That cat that always jumps out of the closet at the wrong time, the killer that just won’t die, the vengeful curse of a disturbed native burial ground-these tropes and countless others haunt the horror genre like chain-rattling ghosts. Everyone has one that gets under their skin. But these writers sharpened their pencils, picked their favorite, and made it work! These twenty-nine stories feature murderous cows, outer space plagues, very bad dreams, and weed-smoking clowns that take worn out tropes and turn them on their heads to genuinely chilling effect.

Featuring original fiction from:

Joe Koch, D. Matthew Urban, Tom Coombe, Rebecca Harrison, Edward Lodi, Liam Hogan, Yelena Crane, Najua Ismail, Cassandra Daucus, Briar Ripley Page, Amanda Cecelia Lang, Tiffany Michelle Brown, Angelique Fawns, Sydney Paige Guerrero, David J. Thirteen, Michael Pearson, Steve Loiaconi, Mark Silcox, Angela Sylvaine, Dana McKay, Ria Hill, Cynthia Gómez, Avra Margariti, J.L. Foux, Red Lagoe, Francis J. Matozzo, Gwendolyn Kiste, Nadia Bulkin, and Rena Mason

Published August 13, 2024 by Hungry Shadow Press

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What is beneath our feet? Below our skin? What lurks in the darkness in the basement, or deep inside the earth? How far down can you read before you go insane? Step down into the chilling stories in Below

We woefully present you with tales of the twisted and terrifying.

Listen to maddening transmissions, step into a basement of secrets, encounter a mother whose hate transcends death, a late-night work call becomes a fight of survival, demons lurk, and spirits seek their final revenge.

These are not your Mother’s bedtime stories…

Published May 2023 by Eerie River Publishing

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Wyldblood Press
Our is to publish high quality speculative and literary fiction, drawn from a diverse range of authors and illustrators. We publish the best new talent, established authors and some well loved classics.

Published October 2022 edited by Mark Bilsborough

Seize The Press is the literary melding of Ursula Le Guin, Thomas Ligotti and Rosa Luxemburg. A brand new online magazine for dark speculative fiction and anticapitalist sci-fi, fantasy and horror pop culture analysis. Neon, dragons and gore.

Published June 2022 edited by Jonothan Pickering

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Come! See the Terror Bird! Don’t get too close, though, these animatronics can be tricky.

Look! There on the field! Does that little girl stand a chance against the ghosts of a town’s unspoken past?

What did you find there in the ground, Robin, beneath your shovel blade? Could it be the answer to everything you’ve ever wanted?

From deserted islands to an isolated cabin in the Carolina woods, from an Arizona film set to a small Mexican town, from a bloody riverbank in Vietnam to the coal-choked streets of Cheapside, the Stories We Tell After Midnight series has invited the reader into a world of shadows almost forgotten by the cold glare of the modern world. This, the third and final volume of the series, offers up more tales of revenge, of hunger, and of the false light of redemption—but only to those who once more dare turn the page.

Published October 2021 by Crone Girls Press

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June 2021 – A father makes a desperate attempt to connect with his son. Survivors of a U-Boat attack try to survive the open seas. When the time comes, what song will we sing? A beachside haunted by loss. And directions to the place you’ve been needing to go. All in this issue of LampLight!

Published June 2021 edited by Jacob Haddon

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A night guard brings an offering to the eternal denizens of a notorious prison.

In a young girl’s room, the shiny people keep watch in the night.

A proud father beams as his son takes the stage for the performance of a lifetime.

The stories in this anthology are the glimpses of the dark places between the forest and a dream. They are the shadows seeking the last notes of a dying violin. They invite the reader into a world where a condemned man faces his fate over and over and over again. Coppice & Brake is an anthology of dark fiction, featuring tales from the borderlands of horror, speculative fiction, and the nightmare fears that linger even after you turn on the lights.

Published March 2020 by Crone Girls Press

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Have you heard the grisly truth about the real tooth fairy?
Or why certain children must never play in the rain?
What about the witch who lives in the projects?
Do you know the real reason we no longer recognize the ancient constellation Noctua?
Or the secret history of Canada’s most tragic monster?
Did you hear about that creepy tape that cures loneliness forever?
Or the weird pet with the big eyes, gorgeous fur, long stinger, and otherworldly powers?

A demonic wolf that hunts its quarry to the ends of the earth…
An inhuman abomination hidden deep in the Mexican countryside…
A bloodthirsty spirit perpetuating the brutal horrors he committed in life…
A beautiful god with a single, horrific command…

These are just a few of THE MONSTERS WE FORGOT.

Comprising the first three volumes of the bestselling MONSTERS horror anthology series, THE MONSTERS WE FORGOT trilogy is a chilling collection of over 100 folklore-inspired horror stories by an international team of authors ranging from award-winners and bestsellers to visionary newcomers. These stories draw inspiration from the folklore traditions of countries including Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Ireland, Wales, England, Norway, Nigeria, Greece, Poland, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Canada, and the United States, the tales in this three-part collection range from original folktales and chilling myths to information-age monsters and modern urban legends, and everything in between.

Within the 128,083 words of Part I, you’ll find a treasure trove of myths, legends, folktales, urban legends, historical accounts, and stories about horrors, both ancient and modern, that have been hidden, ignored, or forgotten entirely.

