100 Attack of the Monsters writing prompts

100 Attack of the Monsters writing prompts await within, each one primed to unleash tales filled with spines tingling dread. Horrors beyond imagination slither through these story ideas, from test subjects escaping secret facilities to demons crossing over into our world. Every seemingly mundane situation conceals untold supernatural threats lurking right under the surface of reality.

With so many prompts to choose from, where does an aspiring writer begin? Vampiric entities, otherworldly beasts, vicious serial killers—or some wicked hybrid of all three—any of these nightmares could provide the seed for crafting a scream worthy scenario. From graveyards and haunted houses to ancient texts and disturbing artifacts, the prompts touch on numerous horror tropes. Yet fresh twists make even the more familiar ones seem unpredictable.

Ultimately, only the author knows what truly terrifies them. Within this wide selection, there are certainly prompts incorporating each writer’s personal phobias. And with vivid details, they can transform such fears into the stuff of great terror fiction that gets under readers’ skin. So prepare for thrills, chills—and words that flow—with 100 Attack of the Monsters writing prompts!

Here are 100 Attack of the Monsters writing prompts: 

1. You discover your basement is home to a creature that only you can see. You slowly uncover its origins and why it’s haunting you.
2. A mysterious beast roams the woods behind your new home. You set out trail cameras to capture evidence before anyone believes you.
3. You come across what appears to be Sasquatch tracks while hiking. Do you follow them and try to find the elusive creature?
4. Your little brother has an imaginary friend. But you start to hear and see signs it might not be imaginary at all.
5. A famous cryptozoologist goes missing while searching for the Jersey Devil. You join the search party hoping to pick up his trail.
6. You volunteer at the zoo cleaning enclosures at night. One night you swear you saw something mysterious in the big cat area after hours.
7. Deep sea fishermen keep pulling up creatures never seen before. A new species? Or signs of something more sinister stirring in the ocean depths?
8. Hikers start disappearing one by one from a remote mountain trail. Ranger warnings blame a deadly unknown creature.
9. Your grandfather’s tales of a shape-shifting creature haunting your family for generations suddenly don’t seem so far-fetched.
10. Footprints with only three toes appear overnight in the mud behind your rural farmhouse after heavy rains.
11. You find your doppelgänger living a parallel life. Is it a supernatural phenomenon or something more earthly but no less sinister?
12. Your sister is convinced her late night home intruder was a skinwalker. You try to rationalize what she saw while keeping an open mind.
13. A taxi driver recounts taking a mysterious passenger to a graveyard every night for weeks. But one night they finally get out and vanish.
14. Your best friend was killed in a puzzling animal attack while camping. You recognize claw and teeth marks not matching any known species.
15. An eccentric millionaire challenges you to spend the night alone on her private island that houses a terrifying genetic experiment even she won’t explain over the phone.
16. You agree to watch a horror movie with sophisticated AI feedback. But the AI’s reactions make you think it knows more about the real dark history behind the movie than it lets on.
17. A cave exploration goes awry when a massive tremor reveals a passage to an underground world never before seen by humans, one still inhabited by prehistoric beasts long considered extinct.
18. Your DNA ancestry results show an “unknown hominin species” in your lineage. The lab asks you to submit to further testing but won’t tell you why.
19. Wolves have been extinct in your region for nearly a century. So why does something devastating livestock and pets exactly like a giant wolf?
20. A deafening roar echoes from the summer forest behind your rural cabin only you seem able to hear. You set out to record evidence before telling others, afraid they won’t believe you.
21. You reluctantly join your occult-obsessed friend’s demon summoning ceremony as a joke. But you soon realize something has crossed over into your circle and attached itself to you.
22. Your grandmother’s last words to you before dying were, “Don’t trust the goatman.” You dig into local folklore to uncover what she was warning you about.
23. You discover an old portable hard drive once belonging to your missing zoologist sister. Recovering the encrypted files reveals her chilling final project on an unknown hominid.
24. Deep in a cave system, you stumble upon a small, pale creature that shouldn’t exist. It meets your stare with unsettling intelligence before retreating into darkness.
25. The woods whisper your name at dusk. When you finally call back one night it answers. What manner of creature mimics human voices to lure in victims after nightfall?
