Jim Peacock Wins TSA's Short 'N Scary contest with "Underneath"!

Members of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association competed for a trophy, a prize package and bragging rights for the scariest short script in 2025.

The winner of this year's Short 'N Scary contest is Jim Peacock for his short script Underneath, which battled through two rounds of voting to our first-ever "Sudden Death" round before getting the highest point score.

Short 'N Scary contest winner Jim Peacock

The logline for Underneath is: Waking repeatedly in a strange apartment at 11:43 PM, a woman discovers she's been running from more than just a childhood fear.

Congratulations to Jim, who has also had success this year with his pilot script "Seaside" in Big Break and Filmmatic's TV pilot competitions.

Judges for this year's Scary contest were Peter Kremer, Bob Giordano, Heidi-Marie Ferren, Bob Saenz, Alvaro Rodriguez and Dennis Paoli. The Contest Manager was Daniel Spear.

Following the announcement of the contest winner, local actors did a live table read of Underneath at the Script-Com Screenwriters Conference in Nashville.

The competition was only open to members of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association and is part of an ongoing competitions in the organization. The others include 'Short 'N Sweet' (love stories) and 'Short 'N Silly' (comedy). The contests run throughout the year.

Also making the "cut" in this year's Scary contest, in alphabetical order, were:

'Scary Good SEMI-FINALISTS'

Ashwood - Ama Adair

iWitness - Andrea Ballard

The Butcher - Drina Connors Kay

Bitter Slice - Gary Frazier

Grave Intentions - Allen Sircy

The Figure In the Woods - Wendy Weising

'Frightfully Good FINALISTS'

Road Kill - Andrea Ballard

Craigslist Cleanup - Chris Hollo

The Witchening - MK Kopp

Hard Feelings - Melissa Sheridan

Check out the list of our runners-up, judges, and other spooky tidbits about this year's Short 'N Scary script contest in this video:

Congrats again to Jim and to all the other writers who participated in Short ‘N Scary. For those of you who submitted and didn’t win this time, we go back to our motto: JUST KEEP WRITING!

Stay tuned for details on TSA's next screenplay contest - Short 'N Sweet - which is based around a Valentine's Day/romance theme and has a deadline of February 14, 2026.