Turn on the lights, check the locks, and settle in. You’re about to remember THE MONSTERS WE FORGOT.

Published December 2019 by Soteira Press

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These aren’t the stories your mother used to tell you…no, these are The Other Stories. The Other Stories is a weekly short story podcast. A modern take on The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, or The Outer Limits. Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller, WTF stories delivered right to your podcast feed every Monday morning.

Volume 79: Mirrors, Episode 3 — Uncertain Evidence

Published August 2022 by The Other Stories

These aren’t the stories your mother used to tell you…no, these are The Other Stories. The Other Stories is a weekly short story podcast. A modern take on The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, or The Outer Limits. Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller, WTF stories delivered right to your podcast feed every Monday morning.

Volume 64: Lost Civilizations, Episode 4 — Uncertain Evidence

Published May 2021 by The Other Stories

These aren’t the stories your mother used to tell you…no, these are The Other Stories. The Other Stories is a weekly short story podcast. A modern take on The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, or The Outer Limits. Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller, WTF stories delivered right to your podcast feed every Monday morning.

Volume 51: Remote Places, Episode 2 — The Chip Truck Man

Published April 2020 by The Other Stories

These aren’t the stories your mother used to tell you…no, these are The Other Stories. The Other Stories is a weekly short story podcast. A modern take on The Twilight Zone, Tales From The Crypt, or The Outer Limits. Sci-Fi, Horror, Thriller, WTF stories delivered right to your podcast feed every Monday morning.

Volume 43: Cosmic Horror, Episode 4 — The Beautiful Princess

Published August 2019 by The Other Stories

No one knows more about urban legends than Molly Heyworth. She’s been studying them for years, hoping to discover a story at the moment it makes the leap from a real-life event to a macabre folktale. When she comes across the Garrison’s video blog, Molly believes her search is over.

The tapes begin with a young couple fixing up their dream house, but events take an eerie turn when a hidden room is found where no room should exist. After the discovery, their home improvements fade into the background as accidents and family tragedies take centerstage.

The videos create an intimate window into the couple’s fracturing relationship and Molly is unable to turn away. The more she watches, the more she sees herself reflected back on the screen. But as she examines every frame and pixel, something is gazing back at her from those captured images of the past — something seeking a new victim to prey upon.

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Dr. Richard Cardin’s is called to a remote estate to bear witness to a groundbreaking scientific discovery. But when he spies a bewitching young woman from his window, the purpose of his visit becomes secondary to the mysteries confronting him. Who is she? Why does she roam the lonely grounds at night? and why does his host claim to know nothing about her?

As Dr. Cardin searches the mansion’s dark hallways and wild, moonlit gardens for the woman and for answers, he begins to question if she’s real at all. Might she be a specter from the house’s past? Or is she a manifestation of his own troubled mind? Or perhaps the answer is more sinister than he could ever suspect?

Available for free on Wattpad

Among gallery owners and collectors, Skad is known as The Atrocity Artist for his transgressive paintings depicting zombified people fused with transistors, vacuum tubes, and circuit boards. But his true masterpiece, his ultimate atrocity, has been his own existence. To reach his goals, Skad has destroyed more lives than he can remember, all with a cruel blend of indifference, malice, and glee.

Now, reeling from the death of his estranged son and facing his own approaching mortality, he returns to his family home on Lake Sauvage to get some peace. But the community by the water has a long memory, and in its earth, the past refuses to stay dead.

Available for free on Wattpad

Psychology professor Denton Reed has been pulled out of the classroom to find a killer. Bodies are turning up all over the quiet town of Bexhill. They are found dismembered and burned beyond recognition in a snow covered farmer’s field, by the abandoned mill, and under the train bridge. The only clue linking the victims is the bizarre figure-eight patterns left behind in their homes.

Denton must use his unique profiling techniques to uncover the murderer, who the police have dubbed Mr. 8. As he begins to unravel the mystery, a strange pattern begins to emerge. Before their deaths, each victim was seized by dark obsessions and inexplicable changes in behavior. Whatever strange forces are affecting the people of Bexhill, they may actually be more dangerous than any killer.

As a wave of insanity sweeps the town, Denton will put his life on the line to get to the source of the madness and risk all to protect the woman he loves.

But is it already too late?

In the spring of 2012, the US government captured a creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. Faced with a monster of myth and nightmares, they built a secret facility half a mile beneath the earth to lock it away. But the scientists and caregivers charged with observing this specimen have been selected because of the control the government has over them more than their skills. Every one of them is emotionally damaged or morally ambiguous. They are so consumed with tragedies from their past they barely notice the humanity of the monster they tend or their own monstrous actions. As they seek redemption for their sins and failures, they are completely blinded to the machinations of the sinister corporation plotting against the creature and everyone in contact with it.

It has been four years since the government captured and imprisoned Amy Westgate after she massacred her family one moonlit night. She has grown up inside the secret laboratory known as The Music Box, where she has existed in two small rooms: a bedroom for when she’s human and a steel pen for when she isn’t. At the age of sixteen, knowing almost no other life, she is content in her insular world.

The team of researchers headed by cryptozoologist R.J. Blass have grown close after the attack on the facility that nearly killed them all. The Music Box is their world too and their old lives are just as forgotten as Amy’s. But when the government orders an end to the project, loyalties will be tested and old wounds will resurface.