1st place

 “The Asylum” by Bradley Jacot

The old Victorian asylum had been closed now for a little over 15 years but somehow the lingering smell of disinfectant still roamed the stale air like that of a rotting corpse. The official word stated that the building had been condemned as structurally unsafe, but the rumors told of something much more terrifying. It had been said that there had been an uprising of evil, paranormal events that had plagued the building culminating on that unholiest of days, Hallows Eve, when the building was finally closed.

James had never given into this chain of thought. As far as he was concerned the tales of horror that had been bred from what was now just some unfortunate blot on the town’s landscape, were just that, tales, and very tall ones at that. Ghosts, the paranormal, James had never believed in all that. Alex, his better half, had however, and now it had come down to this, a stupid dare of staying the night in what some believed to be the home of the dead.

James forced open the large wooden door with surprising ease. As it fell away from its rusted iron hinges it opened up a path of darkness, broken only by the stray rays of orange light streaming through the broken skylights as the sun began to set. As James entered he started to think that maybe this wasn’t the smartest idea he’d ever had, but there was no way he was going to back out now. Besides he had it all figured out, he was just going to find some relatively draft-free dorm and crash out in his sleeping bag till morning. It wasn’t as if there was any hard work involved. Despite this, a fearful sweat began to develop on James’ brow as he slowly walked deeper and deeper into the heart of the asylum. For the first time, James began to have doubts. What if there was some truth to the stories? There were a lot of them after all. Maybe, just maybe, ghosts did exist.

James found a suitable room at the end of the corridor and settled down for the night. He rested his sleeping bag on an old mattress he’d found that had come as a pleasant surprise. This night was going to be more comfortable than he thought.

3 am, the chiming of a grandfather clock rang out through the asylum disturbing James from his sleep. Startled, James clambered out of his sleeping bag to investigate. He was sure he hadn’t seen a clock or for that matter anything else on his journey through the asylum, the place was near empty. It then dawned on him that he’d never heard the clock before. Why now at 3 am, why not 11 or 12 when the noise would be at its worst? Just then the voices of a thousand tortured souls began to echo down the long corridors of the old Victorian asylum. The broken bulbs in the light fittings suddenly began to flicker into life,

on…

off…

on…

off…

In a panic James began running toward the main exit, tripping over wheelchairs and trolleys, items he was sure weren’t there when he first entered. All the time the voices kept getting louder the screams more painful. As the exit neared the whole building began to shake violently, throwing James once again off his feet. With that a violent crash released a steel beam from the ceiling above, pinning James helplessly to the floor. Within moments the walls surrounding him buckled and collapsed as his world fell in around him.

It took four days to retrieve his body and a further three to bury him once more. No one understood why it had happened, why James was there. In irony, the event gave credence to the claims of the building’s structural safety, but Alex, knew differently, of course, she knew the truth, but she would never say.

2nd place

“The Blackbirds’ Sorrow” by Grayson Cook

The seldom flocking of the murder blew a breath of sorrow and desolate hopes that curved the imagination and touched the mental capacity of man, each flap of the crows’ wings felt like a leap in a pond from a crystal dancer that would sway and arch in the gentle distortion that is life. Each squawk of the birds left a painful sting in my ears like a scorpion’s tail. Ringing, ringing, ringing. I tried to drown out the noise with my screams, louder and louder I screamed to keep the crows calm. Why won’t they leave me alone. They circle around my head like the moon spinning around the earth, they tease me with their noise and dig deeper into my soul, ripping apart my sanity and driving out my consciousness. When will the suffering from these infested birds go away or drive out the mad that is hidden inside my body and cleanses the soul of sin and righteousness when all man kind knows no bounds to the true terror that plagues us like Cancer, Narcissism.

 One looks to another for guidance but finds the Devil glaring back at them. Hell’s fire shows no fury to the lustful creatures that attach themselves to us like parasites. They are the real crows that feast on our enjoyment, the ones who really plague us, the ones who are the devil. They are all but ourselves. We look to one another to find blame, seeking out the weak and feeble just to realize we were standing in a mirror filled with our sorrow. We sulk thinking of how the world mistreated us yet not how we defiled the feelings of the others who showed no bound to bring us our Nirvana, fury is not the Devil’s but our own greed for power above each other. When will we learn that we can’t change the fact that our world has gone down the inescapable gutter of life’s rejects? 

The real Devil that lurks upon us, is our own that lives inside all of our souls that craves to leak out and express how we really despise one another and wish harm on the fickle.

3rd place

“The Island of Poveglia” by Danica Hanson   

This isn’t your average Halloween story and the island of Poveglia no doubt was haunted by lost souls. This story takes place in Venice, Italy. Anyways, there’s this boy named Yuki and he decides to meet up with his friends on Halloween night at the island of Poveglia. Little did he know that his friends wouldn’t show up and that he’d regret that night more than anything else. 

