I am holding to my vow to only do the covers after I compose the ideas, in an effort to have less jokey or BS concepts.  You can judge.  These covers are very dashed off.
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SPOOKTOBER DAY 6 – CURSED OBJECT
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  DISAPPEARANCE

TITLE:  THE GRYPHON

Premise:  Why are all the airline pilots dudes?  It’s because women must never learn the power of flight.  It awakens their inner witch.  Captain Iris Lichter came to see the truth of the sky.  It is the abyss into which all things become clear, and become lost forever.  Fools think it’s the cold hard ground, but ground turns to dust, and dust blows away.

She flies for hours and days, staring ahead into the void, knowing that is where all the chattering monkeys must ultimately go.  (ok but srsly the numbers on that profession are wildly fucked up; probably needs serious correction from regulatory bodies.)

Horror Element:  Iris fashions a magical gryphon talisman and leaves it where people can find it.  Each in turn takes the thing and experiences weird symptoms of uncontrolled levitation, of objects and pets flying out windows never to be seen again.  At last they are ripped away into the sky, where they cease to be.  But the metal of that talisman is heavy, and it returns to earth, to begin the cycle anew.  I have this mental image of a sky witch walking through something like a sculpture garden, but all the sculptures are people balanced on some narrow body part, spinning slowly in place like a top, limbs splayed like they’re underwater.  She can pick them up like balloons.  Dunno how I’d work that in, if I did.

Some Nonsense:  Torcha, a great marquis and strong duke, appears in the likeness of a griffon.  However, when he assumes human form, he speaks duplicitously with a harsh voice.  And he is able by his own power to bind all flying creatures, and all creatures that move swiftly above the earth and in the air.  If the exorcist is wise, let them have made a bird of bronze, and consecrate it with the power to bind all birds under their will.  Thus all birds taken together in this power will be found only where they are placed – and produce their sweet songs, and be tame and polite, and willingly obedient in all ways.  Note that the exorcist can capture all birds he pleases by the beak.  He truly gives dignities, and from his mouth confirms them.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 7 – UNDEAD
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  BURIAL

TITLE:  聖人キラー サイモン aka SAINT KILLER SAIMON

Premise:  In an anime world where saints are ghoulish undead who lord over brainwashed villages, driving them toward apocalyptic self-flagellation and human sacrifice, those who long for secular prosperity hire a Yojimbo-like mercenary who has the power to put these undying clerics in the ground – Saint Killer Saimon.

Horror Element:  Standard horror anime, from which Goat Princess is a spin off.  Real life catholic saints include some dubiously historical freaks who were folded spindled and mutilated in fabulous ways, often taking a miraculously long time to die from it.  Saimon has to engage in a bit of the old ultraviolence.

Some Nonsense:  Bille, a strong duke appearing in the likeness of a dragon, has three heads – the third similar to a human – and speaks in a raucous voice.  He changes the bodies of the dead from place to place, and makes his demons appear and congregate over their sepulchres.  He brings opulence and all wealth, and makes you eloquent and wise.  He gives true responses to all inquiries, and has under him twenty-six legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 8 – BIG CITY
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  OFFICE

TITLE:  THE GAZELLE

Premise:  Billionaire tech mogul Orlac had enough luck with ruthless maneuvers over the years that he began to believe his own hype – that he was a genius who could do no wrong.  But unlike other men in that position, he didn’t just assume that meant he could rule with the flick of a wrist, barely moving.  He knew he had to stay in motion, keep up the work, adopting the latest corporate philosophy bullshit and implementing it in the cruelest ways possible.

One day he became taken with the works of trust fund kid cum dubious business guru Asher Skerritt, who warmed up some rehash of the old wolf pack idea.  But Orlac came up with his own rehash of that, after reading a science article about an especially sadisitic alpha who sent the pack on raids where they killed the puppies of competing packs.  He decides that to make OrlaCo great again, he has to become a murderer.

Horror Element:  Every team and section at the city-wide corporate campus operated under vicious pressure from above, from a culture of backstabbing and petty sadism.  But nobody suspected one particular office was suffering under the direct supervision of the CEO, who played with their lives like the kid killing ants with a magnifying glass.  He had them threatened with firing constantly, given arbitrary and impossible goals and punished them for failing to meet them, found the people who most needed work-life balance and robbed them of their life with overwork.

