November 15, 2025
10:00 PM CST

The harvest festival was always a time of merriment in the small town of Durston Hollow. The streets lined with pumpkins and wreaths, the smell of roasting meats mingling with the earthy scent of autumn leaves. Children ran about, their faces painted in festive colors, while adults toasted to the end of the season’s work.

It was a time to celebrate the earth’s bounty.

But tonight, the air held an undercurrent of tension.

Two weeks had passed since Halloween. Two weeks since the veil between the living and the dead had been thinned to nothing, where the spirits of the season roamed freely. For most, the celebration was over. The pumpkins had been tossed, the haunted houses were now nothing more than empty shells, and the witches had hung up their brooms for the year.

But in Durston Hollow, Halloween never truly left.

The harvest festival bonfire crackled and roared in the center of town, its flames dancing like the spirits that still lingered. Around it, the townsfolk celebrated, unaware of the brewing storm. At the far edge of the festival grounds, by the old barn, the corn stalks swayed in the breeze. They seemed almost to whisper.

Beneath them, hidden in the dirt, something stirred.

Maureen Corbin stood with a glass of cider in her hand, eyes cast toward the fire. She was a local historian, always looking for the lore behind the town’s many strange customs. This particular festival was no different. She had grown up on tales of the old harvests, where the corn doll figures—made from the finest stalks—were meant to appease the spirits of the harvest.

The corn dolls. She remembered them clearly from her childhood. Those strange little figures, arranged every year around the bonfire, had always felt… wrong. Too lifelike.

Tonight, the air was colder than it should’ve been for a festival, and the shadows seemed to stretch longer than normal. She shifted uneasily, setting her drink down on a nearby barrel. Her eyes darted to the tables where families were laughing, the flickering lights from the bonfire catching on their faces. Everything appeared as it should, but something gnawed at the edge of her senses.

Then she saw it.

The corn dolls, those twisted, ragged figures of corn and straw, were beginning to move. At first, it was subtle—a slight twitch in one doll’s outstretched arm, a shift of another’s head, as if they were waking from a long slumber.

Maureen’s heart skipped a beat.

The festival-goers, lost in their revelry, didn’t seem to notice, but the dolls’ movements grew more pronounced, their joints creaking as if made of brittle bone rather than dried stalks. And then, with a suddenness that froze the blood in Maureen’s veins, they stood up.

The first doll reached for the firelight, its gnarled fingers glowing orange in the flames. A soft rustling followed as others rose in tandem, their limbs jerking into motion with a disturbing fluidity. They shuffled closer to the fire, their eyes—or the hollow black sockets where eyes should have been—reflecting the blaze.

Maureen couldn’t tear her gaze away, frozen by a growing dread.

One of the dolls—large and monstrous in its size—stepped forward. Its body, composed of corn husks, bones, and remnants of old, half-rotted harvests, moved with unnatural precision. As it approached the fire, it raised its skeletal hand toward the sky, and a chilling wind suddenly swept through the field.

From the ground beneath the dolls, the earth trembled. A low rumble echoed as the bones of the dolls began to rattle. In the distance, the ground beneath the nearby cornfields cracked open, and figures—shadowy, spectral forms—began to rise from the soil.

The spirits of Halloween—those who had not returned to the other side on All Hallows’ Eve—were waking.

The dolls’ movements became more erratic, their limbs contorting as though the spirits inhabiting them were fighting for control. The wind picked up, and the fire began to crackle and snap violently, as if trying to fend off the growing darkness. The spirits were restless, their faces flickering in and out of existence, their mournful wails rising from the depths of the earth.

Maureen backed away slowly, her heart pounding in her chest. The celebration around her had turned into chaos. People screamed, their faces frozen in fear as they looked to the bonfire, seeing the horror that had begun to unfold.

The monstrous corn doll—the leader—let out a low, guttural sound, an unholy moan that was both human and not. Its hollow eyes fixed on Maureen, locking her into its gaze. It reached for her, its skeletal fingers elongated and crackling with some dark energy.

“Run!” Maureen shouted to the crowd, though her voice was barely a whisper against the howling wind. She turned and bolted for the edge of the festival grounds, her breath coming in quick gasps. Behind her, the dolls began to chant in a language older than the town itself—an incantation meant to bind the living to the dead.

But it was too late. The spirits had risen, and they were hungry.

As Maureen reached the woods at the edge of the field, she could hear the laughter of the harvest spirits, the mocking wails of the corn dolls. The wind howled with their voices as they began to descend upon the helpless festival-goers.

She turned back once, watching as the once-celebrating crowd was swept away in the spiraling winds. Those who remained were now surrounded by the figures—made of straw, bone, and the twisted memories of All Hallows’ Eve—grasping, dragging, and pulling them toward the waiting earth.

The festival had ended.

As Maureen disappeared into the night, her pulse racing, she knew this: Durston Hollow would never truly be free of the harvest. The spirits would return every year, at the edges of the festival, waiting for those who dared linger too long. And this time… they would not leave until they had taken everything.