Is this a Japanese legend? or such a convincing story?

I'll tell you a story about this time of year. :)

Once upon a time, there was a pumpkin that lived in the countryside, among many other pumpkins grown by a peasant. Her name was Ernesta, and she was the smallest of all the pumpkins in the garden. For this reason, one day, the peasant picked her up and threw her in the trash, saying, "Little pumpkin, you're no use to me."

Ernesta couldn't believe she was separated from the rest of the pumpkins, and she became so sad and angry that her appearance changed. Scars appeared on her face, and her smile turned into a frightening grimace. From that day on, Ernesta decided to appear every Halloween night to scare the children on the street.

When the peasant realized this, we realized he shouldn't have treated Ernesta that way. Even though she was the smallest, she deserved to be treated like the other pumpkins. But it was too late. Today, Ernesta is on the loose... If you see her around, tell your parents so they can catch her. If she goes back to being around other pumpkins, maybe she'll be nice again. Oh, and never make the same mistake as the peasant!


-Tormented Souls
-Tainted Grail: Conquest
-Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition
-Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
-In Sound Mind - Deluxe Edition
-DOOM (2016)
-Hollow Knight
-Death's Door Deluxe Edition
-Pinstripe

What type of panels do vampires prefer in their monitors?

Sun screens.

Why are most ghosts in the urgent care?

Boo-boos.

I would like to be in for:
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition
DOOM (2016)
Dracula Origin
Hollow Knight
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Costume Quest

The mist rises and thickens as the phantasmal keys roil and dance within the Cauldron. You hear faint sounds of footsteps and haunting laughter. Was that the sound of a coffin's lid creaking? Is it the autumn wind whispering?

On the back wall of the tomb another word slowly appears a letter at a time. B ... l ... i ... n ... k ...

The hairs on the back of your neck rise as a sudden foreboding panic takes over your mind. It screams at you that there is something over your shoulder! You whirl around ...

The angel statues are poised right behind you, their long fangs exposed, their clawed fingers frozen in their reach for you mere inches from your face.

The gates of the Haunted Gogyard squeak as they begin to slowly close and you remember their warning ...
Passage through the Spookster's Story Dimension shall disappear one minute after Midnight,

Giveaway ends in less than 22 hours at 00:01 UTC, 30 October 2025.

fofgot abt the most crucial part.
thank you, bjgamer, for this giveaway! just like with the Speak Like A Pirate one, I like it that one has to be creative to participate. that's great.

also, I'd like to be in for:
- Hollow Knight;
- DOOM (2016);
- Tormented Souls;
- Pumpkin Jack.

I am not a good story teller but I will try my best (I hope I am using the correct tense here). I tried to remember stories I’ve heard in the past and I remembered one or at least some of it.

A young guy have been drinking in a small pub when he saw on the table next to him a beautiful young girl in a white dress – alone. He decided to talk to her. The girl was very friendly and so he offered to buy her a drink – a glass of wine and she agreed. They raised a toast but unfortunately the girl unintentionally spilled some of the wine on her dress. This didn’t affect the mood and they continued their conversation. After they were done the guy offered to walk her home but she refuses. They say goodbye at the end of the street and she leaves but he manages to see the house she enters. On the next day the young guy went back to the same street hoping to see the girl again. When he got close to the house she entered hes horrified to see an obituary of the same girl. Desperate to understand what happened he knocked on the door and he met her parents. He told them about everything that happened last night but the parents told him in tears their daughter have been buried few weeks ago! But the young guy refusing to believe this is true continued to tell them everything he knew about the girl, about her dress and her behavior with details. The parents were so surprised by all this that they decide to unbury their daughter. In the grave they find the girl in the same white dress with red wine stains on it!


I'd like to enter for:
- Death's Door Deluxe Edition
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
- Dracula Origin
- Hollow Knight

Thanks for the cool giveaway bjgamer!

Sorry, don't come here as often as I would like anymore.
Joke number two:
Why are ghosts bad at poker?
They are transparent!

Joke- why the werewolf was eyeing the skeleton? He had a bone to pick!

An unsolved mystery~

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannenji_Temple

House of Mama Cassie.

On the night of October 31th 1747, a terrible event struck a cotton plantation in the small town of Sainte-Evelyne, north of New Orleans, Louisiana. While this story is now forgotten by most people, many know the name Cassandra Laclé, better known as "Mama Cassie." Here is her story.

