Some short stories manage to pack more tension and emotion into a few pages than some full-length novels, and Ushers by Joe Hill does exactly that. From the first page, I was drawn into this wild tale that explores survival and suspicion.

Martin Lorensen is still alive after surviving two mass-casualty events. His luck seems almost supernatural, which catches the attention of two federal investigators. They’re not convinced it’s luck at all. As the investigators ask questions, they don’t seem to rattle Martin much, and he, seemingly, shares all that he can. But later, Martin and one investigator cross paths, and the additional information Martin shares is chilling…

The story unfolds through two settings: a formal interview, where Martin calmly answers every question, and a later, more casual conversation with one of the investigators. That second encounter hit me the hardest!

What makes this short story so effective is how it lets unease build slowly, then drops a quiet revelation that echoes long after the story ends. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that my heart broke for Martin. The terror he’s endured, and the quiet, composed way he bears it, is unreal.

For such a compact tale, this short story is incredibly powerful. Unsettling, emotional, and masterfully structured, it’s the kind of read that stays with you long after you’ve finished it.

A Graveside Gallery: Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters by Eric J. Guignard is not a light read, nor does it pretend to be. This short story collection plunges headfirst into some of the darkest corners of human experience, unflinchingly portraying grief, trauma, cruelty, and the raw edges of humanity.

Content Warnings: Cancer, sibling loss, dog abuse, rape, racist terminology, death of children, childbirth, and other potentially distressing material.

MY GOSH. I just love Eric’s work.

In this collection, my favorite stories include:

The Telephone Game is the standout story for me. I cannot stop thinking about this one!

Per usual, here are my thoughts on all the tales!

Distraught over an accident that occurred, this man stops for food while on his way back home. As the events of the day become too much for him, he struggles even more with what’s to come. 

What an eerie tale to kick things off with!! I have so many questions! 

After a drunken evening on Dia de los Muertos, this man wakes up to a startling scene. Even if he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, his grief has led him down a path where he can finally start to process what happened months ago. 

So many layers of heartbreak here… 

While commuting to work, this man takes a nap in his self-driving car. When he wakes, he realizes something is wrong. 

I hardly trust cruise control. A self-driving car? No thanks! 

Bumming a ride, this character finds himself with an older man who has an obsession with teeth and questionable methods of finding a reliable ride. 

Holy moly. While reading, I kept asking myself what was happening. That ending was wild! 

Oh. My. God. This is the creepiest take on this game that I’ve ever heard. Oh, this is going to haunt me. 

Traveling to London to see if things would be better for them, these two rats only find hate everywhere they look. 

I didn’t know the story this play homage to, but my gosh, Samuel Whiskers is a very unlikable rat. 

While out hunting for antiques, these two wind up in a town that wasn’t marked on the map. Thinking they can backtrack to get to the highway again to get out of there, they quickly learn that the town isn’t planning on letting them go so easily. 

The atmosphere of this one is stifling. I was so claustrophobic thinking about all the rain, the forests around them, and the night that approaches much too quickly. 

A wild ride of skating and letting go! 

Starving prisoners of war try their best to survive their terrible situation. 

Oh my gosh, I love a tale told through such things as journal entries and letters. This was so darkly fun! That ending. Woof. 

Previously enjoying being an artist, another man has realized the power behind the works before the artist himself does. Now he struggles to continue to paint, but is forced to and then forced to destroy the artwork. 

Phew, this one was dark! This poor man! 

While out on a hike, this man thinks his mind is playing tricks on him. But soon he’s running for his life. 

The premise here is so eerie. There’s always such a draw for me to isolation like this, but it also completely freaks me out!

After being blind for his whole life, this man can finally see! But there’s a catch… he can see eyes on everything, even inanimate objects, and they’re watching him.

I struggle already to eat meat, if all of my food had eyes on it, I would starve. This tale only gets worse and worse! This poor man. 

While his mother had warned him not to go out on a night like tonight, this man down on his luck just can’t seem to stay out of trouble. 

I was so nervous to see where this tale was headed! 

When passing away, a soul is split into three or four bits, depending on the circumstances. This man, who was split in four, still struggles with the life that comes next, but he’s about to have an interesting night. 

I loved the different viewpoints we got here! I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. 

When Frankenstein’s monster is rescued from the sea, he tells the captain his struggles – that every piece of him has a voice. 

My gosh, the element of this tale where each piece still holds memory and can say whether it’s pleased to live on or not, was so unsettling. 

When approached by a lone woman who needs gas, this man isn’t impressed by anything she says or does, until she works her magic. She predicts his death, and as much as he doesn’t want to believe it, he can’t help but fixate on it. 

The fact that this takes place mostly in the dark adds an even creepier level to the tale of horror! 

