'The Lighthouse Murders': A Halloween round robin tale

One of the things we love most about Halloween is the spooky stories. Sure, we're into the candy, costumes, trick-or-treating and jack-o'-lanterns. But you can't beat a good ghost story, especially in the Lowcountry where nearly every historic home, street corner and closet has its own spirits.

So, we invited readers to help us create a spooky story. We kicked it off with a premise and opening paragraphs: a recently retired Sun City Hilton Head woman woke up from a dream only to find she wasn't in her home — she was in a lighthouse, and there was a knife in her hands.

From there, readers took it away. They introduced the death of a young, handsome tennis pro from nearby University of South Carolina Beaufort. There were Scottish symbols and someone mentioned Highland cows. From there our heroine, Rita Upton, boarded a mysterious boat, caught some shrimp and stumbled on to the body of her husband.

Then... well, you'll have to read the playback to find out what happened.

This story was originally published October 28, 2014 at 2:23 PM with the headline "'The Lighthouse Murders': A Halloween round robin tale."