ghost story writing assignment

25+ Ghost Story Prompts

Need a scary ghost story to tell over the campfire? Today we bring over 25 ghost story prompts to inspire you to write your own paranormal short story or novel.

A ghost story is a type of horror story that emphasises the theme of the supernatural, apparitions, and otherworldly ghost-like creatures. Generally revolving around death, hauntings or the afterlife. This genre often has an uncanny air about it, producing feelings of fear, dread, and the unfamiliar. A ghost story is one of the oldest forms of literature and can be found in all cultures.

If you’re looking for some new ideas for your next ghost story, these 25+ paranormal story prompts are perfect for writers of all levels. You might also find this ghost name generator useful.

The spookiest time of year is here, and that means it’s time for ghost stories! Whether you’re writing a ghost story for Halloween , a seasonal short story , or even a standalone novel, these ghost story prompts are a great place to start:

A young woman moves into an old house and finds herself in a terrifying situation with her new roommate, a ghost. The only way to escape is to get out of the house alive.
A man is haunted by his past and must face the demons that come back to haunt him.
A group of college students decide to spend their summer vacation in a cabin in the woods. But what starts as a fun vacation turns deadly when they realize that the woods aren’t quite as safe as they thought.
Use this story starter for a ghost story: The first time I saw it, I was only six. It was night and I was playing in my granddad’s garden when I heard this weird sound coming from the forest. I followed the sound and found myself in the middle of a circle of tall trees. It was so dark that I could barely see my hands in front of me. Suddenly, something grabbed my leg.
A woman is haunted by the ghosts of her ancestors, but she must learn to accept her fate and embrace the spirits before they are all gone forever.
An orphaned boy is taken in by a family of ghosts after his parents die in a fire. They teach him how to use his supernatural abilities to help people in need. But soon the boy starts using these powers for evil.
A group of teenagers visit their favourite haunted house during the Halloween season, but they never make it home again.
A couple gets married on Halloween night and discovers that their marriage is cursed. They must solve the mystery of the ghost bride to break the curse.
A boy finds a box of his grandfather’s old slides in the attic, and when he goes back to school, he starts seeing his grandfather’s ghost everywhere.
A man hears strange sounds coming from his attic, and he’s determined to find out what they are. He sneaks up to the attic to investigate, but when he does, he stumbles upon something much more frightening than he could have imagined.
An abandoned mansion on a lonely island is rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of a pirate who was hung for his crimes. A group of friends decide to spend the night in the mansion, and they quickly learn that there’s more than one kind of ghost in the house.
A family moves back into their old family home where their son died years ago. The father becomes obsessed with finding out who killed his son. He believes he knows who the murderer is but no one will believe him.
A man is tormented by a ghostly hitchhiker. He is forced to take them on a road trip until they reach their final destination…a mysterious abandoned town.
A family moves into an old Victorian home, where the previous owner mysteriously disappeared after getting locked in one of the rooms. Now the family is trapped inside by a malevolent entity.
A man is on his way home from work when he is attacked by a group of ghosts. He manages to escape, but now he has a few more problems than he started with.
Use this story starter for a ghost story: I woke up in the middle of the night, and I felt a cold hand touching my face. I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn’t come out. Then, I felt a sharp pain in my neck.
My father told me about his experience while we were driving home. He said he saw a dead girl walking towards him just after I was born, but when he got closer, she disappeared. He thought if was imagining things at the time.
My father used to scare me at night. One time he came into my bedroom and woke me up, telling me to come downstairs. He took me to the living room, and there he told me that a ghost had put a curse on me.
It was the most beautiful cemetery ever. People would come from far away just to walk through the grounds. There was a rumour about a ghost that roamed the graveyard at night.
A teenage girl is forced to spend her summer with her grandmother who believes she can communicate with ghosts.
A young woman moves into an apartment next door to an old house where she hears a woman screaming and sees a little girl standing in the window.
A woman hears a baby crying in her house, but she can’t find it. She keeps hearing it crying in another room, so she goes to check on it. When she opens the door, there is no baby there. But then, the door slams shut and locks itself.
A girl is staying at her grandmother’s house with her family for the night. She is sleeping in her grandmother’s bed, but she can’t get comfortable. Every time she falls asleep, she wakes up to see her dead grandmother sitting on the edge of her bed.
A woman is walking down a deserted road when she sees a figure standing in front of her. It turns out to be an old man in a top hat, holding a cane. He says to her, “Hello, young lady. My name is John Marley. I am a spirit from the other side.”
One night, a mother wakes up to hear her son crying in their room. When she goes into his room, he is not there. She looks everywhere for him and calls out his name. The only answer she gets is a terrible scream that echoes throughout the house.
In a small village, there lived a woman who was very lonely. Her husband had passed away and she was left all alone with her two sons. The boys were grown and had families of their own. The woman was so lonely that she began talking to herself. “I’m all alone,” she said to no one in particular. “I’m all alone.” And then she hears a voice.
There was once a man who lived by the beach. He loved the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. One day, he decided to go for a walk on the beach and ended up drowning. When he died, he came back as a ghost. Every night, he would come back to the place where he drowned, and stand there.
There was once a little girl who loved to play hide and seek. One day, while playing, she got separated from her family. She found a tree stump and went behind it, but when she peeked around the edge, she saw that no one was there. The stump began to move, and suddenly the girl felt herself being lifted off the ground and into the air. As she looked at the tree stump, she noticed that it had eyes. The eyes were staring right at her. Then, before she could scream, the tree stump opened its mouth.

For more spooky ideas, check out this list of over 110 horror story ideas .

How do you write a ghost story?

The basic structure of a ghost story includes an opening sequence that presents the reader with a situation that seems normal but is actually supernatural in nature. The protagonist then encounters the ghost and experiences events that are often strange and frightening, leading up to a climax where the ghost is defeated or disappears. Writing a ghost story is the same as writing a horror story . Before you start writing you need a good ghost story plot idea, like the list above. Both ghost stories and horror stories have a set of characters, a spooky setting, an opening, a middle part and a dramatic ending.

What is the shortest ghost story?

The shortest ghost story is just two sentences long. It was written by Frederic Brown in 1948. The story reads: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door …” Just by reading these two sentences, we can imagine a scary situation. There are two key themes used here, the fear of loneliness and the surprise element at the end. Both these are important themes in ghost stories.

What makes a ghost story scary?

Ghost stories are typically scary as they focus on death and going into the unknown. But the key to a scary ghost story is fear. It is important to make the reader feel uneasy or frightened. Here are some key elements of a good ghost story:

An encounter with a ghost or spirit
A supernatural force that can be both good and evil
Sense of dread
The feeling of being watched or followed
Feeling helpless
Being lonely or lost

Just like all stories, a ghost story must include these basic elements of a story : Characters, Setting, Plot, Conflict and Resolution.

How do you finish a ghost story?

Most ghost stories end with the haunting being explained away as something natural. This explanation can be a spiritual one (the ghost was a real person who died), or it can be a psychological one (the ghost was a product of the protagonist’s mind). The ghost story can also end with no explanation at all. Some ghost stories don’t even bother to give an explanation for the haunting, but let the reader figure it out themselves.

Did you find this list of over 25 ghost story prompts useful? Let us know in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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50 Spooky Writing Prompts and Horror Story Ideas

If you’re looking for scary story prompts or horror writing ideas, you’ve come to the right place! These are great Halloween writing prompts, and some of these could also be used as suspense story prompts or dark fantasy story ideas.

These are all from my book 5 ,000 Writing Prompts: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More . The book has 100 additional spooky writing prompts and horror story ideas, as well as master plots and idea starters for all kinds of writing.

If you are easily scared and have an over-active imagination, just skip this one. And anyway, just remember it’s all nonsense that I made up while I was exercising on the treadmill or sitting in bed.

Some of these are skeletal (ha) plot ideas, while others are images or suggestions. And if you’d like a spooky soundtrack to inspire you, be sure to check out my scary music playlist for writers ! Be sure to pin or bookmark the post for future reference. After all, when autumn rolls around, you might find yourself looking for Halloween writing prompts!

A musician practices. When she finishes a piece, she hears someone clapping for her, although she lives alone.
Frightening events in a small town lead its citizens to dig up the grave of a deceased inhabitant.
Someone gets on the elevator by himself and is never seen by his friends or family again.
The Furies—the vengeance deities of classic mythology—are back in business again.
A collector buys an unpublished manuscript by an obscure writer that describes a terrible historical event a year before it occurred. The collector learns the writer wrote many unpublished stories…
Creating a hybrid of a human and this particular animal turns out to be a bad idea.
A person has the ability to make other people very ill.
The dead walk out of the sea.
An individual begins seeing and hearing from someone who looks just like her – and learns she had a twin who died at birth.
A killer places an advertisement for a willing victim and finds one.
A basement contains jars filled with unusual specimens.
A person finds new photos of herself on her cell phone that she didn’t take.
The spirit of a brutalized slave or prisoner of war wants revenge on his tormentor’s descendants.
A couple vacationing in a remote area begins having the same nightmares.
All of the circus performers were killed in the train wreck.
The television switches to another station of its own accord and plays footage of something horrible that happened long before the technology existed to record it.
A spouse or sibling dies. He or she begins to take over the body of the surviving spouse or sibling.
Weekend adventurers explore a cave and can’t find their way out again. Then they encounter something terrible…
Authorities go through the cluttered apartment of a deceased man who lived alone with no known friends or relatives for decades and find something disturbing.
A group of teenagers trolls everyone else in an online group by telling made-up stories about terrible things they’ve done. Things then get out of hand.
It’s bad luck in the theatre to call the Shakespeare play Macbeth by name, but someone in the company keeps doing it anyway… and the superstition proves true.
Every exhibit in this carnival sideshow is fake. Except this one thing.
An individual develops a terror of water – drinking it, touching it, or even being near it. There’s actually a good reason why.
The grandfather clock starts running backwards.
People in this neighborhood begin having freak accidents that involve normal appliances and machinery, such as blenders, weed whackers, and garage doors.
The cure for a new deadly epidemic is almost scarier than the disease.
He locked the doors and shuttered the windows; it came in through the roof.
A woman is happy when her dead loved one comes back to life… but he’s changed.
This centuries-old beauty secret is effective but horrifying.
A killer toys with his victims by orchestrating a series of false hopes for them.
She wakes up in the middle of the night and runs out to a certain tree.
Tourists on a ghost tour, along with their guide, fall into the hands of an evil presence.
A young woman is impregnated by her handsome new boyfriend, who turns out to be something other than human.
The empty swing is swinging.
A bride on her honeymoon discovers she’s not her new husband’s first wife… not even close.
Long ago, when he was a baby, a man’s parents made an unwise deal in order to bring him back from the dead.
Members of a family or people in a town begin sleepwalking and doing strange things in their sleep.
A young man confesses to a killing that hasn’t happened. The murder he describes takes place while he’s in custody.
Grisly events happen after the arrival of a hypnotist in Victorian London.
An author’s fictional villain stalks him.
Fraternity hazing goes way too far.
It always happens when he’s alone in the car.
A patient in a mental hospital encounters a malevolent ghost, but nobody believes her.
A mother’s young child may or may not be a changeling.
Swarms of insects appear in various places in a town, always followed by an untimely death.
The ghost at the movie theater wants everyone to watch one particular snippet of film.
A child’s imaginary friend starts to cause real trouble.
When putting together a slide show for a wedding or funeral, someone notices that for decades, the same man, dressed in the same fashion, has been appearing in the background of photographs taken in public places.
A politician, religious leader, or celebrity exerts mind control over the will of his or her followers.
The fairy godmother isn’t the good kind of fairy.

Okay, I creeped myself out a little with these spooky writing prompts! If you’re writing a novel and want a step-by-step guide to planning, writing, and editing, be sure to check out my book 5,000 Writing Prompts .

5,000 WRITING PROMPTS: A Master List of Plot Ideas, Creative Exercises, and More | BRYN DONOVAN |

Do you have questions or suggestions about horror story ideas? We’d love to hear them in the comments section! And don’t miss future posts about writing. Follow my blog, if you aren’t already — there’s a place you can sign up below. Thanks so much for reading, and happy writing!

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Ghost Story Writing Prompts—50+ Ultimate Hair-Raising Scary Ideas

September 10, 2022

Common horror themes may involve serial killers, a zombie apocalypse, or a mad scientist. However, classic scary story idea often involve ghosts.

Do you want to write a great ghost story? Eager to give your readers a goosebumps when reading your book? We’ve got you covered. Below, we’ve included over 50 scary story ideas and ghost story writing prompts to spark your spook and give your readers an unforgettable fright.

50+ Ghost story writing prompts

Use the ideas below to inspire you in writing your own terrifying tales that can make your reader’s hair stand on end.

