SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #16 — WITCH/WIZARD
(× Psychedelic/Stoner or Rural/Backwoods or Monkey’s Paw)

TITLE:  Abuela Desastra

PREMISE:  Stoners in Sierra Blanca know that if you partake of peyote (Psychedelic) when your heart is broken, she’ll appear out of the desert (Rural) – an old lady in a hat and poncho, who will grant you a single wish.  Of course, that doesn’t go well (Monkey’s Paw), and the wishes of the broken-hearted tend to follow a certain theme.  For a little place in the middle of nowhere, Sierra Blanca has a lot of drama going on.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Is she a nagual?  A hallucination?  A bruja (Witch)?  Is she even an abuela?  What does she have to do with the corruption of love?  Fiction has us all accustomed to spooky ideas, not easily spooked, but this would be creepy if real.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #14 — VAMPIRES
(× Baroque or Teeth or Ice & Snow)

TITLE:  Miasma Dracula

PREMISE:  Park Yoon-Joon is a creepy dude obsessed with draculae and horror.  Around christmas time (Ice & Snow) at a haunted antique store in Seoul, he finds a rococo (Baroque) vase which contains Vlad Țepeș in mist form.  Good times for Yoon-Joon, bad times for Dracula.  The old vampire, being in mist form, was barely sentient, and his identity and the memory of what he once was became corrupted over the centuries.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Yoon-Joon immediately turns himself into a vampire (Vampire), but finds when he tries to make more vampires, they just disintegrate in his hands.  However, they become part of a blood-sucking mist that he can control, which manifests fangs (Teeth) or vampire faces to attack its victims.  Is there a modern Van Helsing in Korea that can stop him before he takes over the world?

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #15 — MUMMY
(× Gothic or Asylum/Prison or Conspiracy)

TITLE:  Keep it Together

PREMISE:  Holden Poulat was in a gang of cosmopolitan ne’er-do-wells, thieves, and homosexuals, until a very intricate caper (Conspiracy) in Egypt involving seductions and palace intrigue (Gothic) failed disastrously, leading to most of the crew being summarily executed and the rest being consigned to a terrifying desert prison (Prison).  The commandant Entwhistle was a British Egyptologist, allowed to hold this position by the breakaway Turkish sultanate because his methods were amusingly grisly.

Holden wakes up to find he’s become a mummy (Mummy).  All of his organs have been stolen and placed in canopic jars who knows where.  The commandant didn’t do such a great job of stitching him up, and Holden has to keep what’s left of his innards in place by improvising mummy wraps out of tarpaulin, rags, and pitch.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Body horror, of course.  Holden is in denial about being dead, convinced if he can get all his organs back, he’ll be fine.  One of the only other survivors of the gang, Montfort, is in the prison with him, and tells Holden he’s become a stereotypical monster of lore – the vengeful mummy out for grisly trophies.  But Holden says no, and bullies Montfort into helping with his campaign of organ-snatching.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #12 — ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS
(× Stephen King Style or Scary Room or Medical)

TITLE:  The God in the Alcove (it’s a Bauhaus lyric)

PREMISE:  Joshua Creighton is a psychic youth with an innate connection to other mediums, and a sense of obligation to resolve ghostly issues in the world.  He assembles a team of quirky white people (Stephen King Style) to understand and exorcise the deceased victims of an oppressive catholic hospital (Medical) where anesthesia was scorned.

HORROR ELEMENT:  There’s one room all the ghosts and ghouls avoid (Scary Room), where the Worst Thing Ever resides.  Joshua assumes it’s the priest / doctor who presided over their suffering, but the room is a portal to an alternate universe of pure evil (Alternate Dimensions).  The god-like creature that occasionally visits the threshold can, in those moments, send out psychic waves that fuck up all ghosts and mediums in the building.  What will happen if it comes all the way out of the alcove?

