Ghost Story Sparks: Random Ghost Story Writing Prompt Generator

Some ghosts rattle chains and appear at the foot of the bed. Others are much easier to miss.

A chair is always pulled out in an empty room. Someone hears their name whispered through a disconnected telephone. A child keeps talking to the previous owner of the house. A dead woman appears in every family photograph except the ones taken while she was alive.

Ghost Story Sparks is a random generator for stories in which the dead have not quite left. One click might give you a ghost, haunted place, apparition, strange manifestation, unfinished piece of business, message from the dead, séance, haunting rule, supernatural discovery or reason a spirit refuses to move on. Some sparks are unsettling. Some are tragic, mysterious or strangely beautiful. A few ghosts may even be trying to help.

The ideas stretch from traditional hauntings, Gothic ghost stories and historical apparitions to contemporary homes, hotels, schools, hospitals, roads, railway stations and ordinary objects carrying extraordinary histories. You might encounter a residual haunting endlessly repeating one moment, a spirit desperate to communicate, a family ghost passed between generations, an entity whose intentions are difficult to understand or a supposedly haunted place where the real mystery is discovering who the ghost once was.

Not every ghost story needs to be horror. The supernatural can uncover grief, memory, guilt, love, injustice, loneliness, family history and things left unsaid just as easily as it can frighten. Take one spark and follow it, combine several into a complete haunting, or keep generating until something refuses to leave you alone.

Explore the Paranormal Writing Hub for more ghosts, hauntings, supernatural encounters and unexplained story inspiration, or search the Creative Writing Archive for hundreds more ideas across horror, Gothic, mystery, fantasy and beyond.

Somebody is still here. Find out why.