Horror Fiction Short Stories

The Cottage on the Hill is a horror story, but it’s a J. Robert Lennon horror story, in which the characters’ loneliness - their disconnectedness, their inability, at times, even to speak or listen to one another - is more chilling than any of the supernatural elements.

Horror favorite T.W. Grim invites you to pull up a chair and watch the sun slip past the horizon with this dark and macabre collection of short stories.

Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his 16 Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.

Even if you think you don't know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp, and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana. Perhaps the purest expression of Wood's théma - pink angora sweaters, over-the-top violence, and the fraught relationships between the sexes - can be found in his unadulterated short stories.

At sixteen, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now twenty-five and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot."

These short stories can make you shiver and sit on the edge of your seat. Some humorous anecdotes and some interesting plot twists are integrated, and the main theme of most of them is zombies. Get ready to hear about murdered victims, girls who interact with ghosts, zombie apocalypse killing sprees, lost tragedies, confused monsters, and creatures from the deep. None of these stories are directly related, which makes it a fun combo to buy, to get more plot material for less money.

Few authors can claim to have marked a genre so thoroughly and personally that their words have leaked into every aspect of modern pop culture. Clive Barker is such an author, and the Books of Blood marked his debut - his coming out to the world - in brilliant, unforgettable fashion. Crossroad Press is proud to present Clive Barker's Books of Blood in digital for the first time.

Hot on the heels of her 2018 This Is Horror Award–winning short story collection Spectral Evidence, critically horror author Gemma Files compiles fifteen more of her most startling recent nightmares—a creepily seductive downward spiral of dark poetry and existential dread, entirely suitable to the slow apocalypse going on all around us. So take your mind off your troubles and send it somewhere the rules still operate, if only to punish those who violate them.

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft: Commemorative Edition is a select collection of horror short stories, novellas and novels written by H. P. Lovecraft. This collection includes stories by H. P. Lovecraft: Dagon ; Herbert West – Reanimator ; The Lurking Fear ; The Rats in the Walls ; The Whisperer in the Darkness ; Cool Air ; In the Vault ; The Call of Cthulu ; The Color Out of Space ; The Horror at Red Hook ; The Music of Erich Zann ; The Shadow Out of Time ; The Dunwich Horror ; The Haunter of the Dark ; The Outsider ; The Shunned House ; The Unnameable ; The Thing on the Doorstep ; Under the Pyramids.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is the darkest, the living-deadliest, scariest - and dare we say most tasteful - collection of zombie stories ever assembled. It's so good, it's a no-brainer. There is never a dull moment in the world of zombies. They are superstars of horror, and they are everywhere, storming the world of print and visual media. Their endless march will never be stopped. It's the Zombie Zeitgeist! Now, with his wide sweep of knowledge and keen eye for great storytelling, Otto Penzler offers a remarkable catalog of zombie literature.

Ghosts, specters, wraiths.... Restless undead spirits wail beneath the full moon and reach out for you from the swirling mists. The pain and loneliness of death drives them to seek the one thing they cannot have - the spark of life within your soul.... Scare Street presents volumes seven through nine of Terror in the Shadows, gathered into one spine-tingling tome. More than 30 stories of supernatural fear and suspense lurk with this macabre collection. Each one packed with a ghoulish assortment of creatures from beyond the grave.

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.

Did you know that heaven keeps a prisoner? Or that the grim reaper's scythe isn't there to harvest you? It's really to protect you against something on your journey. This is a huge collection of 52 psychological horror and supernatural horror stories, the second volume to the Amazon best-selling horror collection, 51 Sleepless Nights.

The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

For more than 30 years, Ellen Datlow has been at the center of horror. Bringing you the most frightening and terrifying stories, Datlow always has her finger on the pulse of what horror fans crave. Now, with the 11th volume of the series, Daltow's back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. With each passing year, science, technology, and the march of time shine light into the craggy corners of the universe, making the fears of an earlier generation seem quaint. This light creates its own shadows. The Best Horror of the Year chronicles these shifting shadows.

The bold investigators of Arkham Horror are humanity's best hope against monstrous terrors from beyond the void in this second collection of extraordinary eldritch novellas.

Number one New York Times best-selling author and master of horror Stephen King teams up with Bev Vincent of Cemetery Dance to present a terrifying collection of 16 short stories (and one poem) that tap into one of King’s greatest fears - air travel - featuring brand-new stories by King and Joe Hill.

Wild Invitation is an exciting collection of Psy/Changeling stories from New York Times best-selling author Nalini Singh. In "Beat of Temptation", innocent Tamsyn has always had a place in her heart for Nathan, a blooded DarkRiver sentinel. But is she ready for the fierce demands of the mating bond? In "Stroke of Enticement", a wary young teacher, skeptical about love, arouses the man - and the animal - in an aggressive leopard changeling who must prove his affections are true.

The ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan gets more than greasy corn dogs and flat soda when he visits a carnival in Kansas to which his apprentice, Granuaile, drags him. He runs across a barker with a strange power over the crowd: attractive women leave their men and disappear into an unmarked tent, never to be seen again, and the men wander away, forgetting that they ever had girlfriends or wives. When Granuaile falls under the barker’s influence and enters the tent, Atticus isn’t about to forget it and move on.

Although werewolves are a classic monster standard, The Horror Zine’s Book of Werewolf Stories breathes fresh, terrifying life into the horrifying concept of human-to-wolf transformations. Packed with original, never-before published stories of unique and contemporary takes on lycanthropy, this spine-chilling anthology presents exciting, refreshing new ideas that won’t fail to impress even the most jaded horror fans. Brought to you by the established, award-winning ezine and print magazine, only the best and most suspenseful tales can be found here.