A young woman loses her husband in an accident. Overwhelmed with grief, she seeks any way possible to communicate with him. She visits a medium who agrees to help her contact him. Together they make contact, but the spirit they get is not really her husband. It’s an evil spirit looking for a new host.
A teenage girl wakes up at 3 am every morning, disturbed by the strange things that start happening at about this time. She senses something moving in her room. Every night, she gets out of bed to turn on the lights and investigate. Nothing. One night, she turns on the lights and, again, nobody is there. This time, as soon as she turns off the light, bright red eyes appear.
Parents hear their child talking in the playroom. When they ask her who she is talking to, she explains that she is chatting with her friend. Soon, the child’s imaginary friend becomes a regular topic of conversation. Parents ask about the friend, and the child updates them. One day, the parents hear the child crying. ‘My friend hit me!’ she cries. The child has a bruise on her face.
Residents of a small town protest against a corporation’s plans to build a mall in a beautiful wooded area. Unable to fight the corporation, building plans go ahead. Construction disturbs the spirits that reside in the woods, who wake up to wreak havoc and those who dare disturb them. The spirits usually leave the townspeople alone but now use them as hosts to carry out their vengeful plans.
A young woman and her lover are forbidden from being together. Her father wants her to marry a rich man from a neighboring town. He arranges the wedding, but she runs away with her lover on their wedding day. Years later, the rebellious couple returns to the woman’s home to apologize and seek forgiveness. When they reach the door, her father looks shocked. He explains that his daughter took her own life on the wedding day, ten years earlier.
A soldier returns from war with PTSD. He’s distraught with visions of the children in the school he was ordered to bomb. He seeks treatment, but it doesn’t work. The children are not just visions.
A family dog begins to bark aggressively at night. The father of the family wakes up each night to the dog’s barks and investigates but notices nothing strange. One night, after an hour of incessant barking, the dog stops. The father goes to investigate but does not return to bed.
A young couple moves into a new house to begin a perfect life for their family. Happy with the low cost for such a grandiose home, they’re finally ready to have a child. On the night of the child’s birth, strange creatures, faceless beings, approach the house from the dark forest outside.
A single mother’s mental health is deteriorating. Compounded by stress, she begins to hallucinate. One night after putting her child to bed, she stares at herself in the mirror. Her focus fades as she stares, and from the corner of her eye, she sees her child standing, bloody, crying, in the reflection. She turns around to see an empty hallway.
You pull into a gas station at 3 am—coffee and snacks to help you drive the next three hours home. The man at the counter takes your money and tells you to go slow. He gives you a strange look, then nods your departure. As you drive away, you check the rearview and see an abandoned gas station.
On Halloween night, static on the tv screen tells a child to lock all the doors in the house. Locked, the lights flicker. Nobody can speak or scream.
A man dreams of an old woman every night. One night, he wakes up to her lying beside him.
A ghost embodies the figure of a drowning man to lure lifeguards out to sea.
A man kidnaps a young girl. Days later, a body is found in the woods. The body is that of the man.
A man’s best friend dies by suicide. Months later, his friend visits him in dreams. In one dream, the dead friend grabs the man’s arm. He wakes up with a bruise in the same spot.
A student becomes fascinated with pictures of strange creatures in an old library book.
When parents lose their only child to a terminal illness, they visit a therapist to help them deal with grief. One is reluctant to visit a therapist because they’re not ready to accept the situation. Instead, they bring home a doll and treat it as their child.

Funny ghost story prompts

Ghost stories can also be funny. Here are some prompts to tickle your funny bone:

A woman discovers she no longer loves her husband. She doesn’t even like him anymore but feels trapped. Desperate to achieve peace, she decides to murder her husband, finally having the house to herself. Her husband returns as a ghost to haunt her.
An introvert serial killer struggles when his victims return as ghosts and won’t leave him alone.
A child’s imaginary friend gets her in trouble for breaking things around the house.
A man murders his nagging mother, only for her to haunt and continue to nag him.
A man is surprised to find his shed empty. Just hours earlier, it was occupied by one of his victims.
A medium uses her connection to the beyond to predict lottery numbers. When she finally wins the lottery, the ghosts want their fair share. They don’t want money but for the medium to finish their unfinished business on earth.

Ghost story dialogue prompts

A little boy asks his father ‘ who is the man in the hood behind you? ‘ There’s nobody there.
‘Why do you keep moving my things?’
A: Why were you standing outside my house last night?

B: I wasn’t there…

A: A friend of yours stopped by earlier? I think he said his name was Kevin.

B: Kevin? Blond hair? Glasses?

B: Kevin was the friend whose funeral I attended last week.

Young girl: Mommy, can I have orange juice?

Distracted mother: Sure, honey.

Girl: Can my friend have one too?

Distracted mother: Uh-huh, sure, honey.

[Second orange juice carton bursts ]

‘Hi, I’m looking for Jason?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Hi Jason, this is Mort, the sexton from St. Theresa’s Graveyard. We’ve been having problems with your father’s grave.’

‘Problems?’

‘It looks like somebody keeps messing with it. It’s always overturned and messy when we see it in the morning.’

‘Thanks, Mort, I’ll head out in the early hours to see who’s doing it.’

‘No problem Jason, good luck.’

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

Ghost story setting ideas

The setting of a spooky story has a huge impact on the overall experience of the reader. For ghost stories, here are some ideas:

A creaky mansion
A psychiatric ward
The battlefield
A house in the woods
An airplane
A warehouse
A road at night
A theme park
An office at night
A therapist’s office

What makes a great horror story?

Good scary stories share something in common. They all make effective use of essential elements of the horror genre , such as:

Shattering illusions of safety – no place is safe
Suspense – build-up
Frightened child within – reader’s experience

Innocent settings such as a classroom or a playground become shocking and disturbing when we read about dark, supernatural, or unsettling events that happen in them.

Old buildings and decrepit locations suggest that life has long since abandoned a place, yet it’s not empty.

The most frightening tales play on the reader’s existing fears . Clowns, playgrounds, and parents have strong links to childhood, so twisted tales around such topics immerse the readers in childhood fears.

On suspense

Suspense is key to the horror genre. Jump too quickly to the climax, and you don’t give the audience enough time to feel the tension.

Suspense evokes anxiety and an impending sense of doom. It serves to inform the reader that something terrible is going to happen.

The important part is that it hasn’t happened just yet, feeding the fear of uncertainty and filling the reader’s mind with possibilities.

Good authors are playfully skillful with their use of suspense.

Moments rise but fall before the climax to offer the reader a false and brief sense of security. One realizes all too soon that the fall in tension only means it will creep back in later and elsewhere.

We wonder, perhaps our protagonists may escape the mansion, the curse may lift, and the children may at least survive, but we can’t really predict any possibility.

Unlike in visual media, authors can’t use camera angles or sound design to add suspense to the reader’s experience. So, how do you build tension with words on a page?

One narrative means by which to create suspense is to place characters in a dangerous situation but keep them unaware of the danger. Slowly let the reader in on the danger present, but drip feed the degree of danger to your characters.

Consider a typical young girl’s bedroom.

We, the reader, learn that when she leaves for school, the doll, at the foot of her bed, raises its head. Our next scene is in the bedroom when the girl returns from school, and the doll is exactly where she left it, lifeless.

Now, we, the readers, know the doll is alive, but the girl has no idea. Later, she may notice the doll is not where she left it.

Use the ghost writing prompts above to craft your own scary story.

Remember that when writing ghost stories that suspense is key and that a scary story play on very real and present fears.

Feel free to save this list of horror story ideas for later if you need some fresh inspiration, or share it with a friend or the guy standing behind you!

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Writing Genres

How to Write a Ghost Story

Last Updated: March 4, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Grant Faulkner, MA . Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story, a literary magazine. Grant has published two books on writing and has been published in The New York Times and Writer’s Digest. He co-hosts Write-minded, a weekly podcast on writing and publishing, and has a M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 222,501 times.

Many people enjoy a good ghost story and writing your own can be just as enjoyable. Ghost stories generally follow the patterns of other fictional work, focusing on a character and their encounters with a challenging force or event. However, ghost stories have a close focus on evoking feelings of terror and dread, building them up into a horrifying climax. Learning some of the ideas and techniques behind good ghost stories can help you create your own terrifying tales.

Developing Your Plot

Think about which situations meeting a ghost would be most terrifying.
Imagine the details of the ghost and how it haunts you, noting what scares you the most.
Try watching your favorite horror films or reading other ghost stories to get inspired.

What locations do you find disturbing or discomforting?
Your setting should have a feeling of isolation, cutting the main characters off from help.

Step 3 Brainstorm ideas and plan your story arc.

Stasis. This is the introduction to your story and it demonstrates the normal life of your characters.
Trigger. This event is something that pushes your character out of their normal life.
Quest. This is where your character is given a goal or something they must do.
Surprise. This will take up the middle section of your story and will be the events along the way towards your heroes goal.
Critical choice. Your protagonist will need to make a hard choice that demonstrates their character.
Climax. This is the moment your story was building up to and the most dramatic moment of the story.
Reversal. This should be the consequence to your character's critical choice or the main challenge.
Resolution. This point is where your characters return to everyday life but are changed from the ordeal.

Write your outline in a chronological ordering of events.
Don't leave any gaps in the narrative for your outline.
Try to think about each scene and examine how they work together.
If writing an entire ghost story seems overwhelming at first, try writing a 100-word ghost story to warm up. You get 100 words to write something truly creepy and unsettling. It takes less time, and you won't have to worry as much about outlining and pacing.

Don't rush to reveal the confrontation or climax of your ghost story.
Building the tension of the story slowly can make the climax even more intense.

Developing Your Characters

Try to think of why your character is in the situation they are.
Imagine how your character would react to the events in your story.
Try to get a clear mental picture of what your character looks like.

Your ghost will need a reason or motive for existing and doing what they do.
Ghosts come in different forms, being more or less physical or having different powers.

Step 3 Consider working on foils or additional characters.

Foils usually have different personalities than the main characters in order to highlight the individual characteristics.
Your supporting characters should also have their own unique qualities and personalities.
Ask yourself what relationships these characters might have with the main characters of your ghost story.

Writing Your Ghost Story

Step 1 Avoid telling the reader what's happening.

”The ghost appeared and I was frightened” is an example of telling the reader what's happening.
”The ghost appeared and my stomach tightened up in knots. I could feel my face break out in a sweat and my heart trying to leap out from my chest.” is an example of showing the reader what's happening.

Step 2 Make your readers fill in the details.

For example, “The ghost was ten feet tall and exactly as wide as the door that it came through.” is probably too direct.
Try saying something like “The ghost was enormous, making the room suddenly feel claustrophobic and tight.”

Consider ending your story in a single sentence.
Offering too much explanation at the end of your ghost story can lessen the impact of your ending.

Community Q&A

Think about what scares you the most and let those fears inspire your ghost story. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
Have a clear understanding of what and who your characters are. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
Setting is an important part of your ghost story that can either enhance or detract from the feelings of terror you are trying to evoke. Thanks Helpful 4 Not Helpful 1

Tips from our Readers

You don't have to write about a human ghost. Try writing about a ghost animal or some other supernatural being.

Things You'll Need

Pen or pencil

↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/there-are-no-rules/the-horror-genre-on-writing-horror-and-avoiding-cliches
↑ https://www.writers-online.co.uk/how-to-write/how-to-write-a-ghost-story/
↑ http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-structure-a-story-the-eight-point-arc/
↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/7-steps-to-creating-a-flexible-outline-for-any-story
↑ https://atomlearning.com/blog/6-ways-to-build-suspense-and-tension-in-writing
↑ https://mythcreants.com/blog/three-ways-you-can-use-description-to-mess-with-your-readers/

About This Article

To write a ghost story, start by thinking about what you find scary about ghosts. Additionally, since atmosphere plays a large part in ghost stories, imagine the creepiest location you can think of for the setting. Next, work on your story’s arc, which includes the introduction, the climactic moment, and the resolution. As you draft your story, think about what you want to show your reader and what you want to leave up to their imagination, since readers will automatically fill in details with their own mind. To learn how to finish your ghost story, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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132 Best Horror Writing Prompts and Scary Story Ideas

Horror stories send shivers down our spines. They are gruesome, shocking, and chilling. Scary stories are meant to horrify us, and there are many ways to make a powerful impact on the reader. The element of surprise is crucial to make the readers’ blood freeze.

There are different types of horror stories. They often deal with terrible murders, supernatural powers, psychopaths, the frightening human psychology and much more.

Although many horror writing prompts and scary ideas have been written, the following 132 horror writing prompts can spark great creativity in aspiring writers of the horror genre.

