Forum: Story Ideas

Location: a private girls' school/academy
Setup: bodies start being discovered in the woods surrounding the school
Possible suspects:
1. student/group of students
2. teacher/entire faculty
3. local "townie" individual/group
4. summoned monster
5. non-connected serial killer

Possible twists (depending on suspects):
1. initiation
2. protection of school / students
3. sacrifices for occupying sacred ground
4. hyping up notoriety of school
5. trying to shut school down
6. murders totally unrelated to school at all except as a dumping ground location

Just a little mystery scenario that popped into my head as recent thoughts about the Halloween story contest and the Netflix Wednesday series played tag in my head. As always, authors are more than welcome to use all, part, or none of these ideas as they wish (but definitely make sure your muse is okay with your decision - don't want to piss off that scary B with a serious itch!).

I had a somewhat similar concept.

The school is an orphanage for girls.

Some (or possibly all) faculty members are in a cabal where they apply or indicate subtle markers on the students (such as hair ribbons of a specific color or similar) to signal permission to rape and/or kill said student to outside predators anonymously paying generously for the privilege. The faculty co-conspirators are equipped to hide and/or downplay the tracks, but also will play plausible deniability if the events get traction after some screwups.

At first it's just disappearances of students, only ever bothering other students, but explained away in various ways by faculty. Then it became known between students that other students who have been victims (sold for) non-lethal rapes have been silenced and controlled under guise of support. Then bodies are found or attacks witnessed. The school appear just to be randomly besieged by hunting snuff/rapists, but the faculty are defiant and refusing to lock the school down under pretext of not giving up traditions in the face of "random" criminals police should deal with (while some of the local police may or not be in on the scheme). That the attacks are not random and increasingly target troublemakers for the faculty is downplayed as a conspiracy theory.

And so on.