For most police officers, dealing with ‘crackpots’ is simply part of the job. The people who call up confessing to murders they couldn’t have committed or which might never even have happened, the obsessives with nothing better to do than report non existent crimes or exaggerate run of the mill occurences into major events. As far as Tony is concerned Clark Dornan is one of these ‘crackpots’.
For years Clark has been coming to the station with accusations against his neighbour, insisting that there is something horrible going on in the house across the road. When Clark eventually decides to investigate for himself and is reported missing a week later, Tony is forced to finally investigate Clark’s outlandish claims, though once he arrives he realises that perhaps those claims were not outlandish enough.
‘Behind Closed Doors’ is a tale of investigation and terror, showing that sometimes when following the breadcrumb trail, there is something far worse than a house of gingerbread waiting at the end.

As a long-term drug addict, Danny had hit some extremely low points in his life. What made this time different, however, was that when he hit rock bottom, someone was waiting to meet him there.
Someone who would offer Danny a huge sum of money, enough to pay for rehab and perhaps a second chance, if only he is willing to sell the only thing he had to offer.
Blood and Ink follow Danny’s strange deal as seen through the eyes of his friend. It is a tale of addiction, desperation, and horror, that explores not only the price some are willing to pay for second chances but the evil forces that are waiting for the chance to sell them.

In the west, the ‘genie’ is a figure of fun. A pantomime character made of primary colours and cartoon features. An example, if ever there was one, of how the West tries to tame its terrors by laughing at them.
In the East, in Nusaybin, people do not laugh at such things.
Here the word ‘djinn’ is whispered in reverential hush. The things to which it refers are considered not only real, but dangerous. For in these places and to these people the djinn are not just stories, they are the cries in the desert, the heat of smokeless flame. Here the djinn are real and here, they mean you harm.

Some people are scared of clowns. It’s a real phobia. I read once that it’s something about their smiles, the painted grins are just a little too wide and whatever it is in our heads that recognizes faces, gets twitchy. It isn’t wired to see a smile, or a mouth that wide, without instantly thinking of teeth, seeing the threat of a mouth that wide as something with the potential to bite, or even to consume. Of course, that’s ridiculous. Most of the time.
I’m not scared of clowns. I’ve worked with enough of them, metaphorically at least, to have developed an immunity. The only literal clown I ever worked with wasn’t frightening either, but the thing that scared him, the thing that clowns are scared of, well, that I am scared of too. It’s the reason I no longer do what I did and why my hair stands on end at the tinkling sound of bells.
Of course, there had always been strange ones.
In my line of work you get to meet some truly…

What would you say if someone told you they had come face to face with God? That God, in physical form had told them the mysteries of the universe, the details of his divine plan. Would you want to know?
At The Ritzy, just off Oldham Street, there is such a man. The Ritzy itself is the kind of place that the wise avoid and the desperate always seem to find. A dive that calls itself a casino and which is really nothing more than a smoky, converted pool hall. Not the place one would expect to find God.
Yet, with its dark corners and shadowy figures, The Ritzy might well be just the place to hear God’s plan, because far from being sweetness and light, it is a very dark thing indeed. Plumbing the same depths of existential horror frequented by Lovecraft, Fair and Foul is a story that will haunt you long after you have finished reading.

When Leonard Merlode said ‘no’ to the military, he knew there would be consequences.
The technology he had developed, a suit that would allow the wearer to really ‘feel’ what was going on in a virtual environment, was a precious commodity. A commodity that could easily be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.
He could never have imagined, however, just how severely he would be punished for his decision, why the military would hire the man known to his friends as Dex and to his enemies as ‘Flames’ and how the simple word ‘no’, was about to make his entire world, go up in smoke.

Tyler Street looked as though it hadn’t changed a bit since the last time Byron had been there. Same sidewalk cafe. Same trendy woman’s clothing store across the street. Same classy jazz club next door to that. It had been a year since he’d been there, and everything was perfectly in place.
Stepping past the jazz club and clothing store, he heard a high-pitched whimper in the background, rising above the traffic’s din. It sounded wounded, almost angry. Like a dying goose.
Checking the faces of other pedestrians, he wonders why nobody else seemed to notice the sound. They all kept walking, faces casual. Nobody was curious about that tortured wail.
Byron shrugged it off, figuring he was just imagining it. Maybe he was distracted by the grim mission that lay ahead of him.
He took a seat at the sidewalk cafe, checking the time and rehearsing words in his head he’d already repeated more times than he cared to recall.
It’s not you. It’s me. I just don’t think I’m…