A family is on a camping trip. The parents are walking with their two children, a daughter and a son. The little boy trips and falls into a dark river. His father jumps to rescue him. Somehow the boy manages to swim to the surface. The father is nowhere to be found. When the mother gets a hold of the boy, she can’t recognize him. She tries holding him, but the moment she touches his wet body, her hands start burning.
A young girl goes missing in a nearby forest. The whole town is searching for her. Her parents find her sitting and smiling in a cave. Her eyes are completely white.
A woman starts watching a movie late at night. The movie seems all too familiar. Finally, she realizes that it is a movie about her own life and that she might be already dead.
A house finds a way to kill every visitor on its premises.
A child makes her own Halloween mask. She glues a lock of her own hair on her mask. The mask comes to life and threatens to take over the girl’s body.
While digging in her backyard, an old lady discovers an iron chest. She opens it and finds a pile of old photographs of her ancestors. All of them are missing their left eye.
A priest is trying to punish God for the death of his sister. He is getting ready to burn down the church, when supernatural forces start to torture him.
Every year a woman goes to the cemetery where her husband is buried, and when she looks at his tombstone, she notices her own name carved in it.
A woman puts a lipstick on in the bathroom when she hears a demonic voice saying to her: “Can’t you see?”
A mysterious child psychiatrist promises parents to cure their children if they give him a vile of their blood.
A group of 10 friends decide to rent an old English castle for the weekend. The ghosts are disturbed and seek their pound of flesh.
A photographer travels to an Indian reservation for his next project. He starts taking photos, but there are only shadows in the places where people should have been.
A young married couple decide to renovate an abandoned psychiatric hospital and turn it into a hotel. Everything is going well until their first guest arrives.
Three sisters are reunited for the reading of their grandmother’s will. She has left them a diamond necklace, but they have to fight psychologically and physically for it.
An old woman pretends to be lost and asks young women to help her get home. She offers them a cup of tea and drugs them. When the women wake up, they are chained in the basement. The old woman gives them tools and boards, so that they can build their own coffin. If they refuse, she inflicts pain on them.
A mysterious stranger with a glass eye and a cane commissions a portrait. When the portrait is finished, the painter turns into stone.
A little girl’s sister lives with a monster in the closet. She exits the closet on her sister’s birthday.
The demons under the nuclear plant get released after an explosion and start terrorizing the families of people who work at the plant.
A woman gets trapped in a parallel universe where every day she dies horribly in different ways.
A cannibal hunts for pure children’s hearts hoping they will bring him eternal youth.
A politician hides his weird sister in the attic. She’s had her supernatural powers after their family home burned to the ground.
A 16-year-old girl wakes up on a stone-cold table surrounded with people in black and white masks. They are chant and start leaning forward. All of them carry carved knives.
A boy hears screaming from his parents’ bedroom. He jumps and hides under his bed. Suddenly, everything becomes quiet. A man wearing army boots enters his room. He drags the boy from under the bed and says: “We’ve been searching for you for 200 years.”
A husband and his wife regain consciousness only to see each other tied to chairs, facing each other. A voice on the radio tells them to kill the other, otherwise, they would kill their children.
A mysterious altruist gives a kidney to a young man, who has potential to become a leading neuroscientist. After a year, the altruist kills the young man because he proves to be an unworthy organ recipient. The following year, the mysterious altruist is a bone marrow donor.
A group of friends play truth or dare. Suddenly, all the lights go out and in those ten seconds of darkness, one of the group is killed.
A young man becomes obsessed with an old man living opposite his building. The young man is convinced that the old man is the embodiment of the devil, and starts planning the murder.
Concerned and grieving parents bring their 8-year-old son to a psychiatrist after their daughter’s accident, believing that the boy had something to do with her death.
A woman is admitted to a hospital after a car crash. She wakes up after three months in a coma, but when she tries to speak, she can’t utter a sound. When the nurse sees that she is awake, she calls a doctor. The last thing the woman remembers is hearing the doctor say: “Today is your lucky day,” right before four men in black robes take her out.
A small-town cop becomes obsessed with a cold case from 1978. Three girls went missing after school, and nobody has seen them since. Then one day, in 2008, three girls with the same names as those in 1978 go missing. The case is reopened.
After his parents’ death a cardiologist returns to his small town where everyone seems to lead a perfect life. This causes a disturbance in the idyllic life of the people since none of them has a heart.
A man is kidnapped from his apartment on midnight and brought on a large private estate. He is told that he will be a human pray and that ten hunters with guns will go after him. He is given a 5-minute head start.
A strange woman in labor is admitted in the local hospital. Nobody seems to recognize her. She screams in agony. A black smoke fills in the entire hospital. After that, nobody is the same. A dark lord is born.
A young girl finds her grandmother’s gold in a chest in the attic, although she isn’t allowed to go there by herself. She touches the gold and she starts seeing horrible visions involving her grandmother when she was younger.
An anthropologist studies rituals involving human sacrifice. She slowly begins to accept them as necessary.
A family of four moves in an old Victorian home. As they restore it, more and more people die suddenly and violently.
An old nurse has lived next door to a family that doesn’t get older. Their son has remained to be a seven-year-old boy.
A girl wakes up in her dorm and sees that everybody sleepwalks in the same direction. She acts as if she has the same condition and follows them to an underground black pool where everybody jumps.
A bride returns to the same bridge for 50 years waiting for her husband-to-be to get out of the water.
An old woman locks girls’ personalities in a forever growing collection of porcelain dolls. Parents of the missing girls are in agony and they finally suspect something. When they tell the police, their claims are instantly dismissed.
A chemistry teacher disfigures teenagers who remind him of his childhood bullies. One day, he learns that the new student in his school is the son of his childhood’s archenemy.
A girl starts digging tiny holes in her backyard. When her mother asks her what she is doing, the girl answers: “Mr. Phantom told me to bury my dolls tonight. Tomorrow night I am going to bury our dog. And then, you, mother.”
Twin brothers were kidnapped and returned the next day. They claim that they can’t remember anything. The following night, twin sisters disappear.
A boy has a very realistic dream about an impending doom, but nobody believes him until during a storm all the birds fall dead on the ground.
Room 206 is believed to be haunted, so hotel guests never stay in it. One day, an old woman arrives at the hotel and asks for the key to room 206. She says that she was born there.
A genius scientist tries to extract his wife’s consciousness from her lifeless body and insert it into an imprisoned woman who looks just like his wife.
Two distinguished scientists develop a new type of virus that attacks their brains and turns them into killing machines.
A woman steps out of her house only to find four of her neighbors dead at her doorstep. Little does she know that she isn’t supposed to call the police.
A bachelor’s party ends with two dead people in the pool. Both of them are missing their eyes.
A young woman wearing a black dress is holding a knife in her hand and threatening to kill a frightened man. She is terrified because she does not want to kill anybody, but her body refuses to obey her mind.
A strange religious group starts performing a ritual on a playground. The children’s hearts stop beating.
A woman discovers that her niece has done some horrible crimes, so she decides to poison her. Both of them take the poison, but only the aunt dies.
A man encounters death on his way to work. He can ask three questions before he dies. He makes a quick decision.
An older brother kills his baby sister because he wants to be an only child. When he learns that his mother is pregnant again, he decides to punish her.
A husband and his wife move to a new apartment. After a week, both of them kill themselves. They leave a note saying: “Never again.”
A man is trying to open a time portal so that he could kill his parents before he is ever conceived.
A famous conductor imprisons a pianist from the orchestra and makes him play the piano while he tortures other victims, also musicians. Every time the pianist makes a mistake, the conductor cuts of a finger from his victims.
A popular French chef is invited by a mysterious Japanese sushi master for dinner. A powerful potion makes the French chef fall asleep. He wakes up horrified to learn that he is kept on a human farm, in a cage.
A nuclear blast turns animals into blood-thirsty monsters.
A mysterious bug creeps under people’s skins and turns them into the worst version of themselves.
A kidnapper makes his victims torture each other for his sheer pleasure.
Four friends are invited to spend the afternoon in an escape room. A man’s voice tells them that they have won a prize. They happily accept and enter the escape room. They soon realize that the room was designed to reflect their worst nightmares.
Two sisters have been given names from the Book of the Dead. Their fates have been sealed, so when they turn 21, dark forces are sent to bring them to the underground.
A mother-to-be starts feeling severe pain in her stomach every time she touches a Bible. Despite the fear for her own life, she starts reading the New Testament out loud.
A literature professor discovers an old manuscript in the college library. He opens it in his study and suddenly a black raven flies through the window.
You are the Ruler of a dystopian society. You kill every time your control is threatened.
You are an intelligent robot who shows no mercy to humanity.
You are a promising researcher who discovers that all the notorious dictators have been cloned.
A nomad meets a fakir who tells him that he would bring agony to dozens of people unless he kills himself before he transforms into a monster.
A most prominent member of a sect goes to animal shelters to find food for the dark forces.
A man hires unethical doctors to help him experience clinical death and then bring him back to life after a minute. Little does he know that one minute of death feels like an eternity full of horrors.
You travel home to visit your parents for the holidays. Everything seems normal until you realize that demons have taken over their consciousness.
A mysterious woman moves into your apartment building. One by one, all of the tenants start hallucinating that monsters chase them and jump into their own deaths.
Divorced parents are kidnapped together with their son. Both of the parents have been given poison, but there is only one antidote. The boy needs to decide which parent gets to be saved. He has 30 seconds to make that decision.
A patient with a multiple-personality disorder tells you that you are one of six characters.
You wake up in bed that is a blood-bath.
The Government abducts children with genius IQ and trains them to fight the horrors in Area 51.
A woman who has just given birth at her home is told that the baby is predestined to become the leader of the greatest demonic order in the country.
A man signs a document with his blood to relinquish his body to a sect.
A woman enters a sacred cave in India and disappears for good.
A man opens his eyes in the middle of his autopsy while the coroner is holding his heart.
You look outside the windows in your house only to see that the view has changed and there is black fog surrounding you.
The gargoyles from the Notre Dame have come to life and they start terrorizing Paris.
Somebody rings your doorbell. You open the door and a frightened girl with bloody hands is standing at your doorstep. “You’re late,” you reprimand her.
You wake up in the middle of the night after a frightful nightmare, so you go to the kitchen to get a glass of water. You turn on the light and a person looking like your identical twin is grinning and pointing a knife at you.
A renowned book editor receives a manuscript elegantly written by hand. The title grabs her attention and she continues reading page after page. When she finishes, the manuscript spontaneously starts burning, and the editor is cursed forever.
The last thing you remember before losing consciousness is fighting a shady Uber driver.
You find yourself in a cage in the middle of a forest and black mythological harpies hovering above the cage.
A woman wants to quit smoking, so she visits a therapist who is supposed to help her with the use of hypnosis. She goes under and when she wakes up, she feels like a born killer.
Five hikers get stranded during a horrible storm. One of them kills the weakest and starts burning his body.
A mother goes in the nursery to check up on the baby and discovers that the baby is missing and, in her place, there is a baby doll.
A killer is willing to pay a large sum of money to the family of a volunteering victim. A cancer patient contacts the killer. The killer ends up dead.
The sacred river in a remote Asian village fills up with blood. The last time that happened, all the children in the village died.
A tall, dark, and handsome stranger invites a blind woman for a romantic date in his botanical garden. The garden is full of black roses in which women’s souls have been trapped. He tells her that she will stay forever with him in his garden.
A frightened man is trying to lead a werewolf into a trap and kill him with the last silver bullet.
An architect designs houses for the rich and famous. What he doesn’t show them is that he always leaves room for a secret passageway to their bedrooms, where they are the most vulnerable.
A man’s DNA was found on a horrible crime scene and he has been charged with murder in the first degree. He adamantly negates any involvement in the crime that has been committed. What he doesn’t know is that he had a twin brother who died at birth.
Every passenger on the Orient Express dies in a different, and equally mysterious way.
A magician needs a volunteer from the audience in order to demonstrate a trick involving sawing a person in half. A beautiful woman steps on the stage. The magician makes her fall asleep, and then he performs the trick. In the end, he disappears. People in the audience start panicking when they notice the blood dripping from the table. The magician is nowhere to be found. The woman is dead.
A mother discovers that her bright son is not human.
Specters keep terrorizing patients in a psychiatric hospital, but nobody believes them.
A man’s mind is locked into an immovable body. This person is being tortured by a psychopath who kills his family members in front of him, knowing that he is in agony and can’t do anything to save them.
A bride-to-be receives a DVD via mail from an unknown sender. She plays the video and disgusted watches a pagan ritual. The people are wearing masks, but she recognizes the voice of her husband-to-be.
A man turns himself to the police although he hasn’t broken the law. He begs them to put him in prison because he had a premonition that he would become a serial killer.
Jack the Ripper is actually a woman who brutally kills prostitutes because her own mother was a prostitute.
A ticking noise wakes her up. It’s a bomb, and she has only four minutes to do something about it.
After a horrible car crash, a walking skeleton emerges from the explosion.
A world-famous violinist virtuoso uses music to summon dark forces.
A philosopher is trying to outwit Death in order to be granted immortality. He doesn’t know that Death already knows the outcome of this conversation.
A beautiful, but superficial woman promises a demon to give him her virginity in exchange for immortality. Once the demon granted her wish, she refused to fulfill her end of the deal. The demon retaliated by making her immortal, but not eternally youthful.
A voice starts chanting spells every time somebody wears the gold necklace from Damask.
Three teenagers beat up a homeless man. The next day all of them go missing.
Thirteen tourists from Poland visit Trakai Island Castle in Vilnius. Their bodies are found washed up the next morning. They are wearing medieval clothes.
A group of extremists ambush the vehicle in which a head of a terrorist cell is transported and rescue him. They go after anybody who was involved in his incarceration.
A hitman is hired to kill a potential heart donor.
A man is attacked by the neighbor’s dog while trying to bury his wife alive.
A woman disappears from her home without a trace. He husband reports her missing. The police start to suspect the husband when they retrieve some deleted messages.
After moving to a new house all the family members have the same nightmares. Slowly they realize that they might be more than nightmares.
A psychopath is drugging his wife, pushing her to commit a suicide so that he could collect the life insurance.
A woman loses her eyesight overnight. Instead, she starts having premonitions.
A vampire prefers albino children.
A man commits murders at night and relives the agony of his victims during the day.
A black horse carriage stops in front of your house. A hand wearing a black glove make an inviting gesture. Mesmerized, you decide to enter the carriage.
Demons rejuvenate by eating kind people’s hearts.
People are horrified to find all of the graves dug out the morning after Halloween.
Men start jumping off building and bridges after hearing a mysterious song.
A voice in your head tells you to stop listening to the other voices. They were not real.
A severed head is hanging from a bridge with a message written in the victim’s blood.
A delusional man brings his screaming children to a chasm.
A 30-year-old woman learns that a baby with the same name as her died at the local hospital 30 years ago.
A vampire donates his blood so that a child with special brain powers can receive it.
A teenager is determined to escape his kidnapper by manipulating him into drinking poison. He doesn’t stop there.

Published in Writing Prompts

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Writing Prompts About Ghosts

Ghosts and the paranormal provide a bottomless source of inspiration for writers. Ghost stories have existed since the dawn of humanity in some form or another, and are still a favorite for modern storytellers. If you want to write about ghosts but you’re running low on ideas, checking out some writing prompts can give you the inspiration you need!

Whether you just want to warm up, or you’re looking to find something to spark your next big project, you’ll find many ideas here to get you started!

