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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 15, 2022 6:25:59 GMT -5
Here we will post random free horror stories that can be found online to read. Mostly short and hopefully more sour than sweet! Here is Endo to welcome you to our library of monsterous prose!  Read on! This could be you!  |
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 15, 2022 6:40:27 GMT -5
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 17, 2022 10:02:06 GMT -5
This is by the weird fiction writer William Hope Hodgson. Many of his stories feature the sea, and these is something often disturbing about the ocean isn't there? It was the basis of a Japanese movie mentioned on this forum. But I won't give it away. It is called...
The Voice in the NightIt was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea. With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will—my friend, and the master of our little craft—was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin. Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail: “Schooner, ahoy!” The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise. It came again—a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside: “Schooner, ahoy!” en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Voice_in_the_Night |
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Post by endo on Jul 17, 2022 12:32:42 GMT -5
This is a shortish story from author Lake Lopez. I haven't read a lot of his work, but what I have read a has been pretty good. I like this story quite a bit. "The car breaks. Its engine makes a loud bang, then sputters as metal rips into metal. The noise reminds me of my father’s deathbed cough. I let off the gas and the motor shuts down. I coast in neutral, ease the car onto the narrow dirt shoulder and stop. “Damn it to hell.” I’d been speeding, pushing my old car through the shadows by Becker Lake, the place where the rich hide their weekend houses. The road is always smooth, each crack and pothole immediately patched and filled. A dark, burnt oil smell emanates from the car’s hood, poisoning the clean scent of woods. My running shoes crunch through gravel as I walk. A glow of house lights shines through the trees and, when I find a driveway, I head toward the light." www.thescarystory.com/shorthorrorstories/dark-house-horrorstory |
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 20, 2022 4:54:09 GMT -5
The Night Wire (1926) by H. F. Arnold"New York, September 30 CP FLASH
"Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came
suddenly as the ambassador was alone in his study...."
There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore -- they're your next-door neighbors after the streetlights go dim and the world has gone to sleep.
Alone in the quiet hours between two and four, the receiving operators doze over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down almost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger.
Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You've heard of some one you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe they've been promoted, but more probably they've been murdered or drowned. Perhaps they just decided to quit and took some bizarre way out. Made it interesting enough to get in the news.
But that doesn't happen often. Most of the time you sit and doze and tap, tap on your typewriter and wish you were home in bed.
Sometimes, though, queer things happen. One did the other night, and I haven't got over it yet. I wish I could.
read here:en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Night_Wire
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Post by endo on Jul 20, 2022 8:06:57 GMT -5
This one is by John Marino. Not an author I know very well, but this story did it for me... "Insomnia runs in my family, afflicting both sides of it with equal intensity. That’s nearly four centuries of Mexican tossing and Italian turning, with fits of German cursing and crying in between. A long heritage of discomfort, and, according to family gossip, one that has only been interrupted by the rotting medicines that tempt anyone who’s had to put up with an extended period of lost sleep – drugs, alcohol, compulsive anger, and every possible combination of the three. With the advent of psychotherapy, and the discovery that trauma is an actual illness and not a defect of character, many of us have learned to deal with insomnia in less destructive ways..." blog.reedsy.com/short-story/ynqne0/ |
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Aug 3, 2022 6:37:21 GMT -5
Here is Charles Dickens' well-known short story The Signal-Man.  “HALLOA! Below there!” When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all. “Halloa! Below!” shortstoryamerica.com/pdf_classics/dickens_the_signal_man.pdf |
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Post by endo on Aug 3, 2022 8:55:02 GMT -5
 So, I think most here are familiar with the movie Trilogy of Terror and with the Zuni Fetish Warrior doll from the last story, called Amelia. Here's the original story that segment is based on by author Richard Matheson entitled "Prey". Good story, can't decide if I like the story or the movie segment better. Dan Curtis did a great job with the movie, especially considering it was 1975 and made for TV. Prey Richard Matheson "Amelia arrived at her apartment at six fourteen. Hanging her coat in the hall closet, she carried the small package into the living room and sat on the sofa. She nudged off her shoes while she unwrapped the package on her lap. The wooden box resembled a casket. Amelia raised its lid and smiled. It was the ugliest doll she’d ever seen. Seven inches long and carved from wood, it had a skeletal body and an oversized head. Its expression was maniacally fierce, its pointed teeth completely bared, its glaring eyes protuberant. It clutched an eight inch spear in its right hand. A length of fine, gold chain was wrapped around its body from the shoulders to the knees. A tiny scroll was wedged between the doll and the inside wall of its box. Amelia picked it up and unrolled it. There was handwriting on it. This is He Who Kills, it began. He is a deadly hunter Amelia smiled as she read the rest of the words. Arthur would be pleased... " docplayer.net/36594879-Prey-richard-matheson.html |
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Sept 10, 2023 12:50:15 GMT -5
This one popped up on YouTube, which means you need to pause on each page to read it.
It is interesting because it is from 1818 so I thought I'd share here. It wasn't all Jane Austen back then, sensational literature was popular.
Extracts from Gosschen's Diary by John Wilson. From Blackwood's Magazine.
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Sept 10, 2023 12:56:54 GMT -5
I'm reading old Ghost and Horror stories so I thought I''d resurrect in the mad scientist tradition this thread to share my finds with you.
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