Halloween Short Stories

A.bating I.ncentive

Once upon a time, long before AI took over the world, Creativity-Portal.com hosted a true Halloween Story Writing Contest. True as in the event was open to all who desired to write and submit their own original short stories related to the creepy, scary, boo-ish holiday.

Perhaps surprising now, but all submitted stories were written 100% by humans, although one monkey in Kalamazoo is still proving the theorem and will be typing for a while.

What ripple-effect did this have in the world?

• The sweet human-directed "prompt" remains uncontested in inspiring over 30 men, women, teachers, and teens to carve out time to travel back into their favorite Halloween memories, crafting creative stories at all levels of scariness and suspense.
• The pieces fostered engagement in authentic creative process — immersing imaginations into real writing activity, producing imperfect wabi-sabi narratives now manifested and rippling their own effects.
• It invited curious minds into sanctioned, safe space for exploration, practice, and craft development, honing story-telling talent and skills. All worth their weight in gold in connecting deeper and carving meaning in the human experience.

One clever writing teacher at Plano East Senior High in Texas, USA, used the assignment to inspire students to write impressive original, funny, spooky, and garish Halloween stories, tapping into and twisting real-life experiences and fictional tangents into works of art. Delightfully, a student with the sweetest name took first place, and you can read her story and other submissions below.

Reports in 2025 saw the Internet grow increasingly overrun with soulless content generated by AI and bots. It saw students pass up opportunities for grand personal adventures. And it watched trained, seasoned professionals pack up their cubicals as they were discarded in droves. This resulted in diminished creative incentive and potential traded for quick hits of generated CheatGPT content skimming off the collective and passed off as personal genius.

The situational horror marked an era of struggle for content creators — writers, designers, artists, composers, and others solely motivated by monetization who wondered "why bother?" competing in the glut of preferential doom-scrolling. Ironically, it unveiled an interesting reason to the "why" some continued to design, innovate, and create novel and unique things in the world anyway.

AI's on-demand derivative continued to produce impostor works and increased mistrust. Dependence on the technology threatened to erode the most fundamental structures of society. Yes, it saved time. But at a huge loss you will never find on a balance sheet.

Today this may be one of the scariest stories ever told. But it's not finished yet...