Short Writing Prompts About Ghosts

Your character is a ghost who is stuck haunting something mundane (like a teapot, old cupboard, pair of scissors, eraser, vase, etc). How would you tell this story in an interesting way? What is the unexpected significance of the mundane object? What does it mean to the character?
You never believed in ghosts. You’re in denial, even after you become one yourself.
A realtor is trying to sell a very obviously haunted house, but the ghost haunting it keeps scaring off potential buyers.
You can see ghosts, and they’re everywhere—and often very annoying.
Describe a haunted house in detail. Is it an old house, or a new house? What elements betray the house’s haunted nature? How can you create an eerie atmosphere by only describing what the house looks like, and not by what haunted things occur there?
There’s a ghost haunting your character’s laptop. They can browse the web, upload to social media, and even chat with the character by typing into a word processor. Does this ghost torment the character by ruining their online reputation? Does the ghost help them get dates by going through dating sites for them? Does the ghost do their online homework for them? Are they friends? Explore this dynamic.
You’re a ghost, and you delight in scaring the amateur paranormal investigators who come to try to communicate with you.
You can talk to ghosts, and they give you all the hottest gossip on your neighbors, since they roam the neighborhood.
Write an argument between two characters. One believes in ghosts wholeheartedly, while the other one doesn’t believe in ghosts at all. Try to make both characters sound passionate and reasonable.
Your character is being haunted by several old ghosts. Since the ghosts died before many electronic devices were invented, they don’t know what a phone, a microwave, or maybe even electric lights are. As a result, these curious ghosts are constantly pushing buttons, turning lights on and off, and overall just messing around with all the technology in the house.
There are two ghosts living in your character’s house: one recently passed away and is still getting used to being a ghost, while the other is several centuries old. Your character often has to listen to them arguing about just about everything, from culture and politics to food and decor.
A person can only gain the ability to communicate with ghosts if they have had a near-death experience. Describe an experienced ghost hunter’s past and how they developed their ability.
You find out your best friend is just a bored demon, and has been this whole time.
Your pet has grown up with you and has gotten you through a lot of hard times. When the pet passes away, it never truly leaves, and instead continues to watch over you from the afterlife.
Write a backstory for a ghost. Where does the ghost stay? Why are they stuck there? When did they die? Did they die a violent death? Are there other ghosts with them? What are the relationships between the ghosts? How is their story similar to, and different from, other traditional ghost stories?
You don’t know it but you are, in fact, a ghost. One day, you meet someone who tries to convince you that you’re dead. Utilize an unreliable narrator to tell this story.

If you need help writing an unreliable narrator, check out my other post: What is an Unreliable Narrator? (And How to Write One!)

Ghost Story Writing Prompts

There is a ghost attached to a high-schooler, but they can only communicate with them using mirrors. The ghost can either appear behind the character’s reflection, or they can become the character’s reflection. This old ghost then often finds themself giving life advice to this teen about navigating high school, figuring themself out, and planning for the future—along with other classic teen drama scenarios.
A complete skeptic gets haunted. They are adamant about ignoring the ghost and its antics, brushing off even the most obvious paranormal signs. It’s not that they can’t see the books flying off the shelves or the locked doors suddenly swinging open, they just don’t believe a ghost is behind it, and instead cite earthquakes, the wind, the old house, neighbors, and anything else they can think of. This is really frustrating for the ghost haunting them.
You and your buddy are professional ghost hunters. You two go into a job thinking it’ll be easy money, and you are the only one to leave alive. On top of that, you’re now the lead suspect in the investigation into their death. Only you know that your partner was killed by an evil spirit, but you don’t know how to prove that to the authorities, and frustratingly, the spirit isn’t active when the police are around—almost like it’s trying to get you in trouble.
Your grandfather, who you really didn’t visit as often as you should have, unexpectedly passes away, and he leaves you a box of his old belongings. You expect it to be filled with old records or sentimental objects, but instead, it’s filled to the brim with ghost hunting equipment. There is also a letter written by your grandfather, requesting that you try to contact him from beyond the grave.
Your character tragically lost their child in an accident, but ever since, the child’s ghost has been hanging around their house. The character is overjoyed that they can still spend time with their child, and things are okay for a little while. However, more ominous things begin to happen, and the character starts to question if this kid really is the child they lost. Demons have been known to disguise themselves as children, after all…
You’re haunted by a ghost who can’t move on—but they can’t remember why. You embark on a quest to discover who this ghost is, and what could possibly be keeping them tethered to the mortal realm.
A small child has an invisible friend. Their parents encourage this and don’t think much of it, but this “friend” is actually the ghost of a young boy who is trying to get the child killed so he will have company in the afterlife. He is never successful, however, as all his plans are comically foiled one way or another.
You’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal, so despite everyone’s warnings, you decide to meddle in occult practices. It starts simple enough, with a clumsy séance or two, but when you can’t make contact with anything, you seek out increasingly haunted locations. After a while, you admit defeat, but soon meet someone who claims that you’re being followed by several spirits—you just can’t tell. It turns out, there really are people who can see spirits, you just aren’t one of them. You team up with this new friend to learn the stories of the ghosts that have attached themselves to you.
There are legends of a ghost ship sailing around in the seas of a small town. What most people don’t know, however, is that this ghost ship isn’t a pirate ship—it’s a luxury cruiseliner.
There is only one house that isn’t abandoned in the old culdesac at the edge of town. In it lives a little six-year-old girl, by herself. At least, that’s what the rumors are. They don’t see any adults coming in or out of the home, and no one sees her off to school in the mornings or steps out to welcome her home in the afternoons. Occasionally, someone will see an adult move past a window, so the police have never been called to investigate this rumor. What no one in the neighborhood knows, however, is that the girl’s parents have been dead for a while, and continue to care for her as ghosts.
You were at the peak of your life when you died. You had a good job, you were about to get married, and you had just signed the lease on a new house. Things were really starting to look up for you, so it’s understandable that you weren’t able to pass on after your unexpected death. Your fiance moves into the house alone and grieves you for quite a long time. However, it doesn’t last forever. Eventually, they find someone else, get married, and have kids. They move on, and you are stuck watching them build their life without you.
Tragedy has followed you all your life. You decide to visit a psychic to have your fortune told. They inform you that your misfortune is due to a generations-long curse that was bestowed upon your family. You embark on a mission to finally break the curse using whatever means necessary, no matter the risk. Whether or not the curse is real, the character believes in it wholeheartedly.

Writing About Ghosts

When you write about ghosts, you have a vast network of cultural and spiritual resources at your disposal. There’s a huge variety of ghosts that you can draw inspiration from, such as banshees, poltergeists, and mylingar, but you can also draw from existing stories about well-known ghosts in media, such as Bloody Mary, The Headless Horseman, and many others.

Humans have an inherent curiosity about the unknown, particularly in reference to death and the possibility of some form of afterlife. Stories about ghosts have been popular for so long because they satisfy some of that morbid curiosity, while also often making a subtle commentary about what it means to be alive.

If you’re having a hard time writing ghost origin stories, check out A Guide to Killing Your Characters . It might help you out!

Good luck, and have fun!

How to Write Scary Ghost Stories that Terrify Your Readers

by James Colton

https://www.jamescolton.com/articles/how-to-write-ghost-stories/

Fear is one of the hardest reactions to provoke in writing. Just flip through the pages of any ghost story anthology; how many of them are genuinely scary ? It takes more than tortured groans, rattling chains, and a splattering of gore; anyone can do that . But the art of raising goose bumps? That is an elusive art indeed. If you can write a scary ghost story, you can write anything. Are you ready to inspire nightmares? Then follow me…

Fear of the Unknown

People don’t fear death. No one’s afraid of ghosts. Monsters, murderers, darkness—none of the horror staples are really terrifying. If you rely on your audience being scared simply because your story includes any of the above, you’re doomed to fail. Instead, you must understand where terror truly lies.

Everyone fears the unknown.

People don’t know what comes after death, so they get scared. They don’t know what’s making that noise in the other room, so they call it a ghost and get scared. Darkness could be hiding anything—what exactly, we don’t know—so we get scared.

We fear what we can’t understand. That’s why a touch on your shoulder when you’re all alone is so frightening: it should be impossible. The best ghost stories take full advantage of this. You won’t see the ghost; you’ll only hear it, smell it, feel it. A ghost is like the wind; you see a curtain flutter, and the question remains in your mind, what is it?

When writing your ghost story, don’t be afraid of withholding information. Your readers, by the very act of reading, have activated their imaginations. Use this against them! Don’t bog them down with long descriptions of a gruesome specter; instead, use simple words to sketch a vague impression. Your readers will imagine the rest, filling in the gaps with whatever scares them most.

Another way you can introduce an element of the unknown is to limit how often you use trope words. If you’re constantly mentioning ghosts or vampires, then the reader knows exactly what they’re up against. By not attaching a label to your entity, you produce doubt. Doubt makes people uncomfortable, which makes them easier to scare.

Examples of the Unknown

Something is not right.

Why is it that one smile can put you at ease, while another makes you want to get out of the room as quickly as possible? Does it reveal just a few too many teeth? Are the eyes above it just a little bit soulless? Is the accompanying laughter a tad too enthusiastic?

We may not be able to tell what , but something is…off. Something friendly has been distorted. You were climbing a familiar staircase, and the last step was missing. You were listening to a pleasant tune, but that one note—was it off-key? What’s wrong with this picture?

This is a natural extension of our fear of the unknown. A defense mechanism. It tips us off that someone around us bears a sickness that we don’t want to catch, that someone is pretending to be something they’re not. In the realm of robotics and computer graphics, it is called the uncanny valley . When something comes so close to being real, but falls short in some subtle way. This is why mannequins, dolls, and clowns are common phobias.

So how can you leverage this in your ghost story? There’s the obvious: characters with slightly deformed features or unnatural movements. Houses with strange angles. Unexpected behavior works as well.

Then there’s the more subtle: mentioning a detail that would be innocuous anywhere else, but in this particular scenario is out of place. There’s nothing quite like a child’s laughter—especially coming from your basement at 3 in the morning. Is it really a child? Or something like a child?

You can also work it into your writing style. Phrase something in an odd way. Intentionally break the rules of grammar. Just don’t overdo it, or you’ll come across as illiterate instead of terrifying.

Examples of the Uncanny

Sinister whispers.

What are the most iconic ghosts you can think of? How are they described? I’ll bet the words that just drifted through your mind weren’t college-level terms like ectoplasmic , ominous , or stygian . Rather, you probably imagined something white, something tall, a shadow.

You reached for simple terms that your brain could instantly understand.

Amateur writers often gravitate toward heavy descriptions. This is likely the result of high-school English teachers encouraging them to be more creative and expand their vocabulary. But let me remind you of a very important fact: you aren’t writing a ghost story to impress your high-school English teacher. You’re not trying to prove how clever you are.

You’re trying to scare people.

At best, advanced or overly descriptive words are harder to process. At worst, they lead to overwriting and the dreaded pit of silliness.

Simple words, on the other hand, are subtle. They conjure clear sensations in our minds, sensations that we didn’t expect. If you’ve set up your scene properly, everyday words that are innocent by themselves will take on new, sinister meanings.

If you have trouble with this, Lean on the basic structure of the English sentence: subject, verb, object.

He opened the door. The room was dark. He stepped inside. Something dripped on his shoulder. He looked up.

If you need something more, pick a single adjective and apply it to either the subject or the object. Don’t apply anything to the verb; it should stand on its own. If it doesn’t, you either used the wrong verb, or the preceding sentences didn’t set up the right context.

Examples of Subtlety

Do you feel afraid.

Emotion is vital in any form of literature, but especially ghost stories. Remember, the end goal is to make your reader feel what the protagonist is feeling: pure, unbridled terror.

Simply telling the reader that your character is scared isn’t enough. You’ve heard the adage “show, don’t tell.” When writing about emotions, try forbidding yourself from using words like:

Scared/Scary
Horror/Horrified
Terror/Terrified

Instead, show the character’s fear by writing what their body is doing. Write exactly what they’re hearing or smelling, even if it’s only in their head.

But the protagonist is only half of the emotional equation. The other half is the ghost. The scariest ghosts always project some kid of emotion. It doesn’t matter what that emotion is as long as it’s dangerous:

Frustration

A dangerous emotion doesn’t necessarily have to be a negative one. It could be a positive thing taken in a bad direction. Dysfunctional love, overzealous affection—as long as the ghost’s emotions project some kind of threat, you have the makings a terrifying specter.

Fear isn’t the only emotion you can use when writing a ghost story. Try enhancing the terror with sadness, depression, or anger. Positive emotions can have a tremendous impact as well. Offer a glimmer of hope, then replace it with something awful. The contrast can be unnerving.

Examples of Emotion

A dreadful descent.

Fear must be built up gradually. Think of it like you’re taking the reader on a journey from the safety of their world to the nightmare of yours. Like any journey, it’s a transition from point A to point B. If you skip that transition by presenting your scariest scene right up front, it won’t have any effect. The audience is still comfortably seated at point A: a soft armchair by a warm fire.

That’s not to say you can never start with a spooky scene—in fact, it’s a good way to catch the audience’s interest and entice them to keep reading. Just make sure you save the best for last. Wait until the reader has gotten out of their comfy chair; wait until they’re curled up in the cold, damp corner of the basement. Once a reader is primed, they’re much easier to scare.

This priming process is called foreboding . It’s similar to the more common literary device of foreshadowing, but with an emphasis on the ominous. It helps your reader suspend their disbelief and gradually draws them into your nightmare world.

Start small. In a ghost story, this is the quiet noise, unexpected but not altogether unusual, that the protagonist dismisses, attributing it to natural causes.

Then go a little bit bigger. A more demanding noise that piques the protagonist’s curiosity. Perhaps they investigate, but once more can only shrug their shoulders and move on with life.

Then one night the noise becomes a knocking. Maybe someone is at the front door? But the protagonist looks and no one is there. Now they’re nervous, and maybe the reader is too.

The next night, however, the knocking comes not from the distant front door, but the protagonist’s own bedroom door.

And the wood begins to splinter.

Examples of Foreboding

The end…or is it.

If you want to make your ghost story truly memorable, it needs a killer ending. You want your reader to keep thinking about the story long after they’ve finished it—after the lights are out, when they’re trying to sleep.