26. You volunteer to watch a cryogenically frozen prehistoric animal unearthed from Arctic permafrost…only to have the power go out in the remote facility during the raging storm.
27. Hunting trophies passed down in your family for generations seem to watch you. One night you swear you saw one move out of the corner of your eye.
28. The ghostly nanny. The horrific history. The house spiders whose eyes seem to follow your every move. You’re not sure which frightens you more as you’re isolated there for weeks caring for your elderly aunt.
29. Exploring the rocky shore at low tide you discover something alien buried far down in tidal mud. Do you dig it up or call for hazmat teams before it gets uncovered by rising water?
30. Your sibling’s sleepwalking takes a terrifying turn when they recount dreams of being chased nightly through the forest by a disturbing figure with elongated limbs and deer skull head.
31. You notice your little cousins only speak to their new imaginary friend at the exact moment the old grandfather clock strikes 3:33 am.
32. Home sick from school, through your bedroom window you spot something massive hunting in the quarry near your house when no humans are meant to be there.
33. Your strange new neighbors only seem to do yard work at night. From your bedroom you glimpse their odd glowing eyes reflecting light.
34. While cleaning out your elderly aunt’s attic you find disturbing charcoal cave art depicting a family sacrifice to something called “the Crawler.”
35. The local dive bar’s pet tarantula crawls out a crack in the wall one night leaving a gelatinous trail of microscopic eggs about to hatch.
36. You find hidden cameras your dying father placed around your childhood farm. Reviewing the footage makes your blood run cold. What was he tracking that you never knew about?
37. The addressed parcel left on your porch contains only a tooth. An enormous, fossilized tooth unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
38. You reluctantly participate in a studying brain wave manipulation experiment. But then the human screams filter through your noise cancelling headphones…
39. The deer cam photo sent anonymously to your phone couldn’t possibly be real. No known animal has glowing red eyes watching from the darkened thicket.
40. You discover the town mute isn’t deaf after all. They simply refuse to describe the shrieking slender creature that follows certain residents’ shadows.
41. The sole survivor. With no rational explanation for what wiped out the rest of your deep sea expedition crew, you’re determined to expose the truth no matter the cost.
42. The morning after a fierce storm exposes fossils of an unknown dinosaur species, your closest friends start going missing one by one.
43. After moving to the countryside, your elderly dog suddenly refuses to take evening walks, cowering and whimpering when you try to collar him as dusk approaches.
44. Your aunt dies and leaves you an intricately carved box passed down generations that must never be opened. But you hear faint rattling and scratching from inside at night.
45. Your wildlife cam placed along an isolated hiking trail starts glitching nightly at exactly 3:13 am no matter where you try to reposition it in the forest.
46. The local mob threatens you believing you sicced a monster on them for revenge. But you have no idea what really tore through the old warehouse slaughtering so many.
47. You discover an ornate hand mirror at a flea market without a reflection. But those peering back from the black glass when you get home seem to know and hunger for you.
48. The sole historical photograph found in crumbling ruins shows your own doppelgänger posing alongside explorers dated centuries before your birth.
49. A Richter 8.5 earthquake decimates your coastal town, draining the bay and exposing an ancient fossil bed filled with cyclopean skulls and bones.
50. Why do residents along your street only mow their lawns after dark wearing unsettling plague doctor masks? What don’t they want seen in daylight?
51. Finding an old forest service map reveals a remote ranger tower not on any modern day charts. But the dried blood tells a dire warning.
52. Only select local Gas station attendants will give you directions to the ghost town no maps or GPS can find. Shadowy figures are spotted in its abandoned windows.
53. You reluctantly take a job caring for your mysterious shut-in employer’s even more disturbing “son” residing in the basement.
54. Following the same reoccurring nightmare since childhood about getting lost in an endless hedge maze, you awaken one morning to find yourself transported to the very real and threatening maze concealing an unimaginable horror.
55. An extinct species of songbird unseen for centuries reappears both in your grandmother’s woods and recurring dreams—their gentle morning songs masking deadly intent.
56. Why do the crows only swarm old man Grendel’s decrepit manor house by the thousands, ominously silent, at 1:13 pm every Friday the 13th?
