There was a new payphone in town, at least if you believe what some anonymous conspiracy theorist had posted on the internet. Someone on the local paranormal forum had posted photos of a payphone which, to be fair, was in fairly decent condition, and they had insisted it had been installed recently. More likely than not, it had been there for decades, and neither the poster nor anyone else had noticed it until recently. I’m pretty sure the only people who pay those things any mind anymore are kids who genuinely don’t know what they are or what they’re for. But the poster remained quite adamant that this particular payphone was a new addition, his only evidence being some low-resolution…

Demons Of Various Description Ever since the caravan had reached the Unamur Mountains, the climate had become as irksome as the company I kept. Every day, a disgusting heat came with sunrise. Cool days were also rare in Dishare, therefore I hadn’t expected it would bother me when I set out on this journey. However, I soon learned that the mountainous stretch of the Cursed Road was plagued by a different kind of heat; dry and draining. The silken canopy of my palanquin could as well not have been there as the little shade it provided did nothing to alleviate the sensation of being burned alive. The mere act of breathing was akin to sucking sand into my lungs, and…

When you own and run a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, you’ll often meet more than your fair share of oddballs. Nobody ever travels to little towns like mine, just through them, our paths only crossing out of sheer necessity and circumstance. For most folk, my gas station is what the internet likes to call a ‘liminal space’; a transitional zone that becomes creepy when you dwell in it for too long. But for me, it’s the exact opposite. My gas station’s an anchor against the backdrop of transients constantly coming in and out of my life, and they’re the ones who start to get creepy when they overstay their welcome. While I do get a decent…

‘Tom went mad,’ Gilbert said. ‘Schizophrenia or something, I think. He stopped leaving the place completely. After a month of being pent up inside he died of starvation.’ ‘He was a hoarder. A serious one. It took weeks to get the home cleaned up, and even then there’s still some junk in the basement the cleaners left there. I’d be curious to have a look and see if there’s anything valuable.’ He snorted. ‘I doubt it though.’ I sorted through what remained of the clutter and determined most of it to be worthless. There were shelves full of dusty tools and stacks of used furniture. Shoved up against the wall was a large mattress with dirty, stained sheets and old…

It was a dark, foggy night, as it really should be whenever something eerie happens. I was walking from my dad’s house over to my mom’s. I’d had a fight with my dad about something, the topic of which I’ve since forgotten, and realized at 17 years old that I was old enough and capable enough to walk alone back to my mom’s house, instead of stewing in my room at dad’s. Besides, both of my sisters were asleep already, so I wasn’t worried about them not getting their homework done or needing help with dinner. No, my self-appointed duties were done for the evening, and the only thing that stood in between me and the relative freedom of my…

Aside from the slow and steady hoof-falls of the large draft horses against the ancient stone road, or the continuous creaking of the nearly-as-ancient caravan wagon’s wheels, Horace was sure he couldn’t hear anything at all. In the fading autumn light, all he could see for miles around were the silhouettes of enormous petrified trees, having stood dead now for centuries but still refusing to fall. Their bark had turned an unnatural and oddly lustrous black, one that seemed almost liquid as it glistened in whatever light happened to gleam off its surface. They seemed more like geysers of oil that had burst forth from the Earth only to freeze in place before a single drop could fall back to…

You don’t know me. But perhaps you know my voice. I’m a narrator. Specifically, I narrate horror stories online. I scour the internet with a raven’s eye, searching for gems buried amongst the thousands of short fiction stories posted to places like nosleep and Nightscribe. It’s a time-consuming task. Believe me, I’ve lost entire evenings descending deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole of the worst scenarios a human mind can imagine. There are more stories out there than a single person could read in a lifetime of lightless nights. I discard many: those that are too amateurish, too derivative, or that are churned out by AI. But if I keep searching, I am rewarded with something truly terrifying, or…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

My parents live up North, and so every Christmas my drive to their house is defined by a lot of grey, brown and white, as well as bitter cold. Never liked the cold. I spent the first 18 years of my life in it, so I think I definitely have an educated opinion on it. I don’t like the passionless white-skied coldness, or the stark freeze of the deep dark night where you can see your breath billowing out from you like a smokestack, and I especially don’t like when the sky is a deceptive bright blue and all sunny, the rippled clouds all golden and hazy purple, and you go outside thinking it’ll be warm and it’s still fucking…

The homunculus was a thin, flat, disproportionate thing that was too smooth, too round, and seemingly forever dissatisfied with its own ludicrous appearance. The first time I ever laid eyes on it, I had just arrived at my tech job, fresh from a stay of extended medical leave, mind already ablaze with the problems of yesterday’s virtual meetings. A semicircle of young and middle-aged colleagues surrounded and watched in hushed excitement as the thing changed. What I initially recognised as an absent man sporting a brownish complexion was moments later a shaved white girl. Then someone considerably older. Then someone else. It showed no signs of stopping. Blurry, smeared features sank and melted apart, continuously forming anew. Faces were perceivable,…