The key is to put your scariest scene last. Your scariest scene isn’t necessarily the one in which your character’s life is in the most danger. This is the horror genre, after all; death is expected. Rather, your scariest scene is the one in which your character’s identity , sanity , or relationships are in the most danger.

This may mean leaving the reader with a disturbing question or a terrifying revelation. These reveals will threaten the character’s understanding of the world and trigger the darkest aspects of your reader’s imagination.

Putting your scariest scene last might require a non-linear narration. If your scariest scene takes place three quarters of the way through your story, write around it, then use a flashback at the end to explore the scene in greater detail.

If you’re having trouble coming up with an impactful twist for your ending, try asking yourself these questions:

What single fact would make this good situation bad, or this bad situation worse?
What detail would alter the character’s understanding of the situation in a terrifying way?
How can the situation force the character into a choice?
How can that choice be bad no matter what the character chooses?

Regardless of how you end your ghost story, be careful not to overextend the ending. After the big reveal, it may be tempting to offer further explanation, but this can dampen the effect. Don’t be afraid to leave some things up to the reader’s imagination. Leave some questions unanswered, some conflicts unresolved. This produces doubt in the reader and forces them to think about your story late into the night.

Examples of Endings

Writing a good ghost story is hard, but when your readers say they can no longer walk down dark hallways and complain of trouble sleeping, that feeling is totally worth it!

To sum up, here are the main things to keep in mind when writing a ghost story:

Use the unknown to turn your readers’ imagination against them
Exploit the uncanny valley to make your readers uncomfortable
Write simple language to paint a sinister picture
Create empathy to manipulate your readers’ emotions
Build the fear gradually before springing your scariest scene

Finally, the most important advice I can give you is this: read . Immerse yourself in the genre, and you’ll find you naturally improve. A good place to start would be my own library of horror stories .

Author Ivy L. James

Dec 13, 2019

How to Plot a Ghost Story

Updated: Jan 29, 2021

Want to write a ghost story, but not sure where to start? Wanna plot it FAST? Well, my friend, have I got some good news for you.

It's Friday the 13th and I am all about ghost stories, in any medium. (See what I did there?) But writing one myself has felt intimidating because there are so many facets to consider. I wasn't even sure where to start.

Fun fact: Feeling like a subject is too difficult is a surefire motivator for me to figure it out. If it taunts me, I must win. Shoutout to the French language as exhibit A.

So how do we break down the elements of a ghost story? And how do we translate them into a Plotting Strategy? Glad you asked.

We're gonna break it down into these 5 categories, because I love organization.

Overall mood and goal

Main character (the living one)

Side characters

Your ghost story's overall mood/goal

What's the overall mood you're aiming for? You might want your reader/audience to feel unsettled, afraid, regretful, satisfied…

The story's mood influences all the following choices, so decide that first.

Your ghost story's setting

For the setting, consider both the literal setting and the societal setting.

The physical setting can mirror the spookiness or make the story eerie via juxtaposition.

Classic spooky settings include abandoned hospitals and asylums, because we associate them with the patients' pain and historical malpractice, plus abandoned buildings are always creepy in general. Dreary or stormy weather adds to the ominous aura.

Juxtaposition in the setting can up the eerieness factor. A sunny day, a playground, a club or party… Anywhere that your character should be enjoying themselves but can't relax because they have a Bad Feeling, because someone/something is following them, because they keep seeing a dead person, etc.

For the social setting, what's the society's general approach to ghosts and the supernatural? Do people know and accept that ghosts exist? Do they know but hate it and try to exterminate them? Do most people not believe at all? This will influence your MC's approach and how the side characters respond.

Your ghost story's main (living) character

The main aspects to consider about the MC:

Does your MC start out as a believer or a skeptic?

Why does the MC first encounter the ghost(s)?

Why does MC continue to interact with the ghost(s)? (What does the MC get out of it?)

How do the ghost and the MC communicate?

What's the MC's relationship with the ghost, and how does that relationship evolve over the course of the story?

Does your MC start out as a believer or a skeptic? On top of this, keep in mind how society in general would perceive their position. If MC believes in ghosts but society generally doesn't (or vice versa), is MC outspoken or secretive about their belief?

Why does MC first encounter the ghost(s)? Are they looking for answers about something, unknowingly attached to the dead person, avoiding something important, intentionally seeking out a ghost, etc.?

Why does MC continue to interact with the ghost(s)? When the ghost first shows up, your MC could say "nope, bye" and move out of town and the end credits would roll… but unless you're writing a satire, that's not how the story's going to go, is it?

So why does the MC return to the haunted place or contact the ghost again? If they first encountered the ghost intentionally, maybe they think the ghost can help them find answers.

If the ghost needs help, maaaybe MC is kind and generous, but that's not a good enough reason to hold a story together.

To solidify the plot, decide what the MC wants to get out of this.

Does the ghost promise them something in return? Is MC trying to make up for something they feel guilty about? Did they know and care about the dead person? Was the person murdered by someone who will kill again unless MC finds and stops them?

How do the ghost and the MC communicate? They have to be able to get their thoughts across somehow. Do they have audible conversation? Does the ghost write and MC talks? Does the ghost manipulate music or radio waves to create sentences? Do they both know sign language?

What's the MC's relationship with the ghost, and how does that relationship evolve over the course of the story? In other words, how do they start out and what do they become?

Are they strangers at the beginning and grow into allies?

Do they fall in love (prime angst potential)?

Were they close in life and now allied in death?

Do they start out as strangers, become allies, and then become ENEMIES because one betrays the other?

Your ghost story's ghost(s)

This ghost is as much of a main character as your actual living main character. Craft him/her carefully.

The main aspects to consider about your ghost:

How does the ghost look?

How did the ghost die?

Why didn't the ghost Pass On?

What does the ghost need to Pass On?

Who or what is the ghost tethered to?

What's the ghost's overall mood?

How does the ghost look? Are they invisible? A shimmer in the air? A translucent version of themselves in life? A solid-looking version of themselves in life? Or do they look like their dead body post-murder? Looking at you, Hanging Lady.

How did the ghost die? Odds are good that the person didn't die peacefully in their sleep at the end of a long, happy life. Murder is a common reason. Suicide or murder framed to look like suicide also come up a lot. (For obvious reasons, you need to handle this subject delicately.) It might also be an untimely death or an odd death somehow connected to whatever secrets they might've been hiding.

Why didn't the ghost Pass On™? (Whatever "passing on" entails in your story.) Usually the person has unfinished business, was murdered, weren't buried, has a secret that needs to come out, or doesn't know or refuses to accept their death.

What does the ghost need to Pass On? Obvs, this is directly connected to the reason they didn't pass on. Do they need justice? Answers? Revenge? A proper burial? To finish their unfinished business? To have their big secret unveiled? To accept their death? To finally beat that last level on Mario Kart?

Who or what is the ghost tethered to? Your ghost is trapped in this dimension for one reason or another. They shouldn't be touring the world for funsies. To emphasize that they're trapped here, stick them to one thing or person in particular.

Is the ghost stuck near a person , such as their murderer or a loved one? An item , such as a favorite toy (for a child ghost) or treasured possession? A place , such as their home or the place they died? Their dead body/remains ?

Note: This refers to tethering , as in, the ghost can only travel so far from whatever the thing is. Not the same thing as possession , which is typically reserved for demons.

What's the ghost's overall mood? Are they regretful, sad, angry, playful, guilty, lonely…? Stay away from neutral, and stay FAR away from contentment. If the ghost doesn't care or is happy as is, there's no motivation for the MC to do anything.

Your ghost story's side characters

Your story may primarily feature the MC and the ghost(s), but at least 3 side characters should show up:

the believer

the skeptic

the opposition

Who believes MC about the ghost and/or informs them about the ghost in the first place? Someone points them in the right direction. This may be the only person who makes the MC feel like they're not out of their mind.

Who disbelieves the MC and/or preemptively dismisses any rumors about the ghost(s)? Someone scoffs at the idea and leaves MC feeling more alone. Cue the angst.

Who or what is the antagonist or opposing force? It could be a Bad Guy, or it could just be someone with goals that oppose the MC's goal. It could be a ghost hunter, another ghost, a demon, the ghost's murderer, THE GHOST ITSELF… It could even be the Believer or the Skeptic we just discussed. Plot twist.

Ask yourself these questions as you plot your ghost story:

What's the overall mood you're aiming for?

Is the physical setting spooky or eerily normal?

What's the society's general approach to ghosts and the supernatural?

Why does MC first encounter the ghost(s)?

Why does MC continue to interact with the ghost(s)? (What do they get out of it?)

Who believes the MC?

Who scoffs at the MC?

Who is the MC's and/or the ghost's opposition?

Now go forth and write a creepy ghost story! I believe in you!

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How to Write Well

How to Write a Ghost Story

How to write a ghost story: point of view and choice of tense.

One of the first things to do when deciding how to write your ghost story, is to choose a point of view. There are many writing books written on point of view and tense, but here are my thoughts:

Your primary aim is to create a chill. You need to get the reader feeling along with the main character as that person makes his or her way through the story. Because of this many ghost stories are written in the first person. ‘I hear a noise…’ ‘My heart thumps in my chest..’

You will see that I have gone into first person present tense. There is such a thing as the narrative present and when telling stories in ordinary life, people will start to relate an incident in the present tense. For example:

I was walking down this road, then I see a car coming at me. I jump out the way, and I hit a telegraph pole. The car drives off without even stopping. But it was okay. I wasn’t hurt.

Tony Walker, a few minutes ago.

Writing a whole novel in the present tense is fashionable at the moment. If you look back at classic stories, very few were written in the present, but go now (I command you!) to your local bookstore, pick up the new best-selling novels, and a good number of those will be in the present tense.

Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu is written in the first person, present tense because it is supposed to reflect the main character (or protagonist) Laura writing in her journal for Dr Hesselius.

*In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. But here, in this lonely and primitive place, where everything is so marvellously cheap, I really don’t see how ever so much more money would at all materially add to our comforts, or even luxuries.

Carmilla, Chapter 1

However, within the same chapter, Le Fanu slips into the first person past tense. Whether this is intentional or accidental, it’s hard to say. Certainly doing that would earn him condemnation from modern writing coaches and intense slagging off in fiction writing online fora.

I and my father constituted the family at the schloss. My mother, a Styrian lady, died in my infancy, but I had a good-natured governess, who had been with me from, I might almost say, my infancy. I could not remember the time when her fat, benignant face was not a familiar picture in my memory.

It’s fair to say that writing in the past tense is the traditional way to compose a story.

Classic ghost stories were more than not, written in the third person. That is to say,

He walked the long passageway, his footsteps echoing among the serried suits of armour.

Tony Walker, just now

But the choice of past tense over present tense, is not such a hard and fast rule as choosing first person over third person. I would go so far as to say that there are very few ghost stories written before 2000 that use the present tense, but nearly half use the first person point of view and probably just over half use the third person.

You can argue that using first person makes a story experience more immediate, so why wouldn’t you always use it? Why would you ever pick the third person?

There is a reason and this goes to my distinction between a ghost story and a horror story. Very often, most usually, the main character in a ghost story survives. They may be shaken or they may be uplifted by their supernatural experience, but by and large, they survive. However, in a horror story, there is a good chance they will come to a bad end.

In this case, how did they communicate the story to you? Now, we all know this is a fiction. It never happened, but for some reason we like to stick to the convention that we are being told a story ‘as if’ it really happened, and if it really happened, and the geezer in it died, then how come he’s telling it to the audience?

One way I got round this, was by having the main character type it up on his computer, and there the story was blinking on the screen, awaiting a reader. (Luckily the monster didn’t smash it up.) This is a modern version of the epistolary horror story. Dracula is an epistolary story in that it is told in letters and journal entries. Heck, there’s even a sub-genre called Epistolary Horror

But an easier rule for how to write a classic ghost story, is to write in the third person from the point of view of an all-seeing narrator: the voice in the sky, who sees everything, even in locked rooms. This does create a little distance between your audience and your main character, but it saves you having to explain how anyone found out about the horrific incident.

How to Write A Ghost Story: Make the Environment Hostile

What don’t people like? Cold, rain, snow, dark, being lost, an environment where you can’t see very far or your movement is hampered like a marsh or a forest. Yes, make your audience shiver and pine with the protagonist as he or she gets more and more desperate, is separated from all help, and gets colder and more scared. The thing is you have to create a plausible reason why the protagonist gets themselves into this fix. If you simply have them go to the attic in the killer clown’s house, people will ask: really?

In Amelia Edward’s The Phantom Coach , our man gets lost on the moors of Northern England, the snow is falling, the light is fading. But he’s been out shooting so he has good reason to have got himself into this pickle.

Well! It was just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end of the grouse season. I had been out all day with my gun, and had had no sport to speak of. The wind was due east; the month, December; the place, a bleak wide moor in the far north of England. And I had lost my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to lose one’s way, with the first feathery flakes of a coming snowstorm just fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and stared anxiously into the gathering darkness, where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke-wreath, not the tiniest cultivated patch, or fence, or sheep-track, met my eyes in any direction. There was nothing for it but to walk on, and take my chance of finding what shelter I could, by the way. So I shouldered my gun again, and pushed wearily forward; for I had been on foot since an hour after daybreak, and had eaten nothing since breakfast.

The Phantom Coach, by Amelia Edwards

He has every good reason to be lost, and he’s hungry too!

In Frank Cowper’s Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk our protagonist goes hunting duck in a dreary marshland. He finds a derelict ship, clambers aboard and then loses his boat and is marooned!

