Horror Fiction Stories

For more than three decades, 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 readers crave. Now, with the tenth volume of the series, Datlow is back again to bring you the stories that will keep you up at night. Included in the pages of The Best Horror of the Year have been such illustrious writers as Neil Gaiman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Stephen King, Linda Nagata, Laird Barron, and many others.

Gather round as today’s most diabolically clever authors twist simple moments into otherworldly horrors. An empty baby stroller. A scratching underneath the bed. A farmhouse in the moonlight. With an unnerving sense of the macabre, these stories transform our greatest fears into bone-chilling realities.

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.

If you like scary stories, you've come to the right place. Over 15 tales of terror told in a true story style that will make your blood run cold!

If you like scary stories, you've come to the right place. Over 15 tales of terror told in a true story style that will give you the heebie-jeebies.

In Taylor Mill, Kentucky, sits a property rife with paranormal activity, and its oppressive energy is all too real. The family living in the home has undergone a bombardment of constant, unexplained activities. Screaming, disembodied voices, thrown objects being thrown, and apparitions were only the tip of the iceberg for Sam, his wife Jody, and their daughter Charlie. With the help of a priest and two paranormal investigators, Sam and his family began a battle with the unseen forces attempting to drive them from their home.

Both day and night, Lisa Brooks is plagued with nightmares and hallucinations. Could they be caused by the horrifying accident that landed her in the hospital for weeks? When Lisa finds out that a neighbor is looking for a babysitter for her little boy, Lisa jumps at the chance to keep busy and take her mind off of her troubling thoughts. But then the murders start -- and her friends begin dying one by one. Are Lisa's nightmares coming true? Find out in the next installment of R.L. Stine's Fear Street series, Don't Stay Up Late.

Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) has earned a reputation as one of the finest horror writers of the modern era, but his work has been out of print and nearly unobtainable for many years. His seminal volume In a Lonely Place collects eight of his best tales, including "In the Pines," a classic ghost story evocatively set in the Tennessee woods, "Beyond Any Measure," an original take on the vampire story.

Darren Shan, Vampire Prince and "vampaneze" killer, faces his worst nightmare yet - school. But homework is the least of Darren's problems. Bodies are piling up, time is running out, and the past is catching up with the hunters fast. Darren must forge new alliances and try to unravel the mystery behind the malevolent forces that have been set in motion against him. In this second part of the Hunters trilogy, the stakes are raised and the pace quickens to keep listeners on the edge of their seats.

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading - and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he has made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.

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.

In 1919, Kitty Weekes, pretty, resourceful, and on the run, falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams. But something more is going on at Portis House—its plaster is crumbling, its plumbing makes eerie noises, and strange breaths of cold waft through the empty rooms.

Perhaps Blackwood's most celebrated story, The Willows was influenced heavily by his own trips down the Danube River. It tells the story of two campers who pick the wrong place to sleep for the night, a place where another dimension impinges on our own. H.P. Lovecraft considered this the finest supernatural tale in English literature.

Elena: transformed, the golden girl has become what she once feared and desired. Stefan: tormented by losing Elena, he's determined to end his feud with Damon once and for all - whatever the cost. But slowly he begins to realize that his brother is not his only enemy. Damon: at last, he possesses Elena. But will his thirst for revenge against Stefan poison his triumph? Or can they come together to face one final battle?

A terrifying, thrilling collection of must-listen horror stories chock-full of nightmarish supernatural beings and the murderously disturbed that are sure to keep you up all night long.

These shivery tales were collected from the oral tradition, from people all over the Southwest, and represent the rich cultural diversity of the region, from the Ozarks to the Rio Grande, California to the Big Thicket.

A cosmic collection of bone-chilling and terrifying short horror stories by Laurie Blake.

Now a Lifetime original movie, Stephen King's haunting story about an author of a series of mystery novels who tries to reconcile her old life with her life after a horrific attack and the one thing that can save her: Revenge.

Nitya, a single child ignored by her parents, makes an unlikely friend - a boy with a strange power who has mysteriously manifested in her room. Nikhil creates a replacement for his dead mother - a clay doll that has her likeness. Things take a bizarre turn when his clay mother starts communicating with him. Nihar, a teenage orphan, has walked a long way to seek shelter in an orphanage he has heard a lot about, unaware that it is the house of a terrifying secret.

Mankind in its present state has been around for a quarter of a million years, yet only the last 4,000 have been of any significance. So, what did we do for nearly 250,000 years? We huddled in caves and around small fires, fearful of the things that we didn't understand. It was more than explaining why the sun came up; it was the mystery of enormous birds with heads of men and rocks that came to life. So we called them "gods" and "demons", begged them to spare us, and prayed for salvation.