#psychologicalhorror

“I was fourteen at the time. I and my friend Leo Carper went to the Grizzly Rocks,” the storyteller hesitated as he stumbled on a thought, then continued: “I should have put it a different way, so I correct the error. Leo should have come first: of the two of us, he was the major figure, as it were. Daredevil is about him. Ringleader and photographer par excellence,” the storyteller paused and could not go on for a few minutes as he rode out his overwhelming feelings. “I thought back to his…

The clock was ticking. Like a pickaxe in my skull. It's now 2:45. Fifteen minutes until I hear your footsteps; not that bare feet can make much noise on that gravel road. Seventeen minutes until I hear your broken nails on the wooden door. Blindly scratching away, trying to find the handle. Twenty minutes until your voice is calling out to me. But it will be strangled, like always. It's hard to talk with maggots eating at your vocal cords.

Fun fact: There was a time when I was, technically speaking, a “Twitter artist”. Not in the sense that I was controversial or “corny”, as some people put it, but I was an artist with a Twitter account, and I witnessed a lot of the petty drama and general fuss that came with being on art Twitter. I’ve long since deleted my account for a whole cocktail of reasons, but the incident I’m about to describe definitely helped me in making my decision to leave.

Content warning: child death 1

His friends kept calling out, but Sara was nowhere to be found. They decided to split up. Suddenly, Tom spotted a curious exhibit: a large, double-sided rotating mirror. At first, he saw only his own reflection, but a moment later... he saw Sara. "Sara, what are you doing? You gave us a real scare. We were so worried about you. We were afraid something had happened." "I’m sorry, but this is just so... incredible," she replied. "Ah, women," Tom muttered under his breath.

Dusk is just falling over the town of Evil Shade. The alleys are emptying, and the streets are becoming completely deserted. For some time now, the residents have been alarmed by strange, inexplicable events that usually occur late in the evening. Witnesses of these unsettling incidents report encounters with someone or something, after which they feel as though all their energy has been sucked out of them. They complain of muscle aches, headaches, and remembering very little of the…

Editor's note: The following pages were found on the laptop of Elena K., a doctoral student at the Art History Institute in Zurich, who has been missing since March 14th. Her advisor passed the file on to us with the request to publish it — maybe someone recognizes something, maybe someone comes forward. We have changed nothing in the text. The image related to her notes is shown above. Please look at it while you read, for better understanding. Aside from this file, only one other thing was…

"I heard birds singing outside. I didn't know birds still came here." "It is a beautiful day to be alive." — Unknown ... I wake to warm light slanting through the curtains. The air smells of toasted bread and coffee, and in the distance, I hear my mother humming a familiar tune, soft, gentle, but off-key. It sounds like she's humming with her mouth closed.

Ed was a night watchman at Mr. Mitchell’s company, a firm that manufactured engines for motorboats. He was 54 years old—tall, thin, and never without his glasses. His night shift usually followed a set routine: he would circle the warehouse several times and then spend the rest of the night either napping or buried in a crime novel.

It's been 25 years to the day since my friend Baptiste disappeared. Not officially. The date in the police record says 'September 14' because his aunt didn't report him missing until three days later. I was the last person to see him though. I know when and where he disappeared, and I told the cops, but they brushed me off. I was just making things up to protect my friends, they said, and that I had watched too many horror movies.

As darkness fell and the researchers at the Michigan laboratory finished their work and prepared to leave, something was happening that none of them were aware of. In one of the electric crucible furnaces, where they had been experimenting with creating new, extraordinary substances, something was bubbling restlessly. It seemed to have spiraled out of control, yet no one noticed. Almost all the staff had already gone home, leaving only Mike, who was notoriously slow and phlegmatic.

The mind is a complex thing that no one can truly hope to fully understand. You can study it all day long but there are things inside that defy all human logic. In a way we are all prisoners to our own thoughts, and some are hard to escape.

Amitriptyline, 25 mg. Her dose. Her name on the label, spelled the way only she spelled it, with the small accent she'd added at the DMV and never let anyone drop. I hadn't refilled anything. I hadn't opened the app since the funeral. But the receipt said the order was placed five days ago, from my account, and the pickup was authorized with a short code I did not remember choosing.

Lucas Thorne gulped as he turned the corner and saw the rotting corpse of a house that sat at the edge of town. The house seemed twisted as its warped wooden frame sagged under its weight. Grime smeared the windows, reflecting only the fading light of dusk. As his eyes darted around, he confirmed one thing: he was alone. He reconsidered his choice to volunteer for the cleanup.

By WedgeOverPotato "What do you seek? What do you hear? What do you fear? For fate is, my Witherin, inevitable to your undying likeness. That man's biggest creation is more of a brute than man itself. That we all clasp our hands together and prance around for mercy till the undying showers us with the pleasure of death, for it is we, whom shall not die." Witherin. For it is we, whom shall not die.

I didn’t want to move there. Even now, when I try to remember the first day in that apartment, it feels wrong somehow, like the memory belongs to somebody else and I only inherited it after they disappeared. My father kept calling it “a fresh start” after my mother died, but nothing about that place felt fresh. The building stood at the far end of the city where the streetlights flickered even before sunset and every balcony looked abandoned. The elevator smelled like wet concrete and…

I naturally fell into babysitting around the age of 14. As the oldest of two older siblings, I was used to watching younger kids a fair amount of the time. So through friends and family, I got leads for babysitting to score some cash, which definitely beat having to work at a restaurant. The job had its ups and downs, but overall it wasn’t a bad gig at all. Yet, as many good experiences as I had, they were all eclipsed by one night.

Plot: It is the year 1929. Stanley Fontaine, an American writer of mystical horror novels, is forced to leave his city after losing his inspiration. After many years, he decides to travel to Louisiana on the Eastern Express, where the staff is of the highest calibre and nothing seems to foreshadow any misfortune. Yet soon he begins to realise that what we see is not always reality, and that most people have grown accustomed to living in sweet flattery. This very carriage conceals a multitude of…

There is a fresh, blank page sitting in front of me, and as I stare at it it seems to stare back.

Liber Kiffmet — An Occult Dream Of Sorts Gone Bad With Dope & Weed © Andre Michael Pietroschek (if you must, pronounce Pee-tro-shack), all rights reserved Disclaimer: No warranties! This story idea is fictitious, not real, and was inspired by some episodes of the Frozen Frights podcast. Meanwhile, me going nostalgia-lane on the young adult memories is part of this story's surrealism.