Halloween Ghost Story Contest Statistics

Not too surprisingly the state with the largest number of winners is the contest's home state of Massachusetts. In the early years of the contest most of the winners were fairly local. These days, most of the winners come from outside Massachusetts, but it still produces more on the average than any other state.

Note that these results include winners from other countries but do not include winners who did not provide a specific state or province. Thus although we have had a few winners from Asia, most do not show up here because we do not have a state or province to list for them. We use standard abbreviations whenever possible, and for slices from outside the United States list the country abbreviation in parentheses after the state or province abbreviation.

Since so many winners have come from Massachusetts, here's a breakdown of just Massachusetts winners by town. Right now Saugus still holds a majority of the Massachusetts victories, but its lead has been getting smaller with each passing year.

Both Wakefield and Marblehead have been strong all throughout the history of the contest. Revere has been doing exceptionally well the past few years and recently overtook both for second place and has since widened its margin.

Some years ago Revere High School swept the category and moved ahead of Marblehead to tie Saugus High School for first place. Then it took two more victories to become the first non-Saugus school to ever individually top a category. Then Briar Woods High School caught up with Marblehead for third place, and got even more wins to become the first non-Massachusetts school to pass Saugus. Its continued strong performance has made it the first out-of-state school to top any category. A category sweep by any of these top schools would make first place Briar Wood's lead largely vanish. The next few schools are not too far behind, either, so this whole pie could easily change depending upon the results in the next year or two -- a sweep by nearly any school is likely to mean an upset. Quite a few of the schools listed here are from outside Massachusetts, and one is even from outside the United States. Also worth noting is the continuous strong performance from the home-schooled category; it continues to score victories.

The Belmonte Middle School has a fairly strong lead over all the other schools. Of particular interest though is the current tie for second place between the Alachua Learning Center and Stone Hill Middle School. The home-schooled category is not far behind these two, either, and could catch up in a single good year. Most of the top schools in this category (including both the Alachua Learning Center and Stone Hill Middle School) are from outside Massachusetts.

Locally this race tends to be one of the most watched. It's also one of the closest. A sweep could bring almost any of the top schools up to at least second place next year, and while the top few are currently from Saugus, the next few are all from other communities. Wakefield has traditionally done pretty well in this category, and two of its elementary schools (Franklin and Walton) are represented here. There are also schools from other states besides Massachusetts (and even other countries besides the United States) that are in the running here. Lately the Veterans School in Saugus has been pretty dominant, but Oaklandvale is within striking distance and many others are not far behind.