Ladies and gentlemen, caffeine addicts, and people who spent three weeks staring at a blinking cursor only to write “The end” and call it a day—welcome!

THE SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK 2026 Humorous Short Story Competition asked you for comedy, and boy… did you guys deliver!

Received were stories that ranged on the laugh-o-meter from sympathy sniggers and gentle chuckles all the way up to – ‘I’m no longer reading this – I’m vibrating. With laughter‘.

But there can only be one winner. Well, three winners, actually. And here they are –

Were SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK a peacock, it would this moment be in full plumage.

We are tickled pink – actually, let’s make that a full-on shade of neon fuchsia – to present Samanatha’s winning story –

The day 56-year-old Manhattan dentist Phillip Yankum inherited run-down Blackwood Manor—a Victorian-era style house complete with suspicious turrets and windows covered in ‘ghost smudges’ – he arrived armed with nothing but an old bag of cleaning rags. In his back pocket however, he carried a state-of-the-art, Bluetooth-enabled Oral-B Pulsar 9000. You never knew when one of those might come in handy.

Working his way through the dust covered interior with its heavy-on-the-unsettling-oil-paintings aesthetic, Phil ascended the rickety staircase, trying not to breath in the damp air that smelled of wet cardboard and the lingering scent of a cabbage soup made in 1924.

Pushing open massive oak doors, Phillip crept into the master bedroom. In the corner, magically hovering above a stained marble sink, was a floating toothbrush. Phillip was temporarily frozen to the spot in amazement. He’d seen plenty of horror stories inside people’s mouths, but this was somehow more jaw-dropping.

The toothbrush wasn’t merely floating; on closer inspection Phillip could see it was performing a vigorous, mid-air cleaning of an invisible set of teeth. The brush scrubbed with a frantic, aggressive energy, its “sensitive gums” light flashing a panicked red.

“Um,” Phillip whispered. “That’s my plaque-control head.”

The toothbrush froze. Then, with a violent whir, it dived at him. Phillip shrieked, a sound usually reserved for Victorian orphans, and sprinted down the hallway. The ghost of Blackwood Manor, it turned out, was Sir Alistair Blackwood, a 17th-century aristocrat who had died of a catastrophic tooth abscess and was now obsessed with modern dental hygiene. He didn’t want the dentist’s soul; he wanted his bristles.

Phillip dove behind a crumbling velvet settee as the brush buzzed overhead. It was most definitely a wrong-end-of-the-telescope moment. In the grand scheme of the universe, he was being super-aggressively peer-reviewed by a spirit with a piece of molded resin and a two-minute timer.

“Enough!” Phillip yelled, finally mustering some of his Manhattan ‘Do you know who I am?’ confidence. “Sir Alistair, I presume? You’re using the wrong setting! That’s the ‘Deep Clean’ mode. It’ll ruin your ghostly enamel!”

The toothbrush paused, hovering mid-air with a curious tilt.

“You need the ‘Whitening’ pulse,” Phillip advised, slowly approaching. “And for heaven’s sake, you’re not even using paste. Do you want the phantom gingivitis?“

Amidst the cold air, he reached out and took the vibrating brush. Carefully, Manhattan Phil applied a pea-sized amount of “Cool Mint” gel. He clicked the button twice to the “Gentle Massage” setting and handed it back to the void. The brush began to move again, but this time with a rhythmic, satisfied hum. A faint, translucent sigh echoed through the bathroom.

For the rest of the night, intrepid cavity crusader Phillip Yankum sat on the edge of the tub, reading a magazine he’d retrieved from his car, while a dead nobleman polished his non-existent molars. Phillip thought about leaving a bill but realized that would be so transparently absurd.

Tune in next week when we are treated to 2nd place getter Yvonne Lang‘s garlic-mouthwash-flavored giggler –

While you’re here…check out this new 2026 read from the South Korean author who penned the bestselling “Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop’.