A traveler meets a demon at a crossroads at midnight, and each has come to ask the other the way.From folklore: a crossroads lies between worlds. Turn: neither knows the road, and they toss a coin.
An imp inherits a great demon's cloak, horns and reputation, and none of them fit.Nobody is frightened. Turn: a note in the cloak pocket, in the old demon's hand, says to be funny.
A demon hunter's handbook was copied by a tired clerk, and one word of the binding spell is wrong.The spell as written invites the demon to dinner. Turn: dinner works better than binding ever did.
A bargain is handed down with a house: a demon keeps the roof sound and is owed supper every Sunday.The new heir cannot cook. Turn: the demon gives lessons, to protect its interest.
A blacksmith bargains with a demon for the skill to join any two things, then joins the demon to the anvil.From folklore: the tale The Smith and the Devil. Turn: the demon offers a second bargain to get loose.
A demon builds a village its bridge in a single night, and its fee is the first one to cross.From folklore: the Devil's Bridge legends. Turn: a crust is thrown across, and a dog goes first.
A demon buys a cup of lemonade at a girl's stand and has only wishes to pay with.She has no change for a wish. Turn: she gives him credit, and a demon is in debt to a seven-year-old.
A demon deals only in small things: a sunny picnic costs one sneeze, to be sneezed when the demon says.A boy owes forty. Turn: all forty come due in the quiet part of the school concert.
A demon gives a shy man a voice nobody can refuse and takes his ability to hear the word no.He cannot tell when to stop. Turn: he talks the demon into taking the voice back.
A demon makes a miser the richest man in town by making everyone else poorer.Nobody can afford to buy from him. Turn: undoing the wish costs exactly what he has.
A demon must make every offer three times, and a ferryman has refused twice.The third offer is whatever he names. Turn: he asks what the demon would wish for. Nobody has ever asked.
A demon offers a failing baker one perfect loaf a day in exchange for her name.Nobody can call her anything now. Turn: the town names the loaf after her, and the name is hers again.
A demon offers a novelist a finished masterpiece, for the price of never being able to read it herself.It wins every prize. Turn: she learns what is in it from the faces of people reading on trains.
A demon offers a tired queen one year off in exchange for the crown, for that year only.The demon rules well, which nobody expected. Turn: she has to win the crown back by a vote.
A demon sells luck by the ounce at a night market.A gambler buys a pound and loses everything. Turn: it was the demon's own bad luck, sold off cheap.
A demon sells one true answer to any question, and the price is one secret.A reporter's best secret is not hers to sell. Turn: she pays with a secret about the demon.
A demon will grant anything in exchange for the memory of your happiest day.A man pays and forgets why he wanted the wish. Turn: his sister tells him about the day until it is his again.
A demon's bargains carry a seven-day right to cancel, and no client has ever read that far.A librarian reads everything. Turn: she returns her wish on day six, used, and asks for the receipt.
A demon's contract is perfect except for one misspelled word.The fee is written as "your sole". Turn: the demon is owed one shoe and demands it, furious.
A farmer agrees that a demon may collect on the day the last leaf falls from his tree, then plants a pine.From folklore: the peasant who beats the devil on a technical point. Turn: the demon waits for a hard winter.
A grandmother made a bargain with a demon at nineteen and has kept him from collecting for sixty years.She found a loophole in every clause. Turn: he gives up and asks her to write his contracts.
A town hires a lawyer to read the contract its founder signed with a demon two hundred years ago.Payment is due on Friday. Turn: the founder signed with a nickname, and she argues that all week.
A traveler meets a demon at a crossroads at midnight, and each has come to ask the other the way.From folklore: a crossroads lies between worlds. Turn: neither knows the road, and they toss a coin.
A violinist is offered genius by a demon and asks for a good night's sleep.The demon has no contract for sleep. Turn: it drafts one aloud, and she is asleep by clause nine.
A woman sells a demon her shadow for a house, and the shadow starts writing home.The letters say it is happy. Turn: it asks to stay, and she has to bargain for visiting days.
An apprentice clockmaker trades a demon one hour of every day for the skill to build a perfect clock.The hour taken is always the one she needs. Turn: she builds a clock with thirteen hours and pays with the spare.
The children of a town sign a bargain with a demon: no more bedtimes, for the price of every bedtime story.The nights are long and dull. Turn: by Thursday they want both back, and the demon wants to hear a story.
