ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jordan Accinelli (otherwise known as /u/Mr_Halloween) is a part-time author, part-time poet and a full-time student. He often idles about, writing stories here and there of varying genres, but always seems to excel in the realm of dark, twisted horror. He has penned a multitude of stories for reddit’s /r/shortscarystories and is one of the co-founder of the subreddit /r/DarkTales. A number of his stories have been narrated and uploaded to YouTube by various different narrators, large and small. He’s heavily inspired by the works of Derek Landy and his dark, comedic fantasy novels, as well as other fellow short story writers he has interacted with over the years. He hopes to someday bring smiles to all the faces of those who read and enjoy his works. Permanently.
You can contact him through his email at [email protected] or find odd quotes and literary pieces on his Tumblr (http://thebackofmymindhatesme.tumblr.com/)
John Andreini (minnboy) is a marketing copywriter by trade and writer of short stories, screenplays and stage plays by choice. As a screenwriter, he has been a finalist in half-a-dozen national contests, won “Best Screenplay” at the 2007 California Independent Film Festival, and was a runner-up in the 2009 Scriptapalooza competition (One of the top 13 screenplays out of 4,200 entries). He’s been contributing stories to /r/shortscarystories on Reddit for over two years, and a number of them have been turned into Creepypastas on Youtube.
Grace Bowland, known to some as acingit, is a slightly paranoid law student who avoids doing anything productive by writing horror instead. Her stories can be found on /r/shortscarystories, the subreddit that first inspired her interest in horror. Her overactive imagination is great for writing scary stories, but less so when it comes to reading them - when she first got into the genre, she slept with a light on for a full week. Nowadays, the light stays off ... but if there's something strange in her neighbourhood, she'll be the first to call the Ghostbusters. And then buy a new house.
Michael Lee Brown was born and raised in Derbyshire, England. He has dreamed of being a published author since he was a boy and feels privileged to have his stories included in this book. Michael lives with his wife, Kellsey, whom he married on their 7-year anniversary, and their two cats, Jimi and Jinx. The couple are expecting their first child in February 2017.
Crimson Clubs, a.k.a. /u/CrimsonClubs was a regular writer on Reddit's /r/ShortScaryStories posting more than 100 horror themed stories. If you would like to know more about them, pick a card, any card. Crimsons Clubs did precisely this, plucking a card out from a stack of unread books. The chosen card's colour did not match the symbols etched along the periphery. Unread words resemble colours and shapes that cannot be. They can never be forgotten because they were never known. When you see Crimson Clubs they will be unforgettable. Remember, their black suite is red.
D.G. Collins (IPostAtMidnight) is an average-looking person of average age and average weight who lives in an average-sized city. Unfortunately, he is slightly taller than average, so he attempts to average out this inconsistency by writing short fiction. Some of his stories have appeared in anthologies, and many more have been narrated on The NoSleep Podcast, Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, and quite a number of lovely YouTube channels. A few have even been illustrated, animated, and filmed by otherwise rational people. Although he has been threatening to collect his work into a book for years, he keeps getting distracted by new stories. He is an accomplished guitarist, a noted fencing expert, an award-winning chef, and an appalling liar.
He does not always post at midnight.
Edwin Crowe is an aspiring horror writer, who uses his small amount of spare time conjuring up short stories.
He has been lucky enough for his stories to be included on The NoSleep Podcast as well as Chilling Tales for Dark Knights.
If you are interested in adapting any of my work into other formats, or to include them in on podcasts, please contact him.
Dieben is a part-time author who never had much interest in writing until he stumbled across the SSS reddit page. He was amazed by the work of IPostAtMidnight (D.G. Collins) and other wonderful authors on that page, and decided to try his hand at a few stories. To date he has written around 50 stories, finding inspiration in science fiction, identity themes, and subtle plots where good and evil can be mixed or ambiguous. His few interests include practicing meditation with his Sangha, and being a four year old again, courtesy of his young daughters. His dreams include being retired so he can spend more time writing and playing with children.
Kathryne H. is a sculptural artist who occasionally writes halfway decent short stories for Reddit's Nosleep and ShortScaryStories forums (as well as an embarrassing amount of fan fiction) under the username "theotherghostgirl" in her spare time. Although she will probably never actually write that werewolf novel she's always talking about, some of her stories, like "Immortal", and "Happily Ever After" have gotten narrations on YouTube.
If you are interested in seeing some of her slightly less horror driven sculptural work, you can check out her etsy, themuddydragon.