And after becoming the Alpha Wolf, he began to actually murder them.  He used “robust cooperation” with the police to get close enough to sabotage any investigation.  While the victims were all chosen for the job on the criteria of being nervous people who were afraid of failure, one random woman lied through the process enough to gain employment in victim team with her idgaf intact.  This proved an irresistible temptation, and his most elaborate torture and murder plot was set in motion…  No way I’d let him win, if I ever wrote this.  You know how she’ll do.

Some Nonsense:  Alphas, or Malapas, is a great president, appearing in the likeness of a crow, and in human form, he speaks with a raucous voice.  He builds marvelous houses and towers, and quickly convenes the most artificers.  He destroys houses and smashes towers, and gives the best familiars toward this destruction.  He eagerly receives sacrifices and burnt offerings, and deceives people into breaking their contracts with him.  He has under him twenty legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 9 – LIMINAL HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  WOMEN’S LIT/CHICK-FLICK

TITLE:  THE EDGE OF GONE

Premise:  Leah is pushing fifty, single, and has run out of friends.  Life is just going to work, avoiding trouble, and staying alive.  Looking forward to the eventual day she is alone and unable to care for herself, she’s pulling a lot of overtime and saving up considerable stacks of cash.  To avoid potential muggings and worse, she tries to stay as far away from other people as possible on the way home.  That does carry the risk of finding unexpected danger when too far away to cry for help, but she can’t bring herself to try the other tactic – staying close to whatever safer looking randos the night provides.  Too shy.

One night she keeps seeing sketchier and sketchier guys and groups of guys, each in turn pushing her to go into a further subway car, a further platform, to take unfamiliar routes, until she is deep into a poorly lit metro station she’s never seen before – that she can’t even locate on the map.  A group of guys appears out of nowhere, hissing like snakes and threatening her more explicitly than any of the others had before.  But a woman appears, in her 30s and built like the hardest bartender you ever saw.  She has a cobra tattooed on her chest, peeking out of a black scoop-neck tee, and scares them off, even kicking one in the ass as they go.

Leah goes from running away to running after, spending the night going the long ways into who-knows-where, hoping to run into Gomorrah again.  It works. Leah and Gomorrah get to know each other and fall in love.

Horror Element:  Leah also comes to realize she is literally going beyond the borders of reality in order to find Gomorrah each night.  These train stations really aren’t part of the system that humans built.  What the hell does it mean?  Gomorrah has some ambiguities in her backstory that Leah is hesitant to press – like finding out something concrete about her young lover will cause her to vanish.  Worse, knowing that she’s going into liminaland, she knows there’s no guarantee she’ll ever find her way back.

Gradually it becomes clear she has to choose Fight Club style between the Ikea nesting instinct and self-destructive freedom.  She lets herself become lost, and when the story shifts perspective to the real world, nobody remembers she ever existed.

Some Nonsense:  Gomeris, or Cayim, a strong and powerful duke, appears in the likeness of a most beautiful woman, crowned with a ducal crown, riding upon a camel.  For truth he gives full responses about the present, the past and the future.  He is the prince and keeper of hidden caverns wherein serpents appear.  He gives the best love of women and has under him twenty-one legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 10 – DARK FANTASY
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  KILLER ANIMAL

TITLE:  CURSE OF THE WOLFSWORD

Premise:  A medieval prince was wronged by his family, and righteously sought revenge.  A wolf came out of the forest, a sword through its body but still miraculously alive. It bowed to him, offering the sword.  The prince took the sword and used it for his vengeance.  After the fact, he found out about the curse.  No miracle at all.

Horror Element:  The sword wolf grants you revenge but curses you to die from the same.  It takes the sword back to the wilderness and returns to offer it to another wronged soul – this one a victim of the prince’s rise to power.  She can use it to get revenge on him, but finding out about the curse before she fulfills it, does she have a chance to break the cycle?