*What could have caused the splash, that luckless splash, I wondered. There was surely no one else on board the ship, and certainly no one could get out here without mud-pattens or a boat. I looked round. All was perfectly still Nothing broke the monotony of the grey scene–sodden and damp and lifeless. A chill breeze came up from the southwest, bringing with it a raw mist, which was blotting out the dark distance, and fast limiting my horizon. The day was drawing in, and I must be thinking of going home. As I turned round, my attention was arrested by seeing a duck-punt glide past me in the now rapidly falling water, which was swirling by the mud-bank on which the vessel lay. But there was no one in her. A dreadful thought struck me. It must be my boat, and how shall I get home? I ran to the stern and looked over.The duck-punt was gone.The frayed and stranded end of the painter told me how it had happened. I had not allowed for the fall of the tide, and the strain of the punt, as the water fell away, had snapped the line, old and rotten as it was. I hurried to the bows, and jumping on to the bitts, saw my punt peacefully drifting away, some quarter of a mile off. It was perfectly evident I could not hope to get her again.

Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk, Frank Cowper

There Must be a Gothic Building!

In Carmilla, the Gothic focus is the traditional castle, suitably set in a forest.

Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel.Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies.The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. I have said that this is a very lonely place. Judge whether I say truth. Looking from the hall door towards the road, the forest in which our castle stands extends fifteen miles to the right, and twelve to the left. The nearest inhabited village is about seven of your English miles to the left.

From Carmilla by J Sheridan Le Fanu

In Charlotte Riddell’s The Open Door the Gothic habitation is an old abandoned English mansion.

*It was a long avenue, but at length I stood in front of the Hall–a square, solid-looking, old-fashioned house, three stories high, with no basement; a flight of steps up to the principal entrance; four windows to the right of the door, four windows to the left; the whole building flanked and backed with trees; all the blinds pulled down, a dead silence brooding over the place: the sun westering behind the great trees studding the park. I took all this in as I approached, and afterwards as I stood for a moment under the ample porch; then, remembering the business which had brought me so far, I fitted the great key in the lock, turned the handle, and entered Ladlow Hall.For a minute–stepping out of the bright sunlight–the place looked to me so dark that I could scarcely distinguish the objects by which I was surrounded; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to the comparative darkness, and I found I was in an immense hall, lighted from the roof, a magnificent old oak staircase conducted to the upper rooms.The floor was of black and white marble. There were two fireplaces, fitted with dogs for burning wood; around the walls hung pictures, antlers, and horns, and in odd niches and corners stood groups of statues, and the figures of men in complete suits of armour.

The Open Door , Charlotte Riddell

In Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk the gothic habitation is the haunted ship.

The old vessel lay nearly upright in the soft mud, and a glance soon told she would never be used again. Her gear and rigging were, all rotten, and everything valuable had been removed. She was a brig of some two hundred tons, and had been a fine vessel, no doubt. To me there is always a world of romance in a deserted ship. The places she has been to, the scenes she has witnessed, the possibilities of crime, of adventure–all these thoughts crowd upon me when I see an old hulk lying deserted and forgotten–left to rot upon the mud of some lonely creek.

Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk

And we see here that the derelict ship, like Carmilla’s schloss, has an air of adventure and mystery. There is something romantic about it, and so the Gothic habitation must have the horrible and the enchanting about it. They are in fact fairy habitations, no matter how disguised.

One of the most disguised Gothic Habitations and therefore most ingenious, appears in The Old Portrait by Hume Nisbet. Here the Gothic habitation containing the horrific, dangerous but sensually alluring vampiress is an old picture frame.

The frame, also, I noticed for the first time, in its details appeared to have been designed with the intention of carrying out the idea of life in death; what had before looked like scroll-work of flowers and fruit were loathsome snake-like worms twined amongst charnel-house bones which they half covered in a decorative fashion; a hideous design in spite of its exquisite workmanship, that made me shudder and wish that I had left the cleaning to be done by daylight.

The Old Portrait by Hume Nisbet

In Cynthia Asquith’s The Corner Shop , The Gothic Habitation as I am calling it, is the antique shop. In H G Well’s Magic Shop , it is the Toyshop. The Gothic habitation must be set apart from the world. It is an unusual place, not normally encountered and it may be terrifying or enchanting or both.

The message here when considering how to write a ghost story, is to put in a place or object that is fires the imagination of your reader, and transports them to the realm of Faerie. Because that’s what we’re doing after all.

As they say in that classic story, Lud in The Mist the country folk do not clearly distinguish between fairies and the dead. They are both called The Silent People, and ghost stories are in fact a kind of fairy story, where otherworldly denizens come to teach humans about right and wrong, even where they themselves give a bad example.

A Classic Ghost Story Needs Lots of Description

The glade through which we had just walked lay before us. At our left the narrow road wound away under clumps of lordly trees, and was lost to sight amid the thickening forest. At the right the same road crosses the steep and picturesque bridge, near which stands a ruined tower which once guarded that pass; and beyond the bridge an abrupt eminence rises, covered with trees, and showing in the shadows some grey ivy-clustered rocks.Over the sward and low grounds a thin film of mist was stealing like smoke, marking the distances with a transparent veil; and here and there we could see the river faintly flashing in the moonlight.

Carmilla, Chapter 2

A Classic Ghost Story Needs a Monster In The Shadows

M R James believed that ghost stories erred when they were too blatant. That meant being too obvious with their monster. The scriptwriters among you may be familiar with the late Blake Snyder’s manual on Scriptwriting called Save The Cat . It’s a must read book really, but one of the story templates Monster In The House , encapsulates most ghost and horror stories. Think of the Sci Fi movie Alien – the monster in the starship. For a good part, and probably the most effective part, of the movie, we do not see the monster. In the recent horror movie The Ritual, again, for the best part of the movie, we do not see the monster.

In classic ghost stories, most of the time we do not see the monster. In Algernon Blackwood’s The Kit Bag

the scariest effects are the sounds and sensations of the thing unseen on the stairs. In Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk the ghost action is never seen because it’s pitch dark, but we hear and feel the effect of the ghost. A fantastically effective modern ghost story, Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter , takes place in the Arctic Winter when it is dark all the time. We are aware of something moving in the dark, but we can’t see it.

In A M Burrage’s Smee , the twelve guests are playing hide and seek in the dark in a large house, when they realise there are thirteen people playing. One of them is dead.

The classic ghost stories that have supernatural things crawling around in the dark, often end with the protagonist being a mere witness to the supernatural occurrence. The problem with that is that it lessens the threat for the protagonist, and decreases the dramatic tension, so decreasing the scare effect for the reader.

I guess, as in most modern stories, the monster has to emerge from the darkness towards the end and actually threaten the characters.

One story where the tension is built in the dark, and the threat is real, only illuminated at the end when the lights go on, is Ray Bradbury’s The October Game . Strictly speaking this is a horror story rather than a ghost story.

So when writing your ghost story, I would suggest you keep the monster off-stage until the final denouement.

A Classic Ghost Story Needs Foreshadowing

The set-up is a large part of a ghost story. We have talked about a hostile environment, to put the main character far from help. Then we have him encounter the gothic habitation, the place that the wonders will take place: a setting quite extraordinary. In both of these sections we will see a lot of description using all the senses.

Meanwhile, the snow began to come down with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this, the cold became more intense, and the night came rapidly up. As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my young wife was already watching for me through the window of our little inn parlour, and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this weary night.

The Phantom Coach

Ideally, we are going to draw on all the senses to put our reader in that extraordinary place.

The afternoon was closing in, and the hall, which had no fire lighted in it, looked dark and gloomy; but we did not stay there a moment. The old servant, who had opened the door for us, bowed to Mr. Henry, and took us in through the door at the further side of the great organ, and led us through several smaller halls and passages into the west drawing-room, where he said that Miss Furnivall was sitting. Poor little Miss Rosamond held very tight to me, as if she were scared and lost in that great place; and as for myself, I was not much better. The west drawing-room was very cheerful-looking, with a warm fire in it, and plenty of good, comfortable furniture about.

The Old Nurse’s Story

‘One foggy evening, at the end of a day of enforced idleness in my chambers – I had just been called to the Bar – I was rather dejectedly walking back to my lodgings when my attention was drawn to the brightly lit window of a shop. Seeing the word “Antiques” on its sign-boar, and remembering that I owed a wedding present to a lover of 4 bric-à-brac, I grasped the handle of the green door. Opening with one of those cheerful jingle-jangle bells, it admitted me into large rambling premises, thickly crowded with all the traditional treasure and trash of a curiosity shop. Suits of armour, warming-pans, cracked, misted mirrors, church vestments, spinning-wheels, brass kettles, chandeliers, gongs, chess-men – furniture of every size and every period. Despite all the clutter, there was none of the dusty gloom one associates with such collections. Far from being dingy, the room was brightly lit and a crackling fire leaped up the chimney. In fact, the atmosphere was so warm and cheerful that after the cold dank fog outside it struck me as most agreeable.

The Corner Shop

But a large part of the job is to place information early on that seems unremarkable enough, but which is essential to the unfolding plot and particularly the ending. The Russian playwright, Chekov famously said that everything that has no place in the story should be removed, and only objects that are necessary to the plot should remain. This cues up an object and the wily reader will know that if Chekov mentions a pistol in Act I, it will be used by the end of the play.

August Heat does this in that we know that when:

A sudden impulse made me enter. A man was sitting with his back towards me, busy at work on a slab of curiously veined marble. *

August Heat

That this piece of marble will be relevant. As indeed it is.

A Classic Ghost Story Needs Misdirection

Not all ghost stories do that, but it is something that readers love. Misdirection is the main card played by writers of crime fictions. You place the pistol in Act I, and the experienced reader thinks, ‘Aha!’ that will be relevant by the end. The fun thing is confounding the expectation of the reader so that it is relevant in an unexpected way.

For example in the Corner Shop, we are introduced to a grey-faced man who we are led to believe right through the story that he is one of the servants. And, then at the very end it transpires that we, and the protagonist have been wrong about that in a way that suddenly illuminates the central point of the story.

‘“Meet him?” she echoed in amazement as the footsteps neared. ‘“Yes, I may stay and see your father, mayn’t I? I heard your sister say he would soon be here.” ‘“Oh, now I understand!” she exclaimed. “You mean Bessie’s father! But Bessie and I are only step-sisters. My poor father died years and years ago.”’

One classic misdirection, often found in ghost stories is central to M. Night Shyalam’s Sixth Sense where famously at the end, Bruce Willis’s character realises that it is he who is the ghost. We find this in On The Brighton Road , where the tramp perhaps never realises he’s dead, though the reader does finally twig this at the end. This is a common motif in ghost stories, that of the dead not realising they are dead, and in fact I have used it myself, to good effect. Though it seems corny, when I’m doing a live reading of this particular story: The Hitcher (to be found in this collection Cumbrian Ghost Stories I always hear the ‘oh!’ from the audience and that makes me feel warm inside. Unlike the main character of The Hitcher.

When you are considering how to write a ghost story, I would urge you to consider this simple trick. After all, as it is often said, the oldies are the goodies!

To Be Classic A Ghost Story Needs a Moral Message

Since Biblical times, ghosts have returned to the living with the exhortation to do good and eschew evil. Sometimes they urge revenge, such as Hamlet’s father’s ghost in Shakespeare’s play of that name. Sometimes they come to accuse murderer’s as does Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth , but usually they are very concerned with right and wrong among the living, and redressing the moral balance.

When you’re thinking about how to write a ghost story, though there are many ghost stories written without a moral message, the audiences love to have their sense of right and wrong tickled, so whether you have your ghost urge revenge, punish the wicked or reward the good (after a little struggle obviously), put in a morally acceptable message. Good should prevail if you want to keep those One Stars at bay.

Please note, the book links to Amazon are affiliate links and if you buy from them I get a small commission.

Late Night Sleep Radio Bookshelf

Late Night Sleep Radio Bookshelf Links

Harry by Rosemary Timperley

Harry by Rosemary Timperley Thank you to Steve Cuff for suggesting I read this story. Rosemary Timperley was born in 1920 in North London and died in November 1988. Her father was an architect and her mother a teacher. Timperley went to her local girls school and became a teacher herself. She taught English and…

The House and The Brain, or The Haunters and The Haunted by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Join Tony as we explore Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s classic short story, ‘The House & The Brain’. This captivating tale, first published in 1859, follows a narrator as he investigates the strange occurrences in a haunted house. The story is notable for its suspenseful atmosphere, its examination of the power of the human mind, and its timeless…

All Hallows by Walter de la Mare

All Hallows by Walter de la Mare Link to the Audio Version of All Hallows Brief Biography of Walter de La Mare Walter de La Mare (1873-1956) was an English poet, novelist, and short story writer known for his imaginative and evocative works. Born on April 25, 1873, in London, de La Mare began writing…

Phone Calls From The Dead

Telephone Calls From The Dead Apparently, the dead are always reaching out to us. They move your fingers around the Ouija Board, they rap on your tables, and they even call you on your telephone. To me, the weirdest of these communication methods are telephone calls from the dead. I know some readers will be tutting…

Teach Your Students How to Write a Scary Story

You’re terrified. Your heart is pounding, and your chest feels like it’s going to EXPLODE ! You breathe faster and faster as sweat drips from your shaking hands. Are you going to die? NO . You’re just listening to a SCARY STORY .

Being scared is exciting, right? If it wasn’t, why would we go on haunted hayrides, watch scary movies or ride roller coasters?

Let’s face it, in each of these circumstances, we know we’re pretty safe. And when the experience is over, the thrill isn’t. Just watch a group of kids coming out of a haunted house at the fair. They’re shrieking and laughing at the SAME TIME . And, because they know the fear is SAFE , they scramble to get in line again. They’re experiencing a fear-induced NATURAL HIGH . That’s because being scared causes an adrenaline rush in your body and creates a feeling of EUPHORIA .

Enter SCARY STORIES ! When it comes to teaching your students how to write a scary story that will keep readers or listeners on the edge of their seats, nothing beats a good old-fashioned scary story.

