Dark Horror

As kids, outcasts Rebecca, Bobby, Spencer, and Ernie were inseparable friends in the idyllic town of Maple Grove. Three left to pursue lofty dreams—and achieved them. Only Ernie never left. When he falls into a coma, his three amigos feel an urgent need to return home. Don’t they remember people lapsing into comas back then? And those people always awoke…didn’t they?

Since they were lured to the festival at Carousel, Riley (the Film Buff), Antoine (the Athlete), Camden (the Scholar), Anna (the Final Girl), and Kimberly (the Eye Candy) have lived through entire horror movie plots. So far, Riley's survival strategy is working. He's high on his Moxie, Hustle, and Savvy stats. But his Mettle and Grit have dropped dangerously low, leaving him vulnerable. If he gets caught by a killer, he's done for.

Follow Jake Thornclaw as he plunges into a world where the full moon reveals the beast within, unleashing a nightmarish struggle between human and monster. Feel every heart-stopping moment as society unravels and the shadows come alive with unspeakable horrors! This isn’t mere storytelling; it’s an intense experience that will haunt you long after the last word fades. Prepare for unnerving twists that will challenge everything you thought you knew about humanity. Can you handle the howls that echo through the darkness?

The series takes place in a world similar to our own, but one where vampires, witches, werewolves, and shape-shifters live among humans without their knowledge. These supernatural races make up a secret society known as the Night World, which enforces two fundamental laws to prevent discovery: (1) Never allow humans to gain knowledge of the Night World's existence, and (2) Never fall in love with one of them.

Last summer, sixteen-year-old Will Burgess lost many of the people he loved most. Now he’s imprisoned in the Sunny Woods Rehabilitation Center, a facility for troubled youths. Separated from his surviving loved ones and terrified of a change inside him, Will is tormented by a new group of bullies and a sadistic government doctor. When his only ally, an orderly named Pierre, tells him there have been sightings of winged creatures with glowing red eyes, Will believes him.

Casement Rise is a dusty town at the end of days, a harsh world of grit and arcane dangers. While Jean’s stern, overprotective Nan has always kept Casement Rise safe from monsters, she may have waited too long to teach Jean how to face them on her own. On Jean’s twelfth birthday, a mysterious graceful man appears, an ethereal and terrifying being tied to her family’s secrets. Now, Nan must rush Jean’s education in monsters, magic, and the breaking of the world in ages past.

Vampires: murderous creatures in the shape of humans, they stalk the night feeding on the blood of innocents. Seemingly immortal, they can be destroyed only by the use of a stake through the heart, severing of their heads, or exposure to sunlight. By the year AD 12,090, vampires have ruled the Earth for almost 300 years, and it is only these weaknesses that have kept these foul monsters from totally overrunning the world. But what happens when those rules no longer apply?

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Eleanor Zarrin has been distanced from her family for years. When she returns home after a violent incident at boarding school, trying to fit back into the space she left becomes even more difficult when their headstrong matriarch unexpectedly dies. Eleanor's bloodthirsty family is left unchecked for the first time in decades, and when her Grandmere arrives to help the family adjust, it's clear that something dark is lurking beneath her genteel exterior.

A great imagination makes for terrific ghost stories - stories that go beyond the tapping on the doors in the middle of a night or a whistling thrush or even a squeaky swing in the wind. This is a collection of some such horror stories selected and compiled by Ruskin Bond that will send shivers down your spine.

After Cora Glass’s life was stolen by Harrow Faire, things just keep going from bad to worse. Unable to run, unable to escape, there seems to be no way to avoid what she’s become - the Contortionist. But a girl can only take so much. Haunted by an abandoned and seemingly sentient circus? Fine. The life of her best friend threatened unless she sacrificed herself? Fine. Tormented and stalked by a grinning madman who wanted to kill her, and now wants to do worse? That’s where Cora has to draw the line.

Baxter Zevcenko's life is pretty sweet. He's making a name for himself as the kingpin of his smut-peddling high school syndicate, the other gangs are staying out of his business, and he's dating the girl of his dreams, Esme. But when Esme gets kidnapped, things start to get seriously weird, and the only man drunk enough to help is a bearded, booze-soaked, supernatural bounty hunter who goes by the name of Jackson "Jackie" Ronin.

These stories present electric messiahs, identity constructs, the Beatles, and even a nuclear Armageddon, which serve as comic foils for Lain's everyman characters. Here is an America where packets of Sea Monkeys arrive in the mail containing secret messages, and the girl next door can breathe underwater. With Last Week's Apocalypse, Douglas Lain arrives with a punch line and a warning.

In the dark reaches of the eastern continent, Tris Vishal travels from village to village, using his power to put unsettled spirits to rest. He works alone, having learned that letting people close only leads to more death. Still, he finds himself accepting the help of the Mondyalitko woman who saves his life - a woman whose gifts are as much a burden as his own. Mari Kaleja thirsted for vengeance since the night her family was taken from her. She has searched far and wide for the one she thinks responsible, known only as "The Dead's Man".

As a child, Henry Cadmus lived on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry's experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood... and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals... and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village.

Yet another brilliant entry in Kenemore’s zombie canon - Cap’n Hook meets the undead. Set in the Caribbean of the eighteenth century, the epicenter of piracy, voodoo, and the dark arts, The Code of the Zombie Pirate reveals all the secrets to selecting, customizing, and managing a motley crew of pirates-cum-zombies.

I've lived in the shadows. Now I have the chance to escape from them and start over. My cousin and best friend sent me to Alaska to get away from my family. A fresh start. I should have known my past wouldn't let me go that easily. As I fight to overcome it, deadly secrets are revealed. I may not survive. Can I manage to be happy? Three infuriating men seem to think I can, even though I've rejected them. Will the shadows finally consume me?

Mason will soon leave Nalnora, but he’s going out with a bang. As the Master continues to topple and possess the weaker elven Houses, Mason decides to up their offense. Guns might be deadly...but a bazooka decimates. Especially one powered by runes. So, with the help of his few elven allies, Mason works to loosen the Master’s grip on Nalnora one last time. The Master’s army marches for war, but Mason is ready for them.

Sympathy with the sea, with the weird, and with monsters fills the stories of Imperfect Commentaries. Ruthanna Emrys' collection offers listeners feminist and #ownvoices Neo-Lovecraftian fiction, anthropological science fiction, and fantasies of belonging, plus miscellaneous deleted scenes, poems, and secret story origins. Listeners familiar with her novels (Winter Tide and Deep Roots) will see the first appearance of Aphra Marsh, an Innsmouth survivor, still recovering from her losses and making a life for herself in late-1940s San Francisco.