenge
The Sun Sets At Stonehenge

Writers From The United Kingdom Won All Three Prizes In The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition

Writers in Britain obviously have a knack for the supernatural. In The Ghost Story‘s new Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition, which concluded January 31, all three cash awards for flash fiction (short-short stories of under 1,000 words) on a supernatural or magic realism theme went to authors living in England and Scotland.

Scroll down through TGS‘s Home Page to read these three fine stories.

Winning honors in the competition—and its $300 first prize—went to CL Dalkin, a librarian living on the south coast of England, for her story, “A Brief Respite.”

First Honorable Mention and a $100 cash award went to Barry Charman, of North London, for his story, “Palette.”

And Second Honorable Mention, with a $50 prize, was taken by Stuart Riding of Edinburgh, Scotland, for “Kitsune.”

Our next fiction contest is The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award, for which we begin accepting submissions on February 15. Prizes are $1,000, $250, and $100 for full-length short stories of between 1.500 and 10,000 words.