Kids love the element of surprise and the unexpected. It’s fascinating to talk about monsters, ghosts, or anything weird! Reading and writing these stories is reassuring to kids. The creepy stuff is just fiction, and it’s not a part of their everyday lives. It’s IMAGINATION .

Over the years, I’d teach my students how to write scary stories. But, I was disappointed by the majority of the stories I got. I tried different writing prompts, using scary pictures, anything I could think of. None of that worked. To be honest with you, I got some pretty crummy stories. I knew my kiddos were capable of more. I refused to give up! Finally, through trial and error, I developed a formula that worked for me. It’s just two magic words: CHOICE and TOOLS.

I provided my kids with a buffet of plots, settings, and characters. They were intrigued.

Suddenly they had the FREEDOM to concoct a story that was guaranteed to spook their audience. They didn’t have to respond to the same writing prompt.

The graphic organizers helped them plan and organize their stories, develop their characters, and use descriptive words in their writing. Keeping students engaged in writing is foolproof when they choices and the tools to plan and write a great scary story.

Scary Story Elements

Scary Stories:

Amp up the fear factor.
Add cringe-worthy thoughts like a darkness that foreshadows an unknown danger.
Have characters that get into terrifying situations by breaking the rules, making bad decisions, or ignoring a warning.
Include a terrible problem that is creating a mood of doom.
Are usually set in someplace spooky and often takes place at night.
Include a wide variety of sensory words.
Contain mystery and suspense.
Might be unpredictable – setting the reader up to expect one thing but then providing something else.

Setting the Stage

Nothing sets the tone for writing better than turning out the lights and reading a couple of scary stories. Here are a few of my favorite scary stories for younger kids.

PICTURE BOOKS:

The Teeny Tiny Woman by Paul Galdone
There’s a Nightmare in my Closet by Mercer Mayer
There’s an Alligator Under My Bed by Mercer Mayer
A Very Hairy Scary Story by Rick Walton
Beneath the Bed and Other Scary Stories by Max Brallier
In a Dark Dark Room by Alvin Schwartz
The Little Old Woman Who Was Not Afraid of Anything
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
Piggie Pie by Margie Palenti
Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
Ghosts! Ghostly Tales From Folklore by Alvin Schwartz
Tell Me a Scary Story but Not Too Scary by Carl Reiner
Scary, Scary, Halloween by Eve Bunting

One year, I took my kiddos to a Tale Telling Festival in Selma Alabama. My kids were on the edge of their seats listening to master a storyteller regale them with tales from the book Thirteen Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey .

If you can’t make it to a storytelling festival, expose your students to a few videos of storytellers telling scary stories to get a sense of the mood these stories elicit.

Videos provide your students with the opportunity to experience how professional authors play with the readers’ emotions through their choice of WORDS , VOICE, and FACIAL and HAND expressions. One of my favorites is Jackie Torrance telling The Story of Tillie

How to Write the Scary Story

Have you ever tried to teach without a lesson plan? It’s quite frustrating and chaotic isn’t it? You need a PLAN . The same thing is true for your kids. Some of your kids have minimal experience in writing stories. They don’t even know where to begin. They need a plan!

That’s where you come in! By providing supports and structure, your students will write fantastic scary tales. Writing a great story takes time, so if you only have one class period for your kiddos to write, you’re probably not going to get great stories. The time frame from start to finish to sharing takes my kids about a week to complete.

Writing Steps

Here are the steps I use with my students. Depending on the age and degree of writing experience, your students may not need to spend much time on each step.

First, students BRAINSTORM story ideas for things and places that scare them. This is a fun and easy step because kids LOVE to talk about being scared. It’s also good for kids to see that some of their friends are afraid of the same things they are. Be prepared, you might hear some things that you can’t imagine being afraid of. For example, my grandson was TERRIFIED of going to visit my mother in her assisted living facility. He thought all the “old folks” looked like evil creatures. Thankfully, he got over that.

Next, students select a setting, problem, and characters for their story. To help my kids out, I give them choices and ideas to get them started. I provide them with SETTING , PROBLEM , and CHARACTER cards to choose from. By taking note of what your kids shared during the previous BRAINSTORMING SESSION , you have some great ideas to write on the cards.

In the next step, students organize their thoughts using a story elements organizer and a story summary organizer. With these organizers, students plan the story and make sure it has a logical sequence.

Giving students copies of word lists helps them choose sensory words, sound effects (think Ontomontopeia), and vivid verbs to add to the writing.

Have you ever had kids who wrote a narrative and every sentence began with “and then?” Since scary stories are NARRATIVES , I make sure they use a TRANSITIONS WORD LIST to help them with word choice. That way I don’t have to read “and then,” “and then” over and over again.

Let the Writing Begin!

You’ve laid the groundwork. Your kiddos have a recipe for their story. Now it’s time to put pen to paper and START WRITING . For a first draft, I usually have my kids write on every other line. That way it’s easy to make edits during the revision stage.

Next, have a peer and or a teacher review the rough drafts. It’s also helpful to give the kiddos a checklist to make sure they included all the elements for a scary story.

Finally, revise and edit. This is the kids’ LEAST FAVORITE STEP . They want to write their stories ONCE and be done with it! I try to make it more fun by having a little revising party in the class. Give out stickers and turn on some creepy music. If your students have not had experience with peer editing, you can be the editor. A little hint: Tell at least 2 things you really like about the story BEFORE you may suggestions for improvement.

Oops! We’re not done yet! The most overlooked step is REFLECT AND EVALUATE ! Give your kids a writing rubric that is completed by both the student and yourself. I always have my kids share what they think they did best first, and then what they need to improve upon in the comments section of the rubric.

Sharing Your Scary Stories

The most fun is when the kids get to share their own stories. This is the time when my friends say I put on a DOG AND PONY SHOW . But seriously, your kids are super pumped about sharing after learning how to write a scary story.

It’s time to celebrate all their hard work. Have the kids dress up in costumes. Make s’mores. I bought a fantastic electric s’mores maker on Amazon. Turn out the lights, play some spooky music. The piece de resistance is a fake classroom campfire for your kids to sit around.

When it’s time to share his story, I give each kid a flashlight. Remember, it’s important to encourage the kids to ham it up with sound effects, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

Creating a Classroom Campfire

You can find numerous blog posts with instructions for building a classroom campfire. Just do a search on Pinterest. Basically, all you need is:

rocks in a circle
sticks in the center of the ring of stones
battery-operated Christmas tree lights to place under and around the sticks
some orange, red, and yellow tissue paper for the flames.

Avoiding Overwhelm When Teaching How to Write a Scary Story

Does this all sound like a lot of work to you? Don’t worry! I’ve got you covered. You can purchase my Write A Scary Story unit on TpT. It includes a PowerPoint on how to write a scary story, all the handouts, cards, rubric, graphic organizers, and everything else you need to teach this unit. There is also a Distance Learning Version you can use if you are teaching remotely!

I’d love to hear how your scary stories turned out! Come back comment to let me know!

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Choose Your Tone

The first thing you need to do is choose your tone. This is the same whether you are looking at essay papers for sale , or figuring out how to write fiction.

The tone of your ghost story is very important. It’s the first clue many people have about your work. People who want a comedic ghost story, for example, aren’t going to want southern gothic. People who want a tragic story of lost love won’t be happy if they accidentally picked up a cowboy western ghost story.

You need to choose what tone to use before anything else. Ghost stories do have some rules around them. Knowing what tone you are going to go for shows you what rules you need to follow. Knowing what rules you need to follow give you the best chance of creating a coherent ghost story.

Give Your Ghost a Life Story

As in life, so in death. You may not think that your ghost requires a backstory, but he\she\it definitely does! Any good ghost story writing gives the ghost a life story, because that’s what makes it real.

Giving your ghost a life story opens up so many possibilities. Maybe your ghost is involved in events for completely unrelated reasons, but they don’t have to be! Having a backstory means that, if you want, you can tie the events of the story into it. Maybe your ghost is bound to a house because their child died there, or maybe they have to fulfil a deal with the devil. Just come up with an idea for a backstory, and let your mind roam. There are so many possibilities you won’t know what to do with them.

Tie it To a Specific Location

The best stories are often the ones which are most contained in terms of location. We are all aware of the huge scope of movies like. There is space for both kinds of stories to exist.

More than that, think of the different genres of horror and ghost stories. Many of them are centred on particular locations. Gothic horror is normally focused on a house, while southern gothic can take in whole towns. Tying things to one specific location makes it that much easier to create atmosphere, and atmosphere is hugely important in a ghost story.

Using a specific location means that you can delve into some of the local folklore in your ghost story. This adds an additional flavour for your readers, and makes the world seem much more real.

Make Your Readers Breathe Faster

We are all used to jump scares by now – maybe too used to them. The key point in writing any ghost story is that you need to create a response in your readers.

This is another reason to tie your ghost story down to a certain location and tone. Both of these things inform the ways in which you induce fear. The primary reason that people read ghost stories is that they want to be scared. They want to feel the creepy atmosphere, they want to walk along with the characters not knowing if there’ll be a ghost on the next page! You need to create some kind of fear response in your readers, otherwise your ghost story won’t work. People want to breathe faster, to feel as if they themselves are about to see a ghost!

Set Some Rules

Writing needs to have rules if it is to work properly. Ghost stories are fighting an uphill battle from the moment you write them, simply because they involve ghosts. If you make some internal rules for your world, and stick to them, people will find it much easier to suspend their disbelief and read on without question.

The rules don’t need to be complicated. There don’t even need to be too many of them. Just remember that once you make a rule, you need to stick to it. If you don’t, people will find themselves taken out of the story. Rules can make your story a lot easier to write as well. Just write within the framework you set down for yourself, and watch the story take form. Rules can be very helpful in writing.

Avoid Clichés

Many people ask how to start a ghost story. One of the main answers is this: avoid clichés like the plague!

Clichés can be very helpful, it’s true, but they are clichés for a reason. Some stories have managed to incorporate these things into their stories very well. Some have even managed to make a cliché into a hilarious part of their story.

If you are just starting out in ghost stories, you shouldn’t do this. It takes a lot of familiarity with this type of writing before you can do it justice. If you avoid these types of clichés, then you stand a much better chance of writing a good story. It’s honestly that simple when it comes to writing. Reading a cliché used well can be a fun experience, but most people prefer to read a good story.

Do Your Research

Do you want to know how to write a good ghost story? It’s very simple. Do your research. Make sure you know everything there is to know about the characters, history, and location of your story.

Research is important for any story, but it can be particularly important for a ghost story. Say you are writing a story about the ghost of a young woman from the eighteenth century. Say your setting is the current day. You need to be absolutely sure you know that ghost would look and act, and how the present-day characters would react to it. Plenty of research is key, particularly if the ghost’s backstory impacts the plot in any way.

Research should always be an important part of your story. You’ll find that your writing process becomes much easier when you have everything at your fingertips.

It’s Time for Spooky Writing

Ghost fiction is always popular among readers. It’s not just something for Hallowe’en, though it was much more popular around that time. Hopefully our tips will be helpful to anybody looking to either start writing, or improve their writing. You just need to take it one step at a time.

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Writing ghost stories

16 November 2021
Last updated: 23 May 2023

Writing a ghost story – how to start

The fear of ghosts, the main elements when writing ghost stories, how to write a ghost story – the setting, the characters in your ghost story, the mood or atmosphere, your ghost story’s revelation, some dos and don’ts when writing ghost stories, the history of ghost stories, ghost animals, examples from some of my own stories and novels, hallowe’en and all that, authors’ favourite ghost stories, over to you.

Close the curtains, light the fire, curl up in your favourite chair. Maybe the wind is howling round the house, or rain lashing against the windows. Listen. Winter is traditionally the time to read and share ghost stories. Why? Perhaps we all like to be frightened, but only from the comfort of a cosy chair in a warm room. In this post I talk about the history of the ghost story, its main elements and how to write a ghost story of your own. I just hope you won’t scare yourselves too much when you are writing it!

When you start writing your ghost story, you can begin by thinking about or sharing with other people your own experience of ghosts.

Have you ever ‘seen’ a ghost? Many people, especially children, tell me they’ve ‘seen’ or experienced a ghost. Often ‘seeing’ a ghost follows the death of someone very close to you. In the immediate few days afterwards, you seem to see them again. They’re sitting in their favourite chair, or just passing from one room to another. You might even hear their voice, or smell their perfume. This ‘ghost’ or ‘spirit’ isn’t frightening, but it can be startling, because you really know they’ve died. Even though you know you’re imagining they’re there, for that fleeting moment you believe that you really have seen them.

Have you ever had a ghostly experience?

By this I mean something that unnerves you and which has no explanation. I once entered a room in a converted barn that was known as ‘the goose house’. I was alone. As I crossed the room to go to my bed I had the sensation of being pressed against the wall. I couldn’t move or shake the pressure away. I could hardly breathe. My eyes were open, but there was nothing to see. There was absolutely no-one else in the room. After a moment the pressure was released, I was able to step away from the wall and continue to my bed. I have no explanation for this, but when I reported it the next day the owners of the ‘goose house’ said that other guests had had the experience too.

Perhaps people like ghost stories because they like to be afraid. But why do they frighten us?

The fear of ghosts is the fear of the unknown, of experiencing something that is outside our control. We can explore this in our writing by thinking about our own experience of fear. Most people have been afraid at some time or other.

Have you ever been afraid?

Write down how it affected you mentally and physically. Your skin, your temperature, your breathing, your heart, your movement, your voice, your mind? Can you think of anything else?

The setting is actually one of the main characters to consider when writing a ghost story. Once you’ve chosen the setting you’ll begin to have an idea about the other main characters.

So how do you choose a setting? Write down the settings of some of the ghost stories you’ve read. Do they have anything in common?

Now write a list of places you’ve visited that you think might be suitable settings, for their creepiness, their reputation, their remoteness. Anything else?