Two rival chess players each sell a demon the same thing: never to lose to the other.The demon cannot deliver both. Turn: every game is a draw, and they come to like the evenings.
The demon hunter 25
A demon hunter and the demon she is after are both kept by a flood at the same roadside inn.The inn's rule is a truce at table. Turn: there is a third guest whom neither can explain.
A demon hunter gets the hiccups halfway through the words of banishing.Each hiccup undoes a line. Turn: the demon frightens them out of her, as a courtesy, and waits.
A demon hunter has caught ninety-nine demons and is told that the hundredth sets her free of the work.The hundredth gives itself up, to be helpful. Turn: she finds that she does not want to stop.
A demon hunter has to draw a chalk circle round a demon on the deck of a ship in the rain.Chalk washes off. Turn: she lays the circle in rope, which has held worse things.
A demon hunter inherits the business and a ledger of every demon her mother let go.More were let go than caught. Turn: each owes the family a favor, and she starts calling them in.
A demon hunter is called to a school where a demon has enrolled.It has perfect attendance and is top in spelling. Turn: the teacher asks whether this can wait until June.
A demon hunter is hired to clear a theater and finds that the demon has the lead on Saturday.The show is sold out, and the demon is good. Turn: she waits for the curtain call and buys a ticket.
A demon hunter is paid by the demon, and her town has exactly one, who is polite.If she catches him she is out of work. Turn: the two stage a chase every market day.
A demon hunter is the only person in her city who believes in demons, and the demons like it that way.They make her look foolish. Turn: one demon needs to be believed in, and knocks at her door.
A demon hunter keeps every demon she has caught in a jam jar, labeled, on a shelf.A new housekeeper dusts. Turn: two labels are put back on the wrong jars.
A demon hunter loses her book of true names and has to catch a demon by guessing.Each wrong guess makes it bigger. Turn: she guesses wrong on purpose until it is stuck in the chimney.
A demon hunter takes a pupil who turns out to be a demon learning the trade.It is her best pupil. Turn: it wants to teach its family how to stay out of a hunter's way.
A demon hunter tracks a demon across a country by the small bad luck it leaves: burnt toast, lost keys.The trail ends at her own door. Turn: it has been following her, hoping to be caught somewhere warm.
A demon hunter who drives out ogres with roasted beans arrives in a village that grows only lentils.From folklore: in Japan beans are thrown to drive out oni. Turn: the ogre says that lentils tickle.
A demon hunter works by mail: she sends a letter that the demon must answer truthfully.This one writes back with questions. Turn: after a year of letters she sees she never had its address.
A demon hunter's apprentice finds out on her first night that she is afraid of the dark.Demons keep late hours. Turn: she hunts at noon, when they are sleepy and nobody else looks.
A demon hunter's bell rings when a demon is near, and it has not stopped since she moved to her new street.The street is full of them, and they are good neighbors. Turn: she takes the clapper out.
A demon hunter's handbook was copied by a tired clerk, and one word of the binding spell is wrong.The spell as written invites the demon to dinner. Turn: dinner works better than binding ever did.
A demon hunter's hound can smell a demon a mile off, and it has been wagging its tail at one.The handbook says to trust the dog. Turn: she does, and invites the demon in.
A demon hunter's salt, bell and chalk are taken from her at a border, and the demon is on the far side.She has to work with what is there. Turn: a salt shaker, a bicycle bell and a child's sidewalk chalk.
A family of demon hunters has one daughter who cannot see demons at all.She is no use on a hunt. Turn: the demons cannot see her either, and she walks straight in.
A retired demon hunter is asked back for one last job by the demon she never caught.Something is hunting it. Turn: she is the only expert it knows, and it offers to pay.
A town hires a demon hunter by the hour for a demon that appears only on the twenty-ninth of February.She has four years to fill. Turn: she becomes the town's baker, and the demon comes for the bread.
A village hires a demon hunter, then admits that the demon is the mayor's excuse for the missing taxes.There is no demon. Turn: a real one arrives, offended at the use of its name.
Two demon hunters are sent after one demon by two villages on opposite banks of a river.Each bank blames it for different things. Turn: there are two demons, and each blames the other.
The demon who wants out 25
A demon asks to be human for one day, to find out what a Sunday is.It has waited centuries for this. Turn: it sleeps through the whole day and calls it perfect.
A demon bound in a ring for a thousand years is let out by a jeweler who is resizing it.It owes her three wishes and wants no more of that trade. Turn: she asks for an apprentice.
