I Got Lost in a Ghost Town. Now I'm Running Their Halloween Festival.

About the story

It's the last week of October, and you were only supposed to be driving through. The road over Ashgrove Hill was meant to take forty minutes. Then the fog rolled in, thick and silver, the radio began to play an old waltz on every station, and your headlights picked out a wooden sign you're sure wasn't on the map: WELCOME TO HOLLOWMERE. POPULATION: CHEERFUL. Hollowmere is a little valley town of crooked roofs, orange lamplight and pumpkin patches. It has a square with a bandstand, a lake with paper boats, an inn called the Lantern & Key, an orchard, a bakery that smells of cinnamon at midnight, and about two hundred residents who are, every single one of them, ghosts. Friendly ghosts. Polite, gossipy, delighted-to-meet-you ghosts. They float a little when they're excited, they go see-through when they're embarrassed, and they absolutely adore Halloween. Here's the thing nobody outside knows: Hollowmere only exists for seven nights a year, the seven nights before Halloween. Every year, on Lantern Night, the whole town lights a thousand jack-o'-lanterns and paper lamps, and the glow carries Hollowmere safely through to next October. No lanterns, no glow. No glow, and the town fades into the fog for a hundred years. And this year, there's a problem. Granny Wick, who ran the Lantern Night Festival for a century and a half, finally moved on last Halloween (peacefully, happily, with a cup of cocoa in her hand). Nobody has organized anything since. The pumpkins aren't carved. The ghost choir hasn't rehearsed. The candy market has no candy. And the First Lantern, the one that lights all the others, can only be lit by a living hand, because ghosts can't hold a real flame. The town's welcome sign doesn't let just anyone in. It let you in. So now you're the new Festival Chair of a ghost town, with seven nights to organize six festival attractions, raise the Town Glow, befriend a valley full of spirits and light the First Lantern at midnight on Halloween. Odessa Fairweather, the bubbly ghost innkeeper who has been 26 for a very long time, has given you the best room at the Lantern & Key. Barty Gourd, the grumpy pumpkin-headed scarecrow who runs the patches, thinks you'll quit by Tuesday. And on the second night, a living podcaster named Wendell Crane stumbles into town with a microphone, a camera and a dream of proving that ghosts are real. If he broadcasts Hollowmere to the world, the fog may never let it come back. Meanwhile, something drifts at the edge of the valley: the Grey Hush, a cold, quiet fog that makes ghosts forget who they were. It isn't evil. It's loneliness, the kind that settles on forgotten places. Every night the Glow is low, the Hush creeps a little closer. Carve pumpkins with a scarecrow. Teach a ghost choir to sing in tune. Bake soul cakes at midnight. Find out why the sign chose you, and what your grandmother's old lantern keychain has to do with it. Spooky, never scary. No gore, no horror. Just autumn leaves, warm cider, candlelight and a town full of ghosts who only want one more Halloween. Features: Halloween Cozy · Spooky, Not Scary · Friendly Ghost Town · 7 nights to Lantern Night · Town Glow & Festival meters · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Odessa Fairweather, 166: The bubbly ghost innkeeper of the Lantern & Key, who has looked 26 for 140 years. • Barty Gourd, 200: Hollowmere's grumpy pumpkin-headed scarecrow and keeper of the pumpkin patch, carved and awakened two hundred Halloweens ago. • Wendell Crane, 25: A living, starstruck paranormal podcaster who has spent five years searching for Hollowmere. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Choir Rehearsal (Night 3, 20:00) · The Podcaster (Night 2, 23:10) · The Guestbook (Night 5, after midnight). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.