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He invited twenty-two people to his first-ever Halloween party. Twenty-three are in the shared photo album, and the twenty-third doesn’t show his face in any of the forty pictures he’s in.

In this original horror story, a man looks back on the party he threw in his new house, a three-bedroom ranch forty minutes past where anyone he knew lived. The invitation said “costumes mandatory, bring whoever,” with a little ghost after it, and he meant it. His oldest friend Cal came dressed as a lumberjack, which is what he always wore anyway, carrying a slow cooker of chili like a baby, and as always he was the designated driver. Then there was the guy in the full rubber horse head, who took everyone’s coats, drank through a straw in the nostril, and snapped perfect photos all night with other people’s phones. Nobody knew who brought him. It made for a better party that way.

A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a Halloween party, a guest no one could place, and a friend who should have stayed the night. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you.

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📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales

All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.