Imagine how difficult it is to create a tale that’s truly horrific—one that reaches out from the page and threatens you in the safety of your home. Right from the start, the readers must feel a sense of dread, of something menacing that’s beyond their awareness.
To do this, a horror story not only relies on good storytelling, but also a good premise. Both work to create a frightening atmosphere that keeps readers on their toes. But it’s often difficult to find that seed of an idea, much less grow it into a full-fledged story.
Horror Writing Prompts
Below is a list of horror prompts that you can use as inspiration for your next writing session. This list is varied, catering to different types of horror fiction. Feel free to take them in whatever direction you want.
A word of warning, though: horror is meant to disturb, frighten, and shock. In keeping with that, some of these prompts may contain upsetting themes and subjects.
1. There’s a door in the basement of the chapel. It is locked, chained, and boarded over. The priests tell you to ignore it, but every time you come to sweep the dust, you hear the faintest call for help.
2. You live alone in an old house. During the evenings, you spend hours practicing on the piano. One day, as the last note fades away, you hear someone clapping.
3. In a small town, children are abducted and later found hanging beneath a tree. The townspeople tear the tree down and uncover a small coffin. Within is the desiccated corpse believed to be the child of the witch they lynched all those years ago.
4. A historian discovers messages hidden within the journals of history’s most powerful leaders. Decoding them reveals a conspiracy that’s held the world in thrall for thousands of years.
5. You visit your fiance’s hometown. The locals keep telling you never to stop your car along a particular stretch of road, but your curiosity gets the better of you. Now your car refuses to start and you see eerie lights racing toward you.
6. Your character has always wanted to know how it feels to kill someone. They post an ad and quickly find a willing victim.
7. Your town is beset by a storm that suddenly comes out of nowhere. Every flash of lightning illuminates strange creatures flying among the dark clouds.
8. A young boy goes missing. They find him sitting happily inside a cave with strange symbols carved into his body.
9. While on a road trip with your family, your car breaks down. You’re forced to take a detour to a town currently celebrating a local festival. As you wait for repairs, the celebrations quickly turn macabre.
10. An accident destroys a man’s face to the point that people find him disgusting to look at. The bullying pushes him to the brink, and now he’s skinning other people’s faces and using them to cover up his own.
11. Campers are found massacred deep in the forest. Attributing the tragedy to of a man-eating bear, rangers are sent in to hunt it down. What they find is much worse.
12. You wake up one day and discover that your mouth has been stolen.
13. You sort through hundreds of photographs and pick several to include in your professional portfolio. You notice that all of them have one thing in common, despite being taken at different venues and events: a child, unnoticed by anyone in the pictures, staring right at you.
14. All over the country, dozens of people are experiencing the same nightmare. Though they can’t make sense of it, all of them can feel that something is coming.
15. The monster in the closet is real.
16. A woman wakes up to find herself chained to a wall, inside a bare room. Her crazy ex walks in.
17. You are arrested for the grisly murders that have been happening all over the town. The police have a video of you leaving the latest victim’s house two nights ago, bloodied and clutching a knife. But you weren’t even in town for the entire week.
18. A man wakes up to find all of his fellow villagers gone. He finds the first one of them dead just outside the village. The corpse is covered in rashes and boils, the face set in permanent agony.
19. Every time you look in the mirror, you can’t help but feel that something’s looking back. It turns out, a demon has found its way into your house through all the mirrors within.
20. The International Space Station falls silent and any attempt at communication fails. People are sent in to learn what happened and find the station devoid of any life.
21. A vampire comes into town, looking to claim it as their hunting ground. But there’s already a vampire living in town, and you’re not interested in sharing.
22. Something ancient emerges from the swamp near your town.
23. A child is murdered and the whole town grieves her loss. Two days later, the parents get a call from the daughter they killed.
24. Your pet dog goes missing. It returns weeks later, but you can feel that there’s something wrong with it.
25. While at sea, a ship finds itself surrounded by a strange mist. The sailors begin hearing the voices of the drowned.
26. You find the perfect family to host you while you do research outside the country. Everything is well during the first few days, but you soon notice that something’s off about them.
27. Obsessed with immortality, a medical doctor begins replacing his aging organs with those of his younger victims. The whole city is alarmed by the growing number of corpses with missing body parts.
28. You receive a letter from your abusive husband who’s currently serving time in prison. Inside is a photo of you sleeping in your bed, within your locked apartment.
29. A bunch of reckless youths break into a house looking for things they can sell. They find themselves unable to escape and are subjected to torture by the house owner, who is secretly a serial killer.
30. A librarian discovers a diary wedged behind a bookshelf. Inside is a confession, written by the person responsible for a tragedy that happened on campus decades ago. The culprit warns that it will happen again in the future—this year, in fact.
31. You are about to marry the man of your dreams. A week before the wedding, a stranger approaches you and tells you to run as far away as possible from your would-be-husband. The stranger is later found dead.
32. It is Halloween and all kinds of monsters are out trick-or-treating. One of them, you find, is not wearing a costume.
33. Your husband comes to visit you and the kids every year, on your wedding day. The problem is, he’s already been dead for years.
34. You stare at your best friend’s face as she lies peacefully in her coffin. Her parents come over, pat you on the shoulder, and whisper, “It had to be done.”
35. Archeologists unearth ruins in the middle of Antarctica. Excited to discover a previously unknown civilization, they press on into the depths. Their activities disturb the thing hibernating within.
Writing Horror
A horror writer’s greatest fear is to come up with a tale that doesn’t frighten, disgust, or shock anyone. Because what is horror fiction without the horrors?
But one of the most difficult things to do in writing is to actually start the process. And usually, this happens when writers don’t have a starting point.
Consider the prompts above as sparks to fuel your next horror story. Part of what makes them effective is that they’re detailed enough to catch the imagination, but not so much as to “lock” a story into only one direction.
Did you find this post useful? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Cole is a blog writer and aspiring novelist. He has a degree in Communications and is an advocate of media and information literacy and responsible media practices. Aside from his interest in technology, crafts, and food, he’s also your typical science fiction and fantasy junkie, spending most of his free time reading through an ever-growing to-be-read list. It’s either that or procrastinating over actually writing his book. Wish him luck!