Dan Hilliard hails from the Romero heartland of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has been writing horror - between other gigs - since middle school. He currently works as a trade journalist for the steel industry. He lives with his wife and assorted critters at Full Moon Farms, a horse-and-pumpkin homestead outside of Greensburg, PA.
Marty Hoefkes is a copywriter from Toronto, Canada. After a long day of creating pleasant, life-affirming advertising at work, he sometimes writes the complete opposite for fun: the deep, the dark, the disturbing. Like spiders! Ugh. So creepy. You can read more of his writing at ShortAndStrange.com.
Ashley Franz Holzmann was born in Okinawa, Japan and raised in a variety of countries while his parents served in the Air Force. He considered attending art school, but is instead a graduate of West Point, where he enjoyed intramural grappling and studying systems engineering and military history. He majored in sociology and is currently a captain in the Army. Ashley speaks Korean and Spanish, enjoys backpacking, and is the cook in his family. He currently lives in North Carolina with his wife, two sons, and their two 100 pound dogs.
If you enjoyed his stories, you will also enjoy his first anthology, The Laws of Nature: A Collection of Short Stories of Horror, Anxiety, Tragedy, and Loss, which is available on most platforms. His Facebook page is a great way to get in touch with him.
Beat Navy.
Matthew Jeffrey, a.k.a. MrCarcosa, is a writer of snappy scary stories and incisive, competition-winning poetry. Drawing inspiration from miners, escape artists and probability machines, he searches for inspiration in increasingly restrictive environments. He is currently working on a post-apocalyptic detective novel, with plans to publish the day before the world ends.
You can contact him at [email protected]
Tony Johnson, or as he is known in your tongue, DVMDV8, is a veterinarian, educator, writer and alcohol enthusiast.
His normal gig involves creativity and writing, just not usually simultaneously, so writing short stories allows him to empty his brain without anyone getting hurt. He has submitted dozens of stories in many subs on Reddit and has an impressive stack of rejection letters from bricks-and mortar publishers, including his prized possession, a New Yorker cartoon rejection. He has lost several creative writing contests, making him a multi-award-losing author. One short story from /r/DarkTales was narrated and is on YouTube. So, there's that. Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Jeremy Robert Johnson and Thomas Ligotti all influenced his writing and thinking.
He lives in perpetual fear and darkness with a strange droning sound ever-present in an abandoned psychiatric hospital in Indiana with his cat, Boopsie. Should the test results come back and you need to contact him for the antidote, please dial your internet to [email protected].
Marc Kinsville a.k.a MechDog2395 is an engineer, a technical writer, a trainer, and a beer aficionado who is also known as “The Alpha Geek” amongst his northern brethren. He
was named Reddit’s /r/ShortScaryStories Author of the Month in March 2016. Several of his stories have been adapted into audio stories that can be found on YouTube. “The Wallet in the Sewer” and “The Dare Game” are also featured on Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. Most of Marc’s stories can be found on r/ShortScaryStories and he is actively seeking publication for a larger work. While heavily influenced by Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert McCammon, Dilbert, Papa Smurf, and more B-horror movies than you can throw popcorn kernels at, Marc’s inception into the world of the macabre originated from stories that were told to him by his grandparents who took great pleasure in making sure Marc couldn’t sleep at night. Feel free to contact Marc at [email protected].
J. L. Knight has a deep love for the gruesome and macabre, as evidenced by her stories which appear on reddit under the username u/bottlerocket23. Several of her stories have been narrated on YouTube and a few have been illustrated by the YouTube artist Tales of Tim. She spent her childhood reading entirely inappropriate books by Stephen King and Poe, which doubtless warped her young brain. She also counts among her influences such writers as Shirley Jackson, Flannery O'Connor and Roald Dahl. When she is not writing stories, she is haunting - er, working at an antiquarian bookstore and trying to scare her husband and two children, who would like it to be noted that they are pretty much onto her and don't fall for any of her crap, thank you very much.
You can find more of her work at: http://mockingbird2342.tumblr.com/
Bill Leeson (who occasionally uses the reddit username JMAJS) is a student at Penn State University studying chemical engineering. He enjoys the freedom and creativity that can be expressed in a short story as a diversion from his academic work. The kind souls of reddit have compared some of his stories to the dark humor of Christopher Moore. When he isn't confined to the dreaded abyss of statistical thermodynamics, you might find him on a golf course.
