All Comments on 'Harrowing Halloween'

Really enjoyed the main characters, and have to say I'd like to see more. Evelyn's obvious connection with Chris and pseudo possession of Alice could for sort of a bound allowing her to visit them, perhaps more frequently since she is no longer bound to the cemetary.

5 stars, of course

You definitely need an editor to comb over this, but by far my favorite Halloween story this year.

This story would be awesome with the help of an editor. Very imaginative and engrossing. The spelling kept breaking me out of the story's spell. While I loved the characters and would like to read more about them, you wrapped up all the threads so neatly that I felt quite satisfied with the ending.

Thank you to the first anonymous who suggested how I can continue the story. I had been thinking about this as the only part to the story so that I wouldn’t overwrite but I can add more too it after revising this section.

Author note:

Sorry for any spelling or grammar errors that pulled readers out of the story. I had planned for more time to edit but didn’t realize how much this story would expand once I started writing it. I will be working on an edited version soon.

I liked how you moved the story, evolved it and then nicely wrapped it up. I look forward to reading more of your work. I’m a hopeless romantic so I see Chris and Alice living happily ever after following this, maybe naming their daughter Evelyn. Great work!

I read your story and I must say that it's the best halloween story I have read in a long time. I hop you write more like it & keep up the good work and I hope you win the contest.

Screw the spelling errors! I was so involved with this story never saw them. I swung my fists along with Chris and I am not ashamed to say I cried about the deep caring and love written within. This was well written and I am happy that Evelyn experienced love before moving on. On All Hollows Eve our ancestors do move among us if you are turned in. Thanks for this story. Keep writing!

Very well written despite the grammar issues. I was engaged throughout the whole story. Looking forward to expansions on these characters

Very, very well done. I thank you, and will be reading your other submissions. Do continue with this story if you can. It is very clever and well thought out.

I really enjoyed reading this story. I found it interesting and i could not have enough of it. Could not stop reading it. Thanks ;)

Thank you for sharing this story. I could really feel the pain and anxiety of the main character. I also really liked how the main character developed and grew as a person.

Very nice!

and well worth the win.

As several others noted, the story would be strengthened by having a copy editor go over it. The editor can help avoid distractions caused by spelling -- and perhaps suggest ways to make the timing evident without the "headline" approach. A more extensive edit to build in some added personality notes to the women may be helpful, too.

Looking forward to reading more of your work.

Awesome job! Your style is great, your imagery is fabulous and the emotion was intense. Please keep writing.

I was just looking for something kinky with an interesting hook. I did not expect to have feels and be intrigued by the story as well as the characters. Well done indeed.

I thought the first 5.5 pages were superb (minor typos aside - several "Well"s coming out as "While" etc) - a fantastic romance, a slow-burn love affair. I think you ran out of time to get it finished though - from around the party the style changed and we lost the filling that made the first part so readable, and the 3 of them all losing their V-cars was way too matter of fact (e.g. compare with your description of his first kiss). The typos and grammar problems also became much more of a problem (some tense changing even from sentence to sentence - 1st person present is superbly immediate, but if you switch into it it needs to be sustained through a complete scene at minimum)

In particular I think you could have developed enormously the reaction of Alice to finding about Evelyn. We could have had her initial shock at finding Chris's involvement with someone else, that it's been going on for 5 years, and getting her head around the fact she's competing with a ghost. And then the events in the subsequent year: Alice is obviously hot to trot, but this other involvement complicates matters. We could hear all about both her and Chris' conflicted feelings about the threesome. We also know they've held back from full intercourse until that final scene, but have engaged in oral. So there's opportunity for the first time they get naked how they desperately want each other, but hold back because Chris is so in love with Evelyn, and Alice is still working out her feelings about that and working him round too. So they develop red lines that get progressively harder to maintain. (A series with some wonderful episodes based on this idea was "M Club" by WatchingCloud). And in the final scene we could have more about how Alice and Evelyn hatch the plot to solve the conundrum by doing him together, maybe just in oblique hints from Alice during the intervening year as she reflects on her initial 'posession' leading to development of the idea in her mind. And in the final act the emotional deluge of finally releasing that pent-up desire gets us back to the style of their first kiss.

Finally, I would not extend it into a further timeline with the threesome - the trope of the ghost leaving once the "unfinished business" is cleared up is such a strong one it shouldn't be broken. If you wanted to continue, then it should be Alice and Chris alone, with Evelyn as a memory. Maybe when their child is 13-14 have another "event", with the child finally letting on to the parents about it, and it awakening memories in them and they get to reliving the experience along with supporting the child.

So in summary, half a wonderful story, but it could have been sooooo much better. I know it got a prize, but please think about rewriting those last couple of pages (maybe those ideas fill it out to another six or so) and turning it into what it could be.

It was very good and excellent in the beginning, but it fails in a few respects. We never get to see the motivation of either of our antagonists for any of their actions. Some story. Also the main character has some good qualities, but his investigative curiosity is really insufferable. Also having a conversation during the fight scene with Mr Anderson was ridiculous. I liked the sex scene at the end though.

Thank you to everyone who voted on this story and helped me win third place in this year's Halloween contest, I really appreciate it.

To the readers who have commented, thank you for taking the time to give me both positive and negative feedback. The only set ideas I had for this story was the opening scene and the final sex scene of the story, but that was originally going to be just between Chris and Evelyn, Alice was supposed to be a side character but she seemed to become more of a main character on her own. The story took on more events and characters then I had originally intended, pushing back my amount of time to edit in order to get the story submitted in time for the contest. This seems to be my weakness everytime I plan to enter one of the contests. As noticed by several commenters, the final parts of the story were not as well written as the rest of it, I ran out of time and had to pull an all-nighter to finish the story in time and could only do a brief edit on that section. After I finish up my NANOWRIMO for this month I am going to work on the next revision of this story so thank you for telling me what areas I need to focus on during the rewrite so I can improve my story.