A soldier in King Arthur’s army is tasked with something terrible that haunts him. 

This was a tough read! Content warning for things related to children. 

As the last two people, they decide to make the most of the time they have left.

Gosh, this had such an upbeat and fun time with little glimpses of the darkest terrors. 

The First Order of Whaleyville’s Divine Basilisk Handlers – 

Living in fear of snakes, both in their church and those that come from a town over, five men catch the eye of the new girl in town… 

So unsettling! Snakes freak me out to begin with, and where this story takes us was wild! 

My life lay spread out before me then, like a blank sheet of paper, and I had the pen to draw in all the lines of a map, wherever I wanted them to go.
— Bummin’ to the Beat of the Road 

Moonlight plays funny tricks on a landscape at night, especially with wind; it moves shadows around, distorts objects, causes things to appear and disappear.
— Two Hearts Make a Half; or, Ghosts of a Rodeo Clown

At its core, this collection is a fearless dive into the kinds of horrors that linger long after the last page. These stories don’t flinch, and neither should you— you’re going to love this if you’re the kind of reader who seeks out fiction that unsettles, challenges, and sticks with you!

In Aggie and the Ghost by Matthew Forsythe, we meet Aggie who is thrilled to live on her own until she realizes her cozy new place comes with a ghostly roommate. She sets house rules, but will the ghost play along?

Kids will love spotting the ghost in the first few illustrations (such a fun touch!), and as an adult, I couldn’t get enough of the artwork, especially the scene of Aggie sipping tea, one sock missing, surrounded by chaos.

It’s a sweet, funny reminder that things don’t always go as planned—and that sometimes, that’s where the real magic begins. 

Black Out The Stars by Christopher Bond is a dark and twisted tale of generational horrors, spilling from one old man’s lips as fast as the water drains from the pond on his property.

After receiving a call from his uncle, the narrator travels to help prepare the place for sale. The main task? Draining the pond. But as the water recedes, so do the filters on the stories his uncle has kept buried. One by one, the tales surface… disturbing, raw, and impossible to forget.

As the pond grows shallower, the stories grow darker. What begins as simple reminiscing spirals into a deeply unsettling journey none of us could be prepared for.

My goodness. Have you ever read a book that made you feel absolutely awful, but in the best possible way? The kind you can’t stop reading because you need to know how it ends? That’s this book.

Whenever I picked it up, I felt a physical weight in my chest. Even now, after finishing it—and taking a break—I still feel that heaviness.

I’m obsessed with the format. I love a book that weaves stories within stories, and the pacing here is masterful. Each tale slowly ramps up the horror, pulling you in deeper.

Being with those who have known you since you were a child has a way of making you feel like you never grew up, like you’re still that little kid they knew, no matter how many years you have under your belt. But death, the death of those close to you, it has a way of aging you, of changing you. It takes a piece of that innocence and it hardens it.

He gazed out toward the pond, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing it. He stared through it, through a fog, back through the tangled webs of years gone by.

Dad hardly ever brought up Grandpa at all, and when he did, it was mostly small anecdotes, little offhand remarks thrown out like random slashes of a very small paintbrush, just enough to add a little color, never enough to complete a full picture.

I held my breath, part of me knowing what he was going to say next, the other part not quite sure I was ready to hear it.

Enlightenment is always a thing to be feared by the ignorant.

If you’re drawn to stories that leave you haunted long after the final page, then this is a must-read. It’s unsettling, it’s beautifully told, and it’s unlike anything else I’ve read in a long time. Just be warned: once you start, you won’t be able to look away… even when you desperately want to.

Everybody Is in the Place by Emma J. Gibbon is a nightmare wrapped in neon light. In this tale, we follow two characters riding the high of an acid trip while they enter a fairground for an evening of fun (or at least what they thought would be fun).

Drawn like moths to the glow of a fairground at night, these two characters float along in their acid trip as they make their way to their destination. It’s not the rides or cotton candy that calls to them, it’s the labyrinth!

The moment they step inside, the real trip begins…

As this is a short story, I will leave us with just two notes:

1 – I was TOTALLY hooked into this tale. I read it in one sitting and I’m pretty sure I didn’t move at all while reading.

2 – That ending! Oh my gosh. There’s a small, almost throwaway moment earlier in the story that comes roaring back in the final lines. It’s subtle, devastating, and absolutely brilliant. It doesn’t just stick the landing, it redefined everything that came before it!

PHEW. Everybody Is in the Place is a tale that toys with perception, shifting between euphoria and unease with such artistry that you barely notice the turn… until it’s too late.

Spider to the Fly by J.H. Markert is SO ADDICTING. Right from the first few pages, you just know this story is going to get your skin crawling.

