Well, here we are ya'll, the end of the line. It's time to announce the winners of Poniverse's first ever Nightmare Night Fan Fiction Contest! First of all, I want to thank each and every one of you who submitted entries for your participation and taking the time to produce such great submissions. They were all a delight to read through, and every single one of you helped make this contest a resounding success, for which I and the rest of the staff are very grateful. Secondly, I want to apologize for taking so long to get these results posted. Real life's been kinda crazy lately, but still, I'm disappointed that I was unable to get the results up by October 31 as I initially had hoped to. Thank you all for your patience in waiting on me; you guys are the best.

But enough about that. Without further ado, here are... the winners of the Poniverse Nightmare Night Contest!!!

Winners

First Place: Not Right, by sstwins

This little gem which remains sorely under-read at this point was, in my humble opinion, the runaway winner of this contest. It was without a doubt the scariest entry submitted, and considering it's a one-shot fic less than 2500 words long, that is saying something! Quite a few elements went into making this fic so effective. For one, it's pacing is absolutely phenomenal. There are a total of seven, I repeat, SEVEN scenes in this one little fic, yet each one of them is just the right length, never drastically altering the pace of the story in any negative way whatsoever. Besides that, it struck that rare, perfect balance that you rarely encounter in written horror fiction when it comes to evoking fear. Half of its scares are derived from that which the reader is aware is going on, while the other half I attribute as fear derived from that which is unknown and remains ambiguous throughout the story. Bring 'em both together and you've got yourselves a story where it is clearly obvious that something is "not right," but what exactly that something is remains a mystery, and that is what truly makes this an unnerving read. I cannot recommend this fic enough, and would highly encourage all of you to check it out ASAP. It'll seriously take just about 10 minutes to read through, and I can safely say that you will not regret doing so. Congratulations sstwins on your winning entry, you most certainly earned it!

Second Place: Run, Luna, Run: Hallow's Eve Spooktacular, by Pony With A Hat

Our second place winner is also the shortest entry among the winning submissions, coming in at just over 1600 words long, but if you give it a read you'll quickly see why it clinched second. This cute one-shot is, at its core, about the first thing most of us think of when we think of Nightmare Night: Trick-Or-Treating of course! However, this fic takes that premise a step further, centering on none other than Princesses Luna and Tia Trick-Or-Treating, filly style. If that sounds ridiculously adorable, trust me, it is, and besides the already ludicrous amounts of cute permeating throughout, this fic is also chock full of plenty of humorous sibling shenanigans and even a surprise guest appearance from a certain fan favorite character. Undeniably adorable, PonyWithAHat's entry is definitely worth a read, if only for the heavy dose of cute you'll get in doing so.

Third Place: Princess Failure, by NoodleBrony

Rounding out our top three entries is the funniest, and perhaps most surprising, gem of the bunch. Going into this contest, I certainly did not expect that one of the winning entries would be, of all things, a Trollestia fic, but to my pleasant surprise, we got this! In her first MLP fan fiction ever written, NoodleBrony has put together a short, nonsensical, and delightfully random one-shot that revolves around Celestia trying to have some fun around Ponyville on Nightmare Night by, how else, playing pranks. Compared to the other two winning entries, Nightmare Night itself admittedly didn't play any particular relevance in this story, but all the same that doesn't change the fact that it's a mighty fine fic in its own right. Trollestia is, well, as trolly as you'd want; her behavior doesn't match some of the ludicrous levels that I've seen in other fics before, but actually, I kind of prefer it that way. Instead of being this rampant troll, Celestia instead is portrayed as this blissfully unaware prankster who delights in screwing around with other ponies, but doesn't really understand the boundaries of a good prank. It all leads up to a hilarious, out-of-left field ending that I certainly did not see coming and which provided me with the biggest laughs I got out of the whole fic, and certainly sealed the deal on this entry winning third place. Congratulations NoodleBrony on your win, and here's hoping you continue to write fan fiction! I'd certainly love to see what else you could come up with!

Honorable Mentions

I'm not going to conduct full reviews on these next two, but I did feel compelled all the same to highlight a couple other fics that almost snagged one of the top three spots, but didn't quite make the cut. Vicarious, by Closer-To-The-Sun, and Terror Tales of the Farm, by Yoshi89 were both delightful with many, many good qualities to speak of. The former was a creepy one-shot about Spike and the CMC experimenting with a ouija board, while the latter was actually a horror anthology (definitely the most creative in its structure of any of our entries). While, again, neither of these two quite managed to get into the top 3, they were both still great reads, and if you get the chance, I'd highly recommend reading them both.

Once again, I also want to thank everyone else who submitted entries as well. I really enjoyed reading through every single one of these fics, even if some were undoubtedly written better than others. It was a joy seeing people turning out to write their own fics, tell their own stories, and present their own interpretations of canon characters we know and love, or even make up their own! I hope we'll see only more of this in the future, and hope that this contest has done a bit to bring our fan fiction community here on MLP Forums and in the greater Poniverse a little bit closer together. Thank you all for your efforts, participation, and most of all, for the fun times I and many other readers have had reading through your work!