Great story. You deserved at least 3rd place. I haven't read any of the other winners yet, but you earned a very rare 5 Stars from me for this story. I don't give them out very often and have probably only given a handful out during the last several years that I have been reading stories on here. I have probably read a couple thousand of them.

I hope you continue writing on here and with a bit more frequency as many of the great writers on this site have left.

I was just looking for something to help me out but didn't expect this. I was uncertain at the beginning but had hope, im now glad i didn't stop reading after page 1. The twist and how it keeps u on the edge is amazing. Wish i could always read amazing stories like these.

Good story, from a good imagination. Unfortunately, it is full of errors— I wonder if you read it over after you’d finished it. Homonyms are reversed, letters dropped (as an example, soon after dawn they “started to rid me”, when you meant ride).

The story could have been so much better if you’d taken the time to go over it, or had a friend do it for you. As I said, you’ve got the imagination— now you just need the editor.

I didn’t notice any errors. I just read for fun. I enjoyed it and I feel anyone who focuses on grammar too much misses out on the enjoyment of the story. I have read three of your stories so far and will start the next as soon as I finish this note. Keep it up I’m a big fan

I read this when I saw the high ratings, but why?

It’s peppered with careless mistakes- cemetary is wrong it’s CEMETERY.

It’s not worth re-editing as the story is so weak.

Sorry, but this was a poor read, please concentrate on your naturist camp 2.

Thanks for your efforts, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

WOW, great story! I wonder if Evelyn was preggers when she got to Heaven?

I'd love to see what he gets up to with his new girlfriend.

Thanks for sharing.

I really like your style and I will be binging all of your stories. God, reading is much better than watching porn. Good plot and everything. I don't know how to express my thankfulness.

Great story. I think you communicated very well the important parts and had good character growth. So I found it easy to overlook minor spelling mistakes. Thanks for writing. Storyteller19.

The fact that I could get through 7 pages without reading any sex is ample evidence it’s a great story. Yes there spelling and grammatical mistakes but they are forgivable, even without the author’s explanation that he was pressed for time to enter into the competition.

I thoroughly enjoyed the story. That there was no intimacy until the end with Eve and Alice as one, made the story climax (no pun) so good. More so that this was the wish that Evelyn needed to fulfill to move on. I'm a sucker for this kind of story and it brought tears to my eyes. I can get so deep into a story that I am a part of it and see/feel the glow as she left for her next life.

First of all thank you for writing this. I usually don't even open the stories which are not in favorite genre (sibs). I opened this one just for a change but i am fucking glad that i did. I really liked it very much. Hope you write more like these. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Excellent story line and flow. You kept my attention 100% throughout the chapters. I stumbled some through the grammar and misspells but the story was well worth it. Keep writing, you have a great talent there. I'm looking forward to reading more of your works. Thanks!

This story was brilliantly written,but to give it more context the author should have added where Chris and Alice made love at Evelyn's gravesite probably a week or two before Halloween and conceived a baby and have Evelyn be reborn as their child,so they could be a family when Evelyn grew up she could be with them.

Otherwise this story Rocked on so many levels,great work storyteller.

Super

A well-deserved Editor's Choice.

Excellent Story!

Just the right amount of misdirection, same house as Chris, I expected Henry's family to be behind Evelyn's murder only to 'blind' sided by Mr. Anderson (with his hunting knife - no less), and speaking of Henry...good riddance to bad rubbish.

The fact that you made Evelyn (a ghost) Agnostic is great, and for Chris to have the maturity to let her go is great!

This is the 1st story I have ever commented on too!

With a story as imaginative and well conceived as this one, who cares about a few spelling errors? I would love to see a sequel. 5 stars.

This is my first comment. You made me remember being bullied at a city school and the adjacent park on my way home. The fear and humiliation were palpable in your rendering of this story. I was really curious as to your insight to the situation and have to ask if it was the fruit of an exceptional imagination or if from your own brush with bullies. I hope it worked out favorably

Beautiful story!

Response to Anon from 5 months ago:

I missed your comment when you first asked, but here is your answer.

There were only a few times when someone tried to bully me. I was a little chubby growing up but could usually make any would-be bullies laugh or talk shit back to them so I wasn't much of a target. The only exception would be my freshman year of high school, one of the last two times I went Trick or Treating. A friend and I went to our school Halloween event, which was a little carnival on the football field. After it we were waiting in front of an LDS church for a local neighborhood bus to take us closer to his house, a jeep of seniors drove by us while my friend and I were fucking around. They went to pick up a girl who was talking to us, and I said something they didn't like, and they ended up snatching our bags of candy from us and threatened to kick our asses. I couldn't joke my way out of that situation since that was what got me into it. There was an awkward moment where I held the girl's gaze who they were there to pick up. There was sadness in her eyes like she regretted what was happening, but she didn't say anything. She got in the jeep and drove off with them. My friend and I went back to his house and played some Halo 3, but the night was ruined.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful story!!!

Not much sexual action, but that wasn’t really the main focus, so it’s okay. I quite enjoyed the story, I’m glad I read it.

That was a decidedly weird yet engrossing story and very, very enjoyable. You tell a great story and except for some misspelled or left out words, was terrific. Even without the sex at the end, it would have been a great story. Extremely well done!!

Exceptionally well plotted tale... it is beautiful...

Holy crap. A fantastic story. Not what I expected but it was great. Thank you for your work

terrible spelling, major errors in grammar, but a great story.