Previously: “Fleshgait.”
Halloween season is almost upon us, so let’s kick things off with a thematically appropriate creepypasta: “Carrie Morgan’s Halloween Costume.” Another Mak Ralston story (see also: “Ears” and “Anatomy Of Apartment 11A”) this one gets at not just the perils of the holiday itself, but how fraught it can be working retail at specific times of year.
I don’t honestly have a ton to say about this one; I just like it. It’s weird and eerie, but sort of… quiet in its weirdness and eeriness. It’s the kind of thing you could imagine happening for real. Heck, I would imagine that a non-zero number of people have experienced something like this for real. And the fact that situations like these leave so many unanswered questions just… make the whole thing freakier.
[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]
Be careful who you talk to this season — especially if you’re in retail.
Find an excerpt below, and read “Carrie Morgan’s Halloween Costume” in full at the Creepypasta Wiki.
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…To those who ask — which isn’t many — most of my jobs were what I like to call “odds and ends” because the majority were but means to an end (namely money) and most were most certainly odd. I recall rather fondly my summer days at the local putt-putt golf course watching kids and their parents fail to get a neon pink ball through an alligator’s mouth, as I also retain warm memories of “lifeguarding” at the local rec center’s pool where I was similarly nothing more than a passive observer, this time with a whistle around my neck that I seldom ever blew. The jobs less desirable but never the less well-paying were the seasonal retail ones, where most of my headaches came from. The general public can be a rather loathsome bunch, especially at times of year when you’d expect otherwise. Christmas comes to mind, first and foremost. Nothing says “peace on earth and goodwill toward men” like two middle-aged women brawling over a plush Care Bear. The thing ripped in two if memory serves, and both women were detained by the mall security. This was all before my lunch break.
Why I ever agreed to work the register of the pop-up Halloween store (I believe called “Monster Mart”) at the same mall the following fall is beyond me. Actually, it isn’t. The answer’s quite simple, really. If there was a steady paycheck involved, so was I, even if that meant filling up a fog machine every morning and hearing the same, deep voice bellow the ever-so generic “Beware! Turn Back Now!” followed by a fit of evil laughter every time someone stepped through the doorway. I must’ve heard it six thousand times by the time November rolled around, and I used to joke that inhaling that damp-smelling fog for about a month straight would probably give me cancer.
I don’t joke about that kind of thing anymore.
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Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photo via Hansjörg Keller/Unsplash]
Hey, thanks so much for featuring yet another one of my works on the blog! It always means so much to me. What y’all do here is really neat! Keep it up!
And thank YOU so much for all the wonderful stories! They’re always such a delight to read and think about!