Welcome Ghasts and Ghouls, Tale tellers and Jokesters. Spooktober continues! We have some bewitchingly good tales and jokes here ... spooky tales, twisted tales, mysterious tales and educational tales, even dreams and brewing schemes, with portraits! Tales to make you howl with laughter and shiver with the feeling you don't want to look over your shoulder ...

As more offerings are made the phantasmal essence inside the Cauldron swirls and begins to bubble. The ghostly keys tumble and glide, slowly coming ever closer to the surface, each glinting but a moment before becoming shadowed and fading again. A faint rumble disturbs the absolute silence, then all is hushed again. Did it come from the tomb? You look at the angel statues, their faces still covered. Are they closer now? But statues don't move and other than the mysterious dancing leaves with no breeze, all seems still within the mist.

Joke what bees scare the other bees, but are loved by men?
Boobies.

Death's Door Deluxe Edition please.

The Candle in the Canopy

Deep in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, where moonlight barely pierced the canopy, Ana ventured on Halloween night, chasing tales of a glowing light. Locals whispered of a candle that floated among the trees, luring the curious. As she pushed through tangled vines, a faint flicker appeared, hovering above a twisted kapok tree. A voice, like crackling leaves, hissed, “Ana… come closer…” Her flashlight died, and the candle’s flame flared, revealing a shadowy face within its glow. “Stay with us…” it moaned, as roots coiled around her ankles. She screamed, but the jungle swallowed her voice. By dawn, Ana was gone, and the candle flickered anew, waiting. That night, it whispered another name.

May the Hand of Fate grant me a key to one of the following Spooktober Realms:
~ Hollow Knight: Silksong
~ Unbound: Worlds Apart
~ Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition

Thank you very much for doing another cool giveaway this year, J!

Thank you very much for this frightening giveaway bjgamer! Even in this scary day, we need some fun.

What kind of dog does Dracula have?
A bloodhound!

How do mummies make ends meet?
Utilizing crypt-o money!

I'm in for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

In the end of March, 1988, a student visited the place where her parents lived, who were out on vacation, to look after the place for a week. One evening, she went out to the old town and into a pub, where she was last seen, leaving around 10 pm for her place of residence less than 1 km away. However, she never arrived there, and there have been no signs of her whereabouts nor any leads, the police investigations turning up nothing, for the following decades.

20 years later, however, an anonymous letter claimed that she had been murdered and her body hidden under concrete in the basement of an old villa, which is located close to her place and was undergoing major renovation at the time of her disappearance.
When the police used special equipment to survey the ground, they indeed found a suspicious cavity beneath the concrete of the floor, and police dogs also located that spot as a possible grave. However, since the renovation, which indeed included new floors, there now is a large staircase that blocks access to the location, which cannot be excavated without endangering the stability of the building itself. Therefore, there still is no body and she's officially still missing, to this day.

This is a true tale, being an ongoing mystery so might classify as "urban legend" of sorts. But it doesn't feel right to leave it at that, so I devised something light-hearted to make up for it. :)

What do you call a sarcophagus that caught the flu? - a coughin'

Plus there's this pun that has been haunting my mind for long, and this thread gave me the initiative to actually formalize it in the attached image. ;)

I'd like to be in the cauldron, erm, I mean for a key from the cauldron, in the following order:

Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition
Grim Dawn
DOOM (2016)
Rogue Lords - Blood Moon Edition
Tainted Grail: Conquest

Dad jokes incoming.

Why did the skeleton bring a pickle to the Halloween party?
Because it was kind of a big dill!

Why didn't the zombie make any pickle jokes at the Halloween party?
Because it wasn't kosher.

Please count me in for:
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

In the tradition of Nightmare Before Christmas I mix in a litte Christmas song this Halloween with a huge topping of HP Lovecraft, to the tune of Santa Clause Is Coming To Town

You'd better watch out; you'd better go hide.
An Elder Sign is needed for this Yuletide.
Great Old Ones are coming to town.

They're making a fist and shaking it twice.
They're going to hit you naughty or nice.
Great Old Ones are coming to town.

They're bringing ugly shoggoths, And horrid Deep Ones too.
Shub Niggurath is waking up,
And so is Great Cthulhu.

So you'd better watch out, you'd better go pray
When the big guy comes up from R'lyeh.W
The Great Old Ones are coming to town.

This is a story years ago about my father's cousin, you could called him Cousin A. He's a fun one to be around with, kind and reliable, but he always refuse an invitation to have dinner in our house. When he come visiting, he always excused himself at 5PM at most. Only once he stays until night, but that's that. Whenever pushed, he always said that our neighborhood got a confusing maze-like layout and he always get lost without any guidance. Kinda understandable, as our family housing area was a new one with lack of street lightnings and there were no google maps or its ilk back then. And truth be told, he's not the only guests confused with the street layouts here.

But then a couple years later, another of my father cousin, Cousin B from the same expanded family branch decided to rent a house in the street across ours. Being the close friends 3 of them were, and also the one that had an mpv to carry stuffs, Cousin A agreed to help with the moving process. So on a weekend it was us in the rental house helped moving things from the old ones. But it was night already and there's a couple of boxes still to get. Begrudgingly Cousin A agreed to drive there with one condition, someone have to accompany him. So those 2 cousins, Cousin A and B went in a car while my dad and me stayed at the rental.

And they finally came back right just right after midnight. Strangely enough we can hear that the car was driven at too much speed, like they were escaping from something. We instantly decide to go the the carport to welcome them, curious what's the rush was all about. And both of them jump out of the car straight entering the rental house, pale as the moon. "See, this is why I don't want to drive around here at night" said Cousin A, shaking. "I really don't want to said anything about it, but now I got another witness to back up my tale" he continued while clearly still stressed out.