And, if you think you might like to be adventurous, think of unlikely places for a ghost story.

Choose one to be your setting. You can go with the familiar: castle, old house, graveyard. Try to avoid too many cliches.

Or you could choose a lonely, deserted place, or somewhere that’s difficult to escape from – a ship, a school, an island, an empty, locked theatre…

Or be daring: a shopping mall (moving escalators, shutters, reflecting windows…), a building site (rubble, gantries, cranes, falling masonry…) or underground train systems (rush of passing trains, echoey stations, long passages…). See if you can think of more.

Why is this place being haunted? What connection does the ghost have with this particular place? Did they once live there, work there, die there, fight there…? Was it once a place of peace for them? Is it their territory?

Is it the scene of a crime committed by the ghost, or to the ghost?

Is the ghost trapped there?

Who is the ghost? Is there actually a ghost, or is it imagined? What kind of ghost is it – friendly, not meaning any harm? Lonely? Does the ghost know it is dead? Has the ghost come to make amends, to take revenge, to find something lost, to put something right? Does it want to warn you about something? Or anything else?

The central character/protagonist

Decide whether you’re going to write this story in the first person, so you are the person being haunted. (Or you could be the ghost.) Or is it in the third person – in which case, who is it? Make sure you know who your central character is. What happens to them will affect them deeply, and you want to share their emotions, responses, fears, imaginings and rememberings with the reader.

Is that person alone? Is he or she with other people, but is the only one to see the ghost (like Macbeth when he sees Banquo)? So how will the other characters react? Will they be sceptical, amused, dismissive, annoyed, curious, protective, disbelieving, envious…?

Why has this person come to this place? Is there a connection between the character, the place and the ghost that is haunting it? Or is there something about this person that makes him or her susceptible to ghosts? Are they grieving? Highly imaginative? Ill? Guilty of a crime? Or determined to prove that there are no such things as ghosts or the paranormal?

You can create the mood or atmosphere of the story when you decide what kind of ghost story you’re writing. Is it going to be comical (white sheets, clanking chains, boo!), disturbing, creepy, frightening or absolutely terrifying?

Victorian ghost stories are full of creaking floorboards, flickering candles, shadows, gas lamps – but so were Victorian houses! Could you use today’s houses to create the same atmosphere? Electric lights, window blinds, carpeted floors, central heating…

You are taking your main character on a journey to a certain place, where they will encounter disturbing happenings. They will find out what is happening, and they will do something about it. This is the revelation. When they leave that place, their life will have changed. They will never forget this experience.

Remember this isn’t a detective story. You and your reader don’t have to solve anything, but you do have to resolve it. So the revelation leads to the resolution of the story. What does your character do to put things right? For themselves? For the ghost? Or do they simply run away?

How do you want your reader to feel at the end of the story? My anecdote about my goose house experience wouldn’t work as a ghost story, not as it stands. There’s no development, revelation or resolution. I would need to use my inagination to turn it into a satisfactory story. Are you going to explain everything? Or leave ends untied? Will the reader still be disturbed? Too scared to go to bed? Relieved? Amused? Or quietly, and for a long time afterwards, haunted by the memory of what they have been reading?

Don’t reveal too much too soon. Don’t let everything happen at once. Gradually introduce elements of the haunting.

Roald Dahl said: “The best of ghost stories don’t have ghosts in them.“ A classic example of this is Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca . The ghost in this book is never seen; it is the memory of her that haunts every page.

Don’t use cliches – the headless corpse, the white sheet, the undead zombie. Get away from horror, vampires and goths. Don’t try to write a detective story. Don’t let the protagonist or ghost use physical force. The fear is psychological, not physical. The ghost might temporarily harm the mind, but not the body.

Do use surprise and hints. Just when your character thinks things are going to be all right…

What is not fully seen (glimpses, shadows, brief reflections) will be much creepier than a lurking figure with clanking chains.

And what is not properly heard (whispers, sighs, light footsteps) will be much more frightening than wails and shrieks!

Some tutorials on how to write ghost stories keep referring to ‘monsters’ or to ‘horror stories’ or even ‘thrillers’. A classic ghost story should be none of these things.

Do enjoy writing your ghost story. It’s a wonderfully imaginative genre – go for it!

Since ancient times people have believed in ghosts and spirits. In many cultures the dead were buried with precious objects to take into the spirit world with them, as it was believed that the life of the spirit continues after the life of the physical body has ended. The First Ghosts , by Irving Finkel, explores the tradition of ghosts in Assyrian culture of three thousand years BC, and asserts that it is the belief in ghosts that make us human.

Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity by D. Felton shows that ghost stories were as popular in ancient Classical literature as they are today. We still use their concept of the haunted house, the unquiet dead seeking a proper burial, or revenge, or needing to help certain people. Similarly, we use, borrow or perpetuate the same idea of animals sensing the presence of ghosts, and the atmospheric devices of sounds, illusions and smells.

In Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the ghosts of the murdered often return to terrify and to seek revenge. Five of Shakespeare’s plays have ghosts who profoundly affect their troubled living relatives and friends.

In Victorian times, it was common practice to attend a seance, to have the ghost of the dead speak to their grieving loved ones and bring them comfort. Dickens was one of the most productive ghost story writers, which he published in his periodial All the Year Round . Other contributors were Wilkie Collins and Mrs Gaskell. Dickens’ most famous ghost story, of course, is A Christmas Carol , where a procession of spirits bring the miserable Scrooge out of his miserly misanthrope to redemption and happiness.

Many ghost stories are written about animals. Favourites are black dogs that haunt the moors, or riderless horses that gallop, panting and steaming, over the same stretch of land, on the same day of the year. Or on foggy evenings!

In Orkney tales, there is an invisible animal called a Varden. Everybody has one; it follows you everywhere, and it is part of you for all your life. You know it’s there, even if you can’t see it. And when its owner is dying, the Varden moans and weeps.

Now, what if the Varden doesn’t die? What if it becomes the ghost of itself, searching for its dead owner?

Two true animal ghost stories

Now I’m going to tell you a true ghost story about a cat.

A few days after our cat Midnight died, my husband and I both saw an identical cat, but a younger version, prowling round the garden. We didn’t think it was a ghost, but we live in an isolated place and we knew there were no similar cats in the area. No cats at all, in fact. We never saw it again.

No explanation.

Here’s another cat story, and like ours, it’s true!

Friends of ours had a black cat. One day, someone brought it to their house, apologising that they had knocked it down with their car and it had died. Distraught, our friends buried the corpse in their garden, and the children all cried and put flowers on the grave.

A few hours later, their cat walked into the kitchen demanding food!

Explanation – they later found out that the dead cat that they had buried and cried over wasn’t theirs at all. It had belonged to a neighbour!

But do you like knowing the truth, or would you prefer it if I had said that the black cat continued to haunt them till they moved house?

The Haunting of Miss Julie

This is the second story chapter in my first book, How Green You Are . The setting is my own school – a convent school with basement corridors, religious statues, a nuns’ graveyard, an overgrown pond, and a school legend that a nun once drowned there. I only had to use my imagination and memory to write a ghost story about a friendless girl.

You are welcome to use all those elements to create your own ghost story, perhaps using your own school as the setting.

A short story set on the Derbyshire moors. Two children find a horse trapped in the ice inside a cave. One of the children rides the horse at night, and the other child gradually realises that both the horse and its rider are actually ghosts. I’m using my knowledge of the local landscape and my imagination to write this story.

This short story can be found in the Haunted anthology.

The Company of Ghosts

The setting for The Company of Ghosts is a small island about a mile off the coast of Scotland. The only buildings on it are a disused lighthouse and the former lighthouse keeper‘s cottage. All you can hear is the cry of gulls and the waves pounding on the rocks. In my story a girl is abandoned there. She is haunted by memories of her estranged father, but soon becomes aware that there is another presence on the island; the ghost of the lighthouse keeper’s daughter. Again, I used my imagination and my memories of the island to create this story.

Writing ghost stories: a spiral staircase

Slowly, soundlessly, she climbed the spiral stairs. She could feel her breath fluttering in her throat; she was too frightened to set it free. Now she felt a flurry around her like a cold wind; something made her flatten herself against the curved wall as if she was being pushed to one side as someone passed her. She listened, eyes wide, ears strained. Nothing, except for the rummaging of waves on rocks and the distant mockery of gulls. Every nerve in her body told her to turn and go down the stairs and out of the lighthouse, and yet she carried on.

The Haunted Hills

Cover of The Haunted Hills by Berlie Doherty

The setting for The Haunted Hills is an old stone cottage in Derbyshire where a boy is staying with his family. He is grieving for his friend, who died when a stolen car crashed. The boy is drawn to the desolate moors and hills which are haunted by the ghost of the lost lad of local legend. I use the local story and the dramatic landscape of the Dark Peak as well as my imagination to create the atmosphere and the plot.

Writing ghost stories: a plane wreck site

I crest the mound of dark moor, which looks completely desolate, breathing mist. The drizzle is like the white curtains some people have over their windows. I don’t know what I’m looking for, then I’m noticing scattered bits of tiny metal, just fragments at first, and now I can make out broken pieces of fuselage poking out of the ground, shards of metal like spearheads. I walk on, following the trail of debris around an area that could be the size of a football pitch. There are simple little wooden crosses stuck in the ground, made out of what look like ice-lolly sticks. Memorials to men who died here over seventy years ago. My stomach is turning over. Everything’s so sad. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I wasn’t ready for it at all. Suddenly I can’t take it. Suddenly I’m shivering, I’m cold all over. Why have Mum and Dad brought me here, of all places, to see this, of all things? The mist is drifting like breath. It’s spreading damp fingers over my skin, into my mouth, into my eyes. I can hardly see in front of me. Yet there are movements, shapes rising, lumbering towards me, reaching out to me. I can hear sighing, moaning. Desperate, I try to run away, but I can’t move.

Also Thin Air (see plays ) and Quieter than Snow (see my poetry collection Walking on Air ).

You may also be interested in my blog posts on writing haikus , fairy tales , riddle rhymes and puzzle poems and short stories .

In our culture, few people believe in ghosts, or the spirit world, yet we still retain the festival of Hallowe’en, the evening of All Saints’ Day, in which, in the Christian calendar, all saints are remembered. On the following day, All Souls’ Day, the dead are remembered and celebrated. In the culture of today we ‘raise’ the dead on Hallowe’en by wearing scary plastic masks, fancy dress of ghosts, skeletons, witches, anything really. Under American influence, Hallowe’en has become ‘Fright Night’. Shops are full of spider’s webs, bats, lanterns made of pumpkins etc; like Christmas, a Christian festival has become ‘paganised’ by commercialisation.

In Mexico the Day of the Dead, El Día de los Muertos, celebrates the dead with dancing and flowers. I’ve heard it said that Mexicans love death!

There are many really powerful ghost stories and novels. In many the ghosts simply have walk-on parts or are simply ghosts, not there to haunt, frighten or alarm anyone.

A quick poll on Twitter revealed favourite ghost stories to be:

Any by M R James – Brian Moses and six others
Dark Matter by Michelle Paver – Hilary McKay, Melinda Salisbury and four others
Any by Robert Crickman – Chris Priestley and four others
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley – Stacey Sampson
Three Miles Up and Mr Wong by Elizabeth Jane Howard – Ian Beck

Here’s my own current favourite: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.

Published by: Orion, 2011. Available from Amazon .

This website contains affiliate links. If you buy items using these links, I receive a commission, at no extra cost to you.

Please recommend some more wonderful ghost stories in the comments box below!

Original unmodified version of main photo: Ján Jakub Naništa /Unsplash. Other photos: Berlie Doherty

Berlie Doherty

Berlie Doherty is the author of the best-selling novel, Street Child , and over 60 more books for children, teenagers and adults, and has written many plays for radio, theatre and television. She has been translated into over twenty languages and has won many awards, including the Carnegie medal for both Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody , and the Writers’ Guild Award for both Daughter of the Sea and the theatre version of Dear Nobody . She has three children and seven grandchildren, and lives in the Derbyshire Peak District with Alan James Brown. Her new picture book The Seamaiden’s Odyssey , illustrated by Tamsin Rosewell, will be published by UCLan on 5 September 2024. See the About me page for more information.

You may also be interested in:

The art of writing picture books – interview with Caryl Hart

This post has 6 comments

Thank you so much for this very informative article – ghost stories are one of my favourite genres, along with Gothic, and I feel that it’s important to keep it alive, so to speak 😉 . I ‘ve read many of your books and very much admire your writing style – I use Street Child, Children of Winter, Deep Secret and The Company of Ghosts frequently in my teaching, as I find them to be excellent examples for my young writers, as well as being brilliant stories. I am also very much looking forward to The Haunted Hills, which I have on pre-order. 🙂

Would you consider publishing a ‘How to write’-type book (novels, short stories, ghost stories etc.), sharing your expertise and writing techniques? I’m sure it would be very well received. There are a multitude of books purporting to give advice on writing, but few are written by accomplished authors such as yourself, and most give very little useful guidance.

Thank you for all you’ve given us. 🙂 xx

What a lovely message! Thank you so much Wendy. I’m so pleased that you like the blog, and I’m thrilled to know that you like my books too! Thank you very much for sharing them with your young writers – I hope they’re inspired! I will continue to write ‘how to’ blogs on my website like this writing ghost stories and the earlier writing haiku blog, and would welcome requests/suggestions. Hadn’t thought about a whole book though ….. Take care, Berlie

Thanks for helping me to find some idea

Oh good! Thanks for letting me know Joe.

Hello Berlie

Thanks so much for this article, which is really helpful. I have an idea for a short ghost story; would you mind if I sent you, or posted here, a 2-sentence summary of the key idea?

Thank you Francis. I’m so pleased you found the blog helpful. Yes, do please share your idea.

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