Some Nonsense:  Boab, a great president, appears in the likeness of a knight, his head similar to a lion’s, riding on a great black horse.  His eyes shine like fire, he speaks with a raucous voice, and he has large teeth.  He gives the best understanding of all things natural, even the barking of dogs.  He gives full, true responses of things occult and of all questions about the present, past, and future.  He has forty legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 11 – MEDICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CREEPY KID

TITLE:  THE COST

Premise:  One terrible year ten infants die one night after another, in the maternity ward of a hospital.  Nurse Christine was in the depths of a terrible relationship which made it hard to give her full attention to work, so she wasn’t tracking on everything people were saying, or what happened with her coworkers.  One year later, babies start dying one per night, and she begins to remember incidents from that time before which lead her to investigate.  Turns out some of her fellow nurses had been quietly disappeared and even murdered to conceal the true causes of death.  They’d all experienced symptoms of rabies.

Horror Element:  Right above the maternity ward is a special child, kept in isolation due to immunocompromise.  Or is she?  A hospital administrator used sorcery to ensure his daughter’s success in life, the price of which was ten innocent souls per year that she lives.  Lil’ girl is beginning to show powers of her own, besides the annual event of puking up ghostly mutant bird-things that infect the babies downstairs.  I think Christine was abusing drugs during the first outbreak and enough people know that they can blackmail her into silence or other indignities, which makes her hesitant to seek allies.  Maybe some cool doctor breaks thru her distrust and there’s a romance under pressure story.

Some Nonsense:  Cambea, a great count, appears in the likeness of a faun.  He understands the strengths of herbs and precious stones.  He makes birds descend to earth and fly before the exorcist.  And likewise they will fight and play according to their nature as if, indeed, domesticated by the exorcist.  He has twenty legions under his dominion.

Cambea is also known as Decarabia in sources later than the Geomanticarum, which seems etymologically connected to “ten” and “rage” – which is also used for rabies.  Cambea could mean “change” as in metamorphosis or “exchange” as in trade.

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It’s Spooktober, which means I’m coming up with a month of horror story ideas and doing ai covers (with a few tweaks from photopea).  Have at thee…
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SPOOKTOBER DAY 1 – POSSESSION
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PUNK/GOTHIC

TITLE:  BACKMASK

Premise:  Deathrock never had what it takes to get big in society.  People just don’t want to hear those lyrics, feel that darkness.  But deathrock did have what it takes to swing wide the gates of hell.  The most important people in the story are a scene of deathrock musicians, including band members, studio, and biz people.  They are scrappy indy types, only differing from punk rockers in morbid dispositions, higher suicide and opiate abuse rates.

But in a marathon weekend of recording, a new artist enters the studio, seemingly out of nowhere.  Avedje looks human, but is barely able to pretend.  The most canny and close to the problem recognize she’s a demon in the flesh, but don’t know whose fault it is that she was summoned, and don’t know what they should do about it – if anything.  She has a way of getting on everybody’s albums, usually as background vocals.

Suddenly deathrock acts on the label are blowing up, and the new fans are harming themselves and others, changing, disappearing, making the impossible happen.  Most importantly, they are making sure everybody knows that life is a joke and death reigns supreme.

Horror Element:  The movie adaptation of Suicide Circle is an influence here, as are the comics of Junji Ito.  I’d take the basic theme and just spin out a bunch of variations that serve as stories within the story, get the funhouse vibe.

Some Nonsense:  Avedje, a great king and duke, appears crowned with a diadem, naught seen of him but his head; and before him proceed two ministers carrying trumpets.  He teaches of logic and rhetoric, and gives the skill to understand all languages.  He gives very good familiars.  He gives full, true answers about things present, past, and future, concerning the arts, or things consecrated in secret, and of the Fall, and how the rebel angels sinned.  Not an hour will he remain truthful, unless cast into a corner.  Possesses thirty legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 2 – ANALOG HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  PARTY

TITLE:  SNAKES AND LADDERS

Premise:  In medieval fantasy themed social game like Club Penguin for a more broish set, a group of young players gather in a private tower to RP.  Nobody wants to GM, but in the anarchy of that moment, three players are promoted to GMs.  Co-GMs?  This sets them on a path where more than one thing can be true simultaneously.  One is the only GM while the other is also the only GM and likewise the last.  Planning the games happens in the open, allowing the other players &/or GMs to all become privy to the entire plot.  Spoiler alert!

But maybe not.  They gain awareness of the past present and future simultaneously, but experience each as if it is a fresh and immediate moment.  The focal point of the adventure is a game within a game, of Snakes and Ladders.