“My mum had this party in Hawaii, and it was so, so amazing. Did you see my posts on Insta?” Leila heard Joanne say as she walked through the hallways.
“Uhmmm, I definitely saw, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs cos those pictures were cuteeeeee” Esther replied.
“Did you check out Grace’s page?” She replied. “They visited Venice Beach”
“They? Who is they?” Esther raised an eyebrow. “You can’t mean?”
“Who else? She and Jason. There was this picture where she had just a bikini on and Jason’s packs were fire. Sometimes, I wish Mac was more masculine,” Joanne said right before she slammed her locker door and walked towards Chemistry class.
“Urghhhhhhh! Can these people go a day without talking about their silly pictures?” Leila said under her breadth with her hands clutching her backpack.
As she walked through the hallway, her locker seemed farther away with every step closer. Slowly, the walls began to close in, and the grounds opened. Leila could see nothing but black. The purple paint now cold, black, the tiles the same, the people in the hall morphed into obsidian, gooey aliens and the entire hallway spiralled in circles.
“Leila!” Stacy screamed and Leila jittered out of her…

It was the same day that I received my Ph.D. that my grandmother shattered everything I thought I knew.
In total, I had been studying for 7 years, beginning with zoology, and then transferring to straight biology, completing my masters a year later, and whilst taking up teaching duties at the university, completing my Ph.D. over the following years. By that point, I was an academic of some standing and the papers I had written had gained some attention within some select circles interested in those sorts of things, but I was tired. Seven years is a long time.
The process of reaching these milestones in my academic progress was exhausting. The hours and intellectual demands taxing on both the body and mind. Not to mention the crippling homesickness that I had felt ever since starting my undergraduate qualification.
I had left my home in Turkey aged nineteen for a scholarship place at a top university in the United States. Whilst I loved my friends, the lecturers, and the challenge of the courses I completed there, and thanked God every day for the opportunities I had been given, from day one, I felt the nagging weight on my shoulders, the feeling in my…
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As he led me into the back of the store, the light from the outside world fading into a tangled forest of knick-knacks and curios I began to think that perhaps, finally, I had found the place and that this, after all my searching, could be something special.
I had been scouring the junk shops, antique dealers, and curio shops of this particular city for over a month, sifting through the myriad and manifold collections of disparate delights looking for that one treasure that would be the centerpiece of my exhibit. I had, it is true, discovered several interesting artifacts amongst the cornucopia of dross and useless things, but nothing that stood out to me as a genuine one of a kind object of curiosity, such as would make visitors to the exhibit gasp or force the tiny hairs on the backs of their necks to stand on end. Now, finally, I hoped, I may have found such an item.
The exhibition, ‘Creatures, Collections, and Curios’ had been booked for months. The idea was to arrange one room of the gallery into the appearance of an old curiosity shop, overlaying and storing a vast array of ‘things’ from around the world and showing through these tangible, solid objects, the power of narrative. My idea was for the visitor to be able to…

When a vial containing a strange liquid is sent to police headquarters, there is immediately some caution. Could this be poison? Some chemical attack? The vial is carefully packed away and sent for testing. Despite the caution, nobody guesses the vial’s true significance. Where it came from, what the liquid inside might be or how it is connected to the strange flyers that have appeared all over town, flyers bearing the image of a curious little goblin, merrily skipping along and playing on his flute.
As the results come back however, the situation becomes clearer, the threat more present and the chance that a villain from a centuries old fairytale might turn up in this modern world, somehow seems more real.
“For when the Piper plays, you cease your toil and hark, For he comes for your children, to lead them to the dark”.

Room 206 is a room with secrets. As always secrets bring questions. Why is the owner of the hotel meeting with known criminals? Why are the walls around that room four times as thick? What causes the strange sounds of scratching and shifting that seem to come from that room and why do some who enter, never seem to come out?
The answers to these questions lie behind the room’s locked door, though of course there are some secrets that are best left alone. Sometimes the questions are better left unasked.

Unlike most twelve-year-old boys, Charlie is not happiest at football practice or playing video games, for him, the best and most fascinating place on earth is Wenzels VHS Video Store, especially in the horror section.
Fascinated by the ghouls and monsters that reach and tear from the video covers Charlie becomes obsessed with getting his hands on one of these films. So, when an unscrupulous desk clerk offers him a deal, a deal that will allow him to take one of these terrible treats home with him, he leaps at the chance. Never knowing what he might be taking home along with the tape.
Scary Movies is a story of adolescence, friendship, and terror that will make the reader nostalgic for those VHS horror movies but scared to ever watch one again.

