For Halloween this year, we invited our Easyread writers to send us their spookiest short stories, for the chance to have their work appear in a new book in the Easyread library, Spooky Stories, where all the other children on the programme could read it.
They made us laugh, they made us scared, but perhaps most important of all, they made us very proud.
The tales of groups of friends destroying the bad guys like Frankenstein and Junior Frankar, or the eery black smoke, or the zombies, or that bad Thief Stealing the Beef, left us with a heart-warming feeling at the end.
Sometimes, the bad guy like the DareDevil or the cloaked mist wasn’t overcome, and that had us on the edge of our seats wanting to find out what happens next!
The imagination and creativity was superb; the story-telling style gripping, and the spelling was so great!
As you know, we had to pick three winners, and we are delighted to announce the 3 winning stories that will become part of Spooky Stories as:
The Green Moon, by Sienna
Trick or Treat, by Eloise
The Spooky Surprise, by Sebastian
Congratulations guys! Your story will be appearing on the top bookshelf of the Easyread library very soon!
And a big well done to everyone who entered the competition – the standard of entries was so high, it really was a tough call! We hope you’re as proud of your efforts as we are, and a little prize is on its way to each of you to say thank you for entering.
We’ll be running further writing competitions in the future and we hope to see you all there again soon.
For those of you who would like to read Sienna, Eloise and Sebastian’s stories now, you can find them published in this blog post below.
A big congratulations again to our winners and our runners up, and we look forward to reading your writing in the programme and in all future competitions.
Happy Halloween!
…
The Green Moon
Sienna, aged 8
It was a windy afternoon. We were setting up camp on a small farm with some of our friends. We had all been looking forward to spending the last weekend in October together, exploring the historic buildings and playing with the farm animals.
We left the adults to unpack and we started exploring. There were lots of little sheds, filled with dusty things. There were rusty old bikes and telephones and even old saddles for little kids.
Anna saw a baby ant and she said, “I want to raise you little guy and we will have a happy life together”, I said “No, don’t touch”. We walked along, Billy was bored out of his skull, he wanted to play. He found a den and he said, “I’m a boy and I can put my hand in this den.” Everyone shouted “NO BILLY!”
Further along we came across some old tin cans and two vases. Summer wanted to touch them, but I said, “For the last time, don’t touch anything! Besides, it’s getting late, we should head back to camp”. But Summer didn’t listen. She made a plan, she was going to touch it at night.
Everyone ate dinner, it was delicious. It was probably because we couldn’t wait for marshmallows.
It was very dark by now, the moon was another colour, as in yellowish, but it was still lighting our way as we went off to play hide and seek. I counted to 51 and then called out “ready or not, here I come”.
I heard a noise, it sounded like a scary noise, and I knew where it was coming from. It was coming from the den Billy had found earlier. I went to check it out. A big bat flew straight at me. Then I heard a noise like someone stepping on a stick, but it wasn’t, it was an animal. A gigantic bull ant with a red stripe on its back came for me again and again. I ran behind the old stuff which Summer had found earlier but then a cobra slithered out of a vase and I was so close to being bitten. But then I heard “how-woooooool” and creatures from all around ran, flew and slithered towards the sound.
I was alone, I fainted.
Seven minutes later I found myself waking up to wild animal noises. The moon shone a strange green light upon me and I could just make out the eyes of creatures approaching me. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, and I looked all around me. I wailed!
But then, I noticed the bat had the greeny-blue eyes of my friend Billy. He had become Billy the Brain-Eating-Bat! Then I recognized the ant, it was Anna the Blood-Thirsty-Bull-Ant! Summer was there as well, she had become Summer the Snarling-Snot-Spitting-Snake! The hairy leg of a gigantic tarantula brushed passed my arm. I recognised it as my brother, I knew it was him. My brother had become Taine the Terrible-Toothy-Tarantula!
I run off, as fast as I can, and I see an old shed with a rusty padlock on it, but the door is not locked. I run into the room and lock myself in. I look out the window and then see the whole moon is completely green, green like slime. I lock the window and try to calm myself down by reading a book. There were books to the top and books to the bottom, it must be an old library. But there was a book, the dustiest of all, on the table. I went to check it out.
I blew the dust away and I looked carefully at the title. I repeated it in my head over and over again “Green Moon, Mean Moon, Halloween Moon”. Then I open the book, I read it. It was a spell to turn all my friends back into normal people!
I peeked out the window and could see the creatures coming closer. I chant at the top of my lungs, “Turn the clock upside down and make the clock reverse. Bring back what was mine, what once was mine”. Suddenly all of my peers came back as humans. They said “What just happened?”
We headed back to the camp. I looked at the moon. It was plain shiny white again. It was still full. We sat around the camp fire with a big bag of marshmallows and I told them all the story of the Green Moon.
