The Halloween Ghost Story Challenge

[caddyman]

Well, it's here at last, the much trumpeted (by me) Halloween Story Challenge. I had the idea in September when I read an entry on Twitter by belle_fille1982, or @missdracula as she is known over there. She posted a line from a song and it got me thinking. Indeed my story is based upon the lyric of that song -it's one I'm confident that you all know, even if you've never noted the underlying horror.

The challenge was based on the regular Christmas Challenge instituted several years ago by pax_draconis: A ghost or horror story in 500 words or less. My only refinement for the Halloween challenge was for the author to link it however loosely, to a song lyric.

Everyone who has entered - and I have twelve, excluding my own contribution - is convinced that their song inspiration is obvious. I am less sure though some become more obvious when you see the list of candidates. What I have done at the end of the story links is to list the songs, or snippets of lyric, in no particular order and assign them a number. This is just a little bit of fun suggested, though not necessarily in this format, by jfs.

I spent ages putting this all into a poll, but that just did horrible things to LiveJournal, with infinite data loops and all that rot. I have deleted the poll - which is annoying as it took about an hour to sort out!

Anyway, in order to retrieve a little dignity from the project, feel free to leave comments and speculation in the comments section and I shall post the answers up in a few days just to put you out of your misery!

I think all the stories are great fun and I am overwhelmed that so many of you took part. I knew you had it in you!

Here are the links:

nyarbaggytep: Here
romney: Here
pax_draconis: Here
manamar: Here
snorkel_maiden: Here
geekette8: Here
bopeepsheep: Here
littleonionz: Here
fencingsculptor: Here
bibliogirl: Here
maleghast: Here
caddyman: Here
ellefurtle: Here

The song titles I have are here, one author forgot to tell me what song provided their with inspiration, so feel free to provide speculation in the comments area:

1 Chim Chimney – Dick Van Dyke
2 Killer Queen - Queen
3 Godzilla - Blue Oyster Cult
4 The Tide is High - Blondie
5 Man of Colours - Icehouse
6 White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
7 Ain’t No Sunshine - Bill Withers
8 The Dweller Upon the Threshold of Time - The Freezing Fog
9 Amelia – The Mission
10 Suburbia – Petshop Boys
11 Sharon - Deacon Blue
12 The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did, and if you contributed, I hope you found it a fun challenge!

Cross posted to, from and between my journal and just_writing.

Comments

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Can you ask fencingsculptor to unlock theirs, please? It seems to be friends-locked.

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

It's unlocked now.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

Really enjoyed Elle's - "Killer Queen"?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

You should tell her on the entry, Old Chum.

[sea-strands.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed all of these; thank you for arranging and linking and to all who wrote. My special favourite was from nyarbaggytep which I am thinking must be The Tide is High.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

It was, although I didn't know Blondie did a version! I was thinking of the reggae one, by The Paragons

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Same song. Blondie went to no1 in UK and US in 1980 with it.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

I will go seek it out. It was the paragons version I was listening to though.

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I meant to say that I'm glad you enjoyed it too!

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

Well done for running the Halloween writing challenge.

I really enjoyed reading them all.

Paul W

[etoile-violet.livejournal.com]

This was an excellent challenge :-D (I came here via ellefurtle). Will you post the answers soon, or point me to the answers post if I've just missed it? I can't find the Freezing Fog lyrics anywhere, and I can't hear them enough to decipher them on their MySpace page, so there are two I still don't know!

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Finally, I got around to posting up the answers!

http://caddyman.livejournal.com/1021899.html

[etoile-violet.livejournal.com]

Thank you :-D