In 1747, Louisiana was still a French colony, part of a much larger territory called "New France," stretching from Canada to the Mississippi River. French settlers established themselves and prospered in trade and farming. Slavery being a common practice at the time, many black slaves from Africa and the Caribbean were deported to North America. Among them was a young beautiful Haitian woman, 20 years old, named Cassandra Laclé. Purchased by a wealthy French colonist, Alexandre d'Augrain, she became his servant in his colonial house in Sainte-Evelyne, near New Orleans.
He had made his fortune in trade, in part thanks to his connections with European slave traders who provided him with "quality labor" at unbeatable prices. His house was located on the outskirts of the city, surrounded by cotton fields of several hectares where dozens of slaves worked, who had come, like Cassandra, from distant lands. D'Augrain was renowned for his cruelty to all those who disobeyed him and rebel. This was evidenced by some apparent mutilations on some slaves, such as scars or even missing fingers or toes. His wife, on the other hand, was sickly jealous because she knew her husband's tastes for the young girls under his domination. Initially a simple maid, Cassandra became her master's official servant, but he became more and more insistent towards her, despite her repeated refusals.

Still, Cassandra suffered from her condition and sought to escape without incurring the wrath of her master. By chance, one day she met a young black sharecropper named Joseph who also came from Haiti and who shared her plans to escape. Their common project brought them closer together and they ended up secretly becoming lovers. But Cassandra became pregnant and despite her attempts to hide her pregnancy, her mistress found out. Thinking that the father was her husband, she whipped Cassandra to punish her. The poor girl had to confess her relationship with another slave, which paradoxically made her master jealous because she had always resisted his advances. In revenge, the sadistic couple mutually decided to apply their own justice to what they saw as a serious disobedience to their authority. They had the young Joseph hung from a tree as an example and walled up alive Cassandra, who was 8 months pregnant, in the family crypt, located on the agricultural estate.

The cries and pleas of Cassandra could be heard coming from the crypt for six days, yet no one dared to react. Then, on the seventh day, silence fell over the tomb. It was late October. But the d'Augrain couple was unaware of Cassandra's deep origins. She was a "mambo," a voodoo priestess capable of communicating with the "loas," the spirits of the voodoo religion. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Cassandra had this gift, but had never truly been able to exercise it. In her own grave, aware of her tragic fate, she decided to summon the only loa capable of granting her justice and saving her child, at the cost of her soul : Erzulie Dantor.
Protective divinity of oppressed women and mothers, Erzulie Dantor was known to be a fierce warrior against those who harmed children. Cassandra already wore a necklace around her neck symbolizing the ritual symbol of Erzulie (a "vèvè") : a heart pierced by a dagger. She used it to summon Erzulie while reciting a prayer in Creole, both full of hope and anger :

"O Erzulie Dantor, koute lapriyè m,
Bay mwen lavanj kont sa yo ki trayi m,
Bay benediksyon ou pou yon nanm kap fèt,
Akòde dènye volonte yon manman,
Nan non timoun nan."

("Oh Erzulie Dantor, hear my prayer,
Grant me vengeance against those who have betrayed me,
Grant your blessing to an unborn soul,
Grant the last will of a mother,
In the name of the child.")

All seemed calm on the evening of October 31th 1747. The slaves slept in a barn near the main house after a day of hard work. Little Barnabé who was a light sleeper, heard a noise outside, as if someone were knocking loudly at a door. He stood up, looked outside, and what he saw terrified him forever. Standing in front of the steps of the house, a woman dressed in a blue robe was knocking mechanically at the door. She held a dagger in her hand. He only saw her from behind, but he recognized this silhouette : it was that of the young woman who had been walled up several days before. Mrs d'Augrain opened the door and uttered a howl of terror that woke all the slaves with a start. The figure then stabbed the woman and pushed her inside.

Then came the horrible screams of the master that everyone heard. These were followed by women's laughter, but also, and this was what caused the general panic and the flight of the estate's slaves, the cries of a baby coming from inside the family crypt. Only little Barnabé dared to stay, either terrified or fascinated by this scene of horror. After a while, the house door opened and the young figure walked slowly toward the crypt. The child could then see that it was indeed Cassandra Laclé. Her skin was very pale and she was covered in blood. Suddenly, she seemed to become aware that someone was watching her. She slowly turned toward the child, looked at him with her empty eyes, and made the gesture of silence with a finger to her lips. This was too overwhelming for the child, who fled across the cotton fields in the night.

The next day, authorities arrived on the scene, alerted by the delirious statements of the slaves who had tried to escape.
From then on, the versions diverge on what they discovered inside the house. Some say they saw indescribable carnage, parts of human bodies torn to pieces or crushed, as if a pack of beasts had feasted on human flesh. Another version attests that the d'Augrain couple was found sitting in their living room, dead with only a mask of absolute terror engraved on their faces. A final version, this one official, states that the d'Augrain couple was never found. Only a heart pierced by a ritual dagger used in voodoo ceremonies was found in the living room, lying in a pool of blood. Bloody footprints were leaving it and heading towards the outside of the house. The authorities followed them and led them to the nearby crypt. Inside, these steps continued until they stopped just in front of a brick wall that had recently been sealed.