Scary Stories Collection
10 Short Horror Stories
Story 1: Shut In
Story 2: The Edge Of Holly Field
Story 3: Insta Scare
Story 4: Zoom Horror
Story 5: The Haunting
Story 6: Monsters
Story 7: Mr. Strings
Story 8: Clown Eater
Story 9: Graveyard Rising
Story 10: The Witch Tape
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Scary Story Collection
15 Short Scary Stories
Story 1: The Bees
Story 2: The Curse Of Abundance
Story 3: The Little People
Story 4: The Harm I’ve Done
Story 5: The Park At Midnight
Story 6: Shut In
Story 7: The Edge Of Holly Field
Story 8: Insta Scare
Story 9: Zoom Horror
Story 10: The Haunting
Story 11: Monsters
Story 12: Mr. Strings
Story 13: Clown Eater
Story 14: Graveyard Rising
Story 15: The Witch Tape
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The day the quarantine was announced, the only thing I could think of was mother. Yes, behind that, the memories crept closer, shadows and dark things, not forgotten but suppressed, the knot of fear in my belly that had been tied long ago, but more than that, more than anything, I thought of her.In the fifty-six years since she arrived in Britain from Turkey, not once had she spent an entire day inside. In fact, it was rare to see her spend more than a few hours indoors. When she did, she restlessly moved between rooms, pacing and shifting from one seat to the other, always inching closer to the doors, to the outside. Most often, when I went round to visit, I would find in the garden, or sitting out on the front step, waving to children and sharing jokes with passersby, for whom she had long been a fixture. I had lost count of the number of times I’d been told by concerned neighbours that I should ‘make sure to get your mother inside, out of the weather’ and also of the times she had scolded them for sticking their noses where they weren’t wanted and speaking to me on her behalf, as if she wasn’t there or in full possession of her faculties. “Why you talk to him?” she would shout, in a…

Owing to its latitude and position close to the desert, the town of Lacksmouth rarely gets any precipitation. Rain is unusual. Big storms, incredible. But snow? Snow is not just unusual, it is impossible.
When Alan Warner wakes up from a coma and hears about the snow over Lacksmouth, he immediately becomes suspicious. When he is stopped by a local before arriving in town and told strange tales of what the snow did to people, he stops being suspicious and starts being certain.
Certain that his parents are dead. Certain that it was the snow that killed them and certain that the coming of the snow was in no way an accident.

On the edge of Elderton, a town in the Canadian mountains, there is a forest, a forest, that at certain times of the month houses a thing that shouldn’t exist. A thing that stalks through the trees looking for prey, prey that eventually it will find in town.
Down the mountainside, in the quiet of the town, the people huddle together. They bar their doors and board their windows, sitting silently and listening. Listening for the howl. The half-human sound dragged from an ill-formed thing, that rings through the town and announces the arrival of the beast. The howl that makes them hope and wish, that it won’t be their door, the thing tries next.

Being a reporter for a local newspaper is a strange occupation. In essence, it’s exactly the same as being a reporter for a major news organization. I mean the actual processes are the same. You find a story, you interview those involved or closest to the story and then you find a way to present the facts to the public in a factual and if possible, entertaining way. The practicalities of the task are the same. The difference is the stories. Most stories you cover in the local newspaper are boring. If they weren’t, then they wouldn’t be in the local newspaper in the first place, they’d be in the nationals.
At a major newspaper, stories are like planets, they have satellites. Other smaller stories that circulate around the main thread, in the trade we call this ‘soft news’ the finer detail stories that come with a big piece.
For example, when there is some kind of major incident, the hard facts dominate the…
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I was going to say that it all started with a toothache, but that’s not quite right. It really started the day before, with a decision. A stupid decision made with the sort of offhand nonchalance with which people like me make decisions about places like theirs. It was a bad decision, one that I regret to this day and one that I probably always will.
On the other hand, the decision to go to Greece in the first place had been a good one. Though of course that decision wasn’t really mine.
It had been the run up to exam season and as the teacher with the highest number of exam classes in the school (and as a consequence the teacher with the highest number of mock examination papers to mark) by the time the half term break came around I was absolutely exhausted. For what seemed like months I was either in the classroom teaching, planning the lessons I would be teaching the following day, or marking examination papers from one of the four exam classes, all of which had multiple papers for me to plough through.

