Short Stories Occult

Father John has lived his whole life without knowing a woman's touch. Hard at first, his self-denial grew easier over time, as he learned to master his urges with a regimen of prayer, cold showers, and jigsaw puzzles. That changes the day that Debra Rocks enters his confessional. A rough-talking adult film actress, she has come to ask him to pray for a murdered costar.

A young librarian receives a request for an obscure Hebrew book from a sinister gentleman, unaware of its contents. Montague Rhodes James was a noted British mediaeval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918) and of Eton College (1918–1936). He is best remembered for his ghost stories which are widely regarded as among the finest in English literature.

This audiobook features more than a dozen stories by H. P. Lovecraft.

This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the colonial era’s stifling religion, and its dark and threatening woods.

These beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant stories speak of the unknown encroaching upon the familiar, the inscrutable power of grief and desire, and the thinness between all our layers. Where nature rubs against small towns, in mountains and woods and bedrooms, here is strangeness seen through a poet's eye.

Short Story Press Presents Lies We Tell One Another by Don Codner. A woman that was living a normal, mundane existence with her fiancé is thrust into a world that she isn’t equipped to deal with. Her life is shattered, and she must pick up the pieces with the help of a strange man who appears in her room.

This is the first released collection of original short stories by R. Paul Matty. The author's engaging style draws the reader into each detail of actual events in the drama of nature while uniquely creating a greater respect and appreciation for all things wild, inevitably intertwined with changing human culture.

Finally with some time off, Jack Nightingale decides to take a scenic tour of some haunted sites on the American East coast. But when a strange doll is dumped in the road in front of him, what was meant to be a break for rest and relaxation turns into a battle for life and death; the doll is powerful, murderous and evil. And Nightingale may have unwittingly made himself its next target....

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

The events of the story occupy a single June day in post-World War I Central London, as wealthy and fashionable society hostess Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she is to give that evening. Through her thoughts and memories, the voices of others who have touched on her life and will attend her party, Virginia Woolf shows her genius as a writer who is both accessible and popular.

A chilling anthology in tribute to the genius of Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant, and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and listeners. This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, brings together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

A young girl’s dollhouse comes alive at night, and its tiny residents possess a terrifying power. Fate stalks a young cult survivor as she struggles to escape a premonition of her own death. And a beautiful antique jewelry box reveals a dark hunger that threatens to consume its new owner....

A businessman discovers he has a ghostly twin whose presence may be far more ominous than he had thought.... Mischievous children learn that supernatural forces are nothing to toy with, after a Halloween prank goes wrong. And holiday festivities set the backdrop to a terrified teen’s worst fears, when his grandmother’s corpse comes looking for revenge....

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.

Haunted Castles is the definitive, complete collection of Ray Russell's masterful Gothic horror stories, including the famously terrifying novella trio of "Sardonicus", "Sanguinarius", and "Sagittarius", The characters that sprawl through Haunted Castles are frightful to the core: the heartless monster holding two lovers in limbo; the beautiful dame journeying down a damned road toward depravity (with the help of an evil gypsy); the man who must wear his fatal crimes on his face in the form of an awful smile.

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.

This book features four short stories of horror, occult, and the paranormal.

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer, poet, editor and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre, and is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story and considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.

Mardis Gras in New Orleans: the perfect hunting ground for vampires. Every year these creatures of the night descend upon the event and make this night their own. Yet, this year, something seems a little different....

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.