A demon hands in its notice and is told that it must first work out a thousand years of it.It marks the days on the office wall. Turn: it does the job so kindly that it is dismissed within the week.
A demon hides in a traveling fair as the fire-eater.It is a poor one, since fire does not impress it. Turn: it learns to act amazed, and then it is.
A demon is exiled to the surface for being too kind and takes it as a punishment.Everything up here is cold and polite. Turn: by spring it is refusing the pardon.
A demon is told that the way out is one good deed that nobody ever finds out about.It keeps being thanked. Turn: the deed that counts is one it did not notice doing.
A demon leaves the underworld with the one thing it was told never to take: the list of every bargain.It means to cancel them all. Turn: half the signers do not want to be let off.
A demon runs away from the underworld and applies to keep a lighthouse, since it never sleeps and likes a flame.The interview goes well until the horns come up. Turn: the board has had worse keepers.
A demon sent to spoil a harvest stays to see how it turns out and is still there at planting.It has opinions about beans now. Turn: the farmer finds out what it is, and asks it to stay for the peas.
A demon sent to tempt a village librarian has been borrowing books for six years.Its reports are getting literary. Turn: its supervisor comes up to check and asks how chapter two ends.
A demon takes a job at a bakery because the ovens feel like home.It has never made anything. Turn: the first loaf rises, and it cries steam.
A demon that collects on bargains has started warning people about the small print.Its numbers fall. Turn: an auditor is sent, reads the warnings and signs nothing either.
A demon that guards a gate has never seen what is on either side of it.It may not leave the post. Turn: it trades places with a toll collector for a week.
A demon that nine generations of one family have summoned asks the tenth for a day off.Nobody ever asked what it wanted. Turn: the tenth hands it the summoning book.
A demon that took the shape of a house cat for a job finds that it would rather be a cat.Its recall arrives by letter. Turn: it knocks the letter off the table, as a cat would.
A demon that was once something else tries to remember what.Each kind act brings back a little. Turn: it was a river spirit, and its river has been dry ever since.
A demon tries to retire to the seaside, where every landlady has a rule about brimstone.No house will take it. Turn: the last one on the front is kept by a retired demon hunter.
A demon wants out of its contract with a wizard and hires the lawyer who wrote it.She wrote it well. Turn: the way out is the one clause the wizard added himself.
A demon wants out so badly that it hires a demon hunter to banish it somewhere pleasant.Banishing goes one way, down. Turn: she banishes it to her sister's farm, which needs a hand.
A demon's true name, the one that commands it, is the answer to a clue in the Sunday crossword.Thousands of people have it half filled in. Turn: the printed solution is wrong, which saves it.
A mare, the creature that brings bad dreams, wants to bring one good dream before she gives up the work.From folklore: the mare sits on a sleeper's chest. Turn: she does not know what a good dream is made of.
A minor demon has been in charge of stubbed toes for three hundred years and asks for a transfer.The only opening is lost socks. Turn: it takes the post and starts giving them back.
A real demon joins the men who dress as demons at New Year, for one night of being asked in.From folklore: the namahage of northern Japan, men in ogre masks and straw capes. Turn: it is the shy one.
A young demon is sent up for its first haunting and arrives in the middle of a birthday party.It was told to frighten whoever opens the door. Turn: it is taken for the entertainer, and it is good.
An ogre who is driven out of one house with beans every year asks whether it might come in for once.From folklore: in Japan the cry with the beans is Devils out, fortune in. Turn: one child changes the words.
The comic imp 25
A girl catches an imp in a jam jar because she wants somebody to play checkers with.It cheats. Turn: so does she, and better.
A student tries to summon a great demon and gets its nephew, an imp who is minding the office.The imp can grant only small wishes. Turn: small wishes turn out to be the ones she needed.
A weather imp has the job of raining on parades.This year's parade is the umbrella makers'. Turn: it is cheered the length of the street.
An imp bets that it can make a judge laugh in court.The judge has not laughed in thirty years. Turn: the imp laughs first, at the wig, and is fined.
An imp can turn into anything smaller than a teapot and is told to scare a giant.Nothing that small is frightening. Turn: it becomes the giant's lost collar button and is thanked.
An imp gets shut inside the town clock.It is deafened every hour. Turn: it learns the works, and the clock has never kept better time.