Trick or Treat
Eloise, aged 6
My name is Eloise and this is my true story.
Last year on the 31st October when night had fallen, we were getting dressed up for trick or treating. I was dressed as fabulous orange pumpkin and Katie my big sister was a wicked purple witch. Mummy had painted our faces so that we looked really scary- and quite cool too! Daddy had put up Halloween lights so that the whole hall shone green and had made the best jack o’lanterns ever! We were ready to go trick or treating with our friends and I was full of excitement.
At the first house we knocked loudly on the door and sang “Trick or Treat!” Our neighbour gave us some chocolates and we squealed in delight and then we were off again. Trick or treating carried on as we knocked on the doors of the spookily decorated houses, each kind person rewarding us with some yummy sweets. This continued until …
… the last house on Willow Park Way! It was a dark creepy house that stood back from the road and was shadowed by an old oak tree. Outside it was decorated with just a small pumpkin and a tatty scarecrow dumped in a plastic chair. We ran up to the door, excited to find out what treats there would be. We knocked on the door…. silence. We knocked again. No answer. So we knocked one last time, still no answer. We were just turning to go.
Suddenly we heard an eerie voice. It shouted “BOO!” We froze. The scarecrow jumped up. We screamed and screamed – an ear piercing scream.
The wind started howling and the moon slid behind a cloud. It was DARK! The only light was the tiny flicker of the small Jack O’lantern. I almost wet my pants! We were terrified.
At that moment the scarecrow flicked a light on and offered us a small basket with sweets in. Nervously, we reached for a treat, fearful of what might happen next! But it was just an ordinary sweet, nothing special or scary.
The scarecrow slumped back into his seat and froze, waiting for his next victim to arrive.
Next year I won’t be going to the last house on Willow Park Way… or maybe I will.
So beware of scarecrows on Halloween night, they might just get you too!
The Spooky Surprise
Sebastian, aged 8
Chapter One
The Burglar
Once upon a time there was a person named Steve. Steve was not ordinary, oh no, he had saved the town from zombies. Along the way, he had also met Henry, Lucy, and Max. Their village had been burned down by nasty things called “grifiks”, so they were staying in Steve’s house for now.
“Steve, it’s time to go to the shop”, said Lucy. So, they set off. They passed the welcome sign for the village, took a right turn at the library and found themselves at Elmer’s shop. “Here we are”, said Steve, heading inside. He set down a bag of diamonds on the shop counter, and WHOOSH, everything in the shop was gone, including the diamonds.
“What just happened?!”, exclaimed Steve. “A burglar must have stolen all the stuff in the shop. Let’s be detectives and find him”, said Lucy. “OK…let’s go”, agreed Max and Henry. Lucy pointed out, “but we need costumes”. Elmer, the shopkeeper, helpfully pulled out a recipe for making detective costumes from his pocket.
RECIPE – DETECTIVE COSTUMES
Mix the following ingredients: leather, ink-sacks and hot water.
P.S. You can get all of these at the trading post.
Chapter Two
The Costumes
Steve, Lucy, Max and Henry, together with Elmer, walked to the trading post and exchanged one diamond (which had been hidden in Lucy’s dress) for all of the ingredients to make their costumes. Dear Reader, you may at this point be wondering why our heroes had so many jewels. In one of their earlier adventures, they found 40 diamonds on an abandoned island. But that’s a tale for another time. “Let’s go arrest that burglar”, said Max. “No, Max, let’s just trap him”, urged Henry.
Chapter Three
The Trap
Our heroes went back to their house and found some cobwebs in their closets. They decided to use these to trap the burglar. They took five of their diamonds, put these on a stick, and waited for the burglar to come. He came alright—and took the diamonds – but he also fell into their cobweb trap.
Steve, Lucy, Max and Henry took off the burglar’s mask. “Oh!” they all gasped. The burglar was a grifik. He laughed at them, “You foolish kids, the jewel theft was only a diversion. We tried to distract you so that we could turn loose zombies on the people in the village.”
Max sighed, “It’s always zombies, isn’t it?”
Chapter Four
The Zombies Attack!
Our friends ran to the graveyard, but it was too late. The zombies were already coming. “AAAAGH”, screamed everyone. One zombie, with dull grey skin and a mindless brain, came after Steve. “Uhhh, Uhhh”, the zombie moaned. Steve felt sorry for him. It was probably the old librarian.
Steve, Lucy, Max and Henry took some water from the river, put it in a huge iron bucket (which had been used to defeat zombies in the past) and then took their last diamond and placed in inside. They splashed the water over everyone in the town and, while Steve and Max got the zombies’ attention by waving swords, Henry and Lucy dug holes in the graveyard dirt. When the digging was finished, they all used sticks to poke the zombies toward the holes. The town was safe again!