Horror Element:  Each player and game master responds differently to the expansion of their consciousness.  Some are broken by it, some are enlightened but terrified of the inevitable total party kill ending.  Some are experiencing something else altogether, that they cannot explain to the others.  If you die in the game you die in real life.

Some Nonsense:  Ara, duke and marquis, appears in the likeness of a dragon.  When before you in human form, he marvelously controls all manner of serpents.  If the conjurer is wise, they shall gather all the knowledge they seek, and cause fierce serpents to lower themselves, by consecrating this dragon in metal.  And no kind of serpent shall be bold in their presence, and the conjurer will stand well pleased – yet not forever.  They should fear lest the image be broken, and immediately let the strength return to the snakes.  Ara gives true responses of the past present and future, and has under him twenty-five legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 3 – COSMIC HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  THE FORBIDDEN

TITLE:  HEAVY METAL THUNDER

Premise:  Druff was a mechanic and handyman in a desert town.  Some kind of drug perma-fried him too, so add wizard to the cv.  At first he just did odd jobs for the town, but via part-time work on motorcycles and hot rods, he got to know the rockers, and began to work on electric instruments and amps.  One night in the scrapyard behind the garage, he discovered the spark of life a new form of electricity.

Did it fall from space?  Was it a genuine act of science from a rare genius?  Whatever it is, it makes amps rock harder, makes hot rods hotter, and gets heavy metal fans high as balls – a forbidden pleasure.

Horror Element:  Basic Uzumaki method horror.  Pick a theme and run a series of escalating vignettes of scary ideas based on it.  Story one could be a lady getting a special guitar that causes supernatural problems for her, story five could be a coven of rock freaks getting so high they explode at a concert, story thirteen could be the mothership calling back all the volts and bolts, hollowing out the masses like the alien vampires in Lifeforce.

Some Nonsense:  Furfur, a great count, appears in the likeness of a crow, his tail like a flame.  He lies to all unless placed in a corner, but there will take an angelic form, and speak with a raucous voice.  He leads to weapons drawn between men and woman.  He renders people invisible and gives understanding of astronomy and all mechanical arts.  He gives understanding of lightning and thunder, and how they are made.  He knows the best answers in matters occult, and has under him twenty-five legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 4 – RETRO SLASHER
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  BAROQUE

TITLE:  THE RED KNIGHT

Premise:  Everyone is fucking done with sectarian warfare.  This ville doesn’t feel the magnificence of holiness, a precursor to modern french apathy atheism, because the Wars of Religion have made a mockery of both brands of jeezyism.  Some people might have sympathies one way or another, and they’re all nominally catholic as they’re supposed to be, but the late baroque era is all about getting by and enjoying life.

Or is it?  People are getting murked nasty by some stealthy and preternaturally skilled man at arms.  At last a suspect is seen, and his red-lacquered full plate armor still makes him too buff to kill.  Did I say stealthy and plate armor?  It has strips of leather between every point of contact.

Horror Element:  Old timey Michael Myers.  A catholic knight transformed by the most recent religious war into an utter monster, he sees huguenots where there are none.  Like the slashers that kill people who fuck first, he is more likely to judge you protestant if he sees you engaged in sin.

Imagine the sensory experience of being around such a guy.  You’d smell him before you’d see him.  Dude is living off of raw meat, never giving away his location with a campfire.  Raw rat is easier to chew than raw cow.  His armor is not completely silent.  It makes him so heavy, his footsteps are like the hoofbeats of an ox.  He has his own gravity.  Maybe that’s why you slipped while running away.  Time to get fileted for jesus.

Some Nonsense:  Now, however, we must speak of Berich.  Berich is a king yet is called a great duke by all.  The followers of Solomon call him by this name: Berich.  The grammarians call him by the name Belfayt.  He appears in the likeness of a red knight, and his horse is red, and his raiment red, and he wears two crowns.  He gives fully true responses of the past, present, and future.  Constrain him by divine virtue, and by the art of a magic ring, for when at liberty, he lies.  He teaches in full how to change all kinds of metals to gold and silver.  He gives titles and confirms them with clear understanding.  He has a raucous voice, and has under him twenty-six legions.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 5 – BODY HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  EROTIC THRILLER

TITLE:  INVERTED PASSIONS aka THE DEMENTED WORLD OF DOCTOR DICK

Premise:  A mad scientist driven by transphobia tries to come up with a way to medically detransition people against their will.  When he realizes the same tech could be used to help people medically transition better than ever, he tries to overdose on drugs.  Pill mixup, he became a genital elemental!