From the chilling moment Ellie Isles sees her own face mirrored on one of the Spider’s victims, she’s pulled into a murder case that feels disturbingly personal. What begins as fascination quickly spirals into obsession as she works to uncover the truth behind a string of unsolved killings. With each new victim she helps identify, the stakes climb higher—until her own therapist is arrested, and the investigation takes a deeper, dark and unexpected turn.

I HATE SPIDERS AND OH MY GOD. This tale had my skin crawling. The atmosphere is so creepy and intense!

The tension and suspense was truly something else! The way the author paces the storylines, jumping between Ellie’s investigation and the task force, makes you wait for answers, and it’s absolute torture. I wanted to scream at the characters to hurry, but in the best, edge-of-your-seat kind of way.

“Do you know what’s worse than hating your monsters.”
“No,” Amber said.
“Learning the truth about how your monsters were made,” he said, lowering the gun slightly.

Ever since he’d stuck the needle in her neck out on Cochee Road, and whatever was in the syringe went into her bloodstream, she’d felt loopy, her thoughts scattered and jumbled and crawling over one another for air.
Like spiders in his jar.

Spider to the Fly by J.H. Markert is a book that I highly recommend if you’re into twisty true crime fiction with serious chills!

The first installment of Kevin J. Kennedy Presents Horror Tales from Scotland was intense, but in Horror Tales from Scotland II, the authors take things to an entirely new level. This collection dives even deeper into the darkness, featuring stories of sacrifice, seething rage, ruthless revenge, and two hauntingly different takes on the concept of the hunt.

Let’s dive in!

Foreword– 

YES! Love these collection ideas!! Bring them on!!

While running an inn, this keeper anxiously awaits what each guest will be like. Noting that some are terrible while others are lovely. This afternoon, a family comes in that immediately puts him on edge. 

I hated this family immediately. The author did an amazing job making them unlikable. Oh my gosh, the scene looking out the window made my blood go cold. I love how dark this one got! The noises, though… You can literally hear what’s going on thanks to the description here. 

Struggling with a deep rage, this man has a dream one night about the joy of playing with a dog. The next day, he goes out and adopts one from the shelter, and it seems a page has finally been turned in his story! But of course, the rage is still lingering deep down, just waiting for a spark to set it off. 

I had the chance to read this tale a couple of times so far! First in The Horror Collection: Extreme Edition, then in A to Z of Horror. I just can’t help but draw in a John Wick vibe while reading this one! Dark, but so much fun! My goodness, the face I made reading the scene in the park! 

When men begin to drop dead, appearing to have died of fear, the commanders are determined to figure out what is happening. They’re about to learn that things are much darker than they think. 

Phew, the tense atmosphere here was something else! This one had me very on edge. 

Living in a cavern deep below the ground, this family has a unique way of surviving. 

My gosh, that opening scene! As soon as I saw Sawney Bean’s name, I knew we were in for a brutal ride!!

The sun had not yet set, and its dying rays cast shimmering flame across the expanse of ocean, kissing the land with its last light and the promise of night.
— Hunting Season by Kyle M. Scott

I smashed the cunt right in the teeth as he spoke. I could feel my knuckles burst, and I could feel several of his teeth shatter into his mouth.
— Rage by Kevin J. Kennedy

The place was falling apart. Not like the nostalgic sort of spooky place you see in old Scooby Doo cartoons. This place was a dinosaur. The metal was rusting through, and structures were falling apart.
— Rage by Kevin J. Kennedy

Then I started to hear stories—of music being heard in the night, and of a fog where there should be no fog. I put it down to the men’s aforesaid superstitions—perhaps if I had paid more heed back then things might be different now—but I was new to the post, and hard on the men as a result.
— Outposts by William Meikle

The dying man looked up, eyes filled with tears, fear, hope. He opened his mouth, perhaps to beg, perhaps to pray.
Sawney answered with steel.
— The Devil’s Larder by YM Miller

What a killer collection of horror. I’m obsessed with how these four tales were organized and how the brutality slowly dialed up as we went along! Horror fans, you need this one in your brains ASAP!

Kevin J. Kennedy Presents Horror Tales from Scotland is an anthology of four tales that each bring a unique level of horror to the table! In this collection, we have gore, chilling transformations, and terrifying invasions.

Are you ready?

Let’s dive in!

Oh my gosh, I was so pumped to hear how this collection came about! What a great idea stemming from an awesome coincidence! I would have been SO pumped to snag a copy of this at a con and have each author sign it! 

After the staff had been fired, a couple finds themselves passing the time with booze and drugs as tension rises. One day, the tension reaches a peak and things take a terrifying turn. 