“Usually, when you find physical evidence at a murder scene, it helps the investigation. It points the police in the direction of the suspects and most of the time helps them to solve and close the case. So, when a body turns up with its head smashed in, the first thing the detectives do is search for evidence. When a hammer covered in blood stained fingerprints is found, the case seems on its way to being solved, until it is revealed to whom those fingerprints belong.
On paper, it should be easy. A hammer covered in prints, prints linked to someone in the system, someone who has a history of violence and has even been suspected of murder before. It should be easy, but it’s not, because as well as having a record, this same someone also happens to be dead.
How can a dead man commit murder? How can he leave evidence at the scene and call the victim’s relatives after the fact? Are these murders related to the strange rituals and dabblings with the occult taken by a known criminal?
The Damned Hands is a story of murder, haunting, and the occult, where following the evidence, leads to some very dark places indeed.

This place felt, in Stacey Miller’s words, like ‘watching paint dry.’
It was sad enough that she was born here. Everything seemed like it was written down like in a book. A bore, she called it. To her, living here was just pure torture. She had enough of the place.
Holly field was a beautiful place. It was the usual look of a town with a mix of forestry and homely buildings. All the houses looked the same. Cozy and average with the picket fences and gates. Some with manicured lawns and gardens. They all looked the same. The town had a simple look to it. It was the only place she had ever known.
Unfortunately.
Being the kind of person she was, which was an isolated and self-absorbed personality, she wanted nothing but to know more about the world outside her town.
Where else would she go? Why would she go? Could she even go?
Of course not.
She was a sixteen-year-old brunette, who lived with her quite odd parents. A sixteen-year-old girl with short brown hair and dark eyes and no siblings who just lived like everything that was going to happen, happened.
Of average height, modest stature and with no care for any of that, Stacey kept modest time away for herself. With her olive skin, moody and cool attitude, ‘house with no neighbors’ kind of home and ‘dress me, I don’t care’ kind of wardrobe, Stacey barely had any close friends. Friends she had, but nothing more. Always cool, calm and collected, Stacey had a dark cloud over her thoughts concerning where she lived. She did not hate it. She just didn’t know…

For most the date 12/02/2021 has no real significance. The fact that the number is a palindrome and an ambigram are interesting, but nothing more. For most.
For one historian, however, the date becomes an obsession. Popping over and over in strange tales from the past, each linked by the black-eyed speakers, the tales of resurrection and that awful, fabled, date.
At first, he believes he has stumbled across a strange historic quirk, a mystery to be unraveled, but as time goes on and the date creeps closer and closer, the number’s dark implications become more and more immediate and all the more terrifying.

The first time I took revenge on Malcolm Peters I have to admit, I regretted it. Not that he didn’t deserve it you understand. There was definitely justification for what I did, but somehow, it felt awkward staining, and wrong.
It wasn’t even really about him or any concern for how my actions would have affected him. Rather, it was more about me, the way that taking those actions made me feel. That first time, the pleasure in revenge was momentary and pretty soon I began to feel regret at having debased myself, allowing myself to be dragged down to that level. There had been enough of that sort of thing in our family already.
The second time, the final time, I felt no remorse. What happened, happened. Nothing can be done about it now and of course, there is no way to prove that I or Ciaco had anything to do with it.
I first met Peters in the summer and under the most in-glamorous of circumstances. Taking the job at the burger joint hadn’t really been a choice but a necessity. It’s funny, but even now I remember as a kid, visiting the place and watching the staff. Teenagers sprinting from one task to another whilst disgruntled customers on the other side of the counter screamed at them.
I remember thinking that I would hate to…
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The first plan was simple. It started with Derek and Brad slumped around the break room table, sweat dripping from their bodies.
“All the money these jerks are making,” Derek groaned, “you’d think they could afford air-conditioning.”
Brad smirked. “Dude, we’re pulling third world wages and you’re complaining about heat? This place is a joke.”
Brad shoved both hands up his Insane Clown Posse t-shirt, then flapped it for ventilation. “It doesn’t have to be that way, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
Derek leaned in closer. “So, I’m talking to Trina the other day, right? And she tells me about how the place got robbed last summer. Guy comes in right after closing, wearing a mask. Pulls a gun on her — you know her, right? Trina, the girl who…

I’ve always believed the old maxim that truth is stranger than fiction. If you ever doubt the fact, then I urge you to spend more time around people, particularly the elderly and to make sure that you spend that time listening.
One of the best things about working in care, with the elderly, is the never ending procession of stories. It’s a perk of a job. Lived experience is the best source for narratives and once you get to know those that you care for and more importantly, once they get to know you, you often find that they are more than willing to reminisce about their past experiences, the lives they’ve lived, the people they’ve loved and lost and to talk about the strange twists of fate that have befallen them. Sometimes however, it pays to be careful.
For although truth is undoubtedly stranger than fiction, it can also be far more terrifying. Sometimes the things people tell you, with a straight face and absolute conviction can rob you of your sleep.