This sounds like a setup for tentacle porn.  Let’s dodge that.  Before he can tentacruel anybody, he explodes and rains monster jizz into the hospital water supply.  This hospital is full of sexy professionals having the usual hot naked affairs and adult hijinks.  Until…

Horror Element:  In a bit of unreality, nobody here rushes to the emergency room when their genitals turn inside out.  There’s secret shame, fevered scenes of self examination and dubious efforts to beat things back into shape, some people turning into monsters, some few discovering they like what happened to them and not wanting to see it reversed.  This could be taken as exploitation horror or anti-trans propaganda.  Or maybe it’s a didactic lesson showing cis people that genital dysphoria is no bueno.

Some Nonsense:  Lambes, great king and president, appears in the likeness of a woman.  He speaks sweetly, bestowing the love of men as well as women.  If the exorcist wishes to provoke all people to his love, let him fashion a grand image of himself.  Behold! when “love overcometh love” is inscribed upon its brow and the power takes hold, the exorcist’s image is consecrated, granting him such virtue that all people of whatever sex accede to his love.  And so none may cause him to fall for another, as all are marked with his sign.  And he has fifteen legions under him.

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anyway, busy as fuck.  driveby drivebys is all i can muster for the bloge.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #31 — PLAYER’S CHOICE
(× Alien/Space or Anime or Backwoods or Clones/Doppelgangers or Competition or Creepy Kid or Creepypasta/Urban Legend or Cursed Object or Cyberpunk or Darkweb/Technology or Holiday or J-Horror or Killer Animal or Killer Toys or Lost Media or Lovecraftian or Mad Scientist or Spoopy/Pumpkincore or Stephen King Style)

TITLE:  Hallowar

PREMISE:  It’s ON.  In the cyberpunk dystopia (Cyberpunk) there are haves and have-nots.  The well-to-do have a pristine network of MMOs where everybody dwells in beauty and light, the poor have a grotty gore-filled indie basement (Darkweb) called Halloween Online 2.0 (Pumpkincore).  The most influential character there has a child-like avatar (Creepy Kid) but everybody assumes they must be older, right?  That character declares a PvP event (Competition) called Hallowar (roll credits) (Holiday).

The PvP area resembles the US Northeast in fall colors (Stephen King Style), with rows of classic homes on shadowy leaf-strewn lanes.  All the NPCs have been turned into killer ghosts (J-Horror) that sometimes possess dolls (Killer Toys), but is it safer in the craggy tree-covered hills (Backwoods) inspired by The Colour Out of Space (Lovecraftian)?  No, those are full of mutated animals that hate life and love death (Killer Animal).

The timing of the event is such that the tactic of “kill all other players then take time with the puzzle” is not tenable, so all the players are both racing to investigate the mysteries, and fighting each other, with short-term alliances and much treachery.  The mystery plot is about an anime (Anime) that has gone out of print (Lost Media), but if you find a copy (Cursed Object) and watch it, you’ll die (Creepypasta).  Three copies quickly turn up, and players stop taking each other out with shovels and croquet mallets, instead tricking each other into watching the tapes.

But just how many lives do you get in this game?  Nobody said anything about multiple lives, but some players are coming back for another round, even after being killed (Clones/Doppelgangers).  They’re accused of hacking, but there’s something wrong with these avatars, and that suspicion is replaced with worse ones.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The answer to the mystery, when revealed, has to do with a mad scientist (Mad Scientist) who tried to contact aliens (Aliens) and brought their murder-ghosts down to earth in the form of killer EVP and such.  All you have to do to win is be the first to take out the scientist, right?  But in parallel to the events of the game, participants have been acting creepy IRL, and it’s becoming clear they’ve all been the victims of some kind of mad science.  The child avatar emcee appears from inside the lab coat, to offer the last survivors some kind of explanation – or perhaps just to gloat.  Your souls belong to the game now.  Happy Halloween.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #30 — UNDEAD
(× Reptiles or Stranded/Desert Island or Extreme Weather)

