Scare-tober! ( New and open horror plots)

[Spectre]

 Here’s the obligatory “It’s October and I want scary Stories” post!
(Like I ever Don’t want these kinds of things,..haha)

Here’s a few new concepts and few that have yet to be adopted and hopefully I’ll find a few new friends who have fun running around in the dark together:

St. Grecthen’s House:

Victorian/1910s

Traveling this far out of the city feels like a punishment in itself, knowing that everyone you've ever known and loved, save those poor, embarrassed souls resigned to see you to your destination, is off somewhere, dancing or drinking or learning or living.
You’ve lost those privileges, bundled into a carriage or motor coach or train car and sped off to somewhere where you won’t be an embarrassment.

  Your friends and loved one will lie about where you’ve gone, politely but firmly saying you've “taken ill and gone to the country” or some other explanation that will be understood and the last time someone should ask about you for a while.
Perhaps its a spouse, or a parent or even the good medical doctor that's written your sentence, but one one reason or another, You’ve been given as a ward of St. Grecten’s Institute for Wellness and until you've been marked as Cured, you will remain there indefinitely There so one one around to hear you scream, beg or bargain. Nowhere to run on the wide flat grounds, save maybe the sheer drop into the sea from there nearby cliffs. And not one of the staff that can be trusted.
Of the Hundreds that have been confined there over the decade it’s been open, very few ever get out, and none of those who do leave whole..

My Thoughts:

I want to play in the absolute horror that was the early sanitarium/wellness center. Often the fate of the “other” from popular society served as a place to put “troublesome” family members. And don't even get me started on the treatments, ranging from snake oil to actual poison to torture to “sea air and sunlight,” like that heals anything real.

Either we can play out two inmates, ahem,.. patients, or two staff members trying to just get through the day, or a patient / staff member, but regardless, it will be a story of two souls trying to survive a hell on earth  in the name of medicine and “getting better”. Definitely looking to lean hard on the medical aspects, and what they threw people in these kinds of places for,  and how they got through it or maybe even break out.

A Job Nobody Wants:
Mortuary Assistant inspired

  Or at least that's what normal people think. The death industry scares off plenty of rational folks, and that’s a rational response, but those who do decide to take on jobs that the regular folk in hospitals, churches, and funeral parlors can’t even fathom.
  But it is a job that needs doing and tonight is no different.
The call comes in the afternoon and while it begins like any other job, the two mortuary assistants that are n call that days very quickly realize that this job will be unlike anything they have ever done, and that in some way, as the night swallows up the building, that they are not alone.

My Thoughts:
A bit of warning as death and funeral topics can be hard topics, but they are excellent breeding grounds for spooks.  I very much enjoy the superstitions  and rites around funerals and want to play into that, only with any of the creatures might hover around the remaining body. Ghost, devils, or other spirits that might want to used the unoccupied space for their own plans.
I think that it might be fun to play out the dynamic of a superstitious/believer and a skeptic who work the same job, but differ in their approach.



Fanclub:

horror/comedy/truecrime

This one might be based on my own frankly unhealthy levels of interest in consuming true crime media in nearly all it’s forms with all the grisly details.
This story is meant to be a little more light-hearted, ( what concerning sentences to place back to back,) and will center around two characters that might not otherwise have connected in the other areas of their lives, but have grown very close due to their shared passion for True Crime content.
Maybe they have a podcast they work on together, a bookclub that focuses on memoirs of criminal detectives and the survivors of grisly attacks, or frequent the same online spaces solely dedicated to the discussing and possible solving of cases gone long cold.
The two characters could be simply friends, co-workers surprised to cross paths in this strange hobby or even the spark of something romantic, but the amusement  comes that one of them will be the serial killer thats been successfully camouflaged for 10+ years as a normal average citizen, and the armchair detective that coming terrifyingly close to catching them. And who wouldn’t want to share such an achievement with a good, honest friend?

Alternate concept involves the second character being an enthusiastic if slightly overzealous copycat killer, ready to catch their idols attention/eclipse their achievement, and the copycat murders have now focused the spotlight a bit too close to both of them.

My Thoughts:
This is probably a strange place for levity but I imagine this as the exact opposite of a buddy cop story, and that concept is really funny to me. There might even be a sweet story of friendship overcoming differences or a heartwarming mentor/student relationship growing from adversity, but it will be absolutely splattered in gore and loss of human life.

What if NBC’s Hannibal was a comedy?
Also, I think it might be sweet ( again, concerning way to describe it)if our killer kind of had a soft spot for our would-be detective, and decided to sort of help them along in their “investigation” because they are fond of their friend and want to support them. And who else would our detective want by their side for the big case than their best friend from Crime Club?


Insomnia:

Psychological/

In today's over-caffeinated world, it's not uncommon that Sleep has become very hard to come by.  But like it or not, Night and Darkness fall, and in those small hours just after midnight, only a select few are still awake. Even in the digital age, there is something very animalistic about those darkest hours, and every sound turns on something small and terrified in even the boldest souls.
So in the dark, you try not to hear the thumps, the whispers, the creak of floorboards in an empty house. You are supossed to grow out of those fears and fantasies when your a teen, but in the dark, even the strongest hearts falter.

And after so many days without sleep, people tend to hallucinate. to rationalize what they see and hear as an overactive imagination and nothing else. even if there is something there, watching.
This story takes the perspective of two night owl neighbors who see something they should not when no one should awake and what they do about it.

My thoughts:
What it is that they see is up to use, a break in, a murder, a creature, or nothing at all even if they are sure they saw something, but this will definitely be a little more psychological.

There's also something interesting in the idea that one of them might start sleeping and come out of of the funk and the other keeps staying up and gets worse. A question of sanity and what would be considered real is always fun, and even more so if they thought getting sleep might help and it does, but only for a day or so before the strangeness starts again.

Out of the Woods:
missing/returning story

The news vans crowd around, a glut of people and equipment and flashing lights, the crush of reporting with their painted on smiles, very softly pushing each other to hang on every word. The police order them away politely, and the questions explode all at once.
"Where were they found?" " Were they injured?" "Do you have any leads on the kidnappers?" " Why this one person found, out of over 15 disappearances?"

" Do you think that they are part on the other kidnapping?!"
That question silences all the others and the officer tasked with the idea of answering it goes pale. And your heart stills in your chest. That the question on everyone's lips, and wholly unacceptable to even consider asking. This person is a victim, snatched one day as a children and disappeared for more than a decade, and hen miraculously returned stumbling out of the woods, looking dirty and thin and haunted but alive.
And that's a good thing. Right?

But rumors and whispers fly, and this person, once a friend and neighbor, family even, now hides away, strange and pity becomes suspicion, becomes blame. And now even you, their last friend on earth, start to wonder, what really happened out in those woods?

My Thoughts:
There's an element of witchhunt and hysteria that small towns get when something terrible happens in places where nothing terrible ever happens. I want to play out the drama of a person who comes back from something terrible, in my mind a string of kidnappings where no bodies are found, and the only person who bothers to give them the time of day.
While the rest of the town starts to mutter about blame and justice, our protagonists will have to try and solve the mystery themselves, before the masses decide to just deal with the assumed problem.
bonus points if there is room for a cryptid/skinwalker element, maybe our returned person doesn't know that they have changed, or is unaware of their part in the possible disappearances.

Feel free to Dm for further details or if anything sparks your interest. I'm also happy to discuss any plots that you might be brewing in these genres!