Supernatural Horror Short Stories
Page 84
Matthew Gorman
Swim At Your Own Risk
(Originally Published in The Yellow Booke, 2016)
Matthew Gorman is a freelance author of horror and other speculative fiction residing in Seattle, Washington. A self-professed perfectionist, Matthew spent years honing his craft before he was ever satisfied enough to submit anything to a publisher. To date, his short stories have been published in several anthologies and he is currently hard at work upon his first full-length novel. Matthew is a huge fan of classic horror in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert W. Chambers, as well as a steadfast acolyte of such modern horror luminaries as Clive Barker and Stephen King.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edward Randolph’s Portrait
(Originally Published in the Democratic Review, 1838)
The prominent American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His most famous novel The Scarlet Letter helped him become established as a writer in the 1850s. Most of his works were influenced by his friends Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville, as well as by his extended financial struggles. Hawthorne’s works often incorporated a dark romanticism that focused on the evil and sin of humanity. Some of his most famous works detailed supernatural presences or occurrences, as in his The House of the Seven Gables as well as many of his short stories.
William Hope Hodgson
The Voice in the Night
(Originally Published in The Blue Book Magazine, 1907)
William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) was born in Essex, England but moved several times with his family, including living for some time in County Galway, Ireland – a setting that would later inspire The House on the Borderland. Hodgson made several unsuccessful attempts to run away to sea, until his uncle secured him some work in the Merchant Marine. This association with the ocean would unfold later in his many sea stories. After some initial rejections of his writing, Hodgson managed to become a full-time writer of both novels and short stories, which form a fantastic legacy of adventure, mystery and horror fiction.
Robert E. Howard
Worms of the Earth
(Originally Published in Weird Tales, 1932)
Robert Ervin Howard (1906–36) was born in Peaster, Texas. He is responsible for forming the subgenre within fantasy known as ‘Sword and Sorcery’, establishing him as a pulp fiction writer. Being a very intellectual and athletic man, Howard wrote within the genres of westerns, boxing, historical and horror fiction as well, and created the famous pulp hero Conan the Cimmerian. Howard will perhaps always be known best for his association with the pulp magazine Weird Tales, in which he published many stories of an adventure, horror and fantasy nature.
M.R. James
The Mezzotint
(Originally Published in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Edward Arnold, 1904)
Casting the Runes
(Originally Published in More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Edward Arnold, 1911)
Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936), whose works are regarded as being at the forefront of the ghost story genre, was born in Kent, England. James dispensed with the traditional, predictable techniques of ghost story construction, instead using realistic contemporary settings for his works. He was also a British medieval scholar, so his stories often incorporated antiquarian elements. His stories often reflect his childhood in Suffolk and talented acting career, which both seem to have assisted in the build-up of tension and horror in his works.
Jason L. Kawa
Merry-Go-Round, Never Broke Down
(First Publication)
Jason L. Kawa is an author from New York City, where he works on the production side of a major film and television studio. He has stories that will appear in the upcoming anthology What Dwells Below from Sirens Call Publications, and the October edition of Ink Stains Anthology from Dark Alley Press. Some of his influences in the Horror genre include Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Michael Crichton, and Edgar Allan Poe; not to mention many other writers who have numerous speculative elements to their stories, such as Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, and Kurt Vonnegut. Find out more about Jason at jasonlkawa.wordpress.com
Stephen Kotowych
The Murmur of Its Name
(First Publication)
Stephen Kotowych is a winner of the Writers of the Future Grand Prize; Spain’s Ictineu Award; and a two-time finalist for Canada’s Aurora Award. His stories have appeared in Interzone, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and numerous anthologies, and have been translated into a dozen languages. His first collection of short stories, Seven Against Tomorrow, is available now. He lives in Toronto with his family. He enjoys guitar, tropical fish, and writing about himself in the third person. For more information about Stephen and his writing visit his website www.kotowych.com
H.P. Lovecraft
The Shunned House
(Originally Published by Recluse Press, 1928)
Master of weird fiction Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was born in Providence, Rhode Island. Featuring unknown and otherworldly creatures, his stories were one of the first to mix science fiction with horror. Plagued by nightmares from an early age, he was inspired to write his dark and strange fantasy tales; and the isolation he must have experienced from suffering frequent illnesses, can be felt as a prominent theme in his work. Lovecraft inspired many other authors, and his most famous story ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ has gone on to influence many aspects of popular culture.
Roger Luckhurst
Foreword: Supernatural Horror Short Stories
Roger Luckhurst is a professor in the School of Arts, at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is author of eight books, including The Mummy’s Curse (2012) and Zombies: A Cultural History (2015). He has also edited Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the collection Late Victorian Gothic Tales for the Oxford World’s Classics series. He also writes on film for Sight and Sound, and has written books on the films Alien and The Shining for the British Film Institute ‘Classics’ series.
