Occult Anthology

From astronauts in deep space to the ghosts of the Civil War, New York Times best-selling author Alethea Kontis creates worlds of wonder and delight, of weirdness and despair, of whimsy and darkness. Here are 20 stories and poems that will transport you to the magical dangerous worlds you've always known should exist, but have never quite been able to find.

William Wymark Jacobs (1863-1943) was an English author of short stories and novels, well known for his comedies involving rural Essex characters. His most famous story, "The Monkey's Paw" (1902) is a tale of intense psychological horror. "The Old Man of the Sea" is a farcical comedy about a young man, George Wright, who tries to win a lady’s hand by pretending to be the only heir of a rich uncle.

Preston Cobb is always looking to make a quick buck selling any kind of gun he can get his hands on, but when the denizens of the weird west get in the way, Preston's his own best customer. Join Preston as he faces an ancient evil in the snowy Sierra Nevadas in "Abominable", finds romance and bloody mystery in Nevada mining country in "Silver Moon", and squares off with the undead south of the border in "Dead to Rites".

"Azathoth" is the beginning of a never-completed novel written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in June 1922 and published as a fragment in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death. It is the first piece of fiction to mention the fictional being Azathoth, one of the major entities in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, though the entity only appears in the title.

Madman Jack had murdered 14 women in numerous ways seven years before in a small Indiana farm town. He was what doctors called a missionary killer. He believed all women were evil, and he believed it was his God-given duty to kill them. Tonight, October 30, 2008, Jack would escape his maximum-security prison cell and travel back to the same small town and steal more souls to regain his powers.

Who has not been thrilled and not a little frightened by tales of ghosts, spirits, hauntings, and monsters? Some of the most fascinating accounts come from the dark hollows of the Ozark Mountains. For generations, these scary, mystifying legends have been told around campfires and family gatherings and handed down through the generations. Now, for the first time, the best of these tales have been gathered together and presented in this volume.

A ruthless killer shows a real hunger for fame. Struggling through the wilderness, an infected man tries to lead zombies away from his family. Hell hath no fury like a woman murdered. Civil War soldiers discover the secrets of a Southern swamp. Can Christmas magic survive the zombie apocalypse? A ship of the dead hunts the living on the high seas. Dinner in a diner takes on divine import. A 200-year-old vampire has a little surprise waiting for his next victim.

This volume covers H.P. Lovecraft's "apprentice years" - roughly the first half of his literary career, the half written before his return to Providence in 1926. Every story written for publication under his own name is included in this volume, from 1917 through 1925.

Are you ready for a spine-tingling thrill ride? Step into the dark and eerie world of 13 chilling short horror stories from the infamous Nosleep forum on Reddit. From a haunting conversation with the dead, to a seemingly simple heist gone wrong, to a terrifying home invasion, and a father's costly mistake, these tales will keep you on the edge of your seat. But beware, once you start listening, there's no turning back. Don't miss out on this collection of creepypasta that will leave you sleeping with the lights on.

An anthology of short stories based upon/inspired by, and in loving homage to all of those great gore-fest movies and books of the 1980s (not necessarily based in that era, although some do ride that wave of nostalgia), the golden age when horror well and truly came kicking, screaming, and spraying blood, gore, and body parts out from the shadows.

Make Pretend is the first book in a series collecting all of Armand Rosamilia's short fiction. Twenty-one tales ranging from horror to crime thriller to science fiction, contemporary fiction to fantasy and more. From stories a few days ago to one 40 years old.

In this new collection, Patrick Barb explores themes of family found and lost, media consumption and the dangers of runaway nostalgia, the supernatural in our lives, and the impact of violence in both the long- and short-term. From rural backwoods to Park Slope brownstones, Barb's characters face impossible, awful situations, testing their inner strength and understanding of reality. Covering quiet horror, weird fiction, supernatural horror, slasher horror, topical dark fiction, and more, these stories spotlight supposedly familiar terrors and fears in new and unexpected ways.

Whether exploring the tenebrous bottoms of the ocean, traveling into the cold recesses of uncharted space, or battling other supernatural creatures for world dominance, these vampires mean business! So gather your stakes and clutch your garlic tight as daylight draws to a close—and the vampires claim the night!

When a brothel madame is murdered, it looks as if a centuries old witch’s curse on the land has claimed another victim. But as DCI Mike Saxby and his team investigate the background history of the building, other, more sinister, motives emerge. Then a local journalist who had been investigating that same unhappy history is the next to meet a grisly end, and a further discovery by police results in a race against time to prevent a national disaster.

Adam Soto, author of the debut novel This Weightless World, which Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” returns with Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep. The stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, strange and unsettling, explore the quiet spaces where the living and the dead alike haunt one another through their choices, dreams, and institutions.

Follow Caveman and his bros in the Road Dogs MC from Biker Heaven, to the pits of Biker Hell. In the first story, Biker Heaven, after receiving a zombie bite, Caveman hits a tree on his motorcycle at over 100 miles an hour, buying his ticket to Biker Heaven; but when there is trouble in the biker world, Caveman comes back to help his bros in the Road Dogs MC. Taking on vampires and werewolves plus evil demons from the depths of Hell, Caveman and the Halo riders, a band of trouble shooters from the great beyond, have their hands full protecting the bros on Earth.

Imagine, if you will, you’re traveling through the unknown, hellbound, with no road map or stars to guide you. The light fades as you descend into a shadow realm where supernatural terrors make their lair and evil lurks at every turn. Here, dead things don’t always stay dead, for this is a world where things that shouldn’t be...are, and things that should be are not. In this world, we pay a visit to the smallest, but terrifyingly necessary, room, and stories are written precisely to chill the bones as you wait for nature to make its call.

In exchange for pizza, a beautiful crow delivered stories to my windowsill. I've collected those stories, here, for your amusement and observation. This audiobook includes short stories like "Bedfellows", "Belligamy", "Captured by Animals", "The Red Constellation", and more.

A husband, trying to rekindle his marriage in a lonely seaside village, meets a strange young woman from his forgotten past; a man taking a garden gnome to a museum gets an unexpected surprise; a lonely widow encounters an enigmatic character from an embryonic pop group; a group of scientists make an horrific discovery at a big cat conservation centre; and a baby hare comes of age with a momentous idea.

A beer run becomes an interdimensional excursion. Two men settle their differences after discovering an extraordinary secret in the wilderness. A woman faces the bureaucracy of a digital afterlife. A grieving man seeks to know where his wife was reincarnated. Strange lights in the sky transform the lives of a small town. God and the devil play billiards for people's souls. A teenage deity's science project sprouts a startling discovery. These and more dream-like detours into the surreal, interstitial, and inexplicable await within. Chock full of gooey, mind-bending goodness.