Some of our most lasting memories are associated with Christmastime. I can clearly remember receiving a red tricycle when I was four. I can still smell the roast goose my mother made for our Yuletide dinner when I was six. I recall fondly that when I was nine, my father let me climb up a ladder to place the star atop the tree. And when I was eleven, a dead man terrorized me on Christmas Eve. When I was twelve, he came back. This is the story of that man.
When I was a child, the mummers came to town. It was not quite Solstice’s Eve yet. The nights were long and dark, and most nights a thin, jagged coat of haw frost would top the trees in glistening frigidity. What few horses the rich owned would stamp and whinny
“… and to this day Marie should still be the queen of a country in which shimmering Christmas forests and glazed marzipan castles – in short, the most marvellous things you can imagine – can be seen if you only look. The End.” With a sigh, Little Timmy slowly closes
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The screams were like wind chimes stuck in a storm. At first, Della had thought it was the gale-force winds of the blizzard until she heard the weeping coming from her front lawn. By its sound, she could tell that it was not an infant nor was it an adolescent,
I’ve just awoke to see a cheap, Halloween-leftover, glow-in-the-dark cardboard skeleton pinned to my closet door. And no, this isn’t yet another creepy story where someone or something has been hiding inside to emerge in the night. I hope. All I can see in the darkness of my room is
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TRAGEDY AT TUCKAHOE LAKE Ronny was impressed- they were great at telling his tale. “We only save the BEST campfire story for the end,” Stan told the wide-eyed kids as he leaned in, flames reflecting off his glasses. “Are you all SURE you can handle it? It’s pretty scary.” Hannah,
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Five months ago, I made a deal with the devil. It sounds so dramatic, but it is so, so simple; and once you know how, it is hard not to. But you must resist, for if you don’t, you will regret it later. Trust me on that. First, a little
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Rising Tides: Written in the Style of M.R. James By J. Bailey-Hartsel Some time ago, I was asked by several former colleagues to tell them a ghost story. We had gathered for an evening of socializing, a small group of academics from my department at a small but formerly respectable
It’s that time of year again. Any day now the earth around me will be covered in snow. Children, who are not fazed by the cold, will spend hours outside playing In it. Building snowmen, having snow ball fights, and going sledding. And of course they will be looking forward
There was once a very well behaved eight-year-old boy named Miles. He did all the things that good children are supposed to do, nearly all the time. He ate all his vegetables, unless they were carrots. He completed all of his school assignments, except for that one time he forgot
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It had taken only a few seconds but the old lamp-lit street you were walking on suddenly melts away, and you stand in a crowded thrum of bodies and shouting. Looking around you notice the things around you are far from human. Goblinoid creatures with silver-white flesh, Amphibious bipedal creatures
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Hannah pressed the button of her digital recorder. “New World Podcast, number one. October 31st.” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “Happy Halloween, my new listeners. I started this podcast to let others know you can survive. We are here. And you can find us. The calendar says
Halloween is by far my favorite time of the year, the one wonderful day where walking around with a mask on is socially acceptable. Masks hold quite a unique place in society. A mask can transform anyone into something else, turn an actor into a character, hide the ‘secret identity’
Hey there. Are you lost? Me too. Aw there there, don’t be scared, someone will come along. Someone always comes along. Sooner or later. I’m Amy. We can wait here till someone finds us. In the meantime, would uh… would you like to trade? Yeah I’ll tell you a story
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There’s this famous “haunted” hotel in the Philippines. It’s named “Diplomat Hotel.” I am not sure about it’s history since word-of-mouth information tend to distort real history. All I know is that it was an old seminary for Jesuit priests about a decade ago, just about when the city (Baguio
The cracked, grey structure stood like a monument before them, separated from the offroad only by a chainlink fence, scattering pockets of moonlight over the foursome. Swaying against each other with inebriation, three fraternity boys and the only girl they could find who had the balls to come up to
It was the Christmas of 1965, before man had landed on the moon, before the wall had fallen, before many things good and bad. For me it was the last time that I knew innocence, before the creeping shadow which engulfed my family, before the madness, before death; before. It
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The neighborhood always was a tight-knit community. The gatehouse kept out all the wrong people, and the rotation of retiree guards provided a second filter for the riff-raff. Most homes went for over half a million, but a few sold in the quarter-mil range. All of those, they were in
No Body, No Crime: A Cheery Holiday Tale Read More »
The stiff autumn wind bullied brittle leaves across the sidewalk and into the empty street on Angela’s way home from the daycare center. She wrapped her too-thin cardigan tightly around her as the leaves were marched swiftly to the opposite curb. Their colors had drained from bright fingerpaint yellows, oranges,
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Trick or treating was something I always loved as a kid. It’s something that I was too old for, being twenty-five is something that easily puts a damper on childish festivities, and being pregnant makes it even more difficult to join in on the fun. There aren’t many happy families
It was All Hallows Eve as the old ones called it, but to us it was simply Halloween. A time for darkened skies, for fallen leaves golden and brown and the feet of children kicking with verve through them; for sweets and treats, for frightening films and spooky tales, for
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“Mom…dad…is it over?” It was pitch black and silent for a moment after… “I don’t know, son.” Then woman’s voiced quivered… “Henry, how will we know?” It was then Henry switched on the lantern. He was a blinded momentarily and when his sight came too he saw his wife and
It was late October in Brookhurst Wyoming in the year 1965. I was eighteen, and I lived with my sister in an older barn house, on the edge of town. I loved that little town- especially in the fall. The deep oranges, bold yellows, and dense reds of the season
