It’s time to announce the shortlist and winners of the 2018 Ghost Story Competition. Judging this competition is always a challenge: it brings in some of the best writing we see here at The Fiction Desk. This year we’ve got three prizes: a first prize of £500, and second prize of £250, and a third prize of £100. Those three winners will also be published in our next anthology, while all of the shortlistees will receive a three-volume subscription to our anthology series.
So let’s get on with the shortlist, which this year consists of twelve stories:
- Kris Ashton: ‘Highway Memorials’
- Steve Bilsborough: ‘The Sweet Wrapper Incident’
- Michael Button: ‘A New Beginning in a New Home’
- Bruce Coker: ‘Leggers’
- Anthony Cule: ‘The Glass in the Bathroom’
- Jan Haniff: ‘Widow’
- Chris Hogben: ‘The Star That Stayed Till Morning’
- C B McCall: The Spare Room
- Alice Nuttall: ‘The Flat Above the Joke Shop’
- Rosalie Parker: ‘The Moor’
- A D Stuart: ‘Gnomsense’
- Christopher Williams: ‘The New Normal’
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Now for the winners, in reverse order:
In third place, with a £100 prize:
- Kris Ashton: ‘Highway Memorials’
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In second place, with a £250 prize:
- Chris Hogben: ‘The Star That Stayed Till Morning’
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And in first place, with a £500 prize:
- C B McCall: The Spare Room
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I’ll be getting in touch with the shortlistees and winners over the next week or so to arrange prizes. In the meantime, congratulations to all of the above – and to everybody else who entered the competition and sent in such fine work, making judging the entries an absolute pleasure.
The Ghost Story Competition will return this November. In the meantime, our Newcomer Prize for Short Stories is open now for entries, both supernatural and non-supernatural. Find out more here.