The cries of a child could be heard from the other side of the wall. They then decided to break down the wall, and what they saw stunned them : a newborn was sitting on his mother's lap, leaning against the wall. She had apparently been dead for several days judging by her state of decomposition. A mischievous smile was still on her face. But what made some witnesses faint, who for a long time afterward refused to speak of this story, was that the fresh bloody footprints came from this woman. The child, a little girl, seemed healthy and was taken in by a couple of freed black people who could not have children. They baptized her Espérance.
The farm was abandoned because all the slaves refused to go near it. The house eventually fell into ruin, and the place gained a reputation for being cursed.
Cassandra Laclé became a martyr of slavery in the Voodoo religion and was respectfully nicknamed Mama Cassie.

Many years later, people who dared to approach the place on October 31th claimed that one could hear screams of agony, sadistic laughter, and the cries of a newborn in what was now called the "House of Mama Cassie".

Thanks Bjgamer for that spooky opportunity to write a story of my own.

I'm in (in order of preference) :

- The Witcher 3 : Wild hunt - Complete Edition
- Sherlock Holmes : The Awakened - Premium Edition
- Tormented Souls
- In Sound Mind - Deluxe Edition
- Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure Deluxe Edition

What's a ghost's favorite dessert? I scream!

What do you call a witch who lives at the beach? A sand-witch!

Mwahaha!

What’s it called when a vampire has trouble with his house?

A grave problem.

Thanks! This is getting more and more interesting and... frightening.

Who does a werewolf go trick or treating with?

His cousins What wolf and When wolf.

Thank you for organizing this great giveaway again! Below is my entry into the Spooktober Storyfest, called Sliver. I am entering for the following games, in order of preference, most preferred first:

- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
- Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition
- Grim Dawn
- Tainted Grail: Conquest
- Creaks Collector's Edition
- Hollow Knight
- Unbound: Worlds Apart
- DOOM (2016)
- Goetia + Goetia 2
- INSIDE
- Zombie Night Terror
- Pinstripe

Sliver

Martine trudged onward through the cobblestone streets, carrying the heavy large mirror. She didn't enjoy lugging the heavy thing but the storekeeper, Mr. Silver, paid her decently to run errands from customers to the shop. She would have preferred going to see the circus in town, but she needed to earn coin first.

Soon she came into view of the storefront. It was a big place, almost like a manor house. 'Mr. Silver's Mirror Repair', the sign read, 'Bargains Galore!'. She knocked and went inside, calling out "Another delivery, Mr. Silver!"

She set the mirror down, leaning it against a wall, and looked at it a moment. It was badly cracked, the glass smashed into many small pieces, but Mr. Silver was an expert and made it his business to take in and repair even seemingly hopeless cases.

As she gazed at the shattered reflection, Mr. Silver came into view behind her, smiling at her through the reflection. "Ah Martine, what have you brought this time? Oh, another foyer mirror, looks like someone threw a rock or something at it. I will see what I can do."

"Why do people bother with such as these, Mr. Silver?" she asked. "They're all so shattered and cracked, why not throw them away?"

"Sentimentality, my dear," the craftsman replied, "Or perhaps they are an essential part of their decor. One person's trash is another one's treasure you know. Whatever their reasons, I am happy to oblige and take their business." He picked up the mirror and started carrying it into his workshop area.

"Well as long as it pays," Martine said with a shrug. She looked around the shop at the various repaired mirrors on display. "I'll just take my coin and go for the day."

She looked around the tables. "Hey, I think you forgot to leave me my payment." But the craftsman had already gone away inside his workshop. She noticed the door was ajar, and hesitated. She had never been allowed inside the workshop area, only in the shop. But needs must - she hesitantly opened the door and entered.

Beyond the door were stairs down, into a cellar area. It was dark and she went back and took a small oil lantern in the shape of a seasonal jack-o-lantern from wall beside the door before continuing. She then crept down gingerly to avoid tripping. Her shoes made soft crunching noises, like stepping on small shards of glass. Must have been from the mirrors he carried to repair, she reasoned. Still, sloppy of Mr. Silver not to clean up.