My father ask "So what's the deal here? Did the 2 of you get lost?". "It's not that." Cousin B replied shortly. "Do you know the closed road portal just before the main gate to this block?" Cousin A said. "It's the second time now I saw the same thing there, right around the same time. A long-haired woman in plain white dresses, just walk straight through the portal." Both Cousin A and Cousin B looks at each other and shakes their head. "Walk through that damned closed portal like it was nothing."

We never gave Cousin A a dinner invitation again. Cousin B stayed at the rental house for around 4 years before moves to another town. There are other stories about our neighborhood, but it's for another day.

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Thanks for the giveaway, been a while since I entered one of yours. The one on my wishlist is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines so I only enter for that.

A terrifying legend is associated with the castle in Niedzica. As we know, Bogusław the Bald, Duke of Kalisz, married the beautiful Brunhilda, daughter of the Margrave of Brandenburg. The cunning woman conspired with the Brandenburgers and opened the castle gates to them. The Duke and his knights drove the invaders away and then Bogusław ordered the traitor to be thrown from the castle tower. But the Duke loved his wife so much that he regretted this act for the rest of his life, until he finally drowned himself in a well in the castle courtyard in despair. Since then, a legend has circulated among the local population that when anyone disturbs the peace of this castle, Brunhilda appears on the tower, weeping, while the Duke emerges from the well and paces the walls and battlements of his castle, wailing, "Forgive me, Brunhilda!".

Brunhilda haunts on the castle tower
Brunhilda descends from the tower
Bogusław haunts the castle

thanks to Polish youth TV series "Wakacje z duchami"

From the ghoulish Witch's Cauldron I'm after:

Grim Fandango Remastered
Rogue Lords - Blood Moon Edition
Sherlock Holmes The Awakened - Premium Edition
Pinstripe
Hollow Knight
Unbound: Worlds Apart
Costume Quest
Haunt the House: Terrortown

Thanks for the giveaway & to generous donors :)

Thanks for the GA :)

I would like to be in for:

~ Hollow Knight: Silksong
~ Death's Door Deluxe Edition
~ Tainted Grail: Conquest
~ Rogue Lords - Blood Moon Edition
~ Black Book
^ Costume Quest

The following jokes made me laugh:

(1)

- "Mom, where is Grandma now?" - the daughter asks her mother.
- "Grandma's in heaven," - the mother says sadly - "because she fell from the 10th floor."
- "She bounced that high?!

(2)

A couple is walking through a cemetery and the girl asks:
- "Aren't you afraid to walk through a cemetery at night?"
- "When I was alive, I was afraid!"

Ghost through the Storyteller's Challenge again and keep your eyes open ... don't be frightened. (You need at least 2 jokes to enter, coffin up more is extra spectral.)

Your story reminds me of something that happened to me many years ago. I'll have to see if I get the time to post it here.
You are always welcome to enter my GAs, whether or not you see something you'd like to try for. :)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

More spooktacular entries! Thanks for the haunts, scares and shrieks of ghoulish laughter!

From the true to the ridiculous to those whispered through the years, the tales and jokes are offered to the Cauldron. It bubbles consistently, many of the keys within rising and tumbling while others stay swirling in its depths. There are vague shadows in the thickening mist now, just at the edge of your sight. Are they ghosts, or something even more sinister? Your eyes are drawn back to the angel statues, which you swear have shifted ... again.

The story you are about to read is true. It happened to me ...

It was back when I was in my late teens. It was a Saturday in autumn, with barely the sliver of a moon and the slightest mist coming off of the river nearby. I was driving myself and my best girlfriend back home from a movie party at her older sister's house late at night. Her sister lived out in the country and the roads were dark, but as we got closer to town there were intermittent street lamps.

We were talking and joking when I saw movement up ahead. In the car's headlights it looked a lot like a person in light colored clothing was walking down the middle of the road. I slowed down, but this person stayed walking in the middle of the road ahead of us, yet there was something off about it. It seemed like we weren't catching up as it stayed ahead of us. A very strange feeling came over me.

I was about to ask my friend when she turned to me and asked "Do you see that?"

So I wasn't the only one. "I see ... something. It looks like a person walking in the middle of the road, but we should be getting closer faster and we aren't."

Then the 'person' disappeared. We both marked the spot we saw it disappear and agreed on where that was. I drove to the spot to look around in case this person might have stepped to the side of the road after all. As we approached the air got cold and we both got an odd feeling. I can't adequately describe how weird and strange that feeling was, like light charges of electricity dancing over our skin and every hair on our bodies raised at once. Nothing/Nobody was there. We checked the area with flashlights. We drove back and forth checking for reflections. We came back during the day. We tried what we could to recreate it over several nights with similar environmental conditions. Nothing.

Weeks later my friend and I visited her sister again and told her about the strange occurance. What we learned surprised us. We weren't the first to see it. Several people who lived around that area spoke of it. A teenage boy had been walking down the middle of the road late at night, drunk, a decade before when an autumn mist came up off the river and he was hit and killed by a driver. My friend's sister remembered it and told us the landmarks of the spot it happened. On our way back home that evening we looked for the landmarks and stopped. It was the same spot the 'person' we had seen seemed to disappear.

We never saw it/him again, but it was an experience we never forgot.

We need more spooky stories.
Moooore. Moooore !

=)

Thanks for sharing these true experiences. It makes me think about strange boundaries in our lives.