Happy Halloween

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

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🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Embracing Our Deepest Fears

And another Writober has come to an end. I hope these daily writing and photography challenges have gotten you into a daily creativity habit that you will continue into the fall and winter. The prompt posts will continue to be available so come back any time to visit the ones you missed, or want to try again.

As humans we all move toward pleasure and away from pain. It is part of our physical make up to be motivated by survival and avoid danger and death. So when it comes to exploring our deepest fears, we are working against our nature. If we want to write deeply and explore our deepest fears, we need to convince ourselves we are safe, and that memories and imagination cannot hurt us. 

We need to tell the voices from childhood that make up the reactionary rules of our subconscious, that we thank them for the work they did to protect us when we needed them, but now we don’t need them anymore. Writing is about living with our deepest fears every day. Facing our deepest fears doesn’t end on Halloween but is part of our writing practice with every word we choose to put on the page. 

OctPoWriMo

Here we are, Halloween. Congratulations!! I hope you’ve felt inspired and had a lot of fun.

Example Poem: “All Hallows Eve” by William Baer from Poems Dead and Undead_(Aal)

All Hallows Eve

Standing above her open coffin,
within that pestilent place,
he stared at her colorless corpse
and stared at her lovely face.

Sensing a sense of accusation,
“Leave us alone,” he said,
and the others left the mausoleum
and left him with the dead.

He placed his hand at the top of her gown
and broke the clasps apart,
staring down at the purple scar
above her silent heart.

Then he bolted the lid, locked the door,
and saw in the lightning’s light
three ghouls who craved her rotting flesh
in the blackness of the night.

Maggots who dig up and eat the dead
in the pits of no-man’s-land,
who scented the scent of the newly-dead,
who lunged and scratched his hand.

But he smashed them back with his walking stick,
and they staggered from the shock,
then slithered away from the dead one’s tomb,
as he double-checked the lock.

But waiting near the graveyard gate,
under the hemlock tree,
a seductive vampyr smiled and said,
“Come away with me.”

He saw the fangs and famished eyes
of the tempting whore of pain,
who swiftly moved into his path
and touched his jugular vein.

But he lifted a hand of garlic flowers,
and the creature jerked and hissed
into the winds of the coming storm
and vanished in the mist.

At the edge of town, he saw the monster
nearing the torch-lit gate,
looking for its human god,
looking for its mate.

Enraged by the thunder’s thunder,
it stepped away from its place,
but calmly he grabbed the flaming torch
and burned its ugly face.

Later he heard the werewolves howl,
up along the ridge,
as suddenly they blocked his path
before the wooden bridge.

Ravenous, they moved to strike,
but it was far too late;
he lifted up a silver bullet,
then his .38.

He fired at the alpha-wolf,
hitting the vicious gray
and blowing apart its little brain
as the others ran away.

Nearing his gate, he saw the daemon,
but never broke his stride,
and when it saw his hollow eyes,
it nodded, and stepped aside.

At last, the storm fell from the night,
as he entered the house of pain,
it fell in torrents, flashed and crashed,
and pounded sheets of rain.

Upstairs he found the silent ghost
sitting alone, undressed,
with the sharp and bloodless knife
protruding from her chest.

Being the one he’d just entombed,
his daughter, the jilted bride,
who’d come back home to nothing
but a shocking suicide.

The specter pointed at her heart,
but he stared across the room,
into the mirror, into his eyes,
each an empty tomb.

No wonder the creatures had cowered away,
and surely they were right,
those predators of human flesh,
those vermin of the night.

For they could only murder the body,
the part but not the whole,
but he was a far more deadly thing:
the assassin of his soul.

The storm fell down from the blackest night,
over the house of pain,
the torrents flashed and thunder-crashed
and pounded the slashing rain.

~William Baer

Prompt: Write a narrative poem about a Halloween Night.

Possible Form: Quatrain stanzas with an XAXA rhyme scheme, or Freeverse.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Thirty-one Image

Click on the link and take a look at the image. How might this image relate to today’s theme? Write a piece of flash fiction, anything from a six-word story to 999 words. Feel free to bring in the OctPoWriMo prompt and the Photography Challenge prompt, anything that inspires your story.

Halloween Photography Challenge

Prompt: Take a picture of your favorite thing about Halloween.

Thank you so much for joining me for this year’s October challenges. Remember to support each other by visiting and commenting on as many links as you can.

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