An imp inherits a great demon's cloak, horns and reputation, and none of them fit.Nobody is frightened. Turn: a note in the cloak pocket, in the old demon's hand, says to be funny.
An imp is apprenticed to a print shop, where the boy who mixes the ink is already called the devil.From history: a printer's apprentice was called the printer's devil. Turn: they swap jobs, and nobody notices.
An imp is blamed for everything in one household: the broken vase, the missing pie.It did none of it, and it is flattered. Turn: it starts doing them, badly, and the twins are found out.
An imp is sent to curdle the milk of a whole village and falls into the first churn.It is churned for an hour. Turn: the butter is the best the village has had, and they ask its secret.
An imp is sent to tangle every fishing line in a harbor and tangles itself.A fisherman picks it free. Turn: it owes her a favor, and she asks for one calm Thursday.
An imp is sent to tempt a hermit, who is delighted to have somebody to talk to.The hermit will not stop talking. Turn: the imp begs to be recalled and is told this is a promotion.
An imp keeps a ledger of every "I'll do it tomorrow" that is said in one town.The book is full. Turn: it means to start a new one tomorrow.
An imp moves into a kitchen and hides one teaspoon a day.The cook leaves out decoy spoons. Turn: the war ends in a truce and a drawer of its own.
An imp plays tricks only so that somebody will chase it.From folklore: imps were said to be lonely, playing pranks to win a friend. Turn: one girl chases it every day.
An imp stows away in a suitcase and climbs out into a house full of cats.Cats can see it. Turn: it is adopted as a very odd kitten.
An imp swaps the salt and the sugar in a bakery on the morning a food critic comes.The buns are salted. Turn: the critic asks for the recipe.
An imp takes a class in comedy to find out what is funny.It is told that its timing is off. Turn: it has been early for four hundred years.
An imp tries to haunt an inn where no guest stays more than one night.Nobody is there long enough to be annoyed. Turn: it follows one traveler home to finish the joke.
An imp's job is to whisper wrong letters to the contestants at the county spelling bee.One girl listens for it and says the opposite. Turn: it whispers the right letter by mistake, and she is out.
An imp's tricks keep helping people by accident.It hides a man's hat, and he misses a coach that loses a wheel. Turn: the town puts up a statue of it.
An imp's whole job is making shoelaces come undone, and the town has taken to buckles.It has nothing to do. Turn: it retrains in tangling the cords of headphones.
The sack of Titivillus splits over a town, and by morning every sign in it is misspelled.From folklore: Titivillus gathered miscopied words in a sack. Turn: the town likes the new spelling of its name.
Three imps share one pair of wings and a rota.Tonight two of them have somewhere to be. Turn: the third charges a fare.
Titivillus, the demon who collects the slips of scribes in a sack, is assigned to a scribe who never makes one.From folklore: Titivillus, the demon blamed for errors in manuscripts. Turn: he jogs her elbow, once.
How it works
These 100 demon story ideas are sorted by the story the demon drives: a bargain, a hunt, a demon who wants out, or an imp's mischief. Most of these demons are bound by rules and bad at their jobs.
Read the full guide
Demon hunter story ideas
These hunters work with salt, bells, chalk and true names, and nobody is hurt. One is paid by the demon she hunts. One keeps her catches in labeled jam jars. One cannot see demons at all, which turns out to be the family's best trick.
Demons out of folklore
Twelve premises borrow from old stories, and the line under each says which: the Devil's Bridge legends, the smith who tricks the devil, the oni driven out with roasted beans, the namahage, the mare who brings bad dreams, and Titivillus, the demon blamed for scribes' mistakes.
Decide what the demon wants before what it can do. Here they want a day off, a transfer, a friend.
Write the contract out in full. The loophole is usually in its plainest clause.
Questions and answers
What are some story ideas about demons?
Start from what the demon is doing in the story. On this list one sells luck by the ounce at a night market, and another has spent six years borrowing books from the librarian it was sent to tempt.
Are these demon stories scary?
Not very. Most are comic or bittersweet, with no gore, possession or cruelty. One demon has been in charge of stubbed toes for three hundred years and wants a transfer to anything else.
Is an imp a demon?
Near enough for a story. In European folklore an imp is a small being like a fairy or a demon, more mischievous than dangerous. The imps in the group The comic imp hide teaspoons, undo shoelaces and rain on parades.
Are these stories religious?
No. They are fiction built on folklore and invention. No demon of any scripture is named, and the page teaches no belief about demons and speaks for no faith.