Yuki, excited for Halloween, dragged his mom around the costume store they were in. Finally he found a really creepy costume and his mom got it for him. The costume had fake blood splattered on it along with a mask that looked like something that came out of the movie The Purge. It was Monday, and usually Yuki would be at his school, Ca’ Foscari, but it was fall break. Yuki just kept getting more and more excited for the big night tonight, especially since his mom had no clue that he was going to the island of Poveglia. The history behind the island of Poveglia isn’t pretty at all.

 It was a quarantine zone for people who were suffering from the plague. In the 20th century it was then used as an insane asylum. It was said that the doctors in the insane asylum would torture their patients. This didn’t scare Yuki, or at least he thought it wouldn’t. It was one hour before Yuki was going to the island but he decided that he just couldn’t wait that long. 

He went to his mom and asked if he could go to his friend’s house earlier and of course his mom said yes. Yuki ran out the door but instead of going to his friend’s house he started to head towards the harbor. Once he got to the harbor he found a boat sitting on the edge of the shore. He climbed into the boat and started  to paddle his way towards the island. The water looked almost mystical when the boat paddle hit it, making the water sway and ripple. 

Finally, Yuki hit the island’s shore, he got out of the boat and just how the island looked creeped him out. There was trees rotting everywhere and some of them where stil covered with leaves. He continued to look around the island and he found that there were still quite a bit of buildings left on the island. He saw the cavana, the shelter used for boats. He also saw the church, a hospital, the insane asylum, a bell-tower, and even housing and administrative buildings for the staff. 

He decided to explore the insane asylum first. He would soon regret this more than anything else he’s ever done in his short life. He found the front entrance to the asylum, it was all boarded up. Yet, the wood was so rotted that it came right off the door, he opened the doors and they made an extremely loud creaking noise. Yuki walked inside and found wheelchairs and blood smeared all over the floor. He just figured that the blood was from how the doctors tortured their patients. 

Yuki continued walking until he came upon one of the insane asylum rooms, he noticed something in the cell. It almost looked like something was moving in there, but he just thought that would be impossible considering how long it’s been since the island became vacant. He came closer to the cell door and he got cold chills down his back. A hand suddenly grabbed him and pulled him up against the cell door. 

“Help me, help me, help me!” the person cried out. 

“Save me, save me!” they continued to cry out, but it seemed like more than one person said it. 

Yuki was pulled into the cell and that was the end of him, no one ever saw him again after that. 

4th place

 “The Crazy Halloween Story” by Abram Habbinga

It was October 31, 2022 and the boys of the name of myself Abram, Cason, Gage, Raidyn, Braylee, and Braiden. We are going trick or treating and we loved Halloween ever since we were all little kids. The time has come when we had to get ready in are costumes. I dressed up as Baylen Livine, Cason dressed up as a Tater Tot, Gage dressed up as Shrek, Raidyn dressed up as Elmo, Braylee dressed up as a Vladimir Guerrero JR, and Braiden dressed up as Tom Brady. But then they wen’t tricker or treating they got lots of candy and had lots of fun.

 I said that I wanted to go to a haunted house but Cason said there having a Evil On Eary so we wen’t there instead. I loved Evil On Eary ever since my first time going when I was 9 years old and It was pretty awesome we got scared and got bussin tasting ice-cream but then something weird happened we all agreed that we would go to my house for the rest of the night so when we started walking something strange happened we all a loud bang and then it was gone and repeating. (PS 5 min later) BANG BANG BANG. Then we decided to keep walking but we were 8th graders we would be fine, then Cason got pulled into a cabin write next to where we were hearing that BANG and He was gone. 2 hours later, we heard a knock at the door we didn’t open it until we heard a loud scream LET ME IN we opened the door it was Cason. We were terrified at what we saw it was devastating a bloodied up Cason. But we thought it was a prank but it clearly wasn’t it was so bad that we didn’t know what to do then we decided to wrap Cason up, and call a ambulance and let them deal with him because the thing was we didn’t know what to do so we did that. Then after we did that we figured out that we still had time to go trick or treating so that is what we did for the rest of the night and it was fun even though are friend almost died but I had fun and the boys had fun. So on the next day which is Monday we had our first game well my first game for the Halloween board game competition and I honestly thought that we are going to win it was a hard competition but we kept up with everybody. We actually ended up winning the entire thing with the board game called the Haunted Glizzy, but I think someone paid them because there was a entire like movie play made with clay + it was a animation, so that was are halloween adventure Hoped you enjoyed it and hope everyone else that is participating good luck. (+ A Bonus Story About How Cason Ended Up After The Incident)

So after the incident Cason was out in a comma for a while but after He recovered He was back to playing baseball and being on the gold old SLFL. I thought Cason wasn’t going to survive but He did and I’m proud for him that He is doing great and still doing his thing. The boys are scared for the rest of their young lives but at least we did it together as a friend ship of 6. I heard just like all of the boys heard they caught the something that put Cason almost 6 feet under it was a ManGlizzyHonker = a man with a leg as a Hot Dog a big honker which is a big nose. That’s what a Man Glizzy Honker and is still in jail for almost killing a Tater Tot, and also get’s out of prison on October 31, 2023 stay tuned for next years Halloween story.