You know, basements aren't really all that bad. They're actually rather cozy. The pleasant darkness, the abundance of canned foods, and a glowing, flickering warmth of roaring hellfire. A real Nightmare Night experience! And there's so much to do down here! You won't believe the number of secret documents and blackmail that Equestria Daily has down in their storage cabinets. And Seth left so many valuables down here in his Trixie shrine. I'm gonna be loaded once this portal is done opening. Speaking of strange things in basements, Alex and Daffodil should feel very, very ashamed. I can't believe you didn't even have the decency of hiding this cardboard box.
But thankfully, once all that started to get boring, I had something to look forwards to: reading the 100+ horror stories the lot of you sent in. That's impressive, especially considering I gave you guys only a week to get them all in! And the spine-chilling horror of your tales were just enough to distract me from the sound of Cereal's Science Cannon™ which he's been firing at the basement door pretty much non-stop. That portal better hurry up.
Click after the break, and we'll take a look at some truly frightening Nightmare Night tales!
I'm not going to lie, the competition was close! There were a lot of good stories, so many that I had to enslave get some help to sort through them all. SeattleLite, you were a fantastic help, and the hypnosis should wear off in a few hours. Thanks again.
Now, a contest wouldn't be a contest if we didn't have some winners! And I'll tell you what, picking out the finalists was rough going. But I finally whittled it down to the top ten who had that je ne sais quoi that put them above and beyond the call of pony. These are stories that send shivers down your spine, set your heart pounding, and make you think twice about going to bed. And you'll find them all below.
So here's the deal: I've done my job, and that door really needs some more reinforcing, so I can't hang around much longer. What happens next is all up to you. We have 10 finalists, but only three can be the scariest Nightmare Night fics of this year! That's where you come in. Once you've finished reading the lot of these eerie tales, you, the readers of Equestria Daily, will be voting on your favorites.
If my cracking algorithm is correct, there should soon be a poll popping up in Equestria Daily's sidebar that will allow you to select your favorites. So curl up with a blanket, turn the lights down low, and get yourself in that Nightmare Night mood! The winners will be announced on the grim night of October 31st! Enjoy yourselves, my dears. And remember, try to be fair. These authors put a lot of time into these and deserve an equal shot!
Where's that thrice-blasted dark army, already? Stupid portal.
A Nightmare Night to Remember
Author: Syntactics
Description: We wonder why the Queen of the Changelings look so different from the rest of the hive. Is it simply the form she is most comfortable with, or something more?
As Sweetie Belle and the rest of the CMC descend into the hive of the changelings on Nightmare Night, they are about to discover the answers to these questions at the cost of their lives.
Body of Work
Author: The Gray Potter
Description: In the back of the white marble archives, behind a rusted door, paint peeling and centipedes crawling under the frame, there’s a set of stairs. They buckle like cork, and descend into a lightless library coated in dust, pages, and runes. Here, Twilight Sparkle stumbles upon a perfectly preserved body. Her own body.
How Everybody Loves Pinkie
Author: Azure-Spark
Description: When Pinkie Pie left home, she promised her parents she'd write home. A few years after the fact, she decides it'd be best to keep them informed of how she's doing.
Author: Saddlesoap Opera
Author: Dr. Hammer
Description: A beat-down reporter is forced to do an article about what appears to be no more then an abandoned manor.
But there are more within those walls then he ever could have bargained for.
Author: Aquaman
Description: Fluttershy has been plagued by nightmares, and Twilight wants to help her get rid of them. But when the bookish mare begins to pry into the depths of Fluttershy's unraveling psyche, she finds more questions than answers. What do her dreams mean? Why won't they stop haunting her? And why does the creature she keeps seeing inside them seem like more than just a simple nightmare?
Author: Mortimer Quill
Description: Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle set out to find their friend, Scootaloo, when she doesn't show up for their planned day of crusading for cutie marks. The girls track her to a small village fairly far away from Ponyville; Scootaloo's hometown. What the girls find is far from expected, and this adventure will forever leave its mark on the three little fillies.
Author: JMac
Description: Miss Cheerilee's class takes a tour of a haunted cemetery. This is an old fashion ghost story.
Author: Calchexxis
Description: On the anniversary of her parents' deaths Fluttershy always takes the day off to visit their graves for a while. This time she runs into Twilight Sparkle on the way however and the two end up going together. Once there Twilight learns a couple of shocking secrets about her friend including that her parents were both murdered when she was a filly. Fluttershy cannot remember anything about the night it happened though so the perpetrators were never caught. In a moment of sympathy Twilight offers to attempt a hypnosis spell to try and recover her friends' locked-up memories of that traumatic night.
Author: KholdstareV
Description: On the way home from a joyless Nightmare Night party, Twilight finds an old, abandoned covered wagon on the side of the road. A mysterious entity hiding inside begs Twilight for a favor. Giving into her generous nature, she reluctantly agrees. However, she may find that this one good deed may be her last...
