Prompts for ghost stories

 

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Hey, writers! Looking to write a ghost story? There are 6 haunted posts on my Weird Wednesday blog, with writing prompts:

Crisis Apparitions: On the Border of Life and Death

Poltergeists: Noisy Ghosts

The Crossroads: Metaphysical Meeting Place

The Amityville Horror: Infamous American Haunted House

The Wild Hunt: Ghost Riders in the Sky

The Mysterious Ouija Board: Who Are You Talking To?

A prompt for the Ouija Board:

Call in the spirits. The Ouija board was built for necromancy: divination (seeking supernatural knowledge) from the dead. Of course, the practice of begging data from the dearly departed began long before the board came about. But the Ouija makes it easy. So let’s dial up the deceased. (Pro-tip: You can DIY a Ouija board by drawing numbers and letters on a flat surface and using an upside down glass as a planchette.)

Possibilities for benign contact include loving family members who pass on reassurances about the afterlife, ghosts with info on random stuff like lottery numbers, ghosts of murder victims who wish to name their killers, or creative types who want to help you write novels (looking at you, Patience Worth).

But of course, you can also phone up the fiendish: convicted killers, undiscovered killers, relatives you thought were kind who were actually killers, ghosts who like mean pranks, ghosts who just plain hate the living, and the biggest danger: dead dudes who would like to live a second life. Possession by spirits is a favorite Ouija trope, and you often get there by breaking a rule while playing the “game,” which can be anything you like: don’t play alone, don’t try to contact the very recently dead, don’t play without a piece of iron in your pocket, etc.

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