Something To Read 5: Spooky and Unsettling

## Something To Read

The purpose of the Something To Read series is to provide a new writing prompt every month in an attempt to get those out there that want to participate into writing little short stories to help with creative ideas, or perhaps other things such as trying a new character in a certain scenario or simply for entertainment/inspiring.  These activities posted monthly can be either broad and wide or very specific in nature, which can also put a spin on what's written every month by those who decide to participate.

### Topic

Of course, seeing how at the time of posting this one it's October, this month's Something To Read topic had to be something having to do with the freaky, the scary, the unsettling, and the downright frightening.  Compared to the other topics of Something To Read so far this one is a bit broad, but I expect that to happens sometimes, if just because I'm not certain it's good to have excessively narrow topics every single time.  Anyway, on to the topic at hand, the title suggests perhaps a spooky atmosphere of some kind, though really any sort of scary or horror thing can be approached.  It could be an outright horror story, complete with all of the things that would make it such, or perhaps it's just a scene out of a particular story (or just a single scene the author thinks up) that's scary.  Or, on that same vein, maybe it's not "scary", but rather just unsettling to the characters for one reason or another.  Maybe a character finds an old doll that just gives me the creeps.  Maybe a character has to face a fear or phobia of theirs that has them in a bind.  Maybe a character is just really, really freaked out by that giant roach or bug in their house.  Maybe there's some kind of actual monster (or a person, like a serial killer or something similar) lurking around in the town or somewhere where the characters wind up.  Perhaps the story is told from the perspective of said monster itself.  Really, there's an almost limitless amount of ideas that could be used here, anything that happens to pertain to something that's spooky, or even just anything the characters find scary.  The readers might not find a story about people camping freaky, but one cowardly character might be afraid of what lurks out in the dark (whether it's actually something or not).  Or, maybe said camping story actually winds up scary.  Point is, there's many, many different ways this theme could be played.

And then, as usual with these Something To Read episodes, the theme could be used differently from a sort of horror story.  Maybe the characters are attending some kind of Halloween party or festival of some kind.  Maybe some characters are having a scary costume party or out trick-or-treating.  Now, feel free to combine this with your own ideas or perhaps even the old Something To Read episodes if you so desire.  The point of the Something To Read episodes is to spark ideas and let them roam, and therefor nothing is saying that one has to stick to the prompt here alone.  Feel free to ask away if you have questions, though make sure to stay within the community rules for both your questions and your written entries.

Now, see what you can come up with for this month.

### Old Issues

Feel free to check out the old issues of Something To Read here if you'd like.

Something To Read #1: House and Mist

Something To Read #2: Inner Voice

Something To Read #3: Mirror Reflections

Something To Read #4: Steam Pipes