Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Horror

In my childhood the shunned house was vacant, with barren, gnarled and terrible old trees, long, queerly pale grass and nightmarishly misshapen weeds in the high terraced yard where birds never lingered. We boys used to overrun the place, and I can still recall my youthful terror not only at the morbid strangeness of this sinister vegetation, but at the eldritch atmosphere and odor of the dilapidated house, whose unlocked front door was often entered in quest of shudders.

A chilling ghost story by Lord Dunsany, a.k.a. Edward Plunkett, resolves itself thusly: If two straight lines cut one another, the opposite angles are equal. Let AB and CD cut one another at E. Then the angles CEA and CEB equal two right angles (prop. xiii.). Also, CEA and AED equal two right angles, proving that ghosts don't exist.

"Just room for one inside, sir," isn't quite as bone-chilling as hearing "room for one more, honey" in one of the Twilight Zone's most popular episodes, "Twenty Two." The Rod Serling masterpiece was inspired by E.F. Benson's "The Bus-Conductor". A ghost bears the chilling news instead of a recurring dream in Benson's chiller.

A chilling tale from the late Victorian master of horror, W.W.Jacobs.

Herbert West, who is a medical student and later qualifies as a doctor, becomes obsessed with the possibility of reanimating corpses. Unfortunately, the revived subjects do not adapt to reintegration into society. West himself eventually becomes the victim of one of the homicidal zombies.

A series of cataclysmic events are felt around the globe, and throughout the United States the last vestiges of society band together in rag-tag groups to face off against the ghastly horrors of their shattered world. Opposing them is the enigmatic Adam Sigil - a man seemingly able to inflict others with his own darkest fears - and his equally mysterious companion Jelnik. As the world slips into darkness, the survivors of the onslaught struggle with the new normal of their now-dystopian lives amid ongoing skirmishes with mankind’s nightmares.

The classic tale of the uncanny and supernatural by W.W. Jacobs. Whilst serving in India, the Sergeant-Major acquired the mummified paw of a monkey - that had had a spell put on it by an old fakir who, "wanted to show that fate ruled people's lives, and those that interfered with it did so to their sorrow."

Whatever you do, don't go on to the beaches at dusk, or the Sand-Walker will come to your window at night. Such is the sinister warning given to the new lodger at the Beach Farm, a lonely house on the North Sea coast of England. But who, or what, is the Sand-Walker?

Skilled outdoorsman Tom Vanicek wants a future for the two children he's protected so fiercely through five years of living hell. But life in the Columbus sanctuary zone has proved anything but safe. When a despicable attack by the city's dissident, Lefthanders paramilitaries, leaves scores, if not hundreds, dead, Tom's teenage daughter, Lilianna, is in the thick of danger, and his son, Lucas, missing and presumed dead.

Although Anna Katharine Green was best known as a crime novelist, this anthology is essentially a collection of horror stories. The Old Stone House is the history of a disastrous love triangle involving a coquettish young girl and two ruthless men determined to win her heart. The other stories share the theme of a manipulative woman whose scheming places the people associated with her in difficult and unfamiliar situations.

Dorothy Scarborough was an academic and author who had a particular interest in the supernatural. The following collection, first published in 1921, features stories that have a strong comical or satirical focus.

"Azathoth" is the beginning of a never-completed novel written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in June 1922 and published as a fragment in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death. It is the first piece of fiction to mention the fictional being Azathoth, one of the major entities in Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, though the entity only appears in the title.

The mayor is running for governor. His wife is suddenly distant, distracted, and unhappy. And his new home is haunted. Has his wife seen a ghost? The elderly ladies next door watch day and night from their attic, peering into his windows. Watching for what? The mayor's wife has a secret that she has never confided to anyone. Rumors begin to appear in the newspapers hinting at the scandal. Will the scandal harm his campaign? What is her secret?

Based in Oklahoma around 1889, a newly arrived couple learn about the local legends surrounding a "Snake God", Yig, who takes vengeance on anyone who kills a serpent by killing them or turning them into a half-snake monster. The husband has a snake phobia which isn't helped by the wife killing a nest of rattlesnakes.

Award-winning audiobook narrator and producer Mike Vendetti reads The Tell Tale Heart, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Mike Vendetti portrays an unnamed narrator who endeavors to convince the reader of the narrator's sanity while simultaneously describing a murder the narrator committed.

Two star-crossed lovers, whose families fought and killed each other during a civil war in France, try to find their way to forgiveness and reconciliation. The heroine's plan? Sleeping on St Catherine's Couch - a terrifying ledge above the Loire where the faithful may dream of Heaven's advice. Despite the advice from King Henry and the Countess Villeneuve's faithful servant, the lovers leave their fate up to the dream.

Today we have ghosts that haunted our ancestors, as well as our own modern revenants, and there appears to be no earthly use trying to banish or exorcise them by such a simple strategy as refusing to believe in them. Since man knows that whether or not he has seen a ghost, presently he will become one, and thus he has become fascinated with the subject. Therefore he creates ghosts, not merely in his own image, but according to his dreams of power.

As with most stories by Poe, there are far deeper meanings as the narrator takes us through his madness. Pluto his cat becomes a symbol of what is wrong in his, the narrator's, life. He tortures Pluto in a drunken stupor by cutting out his eye. He feels guilt for hurting a creature he once loved that also once loved him. The narrator continues to spiral into his web of self-destruction until he is penning his story the night before he will meet the same fate he imposed upon Pluto.

Mary Shelley had an abiding interest in the mysterious and the supernatural. In this atmospheric tale, she describes the nocturnal wanderings of an enigmatic figure in the woods, and the expectations and conclusions those who have witnessed its activities.

Award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti reads Edgar Alan Poe's classic The Pit and the Pendulum, taking us back to the Spanish Inquisition. Vendetti's performance takes us into the dungeon where we can all but feel the sharp edge of the deadly pendulum brushing across our body, hear the ravenous rats scurrying about the cell, and worst of all, the final terror. The panic of Poe's narrator becomes palpable as you listen to this classic tale so well-narrated.