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #13 — WERECREATURES
(× 1980s or Creepy Kid or Mascot Horror)

TITLE:  Funny Animals

PREMISE:  Shawn Voltkamp is a cartoon maniac (Creepy Kid) in 1987 (1980s) Champlain, Illinois.  Oh, thinks he, that this too solid flesh could not melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a painting on celluloid.  To be a funny animal is to be immortal, an undying jester who may tweak the nose of any and all, however one sees fit (Mascot Horror).

HORROR ELEMENT:  idk he’s bitten by a bugs bunny or some shit.  No, no, don’t do that.  Let’s say Shawn was part of a lineage of shape-shifting monsters from the Black Forest of Germany – most manifesting as werewolves (Werecreatures), but all having the possibility of choosing a different alternate form.  Shawn’s TV-demented psyche makes him into a hellish shadow chipmunk.  Howwible.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

Today I’m getting married (this was queued), so it’s a good time to break my comment policies, if you don’t mind getting banned when I return.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #11 — GIANT MONSTER
(× 1920s or Women’s Lit/Chick-Flick or Office)

TITLE:  One Leggy Dame!!

PREMISE:  In a sorta 1920s-ish (1920s) alternate world (maybe the same retrofuture metropolis as Mutant Reign?), the fashion magazine editor Astél Bartók has two young ladies working for her as interns (Office), Zina Hassman and Flora Leiter.  It’s some Devil Wears Prada business (Chick-Flick), until evil girlboss Astél becomes a giant monster (Giant Monster).

HORROR ELEMENT:  How did this happen?  Flora is aware her best friend Zina has psychic powers and is not mentally well.  Zina develops a masochistic crush on Astél, and reality comes to reflect the outsized place the boss has in Zina’s imagination – the “step on me mommy” fantasies of web weirdos come to life.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #10 — RETRO SLASHER
(× Art & Artists or Religion or Birds)

TITLE:  Nailing You to the Spanish Mystic (it’s a christian death lyric)

PREMISE:  Austria 1976, a bevy of young lady art students (Artists) become gripped by the observation that they can get admitted to the school but they can never get the praise and opportunities of the men.  Why are they even allowed in the door?  Just to give the boys somebody to lay with, they surmise, and their leader Valéria Keresztes calls their group the Harem-turned-Convent (Religion).  They take a vow of chastity and to make art that is powerfully unsexy.  Valéria in particular has a medieval flagellant’s attitude toward the body and the spirit.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Yeah, this is a giallo (Retro Slasher), so you know it’ll actually have very dubious intersection of sex and murder.  Girls and boys start dying gruesomely, but especially with the girls, there is some question – was this homicide, or a suicide borne of religious zealotry?  Nobody can pin it on Valéria, despite her being obvious suspect number one.  It’s a mystery, but maybe there’s a clue in the way the killer always stages things so that crows (Birds) can start eating the victims, messing with other evidence.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Capitalist Exploitation, Despair, Suicide

SPOOKTOBER DAY #9 — NOIR
(× Hypnotism or Industrial or Scopophobia)

TITLE:  Falling Forever

PREMISE:  Henry Combs has to work at General Industries giant gloomy (noir) “everything” factory (Industrial), joining the other child laborers and victims producing endless random springs and gadgets.  The floor bosses monitor every tiny hand ruthlessly for inefficiency (Scopophobia) which leads to freakouts and despair.  But management has a solution.  A combination of drugs in the cafeteria and soothing musics (Hypnotism) keep the suicide rates in check, though the program has to be continually tweaked to maintain the balance and reduce bloody machine accidents in the wraithly young proles.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Henry is sure grateful for the drugs in his lunch.  Makes the day run nice and smooth, makes you want to show up for work.  You get mighty nauseous if you don’t.  But the hints and whispers about the reason for the drug program – the plague of suicides, people jumping off the roofs – maybe it’s planted a suggestion in his head that has him seeing ghosts.  Or maybe the ghosts are real?

SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #8 — SOUTHERN GOTHIC
(× Blue-Collar or Phobia or Plants & Flowers)

TITLE:  Witch Stain

PREMISE:  I should be composing these before 2 AM but it just ain’t working out like that.  Letting the images guide me too, not the best way to come up with a good idea.  Let’s say Creepin’ Lamont is victim of religious abuse (Southern) with internalized homophobias (Phobia), who thinks he’s possessed by witches and demons.  Even normies can tell he’s just gay and a lil wild-hearted, tho the crueler among them think he’s going to do harm to children, hence the nickname.

Lamont is gardening (Blue-Collar, Plants & Flowers) at a rich old family’s estate (Gothic) and falls in love with a young dude of the house, Marcus.  Marcus tries to get the wild boy to give in to gentle feelings, but it always devolves into panic attacks and visions of hell.

HORROR ELEMENT:  What if witches really did want you to kiss a dude?  I keed, i keed.  The horror in this one is realistical – loving somebody with bad problems.  It must have a happy ending tho, insofar as it’s possible.  Cut to future and he controls his episodes with therapy and careful self-regulation, and can kiss the boy without having a heart attack.  The world is haunted by demons that god made, thx god.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #7 — POSSESSION
(× Soap Opera or Mirrors or Dance)

TITLE:  Czarny Domowik

PREMISE:  The domowiki of the noble houses in Silesia always protect and reflect the families within them.  The Czajka family grew corrupt and discordant with time, generational abuse and trauma (Soap Opera) creating a cycle of doom and despair.  The spirit that once manifest itself as lizards to devour the cockroaches falls silent for a long century, then returns as a howling gadarene legion of miniature ghouls in every reflective surface (Mirrors), that drive the last of the line to end it all (Possession).

HORROR ELEMENT:  Justyna Czajka just assumes she’s going bonkers because of the abuse, smiles wanly, and goes about her day.  She comes home in the evening to find her remaining family members (abusers) dancing (Dance) from room to room, smashing against things, leaving skin and blood on the walls and doors.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #6 — CULT
(× 1990s or Game Show or Shyamalan Twist)

TITLE:  Kill the Lights

PREMISE:  In the late ’80s, Piper Herdez had the worst of both worlds – being exploited by a ruthless cult, then going through one of the more ethically dubious deconversions – abducted and bound, verbally abused like it was an exorcism.  But it took; now she recognizes what she was going through on the inside, and can never look at The Illumination Center (Cult) with the same eyes she used to.

Even so, she hates Gabriel Gundren -the deconversion guy her family hired- with a passion.  Her family came to see it her way as well, and are OK with her trying to snake some of his business.  She uses a variety of subtler methods to give cult members the perspective they need to escape, and targets people he was hired to snatch.

Gabriel starts to figure it out, but doesn’t have a chance to do much until, in 1992 (1990s), things come to a head.  Piper finds out he’s going after a man she knows from The Illumination Center, and she figures it’s time to use her inside knowledge to get close first.  Both of them hit on the same scheme:  infiltrating the set of the cult’s game show (Game Show), Kill the Lights.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The Illumination Center’s game show revolves around a $cientologyesque personality quiz, but played for prizes.  It’s also treated as a sort of humanist getting-to-know-yourself thing, where the studio audience awws at sympathetic moments of revelation.  Somehow this works for normies well enough that the show is a good moneymaker for the creeps.  Still, that money has to buy the cult leader’s tenth lambo, so the production is cheap.  Instead of pulling back tinsel curtains for big reveals, they turn off the studio lights, change things around, then turn them back on.

So horror:  The cloying atmosphere of a cult, the danger of being pulled back in or running afoul of the cultists, and what all can happen in that moment of dark?  Piper and Gabriel got jobs on the catering crew to get into the place.  Gabe was just going to snatch the boy and run, but he sees what Piper is up to and starts a cat-and-mouse situation with her.

The cult catches both of the infiltrators and forces them to play as contestants, bound to chairs like Gabe always used to do.  The twist (Shyamalan Twist): when the lights go out their souls are laid bare, and when the light comes on, they are Illuminated.  It’s always that the cult is right, isn’t it?

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!