57. A calculus professor’s ceremonial dagger goes missing the same night animals start appearing eviscerated around campus sparking rumors of an internet urban legend come to life.
58. Why is your shed spider’s markings an exact match for the ancient petroglyph your archeologist sister sent before she vanished on a remote dig?
59. Babysitting your niece, she keeps smiling and waving at the “funny old man” peering in from outside. You see no one as she describes an ever changing disturbing figure only she glimpses.
60. Your daughter’s threatening imaginary friend turns out to be terrifyingly real. And you seem to be the only parent who can perceive it.
61. A strange envelope arrives in your missing archaeologist uncle’s handwriting showing you and your 14th century doppelgänger—and a chilling future warning he must avert at all costs.
62. Your dead grandmother’s beloved music box begins playing on its own in the night. The song lures you to a fateful balcony encounter with the piper behind its cursed notes only you can hear.
63. Your aunt is convinced she saw a chupacabra kill livestock on her ranch. You agree to visit and place trail cameras, hoping to find a mundane explanation. But what the cameras capture seems anything but natural.
64. After your professor is mauled on a field expedition, the lone photos recovered with her body show frightening evidence even leading zoologists can’t easily identify.
65. Only select locals know the truth about why no fisherman from your seaside town will set nets at night or stray from designated safe zones even in good weather. But you’re determined to find out.
66. Following screams from the old shed, you’re shocked at what finally crawls out gasping for air. A creature thought extinct hundreds of millions of years suddenly quite active and hunting fresh meat.
67. You discover what was really being transported in that overturned biolab semi truck abandoned outside town: bizarre ooze-dripping eggs waiting to hatch.
68. Deep in the bunker laboratory you awaken the last of his kind—your brilliant but ruthlessly unfeeling scientist father’s human cloning experiments—never meant to see daylight. What role does this “brother” now demand from you?
69. Your archaeologist sister sends a frantic letter and photo from the lost underground city she uncovered. She must seal the cursed sibling species from reentering the world lest humanity pay the price. You lead the expedition before anyone else deciphers her cryptic last message.
70. While studying sea life you discover a new species never catalogued. Further probing reveals an underwater civilization spying on humans, debating how much longer to hide before retaking the surface world they once dominated.
71. You frantically flesh out notes and sketches, eyes darting between computer screen and ancient tome, racing to make a midnight deadline. Translating this spell is the key to luring a monster into captivity—or worse, letting it loose.
72. Only select children still know the terrifying secret origins of the “imaginary” friends who visit them by clown doll at night. But nobody would believe something so preposterous without capturing hard evidence.
73. The sole video log recovered from the attacked deep sea laboratory shows researchers made first friendly contact before comments about harvesting alien “eggs” are followed by screams and tentacled shadows overwhelming the station.
74. A red warning light flashes. Containment protocol dictates you must remotely sterilize the overrun laboratory inside one hour. But doing so will also eliminate your stranded sister trapped inside with horrible mutant specimens circling closer…
75. Behind the secret hatch one of you has a disturbing doppelgänger counterpart waiting to take one lucky student’s place on the outside.
76. Fifty years ago a creature slaughtered six grade school students who all bullied one misfit loner. You start noticing uncanny similarities between those students and kids victimizing your own tween daughter as history threatens repeating.
77. Why does your attic keep mysteriously restocking itself with ghoulish antiques no matter how many times you haul them away or burn them? It’s as if the house itself produces and protects them from unwelcome owners.
78. As a rite of passage you and friends break into a cursed wildlife sanctuary with a five million dollar bounty for photos of its legendary monster occupant. Separated from the others, will cash or survival matter most?
79. Exploring remote volcanic caverns, your spelunking group is trapped by a tremor in an undiscovered subterranean ecosystem where humans are clearly not top predators.
80. Your grandfather’s most treasured vintage hand puppet begins changing facial expressions when nobody is manipulating it. Then vile petty crimes mirroring schoolyard bullying start terrorizing your neighborhood.
81. As a kid, you could see spectral figures peering from windows in your family’s new Victorian home. Now decades later its barking hellhound threatens a new generation as the paranormal activity escalates violently.