G.L. McDorman
An Idle Dream, Quite Gone Now
(Originally Published in The Yellow Booke, 2016)
G.L. McDorman has served as a soldier, a spy, and a scholar. Following a passion for dead languages and mysterious ruins, he is in the process of earning his doctorate in medieval history at Princeton University, where he spends an inordinate amount of time mulling things over in the gothic chapel designed by weird-fiction writer Ralph Adams Cram. When G.L. McDorman isn’t writing, you’ll find him climbing mountains or ambling across wastelands in search of adventure and glory. His novella The Quality of Mercy is available now in print and digital.
A. Merritt
The Pool of the Stone God
(Originally Published under the pseudonym ‘W. Fenimore’ in American Weekly, 1923)
Abraham Merritt (1884–1943) was born in Beverly, New Jersey. A writer of speculative fiction as well as an inductee to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Merritt wrote characteristic pulp fiction themes of lost civilizations, monsters and treacherous villains. Many of his short stories and novels were published in Argosy All-Story Weekly. His most famous novels are perhaps Burn Witch Burn, The Ship Ishtar and Dwellers in the Mirage. His writing was known for its excessive descriptive detail as well as the immense creativity of the alternative worlds he created.
Michelle Muenzler
This Time, Forever
(First Publication)
Michelle Muenzler, known at her local Texas SF/F conventions as ‘The Cookie Lady’, writes fiction both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. Her short fiction and poetry can be read in numerous science fiction and fantasy magazines, and she takes immense joy in crinkling words like little foil puppets. Feel free to chase her down at a local SF/F conve
ntion where she will ply you with hundreds of home-baked cookies while gleefully describing the latest horror she’s written. You can also find her at michellemuenzler.com, but she finds electronic cookies far less tasty than real ones.
Edith Nesbit
The Power of Darkness
(Originally Published in The Strand Magazine, 1905)
Edith Nesbit (1858–1924) was born in Kennington, England. Nesbit established herself as a successful author and poet, writing a variety of literature ranging from children’s books to adult horror stories. She co-founded the Fabian Society and was also a strong political activist. Marrying young and frequently moving home, Nesbit made many friendships with other writers including H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Although she gained most of her success from her children’s books, like the ever-popular The Railway Children, she was also a well-known horror writer, with such collections as Something Wrong and Grim Tales.
Fitz-James O’Brien
The Wondersmith
(Originally Published in Atlantic Monthly, 1859)
Born in County Cork in Ireland, Fitz-James O’Brien (1828–62) was an Irish-American poet and writer deeply involved in the genre of Gothic fiction and an early writer in the science fiction movement. He was the son of a lawyer and first worked in London as a journalist before moving to New York City to begin writing. Amongst his most famous short stories are ‘The Wondersmith’ and ‘The Diamond Lens’. O’Brien died after being wounded in the American Civil War, and H.P. Lovecraft said that O’Brien’s tragically young death ‘undoubtedly deprived us of some masterful tales of strangeness and terror’.
Edgar Allan Poe
William Wilson
(Originally Published in The Gift, a Christmas, New Year, and Birthday Present for 1840, 1839)
The versatile writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He is well known as an influential author, poet, editor and literary critic who wrote during the American Romantic Movement. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, and his works are famously filled with terror, mystery, death and hauntings. Some of his better-known works include his poems ‘The Raven’ and ‘Annabel Lee’, and the short stories ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. The dark, mystifying characters of his tales have captured the public’s imagination and reflect the struggling, poverty-stricken lifestyle he lived his whole life.
John Polidori
The Vampyre
(Originally Published in New Monthly Magazine, 1819; it was falsely attributed to Lord Byron)
One of the first to write about the popular subject of vampires in English, John Polidori (1795–1821) was born in London, England and is deeply associated with both the Romantic and Gothic movements in literature. He was greatly influenced by the work of Lord Byron, for whom he worked as a personal physician. Polidori was with Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley on the night the group of writers gathered to write and share ghost stories. This is when Mary Shelley wrote the beginning for her novel Frankenstein, and where Polidori got the idea for The Vampyre.
Cody Schroeder
Tracks in the Snow
(First Publication)
Despite efforts to escape, Cody Schroeder has lived his life in the hills and forests of Gatewood, Missouri, USA. He has a lifelong love of all things strange, mysterious, and fantastic. Things most people find appalling. Today he devotes unreasonable amounts of time to writing about such subjects. Favourite writers include Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett among countless others. He graduated from Arkansas State University in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He has previously had work published in The Literary Hatchet.
