A Ghost Story Competition That Reads a Haunting as a Haunting
Quick answer: A ghost story competition with a published rubric: Writory accepts original ghost stories of 100 to 3,000 words in any language, judged blind on the five published marks, with dread scored as structure and the person haunted scored as character. Entry is $8, the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100.
Writory's short story contest accepts ghost stories of 100 to 3,000 words in any language, judged blind against a published rubric. Entry is $8, the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100.
How the rubric reads a ghost story
A ghost story is judged as a ghost story. Storytelling & Structure, 25 points, is read as the management of dread: does each appearance of the thing cost more than the last, and does the ending deliver what the first hint promised. M. R. James wrote the rules down himself in "Some Remarks on Ghost Stories" (1929): a familiar setting, a ghost that is malevolent rather than sad, and reticence, meaning the writer withholds more than he shows. "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" (1904) is those rules applied to one seaside hotel.
Character & Emotional Impact, another 25, is why so many competent ghost stories score in the sixties. The reader has to want the haunted person to be all right, and a professor who exists only to open the wrong drawer does not earn that. Edith Wharton's "Afterward" (1910) works because Mary Boyne's marriage is the real subject and the ghost is the bill arriving. Language & Craft, 20 points, rewards restraint; the adjective "terrifying" has never terrified anyone, and a judge reading blind will mark it as a gap where an image should be.
Craft notes for a haunting in 100 to 3,000 words
Set it somewhere the reader already knows. James insisted on the familiar, and Charles Dickens's "The Signal-Man" (1866) takes place in a railway cutting, the most modern location of its year. A haunted flat above a takeaway is more frightening than a castle because the reader has stood in one. Introduce the wrongness small: a chair moved a hand's width, a letter in a hand the character recognises. Escalate three times at most; at this length a fourth appearance is repetition, and Structure notices.
Give the ghost a reason and never state it. The dead in the best stories want something, and the living character's failure to understand what is the engine. Rabindranath Tagore's "Kshudhita Pashan" ("The Hungry Stones", 1895) is told by a tax collector in a Mughal palace who never learns what the palace wants from him, and the not-learning is the story. Decide whether the ghost is real or the mind's, and know the answer yourself even if the page keeps it ambiguous, as Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898) does.
End after the ending. The final image of a ghost story should be a small domestic detail that has changed meaning, not the ghost itself; Impact & Resonance, the last 10 points, is decided by what the reader sees in their own hallway that night. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959) closes on the house, not on Eleanor, and Susan Hill's The Woman in Black (1983) closes on a man who has finished telling a story he cannot finish living. The free Story Craft course at /academy/story-craft covers endings at exactly this scale.
Any language, one pool, and what you receive
Every culture has its own dead, and Writory reads ghost stories in any language in that language, in one pool with everything else in the round; a chudail in Hindi stands beside a pontianak in Malay and a Victorian revenant in English. Writers must be 13 or over and the work must be original. Entry is $8 for one story, $14 for two and $25 for five, each judged separately. The first contest runs from 1 September to 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. From December the contest is monthly: entries close on the 25th, results on the 30th, and the next round opens the moment they land.
Every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100 on 30 November 2026, with the five marks shown separately: Storytelling & Structure 25, Character & Emotional Impact 25, Language & Craft 20, Originality & Voice 20, Impact & Resonance 10. The top story takes $100 and free entry to the next round; free entry is earned, not open to all. Writers keep all rights, optional written feedback is available at entry, and the criteria are published at /short-story-judging-criteria.
The published rubric, 100 points
- Storytelling & Structure (25 points): Does every scene cause the next, and does the ending pay off the opening?
- Character & Emotional Impact (25 points): Do we want something with your character, and does the story make us feel it?
- Language & Craft (20 points): Clean, deliberate prose: rhythm, precision, and nothing wasted.
- Originality & Voice (20 points): The angle only you could write, told in a voice that sounds like nobody else.
- Impact & Resonance (10 points): What the story leaves behind after the last line.
How it works
Submit an original story of 100 to 3,000 words by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Every story is judged blind against the rubric above, and results arrive on 30 November 2026: every entrant receives a certificate with their name and a score out of 100. Writers keep all rights. Monthly winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
Are ghost stories eligible in the Writory contest?
Yes. The contest accepts original stories of 100 to 3,000 words in any genre, and a ghost story is read as a ghost story: the judges score the management of dread as structure and the haunted person as character. There is no separate horror category; a ghost story stands in the same pool as everything else.
What does it cost to enter?
$8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five, each judged and scored separately. The winner of a round takes $100 and free entry to the next; free entry is earned that way and is not open to everyone.
What do I get back if my story does not win?
A certificate and a score out of 100 split into the five rubric marks. For a ghost story, compare Storytelling & Structure with Impact & Resonance: a high first and low second means the appearances escalated but the last image did not follow the reader home, which is the fault most hauntings share.
How long should a ghost story be?
Anything from 100 to 3,000 words is eligible. The classical ghost story runs 5,000 to 10,000 words, so the cap asks you to keep one location and at most three appearances. Flash-length hauntings of a few hundred words are also complete if the single wrongness lands, and are read as flash.
Does the ghost have to be real within the story?
No. The story may leave it open, as The Turn of the Screw does, or resolve it either way. What the judges read for is whether the ambiguity is controlled; a story that is undecided because the writer was undecided reads differently from one that keeps two explanations alive on purpose.
Is a ghost story the same as horror here?
The contest does not separate them, but the judges read what the story attempts. Horror can rely on shock and the body; the ghost story tradition relies on reticence and dread, and a ghost story is marked on how well it manages those. A story can be both, and is then read for both.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 31 countries have entered, readers come from over 150 countries, and every submitted poem is judged and scored out of 100 across five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and impact and resonance. Every entrant receives a certificate; winners receive cash prizes and are published by name. Entries close on the 25th of each month and results are announced on the 30th. Writory is listed by Duotrope, Poetry Kit, Christopher Fielden's competition list and Creative Writing NZ, among other organisations. Past results are public at past winners and the leaderboard.