We are please to announce the winners of our Ghost & Horror Short Story Contest. The competition was tight as many of you ranked so close to one another. YIKES! Way to dish out fear and screams! The judges, Willow Ford and Tyler Schanck, were pleased with the submissions calling them “gothic, frightening, unique, and terrifying.”
A special thank you to our judges who offered extensive feedback on your stories. They LOVED your work and eager to let you know how they felt about each and every single story. WOW! They truly went beyond expectations.
THANK YOU WILLOW AND TYLER!
Feedback
Submitter feedback is inside your Ghost & Horror Short Story submission portal in the DASHBOARD. You can login to your account to see your feedback on your stories. You should have also been emailed the feedback if you receive notifications from us.
Spooky Image Contest
The image pictured was the only image submitted into the contest, by Sasha Snow. Congratulations Sasha for putting yourself out there in another medium of art! We hope to see many more image submissions in the future. Be thinking about it artists.
Contest Winners!
Throughout the month of October we will publish the Top 5 winners of our Ghost & Horror Short Story Contest. This will make for a creepy, gothic, and frighteningly fun Halloween season.
1st Place: Zira MacFarlane, FLY BAIT – $100 Prize Winner
Zira MacFarlane is a nonbinary queer biologist who lives in Toronto with a small menagerie of cats, geckos, and humans. They are an amateur writer, and love using horror and fantasy to explore ecological themes and stories of queer love and pain. In the wild, they can be found storytelling, birdwatching, and trying to discover the latest mischief their cats have caused.
2nd Place: The Gathering, FALSE MOON RISING – $70 Prize Winner
The Gathering is a trio of Hispanic women who met at Cal State Northridge in a creative writing workshop. Their names are Joanna E. Benitez, Leslie Gonzalez, and C. L. Verdin. Together they write speculative fiction that is drawn from their cultural backgrounds. They share a love for fantasy, folklore, and mythology.
3rd Place: M.C. Rodrigues, CHOPIN IN CANDLELIGHT – $40 Prize Winner
M.C. Rodrigues is a cardiologist by day and writer by night. She gravitates between various genres, but has a personal affinity for stories featuring queer characters. A lover of black coffee, chocolate and cozy wool jumpers, Rodrigues lives in São Paulo, Brazil with her husband and two dogs.
4th Place: Ellis Morten, HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN? – $25.00 Prize Winner
Ellis Morten is a queer writer and cat lover based in Brooklyn, NY. They are excited to take the plunge into horror writing and hope to be scaring readers for years to come. Currently, they are working on several projects and trying to fund their unending desire for more tattoos. They can be found on Twitter and Instagram @fleurdellis_
5th Place: Matt Micheli, THE LOCKET – $20 Prize Winner
Matt Micheli is a writer out of New Braunfels, TX. He has several fiction and non-fiction pieces featured in various magazines and anthologies (most recently in Night Terrors 18 and upcoming in Executive Dread) and is a multi-contributor/reviewer/columnist at This Is Horror. His first novel (no longer in publication) was the Wildcard winner at the 2012 Halloween Book Festival. He is a loving husband and father and spends his days dabbling in domestication and his nights in Tequila, always searching for the next great story.
Honorable Mentions in no particular order:
NIGHT ON THE HIGH DESERT by Joseph Hopkins
SEVEN by Bibiana Krall
THE SCENT OF THE SCATTERED by Ted Morrissey
IT’S BETTER THAT WAY by Catherine Peacock
TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW by Megan Speece
OVERCOOKED by Sophia Therriault
Again, Congratulations to all of our winners!
Upcoming – Submit to our Courageous Creative Anthology
All winners of the 2021 contests: Napkin Microfiction Contest, Summer Short Story Contest, and Ghost & Horror Story Contest will be in our Courageous Creative anthology early 2022.
We love our Indie Community!
Leisa & Dustin