The downstairs area was large and dimly lit, speckled with boxes and ladders and wooden dividers, but it glittered strangely everywhere in the flickering light of the jack-o-lantern. Martine crept closer and gasped: the walls, and almost every surface, were covered in cracked shards of mirror. Shards in every size and shape and orientation, carefully placed and affixed next to each other, tilted at slight angles. Her distorted reflection stared back at her in pieces, almost like looking into a kaleidoscope.

"You should not have come here girl," came the craftsman's voice, and he emerged from around one of the dividers. "This is my work area."

"Work area?" Martine asked incredulously. "What are all these shards all over?"

"Ah, mementos, fragments of the mirrors I have fixed, a bit of artwork. I find It relaxes me," the craftsman said evasively. He stood behind her and she saw his smiling face reflected in the cracked shards "See, nothing more to it than sentimentality on my part. Well, I will get you your coin, just wait here a moment."

But Martine felt something was wrong. She stared at their reflections in the cracked shards, and then realisation struck: while her reflection was broken into countless pieces, the craftsman's reflection was nearly whole, with only a few tilts and breaks in his form. He had always looked nearly whole, in every broken mirror she had brought to him.

It was impossible, Martine thought. How could a cracked mirror reflect something in its shards without distortion? And then she felt a dawning horror - the mirror couldn't. What she had thought to be the craftsman's normal appearance WAS the distortion. But if her human form was reflected as a broken mess, then what was reflected as unbroken must surely be---

She started to turn around with a queasy feeling. Behind her the craftsman's voice turned cool. "I see you have realised. I can fool a human mind with glamor, but a mirror has no mind to enspell. I suppose it was inevitable that you would find out."

And Martine turned around and beheld the monstrosity - a shattered form of pieces of flesh and bone, its parts joined at all mismatching angles and positions. Nothing so broken could be alive, and yet it was, moving in ways a body should not move, pieces sliding against each other, attaching and separating, like a box of puzzle pieces being shaken, some parts aligning temporatily and then losing cohesion again.

She dared not scream. "Mr. Silver, what-"

"Not Silver, girl. Sliver. A fitting name, don't you think?" the creature said. "Fitting for a master thief too, so I thought of myself many decades ago. But I was too sure of myself. I sought to rob a rich manor, this very place, but I the owner found me and I had to kill him. A nasty business. And when I sought to escape, in my haste I fell and crashed through a mirror, and fell down those stairs you walked. And I suppose the shards must have cut my throat, for it seemed to me I fell and fell, through more and more mirrors, endlessly, until-"

"Until what?" She breathed, trying to make tiny movements to put space between herself and the creature.

"Until I fell all the way to hell itself, girl. But I made a bargain, you see. The devil had plenty to offer, bargains galore he had. He would send me back, and give me the manor for my own, and all I would have to do is occasionally send him someone in my place. A boy or a girl like yourself, someone no-one would miss. A very good deal."

Martine's breathing quickened. "So you left me unpaid intentionally today. You wanted to lure me down here."

"Yes, girl. Surrender yourself. It will be quick, a quick push against those mirrors. Their shards are sharp indeed, you will see."

"I don't think so," Martine retorted. "But why are you like this then, if you made such a good deal?"

"Because the devil cheated!" The creature roared with anger. "He sent me back not as I had been, but as the mirrors had seen me! No life of luxury for me, no manor lord's station in town. But he promised that he would restore me in the end. All I need is to arrange the mirrors so that they see me as I was! And I am so close."

"So the mirrors I brought to repair-" she said. She was nearly at the stairs.

"Yes! Material for my experiments. All these decades - all the mirrors you and your predecessors have brought. For each broken part of my body I must find a shard of mirror, placed just right, so that they would invert what was done to me, so that each part of me broken form is reflected back to where it once belonged."

In the mirrors Martine saw Mr. Silver smile a wry smile, but in the creature itself the motion was as if his skull was split and splintered. Sliver almost preened. "I have arranged every piece, turned and tilted every shard a thousand times. My reflection is nearly perfect. I am so close! It is only a matter of time until it is whole - until I am whole once more."

"How nice, well I wish you the best of luck."

"Ha! You cannot leave girl, you have seen me as I am. And the devil is due another gift."

"Agree to disagree!" And with that Martine sprinted up the stairs, and behind her the creature - Sliver - hissed and moved with a speed faster than should have been possible, its strange sliding parts turning corners in a way a human body could not.

Maybe it is fragile, being broken like that? She wondered and hurled one of the boxes on the shelves at the creature with all her strength, but it only bounced off and Sliver laughed. "Not so easy my dear." Martine swore under her breath and ran, the jack-o-lantern's light swinging wildly as she did, and the creature skittered up the stairs after her.