TITLE:  Charles Darwin vs the Imps of Darkness

PREMISE:  Guess who’s back?  It’s ya boy Chaz, and he survived the mutated brain-sucking finches.  With all the finches back to normal or wiped out with shotgun blasts, they’ve left Darwin alone on San Cristóbal (Stranded) with the bodies of the rest of the Beagle‘s crew, all hollowed out skulls and drifts of down.  In his sorrow he talks with the dead, moving among them to scavenge supplies.  A mysterious fog descends, so thick nothing can be seen (Extreme Weather), and he falls into a tide pool sobbing.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Marine Iguana druids (Reptiles) come to land when the fog is thick, and behold the mournful man.  He wants to see his friends live.  Undead is close enough, right?  They raise the crew as horrid zombies (Undead) that shamble and do strange things with what’s left of their bodies.  Darwin is even more traumatized, and goes to war against the “Imps of Darkness.”  Will he defeat his reptilian would-be benefactors?  Well, IRL Darwin is dead and marine iguanas aren’t extinct yet, so…

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #29 — SMALL CREATURES
(× Victorian or Forest or Holiday)

TITLE:  ¡Feliz Navidad, Buenos Aires!

PREMISE:  Nadine and Paola are sheisty teenagers who just don’t give a fig.  When they come across a cursed antique (Victorian) set of toy soldiers (Small Creatures), they give them to conservative tio Sarmiento as an early Navidad (Holiday) present, and his ass puts ’em on the tree, it’s gonna be a cursed little christmas.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Sarmiento is forgetful and while he realizes there is a ridiculous bounty of soldiers in the chest, he doesn’t remember how many he’s pulled out – and that it is frankly an impossible amount.  He gives them to everybody – they even find their way onto a big tree at the mall.  When they come to life, it’s a forest (Forest) of wooden demons, in Gremlins-styled mayhem.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

🎃 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 🎃  By now I have finished all 31, but I’m posting these all queued a few days behind, to get bloge content out of it.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #28 — GOTHIC
(× Geezer Teaser/Psycho Biddy or Silence or Insects)

TITLE:  House of Flies

PREMISE:  Seema fled from a cruel home life that almost killed her.  Unwilling to return, starving, lost, she took a job caring for an old woman of British descent who lived in a foreboding mansion at the top of the hill (Gothic).  The job wasn’t too weird at first, aside from being required to stay silent (Silence) at all times, so she can hear distant cries for assistance at the top of the stairs.

She became hypervigilant, attuned to all the noises of the creaky old house, but still had trouble distinguishing between the sounds of Georgina, the hum of electricity, and whatever these buzzing insects (Insects) were.  But in the moments when she got to leave the house for groceries, she met a nice dude and began a courtship.  Life could be worse.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Life got worse.  Georgina formed a presence in Seema’s mind that seemed to transcend the physical.  Was Seema going paranoid, losing her sense of decency and empathy toward a disabled old gal, or was the haunting buzz real?  Georgina (Psycho Biddy) figured out that Seema was seeing a dude and messed with their relationship, and messed with Seema’s head until things went all Edgar Allan Poe.

 

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #27 — COSMIC HORROR
(× Chaos or Virtual Reality or Virus)

TITLE:  Welcome to the Disease

PREMISE:  In da Future, we are all jacked in, on that virtual reality tip (Virtual Reality).  It’s 100% secure, like, internet security is no longer an issue for some reason.  Come inside, we’ve got a paradise to help you forget your incipient decrepitude.  Enjoy the pleasuredomes.

But how was this achieved?  The quantum woo is real.  Quantum computers managed to access the platonic realm of Forms, the for-real real, to which all of our teacups and pink flamingos and biological existences are pale imitations.  But humans were not meant to intrude into that heady air, representing an incursion of entropy (Chaos) into that previously inviolate realm of perfection.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The condition is spread by some unknown means, like The Ring (Virus), but everybody is racing to figure out what the rules are.  When you’ve caught it, some Joel Cairo-looking emeff appears to you and says, “Welcome to the Disease” (roll credits), and then your VR experience is corrupted.  You behold what it looks like when perfect order meets perfect chaos (Cosmic Horror), and like, lose all your sanity points or something.