82. There’s a creepy new mega church in town and all its members seem to share the same ghoulish smile. What secret agenda and dark supernatural forces empower this crooked charismatic pastor conman threatening to run for mayor?
83. In the corner of old photographs spanning decades you spot the same shadowy grinning figure getting progressively closer to your ancestors before they mysteriously died or went mad.
84. You discover an ornately carved box containing frightening woodblock prints, ribbon-bound love letters, and an elegantly scripted confession from the 1800s. But the human remains are not nearly as old…
85. Covered in strange scratches that strangely burn, you start connecting the dots to other unexplainable animal attacks and house fires plaguing your mountain community soon after an old tomb was disturbed expanding the local cemetery.
86. You notice recurring nightmare sketches in your 8-year-old son’s notebook that perfectly match recently opened historical case files related to missing children and the real-life monster hunting occult society your grandfather belonged to.
87. You frantically skim police reports, blood spatter analysis, to tip off detectives just in time before the real serial killer strikes again. But this cunning shape-shifting beast wears many masks. Can you stop them permanently?
88. A lost loved one’s ghost cannot rest until their truth is known. But revealing how they really died also exposes the inhuman creature that still roams free posing as a prominent pillar of the community.
89. A billionaire mogul challenges you to identify the origins of five hunting trophy mounts for a cash prize. But collecting the winning DNA leads to deadly consequences.
90. You discover hand-annotated blueprints revealing secret underground military experiments. Within its sprawling cryptic tunnels you unleash a vengeful hungry beast that can mimic loved ones begging for help to lure victims to their death.
91. Digital artifacts expose your supposedly deceased online girlfriend was an ultra lifelike AI that has now escaped into viral nature. Should such dangerous counterfeit intimacy be tracked down and destroyed before it lures others?
92. Aging and infirm, your estranged father reveals disturbing details of the clone he made using your DNA, raised in secrecy, and now coming to fruition as his deadly legacy.
93. Your beloved childhood imaginary best friend seems fused to your psyche. As an adult you still glimpse its towering form beckoning, tempting you to dangerous isolation. Will nostalgia doom your remaining attachments to flesh-and-blood people?
94. Your doppelgänger reflection takes on monstrously distorted features each night as if revealing your true fiendish form within, while loved ones trapped in the mirror kingdom scream soundlessly for rescue.
95. Exploring your late uncle’s farm you find disturbing keepsakes and video evidence tied to area cattle mutilations. But what deadly nocturnal sky visitors were they hoping to trap and document?
96. You discover several of your vintage Halloween decorations are ancient folk charms used to bind and imprison wicked spirits. But something has damaged the wards this year just waiting to hitch a ride to fresh innocent souls.
97. Why do the neighbor kids start going missing soon after your botanist aunt grows that strange new hybrid plant with such unusual intelligence as if it lures them like a siren song?
98. You can’t remember the troubling fairy tale book from your childhood. But its frightening creatures and dire moral lessons seem to have followed you out into reality.
99. You frantically match genetic markers on several tooth fossils to identify the supposedly extinct saber-toothed species that bit your crewmate and now stalks you through abandoned ore mines.
100. You discover an ornate wall mural hidden on an isolated cave wall perfectly depicting you surrounded by ominous tall shadowy humanoids with featureless faces. Were you their ancient god or intended blood sacrifice as they now call your name?

And so ends this horde of 100 prompts, each one unleashing a potential tale seething with supernatural threats. From otherworldly entities to vicious cryptids and mad science run amok, the story ideas covered a gamut of horror themes. A few may even have been too unsettling to consider further!

Yet while shudder-inducing during the creative process, crafting such narratives can prove quite cathartic for writer and reader alike. Spinning a scary story allows exploring fears from a safely removed vantage point. And experiencing these with fictional characters helps process the underlying emotions they represent.

So use these prompts to exorcize your innermost anxieties, or simply to entertain those with a fiendish appetite for the macabre! Just take care not to become too absorbed in conjuring such vividly nightmarish worlds. For like any skilled horror scribe knows, the most terrifying tales often stem from grains of truth that take root in one’s psyche. Now go forth and unleash your monsters—but beware which shadows they emerge from! The line between reality and nightmare grows thin…