This tale kicks off with such a brutal line that will suck you right in. It’s such a wild ride where you can’t help but itch thinking about the noises coming from the snug. And that ending!!

Telling a tale from childhood after a visit to a candy store, this man seems unfazed by the warning he was given as a kid. He just couldn’t help himself and made a choice he would regret. 

With a title like this, I was so nervous to see where this would go. My gosh, I did not see this one coming! 

After terrible storms rocked the UK, things struggled to get back to normal. Most unsettlingly of all, crabs that washed up haven’t made their way back to the sea. But these two are pretty unfazed as they go out to try to find more weed. 

This was the second time I read this tale (the first was in A to Z of Horror by Kevin J. Kennedy), and my gosh, the scene in the park gave me the massive creeps yet again! This tale is so fun and pretty lighthearted, but then there are brutal spurts of darkness and violence. 

When his wife is convinced that the trees are closing in and that something is wrong, this man continues to brush her aside. But once the worst happens, things only continue down a dark path…

The thought of trees moving is so wildly eerie to me! Not like the LOTR trees, but like the trees from this or a Kat Silva story… creeps me right out! Boy, was the body horror here intense! 

But that was in the days when she came with skin.
— The Scaly Wages of Sin By Bill Davidson

Some people have such a bad life that little scares them. They just don’t see how things could be worse.
— Crabs Vs the A.Y.T. By Kevin J. Kennedy

Bring on book two! This was a BLAST.

The Invisible by Steve Stred is a jumpy and patchwork tale of a man struggling with the journey that he is on. 

The Foreword by Jeremy Hepler was so wonderful! I love it when authors talk about their experience with the tale we’re about to read before we dive in!

Now, about The Invisible – When setting out on a journey that he knows he must go alone, this man jumps between the journey in his car as he tries to outrun a creature and the lighthouse that he believes is his key destination. 

However, the more time he spends in the lighthouse, the more frequent the time glitches become. Soon he’s left questioning everything…

Ah, this is a story that you really just need to dive into, so I will keep this short. I had no idea what to expect here, but boy, I was absolutely rocked by that ending. I was so intrigued by the sporadic bursts of storyline, and I couldn’t wait to see where they were going to intersect.

At the end of the book, Steve added a lovely Afterword that starts off with the kindest line, “So, how’re we all doing?” The sound that came out of me after reading that was wild. WE ARE NOT OKAY, STEVE! NOT OKAY!

What a tale!! 

It came again, almost instantly after the first impact, and louder this time, fuller. A dread took hold, one that suggested I keep my mouth shut and turn tail and flee, but instead, my legs refused to move, and, like a dumbass, my mouth opened.

I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t anything to be concerned with. Then, I realized how quiet everything was. The sounds of nature – birds, wind, water and so on – had ceased. It was as though the mountain itself and all its inhabitants were collectively holding their breath, armed with the knowledge that something horrible was about to happen.

My heart dropped. 
It was as though an anchor had been tied to the hopes of finding those answers, and when none came, the anchor had been thrown overboard.

Where I grew up, depression wasn’t a thing that was spoken about, wasn’t something I’d even heard other kids my age have to deal with.

I’d experienced so many moments of sheer confusion over the last few days that I should’ve been able to handle whatever the next crazy thing was. But apparently, I wasn’t.

Anything Steve writes, I’m here for. This book was so brutally twisted. After reading, I was absolutely gutted.  

The Old Man and His River by Matt Wildasin is a tale about a man searching for one last big catch, but who finds so much more out there on the river.

Okay, first things first, in the introduction, Matt lays a lovely foundation for the man that the tale is centered on. For anyone who has had the heartbreaking chance to see their grandparents age and pass, this will hit you right in the heart and prepare you for what’s to come next.

Then we dive into the story…

Feeling the weight of time catching up with him, this old man is determined to have one last big fishing adventure before he leaves the riverside. As he embarks on his quest for a once-in-a-lifetime catch that has haunted local legends for years, the river becomes both a physical and psychological journey.

My gosh, the adventures through the rapids on the way out had me holding my breath. I was so ready for disaster to strike at any moment! As soon as he made it through, I didn’t relax; I was already anxious for the return trip.

I read this story in one sitting. I just needed to know what would happen next and how this journey would end. I absolutely loved that as he ventures deeper into the river, he realizes that the river, and life, aren’t just about the destination, but about the people and the moments you share along the way.

The dancing fireflies whipped about aimlessly through the darkness like his mental search for that very moment, but it was lost. Sadness gripped his throat, but he swallowed it away so that the boy would not realize he could not remember.

Though not strictly a horror novel, The Old Man and His River is a book that I would highly recommend to horror fans as well as other readers. The theme of chasing one final, grand adventure while knowing time is running out is incredibly powerful.