Looking for spine-chilling horror story ideas? Here are five creepy plot ideas to inspire your next frightening story.

Stuck For A Scary Plot?

Horror stories are like Marmite – you either love them or you hate them. Horror has several sub-genres. If you’re going to write a horror, what sub-genre do you normally read? It’s always best to write what you like to read.

If you need more information on what some sub-genre requirements are, we’ve put together a blog, The Essential Guide To Writing Horror, that will help. Once you’ve decided on your sub-genre, you need a plot that fits. The truth is that you can turn almost any idea into horror.

Try These 5 Horror Story Ideas

1. Psychological Horror

Messing with people’s minds is the essence of psychological horror.

What if…
…a married man was leading a double life – two different wives, two different households. Neither wife knows about the other. What if, after being attacked in wife number one’s home one night, he wakes up in a half-body cast the next day in wife number two’s bed? What if that night he has nightmares about the house moving? What if the next day he wakes up in wife number one’s house? The nightmares and home swapping continue, and every day the rooms seem to get smaller. When he mentions it, the respective wife tells him he’s just getting cabin fever. What if he starts to hear both wives voices during the day in the same house when the house is empty? What if he can’t get out because of the body cast, there isn’t a phone handy, and he can’t talk about it to either wife about it without giving away the fact that he’s a bigamist.

2. Supernatural Horror

It may surprise you to know that, while some people think Christians shouldn’t read Stephen King, King is a believer. Many of his books explore the themes of good vs evil. And many are allegories for grace and redemption. The Bible can be a great source for ideas for horror. Take for example the verse in Genesis 4:7, … if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you… This verse was used as the germ of the idea Frank E. Peretti used to create the plot of his book, The Oath.

What if…
 …a statue of a saint in a church starts bleeding and there is no discoverable cause? What if the small shrine statues of saints in the congregants homes start bleeding as well?  One is a miracle. Hundreds – that’s something else. What if crosses in non-Catholic churches start bleeding? What if crosses, and St Christophers that are worn as necklaces and earrings start bleeding, but only when they are being worn? What if Bibles and prayer books start bleeding when they are read? What if people start bleeding? Is it a miracle, or is it a curse? Or is it something else entirely? Exodus 12:13: …The blood shall be a sign… 

3. Body Horror

Monsters lurk everywhere in horror stories, but in body horror, the monster is much closer to home. Beneath your skin. Mutating you, altering you, turning you into something that isn’t human.

What if…
…The Pripyat River, which flows into the Dnieper River and eventually empties into the Black Sea has been carrying nuclear waste from Chernobyl. This part is true. But what if tanning beds have now been turning into anti-aging machines? What if instead of UV they provide infrared light? What if the user has to apply a gel made of a seaweed found in the Black Sea? What if that fact was being kept a secret? What if the treatment does actually make people look much younger and people start buying their own anti-aging beds for daily use? What if there’s an earthquake in Chernobyl and vast amounts of nuclear waste have been released? What if the newest batch of gel reacts differently? Instead of aging backwards, the light now makes the gel expand and harden turning into a chrysalis. What if the humans inside metamorphose into something else entirely?     

4. Found-footage Horror

When writing found footage, it’s vital that you make the reader believe that the story they are reading is reality, not fiction.

What if…
…a tax auditor and his assistant arrive at an old family-run company to audit their books. What if they begin to find strange discrepancies that the family know nothing about. The auditors now believe there is deep fraud going on. They want to dig deeper into the archive to see how far back it goes. What if the family agree and the next day a family member the auditors haven’t met before joins them? What if she doesn’t seem to be quite what they think? What if she leads them to hidden diaries, journals, and old photographs that tell an altogether darker history of the company than the one on the website, one that seems to be getting closer to the present every day? What if she starts to get sick and claims someone is poisoning her and that they will be next? What if she died three hundred years ago?

5. Gothic Horror

Gothic horror relies heavily on brooding castles on cliff edges, wild seas, lightning and thunder, family secrets, watchful servants, jealousy, and creaking floorboards in the middle of the night. 

What if…
…instead of a dark forest, it’s a desert. Instead of a brooding castle, it’s an old, decaying Spanish mansion? What if, instead of gossiping neighbours, there are old myths in books in the house’s library. What if the servants are from one family and are all mute and can only talk in a sign language they’ve invented? And only do so when they think no one’s watching. What if our young heroine has been told she is the owner of the house’s ward? What if everything is idyllic until a letter arrives that says a priest is coming to visit, and everything changes? What if the cellar leads to underground chambers and corridors?

The Last Word

Anything can be turned into a horror story. A trip to the supermarket, a ride at Disneyland, being lost in Paris, knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Ok, that one is a little creepy. Avoiding the clichés will make your book original, and far more interesting.

Don’t forget you can turn your book into a horror story by using a twist at the end, a stunning reveal, or a final chapter that subverts everything that comes before. Just don’t make those ‘unrealistic’. The final scene in the movie Sixth Sense is a good example of a stunning but realistic twist. You need to plant seeds, however small, throughout the book so that when readers think about it afterwards, they are shocked at not having seen the twist coming.

Great horror stories often begin with a simple but unsettling idea. Use these five scary plot ideas as a starting point, then add your own twists, characters, and fears. You never know which one might become your next nightmare-inducing story.

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

by Elaine Dodge. Author of The Harcourts of Canada series and The Device Hunter, Elaine trained as a graphic designer, then worked in design, advertising, and broadcast television. She now creates content, mostly in written form, including ghost writing business books, for clients across the globe, but would much rather be drafting her books and short stories.

More Posts From Elaine

1. The Essential Guide To Writing Horror Stories
2. Why Is Horror More Popular Than Ever?
3. The Art Of Writing A Great Love Triangle
4. Love Story vs Romance: Key Writing Differences Explained
5. A Quick Start Guide To Writing First & Last Lines
6. What Is A Character Bible & Why Do I Need One?
7. A Quick Start Guide To Writing Revenge
8. A Quick Start Guide To Writing Emotions
9. Why A Good Vocabulary Is Important For Writers
10. What Is Cozy Fiction? & How To Write It

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The post Stuck For A Scary Plot? Try These 5 Horror Story Ideas appeared first on Writers Write.

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