 

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #26 — GHOSTS
(× Curses or Punk/Gothic or Time-Loop/Alt-Chronology)

TITLE:  Ghost Lightning

PREMISE:  The streets of LA are haunted by bad weather.  As late summer fades to fall, lightning storms break out, but this lightning be cursed (Curses) by the ghosts (Ghosts) of some terrible crime.  The worst part?  The crime didn’t even happen in this reality, but we’re still paying the price.  In an alternate timeline (Alt-Chronology) the government developed time travel and used it to do a genocide, creating time ghosts that rip through the boundaries between dimensions and torment indiscriminately.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The time ghosts manifest as bolts of lightning, and in their wake leave holes where you can see through to another world.  Somehow, it’s always a world where people are alive who in your world are dead, or vice versa, and you get the horror of losing them again, or being lost to them again, when the opening closes.  Also possibly getting lightning bolted to death.  Zzap.

Our heroines are punky (Punk/Gothic) trans lesbian Martika Martinez and her cis girlfriend Ariel Nunn, who are also haunted by alternate versions of themselves that are not in love, or not out of the closet.  Weird times, yo.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #25 — SUMMER CAMP/CABIN
(× Survival Horror or Disaster or Trees)

TITLE:  Happy Campers (apologies to whichever fifty people first used this title ironically)

PREMISE:  Camp counselors (Summer Camp) are very insistent that you have a happy time, the best time of your life.  Macrame or get burned with a lighter.  Toast the marshmallow but if it catches fire you catch these hands.  What’s wrong with them?  And is it contagious?  Other kids start to get with the creepy agenda, leaving the radicals and non-joiners increasingly desperate for the freedom to slouch in their own independent ways.  And not get murdered with hand-crafted natural weapons, like god intended (Survival Horror).

HORROR ELEMENT:  It’s a natural disaster (Disaster) because some kind of exotic mold in the trees (Trees) has grown far in excess of its usual amounts, due to its natural predator the jackanory weevil being gobbled up en masse by invasive spotted balinese assassin bugs.  When the wind kicks up and the pollen rains down, humans catch something like ergotism.  All suffer erratic adrenaline spikes and altered behavior, but the most socially conformist become prone to violent rage and sadistic oppression.

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SPOOKTOBER 2024!

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

SPOOKTOBER DAY #24 — FOLK HORROR
(× Mountain or Odd Couple or Dark Magic)

TITLE:  The Alpine’s Bumpin’

PREMISE:  I’m gettin’ good grip from the fifty series tires; the alpine’s bumpin’ but I need the volume higher…  So quoth Sir Mixalot.  I know folk horror is usually about a summery rural cult torturing some squares to death but I don’t love the genre so I’m going with the idea this category could include faerie tales.  So.

Jakeem and Bernard are an odd couple (Odd Couple), wherein Jakeem is the low-key nerd, and Bernard is the vision-questing Jim Morrisonesque tripping man.  He must drag his personal Ray Manzarek (Jakeem) to the ends of the earth, and this time it’s up a mountain (Mountain).  They went to a ski resort with the idea they’d meet some cool people and learn how to snowboard, but the resort is all but abandoned.  The weather report said skiing too dangerous, slopes closed, but the resort itself was still technically open, which is how they ended up with tickets while everybody else was staying home.

The skeleton crew of a staff warns them to stay inside, enjoy the cocoa by the fireplace, take in the view from the grand lodge, whatever.  But Bernard ensorcels Jakeem to follow him off a cliff, in his usual way.  The dudes end up high literally and figuratively in snowy dangerous places.  The mountain paths rely on consensus reality to stay moored in the mortal realm.  Without two hundred snowbunnies thinking it’s just a ski slope, it becomes a path to the impossible.  The guys find themselves in an ice castle, subject to palace intrigue between some talking ravens, dwarven servants, and a wicked ice witch (Folk Horror).

HORROR ELEMENT:  At first it’s all fun and games.  Jakeem teaches the ravens to smoke weed, Bernard wheedles the witch about the nature of reality, maaan.  But things take a turn for the real when the witch bites back with vindictive curses and spells (Dark Magic), leading to grim shit like raven cannibalism and horrible transformations.  All psyche stripped to the bone, what’s left of our gentlemen?  Will they ever get back to college?

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