Jonas Lefkowitch is passionate about storytelling, and has been inspired by those who practice the craft his whole life, with his own writing being influenced by such authors as Kurt Vonnegut, Joe R. Lansdale, Clive Barker, and Jack Ketchum. Under the name Dove_of_Doom, Jonas has posted short fiction on Reddit, mostly in the Short Scary Stories forum. Readers have shared his tales on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and several can be heard narrated on YouTube. His most popular piece, Everybody's Waiting for a Twist at the End was adapted into a short amateur film.
Jonas Lefkowitch is on Twitter (@JonasLeft) and can be contacted at [email protected].
J.A. Marshall is a writer of mysteries, scary fiction, and the occasional horror screenplay, whose stories often appear on the subreddit Short Scary Stories under the username whoeverfightsmonster. Working in real life as an online copyeditor, J.A. Marshall has a master’s degree in English literature with a spectacularly useless and impractical emphasis in medieval literature. For further information and more scary stories, go to www.noisesinthecellar.wordpress.com.
Nicholas Ong (/u/nichonova) is a soldier in the armed forces of his country who occasionally churns out word salad coherent enough to be called stories. Previously posting on a throwaway account (/u/dev9x), he was approached by the NoSleepPodcast and has thus decided to go with a more pronouncible username due to dev9x sounding really dumb when read aloud. In his free time, he enjoys reading manga and doing sketches, although he has yet to read a manga on sketching.
He can occasionally be found on Twitter under the same username, and emails to [email protected] have sometimes escaped the 'mark all as read' button.
He is currently working on a sci-fi fiction novel, even with his muse on leave.
Michael Parrish is a full time Southerner and a part time amateur writer who refuses to live in any environment where the winter temperatures regularly dip below 30 degrees. A graduate of Troy State University, Michael took a twenty year break from writing creatively until he stumbled across Reddit's /r/ShortScaryStories. His most popular work, The Undying Love of a South Texas Girl, has been narrated on YouTube's CreepyPastaJr channel.
He cites his greatest influences as Harper Lee, William Faulkner, and the Drive-By Truckers. Michael currently lives in deep south Alabama with his wife, two children, and a foot biting cat named Moxie. He enjoys his free time cruising back roads in his Jeep, drinking beer on his back porch, and perfecting his modern take on Southern cuisine in his kitchen.
Kristopher J. Patten recently graduated from Arizona State University with a PhD in cognitive science where he made several contributions to auditory perception and multidimensional scaling. His fiction work has been featured on the NoSleep Podcast, The Kernel Online magazine, and the Ibexian literary magazine. Kristopher draws inspiration from literary masters like Ray Bradbury, Raymond Chandler, Richard Matheson, and Max Brooks. On the rare occasions he follows the narrow slit of light beaming under his office door and leaves behind his computer, Kristopher can usually be found hiking, boxing, or playing disc golf at one of Arizona's numerous and beautiful courses. His fiction work can be found on the world wide internet of things at kristopherjpatten.wordpress.com or you can treat yourself to a spur-of-the-moment, in-person tale at Valley Bar in Phoenix every Tuesday between 8pm and midnight.
Mike Sundberg chose the username “Don Ganja” to be his internet personality more than a decade ago. Long story short, the end. Mike writes for pleasure, producing such private masterpieces as Cheerio Rape, For the Love of Running, and Harold the Cigarette. His first public publishment was on reddit.com, in the sub-reddit, r/shortscarystories. /r/shortscarystories/ is really hard to read when drunk, was his first submission and his most popular. Mike Sundberg can be reached via reddit, under /u/DonGanja.
Eskild Thomsen, largely unknown and never before published, writes his stories in between changing diapers and trying to start a rock band. One more successfully than the other. He is inspired by the chilling light of sunny northern European evenings and also a little bit by Chuck Palahniuk, Cormac McCarthy and Jakob Ejersbo. Eskild can be reached at [email protected] and more of his stories can be found at www.thomsen2016.wordpress.com.
K.J. Williams (/u/lordhi) is a vivid hallucination that enjoys terrifying those with sleep paralysis. In his downtime, he reads science fiction and horror books. His favorites include the likes of HP Lovecraft and Stephen King. If you wish to contact him, he can occasionally be found haunting various web servers, especially the curiosity that receives all messages sent to [email protected].
Claudia Winters (/u/TeamShadowWind) is a writer getting her start among the darkened webpages of /r/ShortScaryStories. Her favorite author? Neal Shusterman, obviously. Getting up in the ungodly hours of the morning is pretty much an everyday thing for her, and one of her favorite hobbies is drawing. Who knows what demons she'll put on the page? Though she refers to her typing method as "unconventional," she's just happily pecking away at her keyboard, eager to once again use her wordsmith powers to tamper with the minds and hearts of those around her.
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