She emerged onto the shop floor. It was already dusk and she could see the streets were deserted - there would be no city watch, no-one to help her even if she called out. Thinking rapidly, she saw all the display mirrors facing outward onto the street. She had thought it was merely advertising, but now she wondered - if the cracked mirrors had power to make Sliver whole, what would unbroken mirrors do?

As the creature emerged to the shop floor, she quickly grabbed one of the fixed mirrors and turned it to face the creature.

And Sliver did flinch, but only momentarily. "Foolish girl, I work with mirrors all year long. Did you think I would surround myself with them if I were so vulnerable? Yes, seeing myself as I am pains me, it is like the mirror throws shards at me like it did that fateful night decades ago, but I have learned to bear it, to dodge the shards as it were. Familiarity has dulled the pain."

Flinching is good enough for now, Martine thought, and threw away the mirror. She grabbed another repaired one and turned it to face Sliver as she backed towards the entrance of the shop. Again Sliver flinched and grimaced but did not stop, and Martine threw it away in frustration.

Out of options, Martine ran out, Sliver following with a throaty laugh. "No witnesses this time of night girl, no need for me to hide, until I catch you and the devil is satisfied again!"

It was almost pitch black outside, a cloudy moonless night with no city lights in this area. Martine ran, holding the jack-o-lantern to light her way. Ahead she saw the circus grounds, and suddenly she realised what she must do. She ran towards one particular tent, relieved to find its entrance was unbarred. She ran inside, and was elated at what she found. This must be it! She quickly found a position and shuttered the lantern, leaving the tent fully in darkness.

She heard Sliver's voice from outside. "You won't escape, girl. I've dealt with other troublemakers over the decades. I know how to deal with you too." The creature crept inside the tent. "Where are you girl... just surrender... you will not keep me from being whole!"

Martine held her breath, hearing Sliver ever closer to her. And then, at the last moment, she suddenly unshuttered the jack-o-lantern and held it aloft.

The lantern flared at the sudden influx of air. It illuminated the grotesque form of Sliver, rearing up to strike at Martine. And all around, it revealed what the tent was full of.

Mirrors. But not straight reflecting mirrors. Funhouse mirrors, bent, curved, concave and convex in every way, facing each other in every direction. Martine's own image was multiplied and elongated in a thousand ways by the funhouse mirrors, the room seemingly full of her doppelgängers, thin and thick, tall and short. But so was Sliver, his broken form now repeated a million times and more, twisted in an infinite number of different ways.

And Sliver howled in horror and agony. He had grown used to one reflection, but not to an infinite variety of further twisted versions. The room was full of mockeries of him, and their pictures tore at him, tore at his mind in ways he had not prepared for. So he howled and roared, and spun, and struck out at the mirrors, and his broken parts slid against each other in an ever more rapid sickening undulation, breaking and attaching in ever more ways. And Martine howled too in terror and crouched down against the floor and held her head as the air became full of slithering body parts and ever more splinters of glass and the air was full of Sliver's screams----

Until there was only darkness and quiet. Martine raised her head and winced, she had pieces of glass stuck in her back and in her face and arms. She raised the jack-o-lantern and looked around. The funhouse mirror room was destroyed, but there was only piles of glass around. There was no trace of Sliver.

"Young lady, what are you doing here? Are you all right?" Came a voice from outside the tent. A man walked in holding a torch. In the torchlight she could see he was dressed as a circus director. "Er, I was..." Martine began.

"You must have sought shelter here in the earthquake, right? We felt it too. Sadly not a safe place to go, miss, as you can see all our fine funhouse mirrors are broken now."

She stared at him in disbelief. An earthquake? "Um... yes, that's what happened. Yes, I was sheltering here."

The director helped her to her feet. Martine continued, "I am sorry for the damage of your circus, mister. I was hoping to visit someday, maybe when the damage is repaired."

"Ah, that may take a little time. You wouldn't know anyone who repairs mirrors do you?"

Martine blanched. "No, I don't know anyone like that. I have to go now I think."

"Well, off you go then miss. But you'll be back eh? Everyone comes back to the circus. I just know it," the director smiled. Martine just smiled nervously and then walked out. She hoped to find an inn somewhere and sleep for a day or two to put all this behind her.

After watching Martine leave, the circus director surveyed the damage again, and mused to himself, "That one was quite a clever girl, one to watch I think. Oh well, at least the other fellow is back where he belongs." He grinned. "I suppose I should go give him a warm welcome and congratulate him again on what a good bargain he made."

And he pointed the torch he carried at the ground and twirled it around him in a quick motion, and the torch painted a circle of flames around him, and his form sank into the ground in the centre of the circle, and then the tent was plunged into darkness once more.

Where do werewolves store all of their Halloween candy?

In a werehouse.