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Every year, the week after Halloween, the local paper ran the same little item: on Mischief Night, someone had soaped a single word onto a single front window, and nobody saw who did it. The paper called it a prank. Her neighbor, who had lived on Fulton Street for fifty years, said none of them were ever random.

In this original horror story, a single mother looks back on her first fall in a narrow 1911 house she could barely afford. The radiators knocked all night, the fuse box blew whenever the dryer and the space heater ran together, and she worked nights on a hospital ward while her twelve-year-old son Petey left notes on the kitchen table (“Ate the meatloaf. All of it.”). Then, the Saturday before Halloween, she comes home to a single curved stroke of white soap on her front window, at about the height of her face. So on Mischief Night she turns off every light, pulls her chair up to the glass with a thermos and a flashlight, and waits to catch them.

A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Mischief Night, an old house, and a message she read the wrong way. 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.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

The night corn maze had one rule, painted on a board at the gate: if you get lost, raise your flag and stay put, and a guide will come to you. In October 1994, a father and his eight-year-old daughter went in with flag number fourteen.

In this original horror story, a man looks back on the brave night he planned for his daughter Cass, a girl as afraid of the dark as other kids are of dogs. For her eighth birthday, she chose six acres of field corn after dark, with a flashlight, an orange flag on a pole, and a farmer’s joke about the old roped-off well out at the north end. Cass named the walls of corn (the tall ones were Big Steve), held onto his belt loop, and kept her flashlight pointed at her sneakers so nothing could jump into the light. About an hour in, they’re properly lost, so they do what the sign says. They raise the flag, and a voice in the corn calls their number.

A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a night corn maze, a father and daughter, and a rule that’s supposed to keep you safe. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you.

🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show.

📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales

All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

For forty-one Halloweens, the retired mailman across the street gave out the most famous popcorn balls on Wheeler Avenue. In 1997, from his hospital bed, he asked his neighbor for one last favor: hand out his treats, and save the single popcorn ball left on his counter for the boy in the fireman suit.

In this original horror story, a single mother looks back on the Halloween she sat on Mr. Eberly’s front step in his place. He was the man who had shoveled her walk and fixed her furnace with a coat hanger the winter her husband left, and who taught her daughter Maddie to whistle with two fingers. Every other day she let herself in with the key under the ceramic frog to water his forty pots of African violets, from underneath, the way his index card said. His voice on the phone was weak and thick, as if he were talking through a dish towel, but his instructions were clear: the popcorn ball was only for the boy in the fireman suit, and only if he asked for it by name.

A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Halloween night, a kind old neighbor, and a promise kept exactly as asked. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you.

🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show.

📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales

All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.