Horror Legends

Teeny Voix lies burritoed in her blanket, girded by Lego landmines, protected by her plushy opossum when the bedroom door creaks, and her lecherous stepfather enters . . . again, while her momma ignores. Weeks earlier, the mute girl penned a mysterious letter, unwittingly hailing a goliath who mauls then kills Teeny's stepfather. The bizarre death forces Teeny to use wit, fortitude, and an eclectic collection of combatants to brave life and death battles with the wicked White Van People, an organized and well-financed child trafficking operation.

Seventeen-year-old Aderyn ("Ryn") only cares about two things: her family and her family's graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meager existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don't always stay dead.

A village that is abandoned on every 14th of June. Legend has it that deadly witches, or churels, visit it on that cursed night. A kund where demons are exorcised out of the possessed people. Legend has it that if a pandit of the kund dies an unnatural death, he comes back unless he is beheaded. A jungle in which no one dares to step on a full-moon night. Legend has it that it is haunted by women from a nearby village who turn into blood-thirsty human bats, or chamgadarni, and eat their prey alive.

Marcus grew up believing his father killed his mother—then blamed it on the boogeyman under the bed. Always leave the lights on, his father warned, or the boogeyman will get you. Marcus still heeds the superstition, especially when he invites his new girlfriend over. Is Marcus haunted by a creature or has he just inherited his father’s murderous delusions? The night will tell.

Since the beginning of time, the angelic hosts of the High Heavens and the demonic hordes of the Burning Hells have been locked in a struggle for the fate of all Creation. That struggle has now come to the mortal realm...and neither Man nor Demon nor Angel will be left unscathed.

Darkly thrilling, these 20 new ghost stories have all the chills and power of traditional ghost stories, but each tale is a unique retelling of an urban legend from the world over. Multiple award-winning editor Ellen Datlow and award-nominated author and editor Nick Mamatas recruited Jeffrey Ford, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin Kiernan, Catherynne M. Valente, Kit Reed, Ekaterina Sedia, and 13 other fine writers to create stories unlike any they've written before.

'The ghosts of today live not in castles or stately homes, but in ordinary houses and offices, and they're witnessed by ordinary people like you and me. We just need to figure out what the hell they are - the dead returning from the "undiscovered country" of death? Or the product of that equally mysterious and ancient location, the human mind?

In Ghostly Japan collects 12 ghostly stories from Lafcadio Hearn, deathless images of ghosts and goblins, touches of folklore and superstition, salted with traditions of the nation. While some of these stories contain nightmare imagery worthy of a midnight creature feature, others are not ghostly or ghastly at all. "Bits of Poetry" offers an engaging study on verse, and "Japanese Buddhist Proverbs" explains the meaning of several aphorisms based on Japanese cultural references.

In the land of moss, magnolias, and bayous, ghost stories suffuse the landscape like mist on a moonlit swamp. Swamp ghosts, hot-tempered villains and tricksters once lived there, and live on today in such blood-chilling stories as the six in this collection.

It's Midwinter again in Eerie-on-Sea, when legend claims the terrifying Malamander emerges to hunt-and search for its long-lost mate. It's the anniversary of daring Violet Parma's arrival in Eerie; a year later, she still hasn't found her missing parents, just as anxious Herbert Lemon has learned little else about why he washed up on the shore in a crate of lemons.

Four horror stories, over 30 hours of audio entertainment. Horror stories are intended to frighten, startle, and even disgust the listener. The tales of blood-sucking vampires, headless horsemen, hideous creatures, and transformed humans will leave you terrified yet compelled to listen to the next.

A dark, contemporary fairy tale in the tradition of Neil Gaiman. Jeremy Johnson Johnson hears voices. Or, specifically, one voice: The ghost of Jacob Grimm, one half of The Brothers Grimm. Jacob watches over Jeremy, protecting him from an unknown dark evil whispered about in the space between this world and the next. But Jacob can't protect Jeremy from everything. When coltish, copper-haired Ginger Boultinghouse takes a bite of a cake so delicious it’s rumored to be bewitched, she falls in love with the first person she sees: Jeremy.

Everyone in Sleepy Hollow knows about the Horseman, but no one really believes in him. Not even Ben Van Brunt's grandfather, Brom Bones, who was there when it was said the Horseman chased the upstart Crane out of town. Brom says that's just legend, the village gossips talking. More than 30 years after those storied events, the village is a quiet place. Fourteen-year-old Ben loves to play "Sleepy Hollow boys", reenacting the events Brom once lived through. But then Ben and a friend stumble across the headless body of a child in the woods.

Dr. Warthrop is a scientist who tracks and studies real-life monsters. Assisted by his 12-year-old apprentice, Will Henry, Dr. Warthrop discovers a pod of Anthropophagi and launches a hunt to destroy the foul beasts.

Rick Yancey’s first gothic suspense tale, The Monstrumologist, earned him a prestigious Michael L. Printz Award. The second installment of this acclaimed series, Curse of the Wendigo, finds young Will Henry on the hunt for a supernatural beast plaguing New England in the late 1800s. Will and his mentor, the domineering Dr. Warthrop, are enlisted to help the doctor’s former fiancée. It seems her husband has been lost in the Canadian wilderness.

Producing an immersive audiobook experience (with narration, actors, music, and sound effects), Seth Andrews has drawn upon his decades-long experience as a broadcaster and storyteller to conjure an eerie otherworld of ghosts, spirits, devils, and supernatural beasts. A mix of original tales and popular urban legends, these 14 freestanding chapters favor ghouls over gore, providing easily digestible vignettes of supernatural fiction, ghostly lore, and creepy fun for anyone who has ever enjoyed a scary film, haunted house, or Halloween campfire story.

Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. And moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over as someone different. In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones.

A cave-diving expedition on a mysterious island goes horribly wrong for a renowned marine biologist and his fellow divers when they become hunted by a deadly breed of predators that, until then, had only been known in myths and legends.

After barely escaping the evil spirit that tried to destroy his soul, Tark vows to spend his life protecting the innocent. So when his mentor goes missing on a ghost-hunting expedition, Tark and Okiku join the search. But the Suicide Forest has seduced thousands of people to their deaths over the centuries and is thick with their sorrows. With time running out and danger at every turn, Tark will either become a hero - or die trying.

I didn’t believe in the Rule of Three. Not at first. It was just one of those urban myths you hear about all the time. A story my boyfriend told me about a girl cursed by the number three. A girl whose parents had killed themselves after her sibling had died in an accident. Which meant that she was doomed to die too because that’s the Rule of Three. Bad things always happen in threes, they say, and they are right. Because it’s happening again.