1875 London…
June was thrilled to be travelling for the first time to India. It was her first visit to Udaipur, Rajasthan and she was ecstatic to see the new mansion she was about to set foot in. Before this, she had only heard stories about the richness of the place, the warmth of the people there, and about colours that were the main attraction to her. She had heard that women there wore beautiful coloured attires which she wanted to see with her own eyes.
It was her 18th birthday and her father had gifted her this whole mansion to her as a sign of his love for her. She was going there alone accompanied only by a few of her handmaids, to meet her fiancé who was already there to welcome her. Edward Davies was looking forward to meeting his sunshine whom he wrote a letter to, of how much he had waited for this day to arrive and to be finally able to meet her.
It was going to be their safe haven, a home where she would be spending the rest of her life after her marriage to Edward. The day arrived and she reached the mansion in Udaipur after a long journey of six months and more. To her dismay, there was no one at the gates to welcome her. She couldn’t find any staff or even see her love, Edward anywhere. This made her uneasy and worried. The mansion didn’t give her a good feeling at all. It seemed like an abandoned house in its first appearance itself. She was doubtful whether to enter it or not but she needed to find her fiancé.
Situated at the outskirts of the city and over a hilltop, the house seemed deserted and June wondered why her father had gifted her such a strange house? …
Er…are you all wondering whether I am going to tell you the rest of the story or not? Sure, yes, I will tell you soon. After that how about crafting a new story from the prompt on your own. It would be fun, isn’t it? Wait…wait! Let me give you some rules and tips to make you imagine an amazing story and send it to us.
1. Only one story per household.
2. Words should not exceed the limit of more than 3500 -4000 words.
3. You can use the above prompt to work for you as an idea to write a new story. Some of the elements that need to remain same somewhere in your story is the year mentioned above, names of the characters from the prompt must be used as well.
4. You can use the same era or you can use this time period and do a transition of it by travelling to any year, era or time you wish to, which means you can express the old time story coming to the modern ages travelling like a folklore.
5. You can add new characters for sure without hesitation.
6. ‘The Abandoned House’ phrase must be used into your story but kindly think of some other title for your story. The same shouldn’t be used as a title.
7. The stories can have horror elements into it, but you should not express any bloodshed, abusive words, explicit or extreme horror of any type. You have to write a story to show the supernatural experiences that the people that go into the house face there, which makes them believe the legend, that why it’s called ‘The Abandoned House Horror’.
8. Major Tip: The house has now become a museum and people who choose to visit there, must enter the house at their own risk (can be used by those writers who wish to write it from the modern day angle).
9. The last date of submission is 15th April 2022 till midnight IST.
10. Write ‘Horror Story Submission’ in the subject line and send it to editorialmagazinecc@gmail.com
11. I will be selecting the stories this time for this new horror anthology project from the submissions that would come across. What I am expecting is a good literary piece and not any sudden fiction with a fast paced or a sci-fi angle to it.
12. Selected writers will have to purchase their own Author's Copy.
Happy Writing!
Monalisa Joshi
Founder, Director & Chief Editor
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