Oliver Smith
John Johnson
(First Publication)
Oliver Smith is a visual artist and writer from Cheltenham, UK. His writing developed from an interest in surrealism and as a result his stories and poetry generally involve the weird, fantastic, and speculative: a mermaid in the bath, pickled brains plotting in the pantry, and a giant flea where the housemate used to be. His prose has been included in anthologies from, among others, Inkermen Press and Ex Occidente Press. His poetry has appeared in Spectral Realms, Eye to the Telescope, and Illumen. Much of his previously published writing is included in his collection Basilisk Soup & Other Fantasies.
Lucy A. Snyder
Magdala Amygdala
(Originally Published in Dark Faith: Invocations, 2012)
Lucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of 10 books and about 100 published short stories. Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Best Horror of the Year and podcast Pseudopod. She lives in Ohio and is faculty in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com and you can follow her on Twitter @LucyASnyder
Mariah Southworth
My Brother Tom
(First Publication)
Mariah Southworth lives in Northern California with her husband Gareth and their cat Beatrix. Mariah’s current day job is working as an office assistant in a bakery. Sometimes she sings songs from Sweeney Todd while working. She enjoys writing both short and long works of Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. Her latest Science Fiction story will be appearing in Cuppatea Publications’ Humans Wanted anthology. To find inspiration for her horror writing, Mariah reads both classical and modern horror, but the best ideas come from nightmares.
Bram Stoker
The Judge’s House
(Originally Published in Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic Life’s Christmas annual Holly Leaves, 1891)
Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker (1847–1912) was born in Dublin, Ireland. Often ill during his childhood, he spent a lot of time in bed listening to his mother’s grim stories, sparking his imagination. Striking up a friendship as an adult with the actor Henry Irving, Stoker eventually came to work and live in London, meeting notable authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. Stoker wrote several stories based on supernatural horror, such as the gothic masterpiece Dracula which has left an enduring and powerful impact on the genre, creating one of the most iconic figures that horror fiction has ever seen.
Angela Sylvaine
The Bride
(First Publication)
Angela Sylvaine still believes in monsters, both real and imagined, and always checks under the bed. She holds degrees in psychology and philosophy and will be published in the June 2016 issue of Disturbed Digest. North Dakotan by birth and Coloradoan by choice, she lives with her husband and four creepy cats on the front range of the Rockies. You can follow her on Facebook @authorangelasylvaine and Twitter @sylvaine_angela
Damien Angelica Walters
The Floating Girls: A Documentary
(Originally Published in Jamais Vu, 2014)
Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Sing Me Your Scars (Apex Publications, 2015), Paper Tigers (Dark House Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Cry Your Way Home (Apex Publications, 2017). Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the 2016 World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda’s Song, Cemetery Dance, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two rescued pit bulls. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on the web at damienangelicawalters.com
Desmond Warzel
The Final One Percent
(Originally Published in Blood Rites, 2013)
Desmond Warzel is the author of a few dozen short stories. These have appeared in nifty magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction, at fancy websites
like Tor.com, and on newfangled podcasts like Escape Pod. He lives in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Most of his tales are fantasy and science fiction, but he is occasionally tempted to subject his characters to something a little darker. When not writing, he spends his time rooting for the Cleveland Indians; this pastime generates the despair necessary for fashioning tales of true horror.
H.G. Wells
The Flowering of the Strange Orchid
(Originally Published in the Pall Mall Budget, 1894)
The Red Room
(Originally Published in The Idler, 1896)
Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) was born in Kent, England. Novelist, journalist, social reformer and historian, Wells is one of the greatest ever science fiction writers and, along with Jules Verne, is sometimes referred to as a ‘founding father’ of the genre. With Aldous Huxley and, later, George Orwell, he defined the adventurous, social concern of early speculative fiction where the human condition was played out on a greater stage. Wells created over 50 novels, including his famous works The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau and The War of the Worlds, as well as a fantastic array of gothic short stories.
Michaël Wertenberg
Midnight Snack
(First Publication)
Michaël Wertenberg is a French-American writer with publishing credits in: The Literary Hatchet, The Scarlet Leaf Review, Page & Spine, Pulp Modern, The Fable Online, Unlost and the Blyant Publishing anthology Blaek. Inspired by his own struggles with depression and addiction, and his less-than-sane upbringing, he explores, through his writing, the many derivations of the mind, notably its fascinating yet frightening ability to rationalize and defend the irrational. His blog, My Disease-Ridden Mind, can be found at michaelwertenberg.wixsite.com/mysite
Edward Lucas White
The House of the Nightmare
(Originally Published in Smith’s Magazine, 1906)