Coccus Pocus 2025: A microbiology-inspired scary story competition going international

In Autumn 2025, the University of Hull, UK, launched its annual scary story competition for Halloween: Coccus Pocus! The event was organised for a seventh time, following six successful runs from 2019 to 2025. The Microbiology Society supported the competition as part of its Knocking Out AMR campaign, which is all about helping people to understand what antibiotic resistance and biofilms are, and how to fight them.

Our fantastic network of Coccus Pocus ambassadors grew from 15 members to 25, including new ambassadors from France, Greece, Malta and Denmark. In 2025, 21 stories were received in total, both from school children (12–17 group) and university students (18+ group).

The contestants were encouraged to write a short horror or sci-fi story between 500 and 2,000 words, including themes of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and/or microbial biofilms. The evaluation committee ranked stories according to the intrigue of their plot, use of language, character description and scientific soundness.

This year’s winners were:

18+ group

• 1^st place: Daniel Awodi (University of Abuja, Nigeria) for his story ‘The Unseen Colony’ (awarded a £100 Amazon voucher).
• 2^nd place: Snigdha Maiti (Amity University, India) for her story ‘Petri Dish No. 13’ (awarded a £30 Amazon voucher).
• 3^rd place: Subhanah Hussain (University of Hull, UK) for her tale ‘Dear Isabella’ (awarded a £20 Amazon voucher). 

12–17 group

• 1^st place: Jessica Barkley (St Bede's School Secondary School, UK) for her tale ‘The Resistance’ (awarded a £100 Amazon voucher). 
• 2^nd place: Ikechukwu Victor Jr. for his story ‘The Bloom at Ridgeway High’ (awarded a £30 Amazon voucher).

We are really thrilled about our competition going international once more, attracting remarkable entries from Germany, India, Pakistan and Nigeria!

The competition organisers hope that the competition will be held again and again around the country and abroad; aiming to increase public awareness about the important problem of AMR and biofilms, and to boost the enthusiasm of young people about the fascinating field of microbiology.

The 2025 competition 18+ winner, Danos Papapostolou (Hull York Medical School, UK).

We also plan to publish an anthology e-book (free to download for all) with the first 40 winning stories of the competition later in 2026. Stay tuned!

Coccus Pocus will run again in October 2026. Can you think of any biofilm or AMR-related scary stories? Would you like to be one of our Coccus Pocus ambassadors for your school or university?  Please contact Georgios Efthimiou with any questions.

If you want to get some ideas, read the 2024 and 2025 entries below and listen to the amazing 2025 podcast about Coccus Pocus, complete with Society staff reading fragments of the winning stories!

Below are some of the winning entries from 2024 and 2025:

• Don't Let Them In (1st place 12-17 entry 2024)
• The Mansion at Solwyin’s Hollow (1st place 18+ entry 2024)
• From micro to macro - Dr Bogeyman’s mistake (2nd place 18+ entry 2024)
• Unresolved Injustices (3rd place 18+ entry 2024)
• The Resistance (1st place 12-17 entry 2025)
• The Bloom at Ridgeway High (2nd place 12-17 entry 2025)
• The Unseen Colony (1st place 18+ entry 2025)
• Petri Dish No13 (2nd place 18+ entry 2025)
• Dear Isabella (3rd place 18+ entry 2025)

Read some of the older stories (from 2019–2023) on the National Biofilms Innovation Centre website.

Find out more about the Champions Scheme and the activities our Champions undertake on our Society Champions page.