Honestly, until the thing with Stephen Mellor I’d never understood how people managed to be scared of ghosts.
Monsters I could understand, serial killers even more so. Monsters like werewolves and vampires had huge tearing teeth and ripping claws, whilst serial killers, even fictional ones, thrust with their horribly pointed kitchen knives or smacked their lips at the thought of devouring you. I could even understand people feeling creeped out by aliens and the kind of mutant creatures and robots you see in sci-fi. To me, being scared of that stuff made sense. But ghosts?
Perhaps it was the tangibility of the others. The idea that monsters and aliens, if real, could actually do you harm in the physical world, that they were in some way more solid and physically threatening in a literal, touchable way. I could understand being scared of that, but bedsheets going ‘whooo’ like a boiling kettle, or ghoulies and dead people creeping around in churchyards on tiptoe just didn’t cut the mustard.
When I heard reports of plates and furniture flying around, I assumed it was a domestic, not a poltergeist. Christ knows my wife has thrown some crockery in her time. When something went bump in the night, I assumed it was either a burglar or some local pisshead too drunk to get his key in the door.
Now I’m not saying I’m impervious. I’m happy to…
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When Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ, he was paid in sliver. Thirty pieces to be exact. Where those thirty pieces ended up has fascinated historians and theologians for centuries. It has also fascinated those with darker interests.
When a ‘procurer’ of religious artifacts is presented with the locations of these ‘Judas Pennies’ and the reason they were dispersed in the first place, he sets out on a shadowy endeavor to bring them back together, not realizing as he does that his excavations will dig up far more than just the past.
A tale of obsession, black magic and vampires, ‘Judas Pennies’ is a terrifying lesson in being careful what you wish for.

In my family, the wendigo is not spoken of as a myth, in fact, if we can help it, it isn’t spoken of at all. For to even use the word is to invite things more horrible than you can imagine into the thoughts and into the home.
Instead of the word, we have the doll. A small, hideous, figurine that has lived on our mantlepiece for generations. As a child I was forbidden to touch that figurine. As an adult, I found out why.
The Wendigo Doll is a tale of myth, terror and a hunger that will never, ever, end.

Like most bad ideas, the whole thing had actually started as a joke. A flippant remark that should really have been swatted away like a persistent fly or left to dissolve into memory like an indistinct blur of the day’s other conversations. I should have been, but it wasn’t.
Instead, the joke became an idea, an idea that grew into a suggestion, and before I knew it, was gathering mass like a snowball rolling downhill, picking up both speed and size the further it was pushed. Within minutes, the joke had grown and mutated into a full-blown plan of action, for which arrangements were already being made. Once the ball gets rolling like that it’s always hard to stop. Bad ideas have a momentum of their own.
Morefield was a quiet town, filled, unfortunately, with not so quiet people. The primary forms of entertainment in this tiny rural backwater being either to gossip about other people’s intrigues and indiscretions or actively participate in them yourself for the future discussion of others. As a trio, Adrien, Dion, and I had long ago decided to opt-out of…

“What’s the capital of Colombia?” asked Travis, enjoying his turn as the quizmaster for their weekly quiz night.
They’d all been friends since childhood, and university wasn’t going to change that, even if they were at different ones. Travis had moved to New York while Stefan and Ryan had stayed in their hometown of Mansfield, MA but travelled into Boston for their studies. Sean had moved on campus at Brown University so was only about 30 minutes from Stefan and Ryan.
They still tried to see each other often but it was hard for them all to be in the same room at the same time. The weekly zoom quiz was something they all looked forward to.
They all grew up together in the town and their parents were all friends, meaning countless sleepovers and games while they grew up. Others had come and gone but their friendship was the only constant. Solid, unchangeable.
“Bogota,” exclaimed Ryan.
“Correct,” confirmed Travis. “Another point to Ryan.”
Ryan was usually the winner of these quizzes as he has an incredible depth of…