Blake Gardner awoke to an oppressive, physical darkness. It embraced him. As the cold shadows flowed around him, he felt himself falling; slowly but surely. He tried to reach out, to flail and to grasp, but only pain greeted him. Something bit into his wrists like fiery needles. His hands
I hate scarecrows. I have ever since I was little. I found something about the dolls stuffed with straw unsettling. I remember my parents tried to help me get over this fear by telling me things like, “They’re not scary, they only want to be friends” or some other lame
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There’s an image that I keep pushed away in the back of my mind. Occasionally, it makes its way out and I can see that horrid face once more. My limbs go numb and I can feel my throat begin to tighten as every grotesque detail can be seen in
I hate the water. Always have, always will. Oh, sure, I’ve swum in pools and jumped off diving boards like any other person, but I have never once allowed my feet to leave the ground at a beach or lake. Something about not having solid ground to stand on freaks
Mark sighed and looked out at the night sky. He was standing on the roof of his apartment building, four stories up. Sometimes Mark just liked to stay up here and reflect, it was quiet and peaceful. Looking down you could see the normal hustle and bustle of city life but if you looked up you could see the beautiful sky, and sometimes even a full moon or some stars.
My girlfriend, Ruby, and I had been together for about a year before the dreaded question of visiting her parents reared its head. Although she assured me that her folks were relatively laid back and easy going, that did little to settle my nerves. This was my first long term
Looking back now, all I can see is his damn face. It looks at me, as I close my eyes. I can see the dripping of the black liquid, as it falls from his eternally-smiling mouth. His teeth are small and sharp and sit in rows, like a shark’s do.
We called it The Deef. It was supposed to be a joke. We had a game, the group of us. It didn’t really have a name. It was just the cryptid game. It was simple: every time we got together, one of us had to share a monster story. That was basically it. We’d started it back in college, and just sort of never stopped. There were more rules than that, of course. It had to be original. No more than one story introduced per get-together. Whoever had the best monster was winning.
I was always close to my uncle, even if I was too young to truly know or understand him. He was a military man for the whole time I knew him and usually told the most batshit crazy stories you could imagine, but they were never exaggerated or made up. He was in Desert Storm and came back telling us about all the things that were over there. We were positive he was making up the part about the camel spiders, but the Brittanica set my grandparents had proved it to be true! He talked about how big they were, how fast, and skin-crawlingly ugly and nightmarish they appeared. He also made sure to mention he’d only really seen them twice.
The hull of the ship moaned and groaned under the strain of its frozen enclave. HMS Stargazer and its crew had initially set out into the deep unknown to map uncharted territories, but winter descended quickly upon them and they found themselves trapped between stars and ice for months. Supplies were running thin and the captain of the ship, a tall and clean shaven gentleman by the name of Gerald Northington, had assembled groups of hunters to venture out in search of seal meat. The most recent hunting expedition had yet to return and Northington was pacing anxiously up and down his quarters.
Between Ice and Stars Read More »
I am currently sitting in front of my computer, scared witless. Any moment now I am going to be killed. Today a friend of mine told me a story. His aunt had taken care of him since he was a small boy, and she told him last night about how
I am terrified of sleep – or, more accurately, what occurs when I do. For as long as I can remember I have seen spots when I sleep. More precisely, I see them when I close my eyes to go to sleep. Between the second I start closing my eyes
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It all started after moving into my new house. Yeah, that’s pretty cliché. Believe me, I know, but it’s what happened. I never experienced anything supernatural before and, though interested, I never really expected anything to happen to me. I was able to rent the house for pretty cheap. I
Within the Darkness Read More »
As I entered John Kirowan’s study I was too much engrossed in my own thoughts to notice, at first, the haggard appearance of his visitor, a big, handsome young fellow well known to me. “Hello, Kirowan,” I greeted. “Hello, Gordon. Haven’t seen you for quite a while. How’s Evelyn?” And
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I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder when I was five. I have always struggled to interact with people because of this disorder, spending large amounts of time attempting to fix imperfections around me. I would lash out harshly at people around me if they touched me or my things, and
In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama, a region sparsely settled by backwoods blacks and Cajuns—that queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth century—stands a strange, enormous ruin.
You needn’t think I’m crazy, Eliot—plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this. Why don’t you laugh at Oliver’s grandfather, who won’t ride in a motor? If I don’t like that damned subway, it’s my own business; and we got here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We’d have had
Simza stumbled through the dark forest, tripping over indiscernible tree roots in the darkness. She sensed that something was wrong with the baby, and was afraid, but she had no one to confide in. She had wandered away from the camp when she started feeling the sharp pains in her
There’s always something inherently eerie about living in the forest, in complete isolation. You almost always assume the worst when you’re on your own surrounded by the thickly wooded area, it’s almost like time doesn’t pass the same as it would anywhere else, like the edge of the woods was
Bill Tanner, a retired USPS mail carrier, ran a local haunted house that had become quite well known in the city where he lived. Established as a terrifying and fun way to unleash people’s greatest fears upon them, it was aptly named “Tanner’s House of Horrors.” People came from miles
Laughing in the Dark Read More »
I had the house to myself, my parents were spending the weekend in Toronto, and I’d spent the day hanging out with my girlfriend. Up until I dropped her off at home later that evening, it was an ordinary day, as close to perfection as possible. I took my girlfriend
It Watched From the Roof Read More »
Craig Brockwell was found by his wife, dead on their living room floor, a plastic garbage bag tied off around his neck, and an empty bottle of Xanax on the kitchen counter, next to a suicide note. My initial external examination of the body revealed no indications of a physical
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Part 1 I am often asked how it was that I first became interested the true crime genre. It’s the sort of question I frequently get at conventions, book signings, panel meetings, and interviews, but the actual answer is fairly mundane. What I find more interesting is the source of
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Did you know that, once introduced to routine, our brains are capable of accepting it to the extent that when something changes, it doesn’t notice? The change could be small and harmless, an object there that wasn’t, or something moved to another room that you would normally duck around on
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