fiction
Horror fiction that delivers on its promise to scare, startle, frighten and unsettle. These stories are fake, but the shivers down your spine won't be.
A Journey Into the Death of Us All
A cup of coffee fills to the brim of the steel mug and scrapes across the metal table as the robot arm passes it to you. Across the table in front of you is the AI Detective, who has a list of questions and will record your answers. The AI Detective has a TV screen and 4 fingered hands, arms, and feet that retract back into its box structure. When looking directly at the screen, there are tiny lights on the outer rim of the screen able to project or cause any image to trick your brain into hallucinating what the Detective wants you to see.
By Muhammad Sabeelabout a year ago in Horror
Imagine Transcendence
The cool blues and grays of the monitor screen painted Lisa’s tired face, reflecting another hour lost scrolling through an endless, bland expanse of generic stock photos. Each sterile image felt less like potential and more like a tiny, suffocating box, a visual echo of the creative and financial constraints pressing in on her. The rent was a looming shadow, freelance gigs felt like distant mirages, and her creative well felt not just dry, but actively parched, cracked earth under a relentless sun. But beneath the surface of this everyday struggle, there was a deeper, more profound ache. A hunger for something *more*. A yearning for transcendence, for beauty that wasn't commodified or diluted, for a connection that felt utterly lacking in her current, mundane reality. She felt tethered, not just by finances, but by the sheer, uninspiring weight of the ordinary world, longing for a glimpse of something impossible, something that pulsed with genuine life and meaning, something that mirrored a hidden, unexpressed part of herself.
By Maxim Dudkoabout a year ago in Horror
The Hollow Beneath the Pines. AI-Generated.
It was the summer of 2012 when I visited a remote village in southern France with my cousin Adrien. The kind of place where phones lose signal, and time slows down to match the hum of crickets. At the edge of the village stood an ancient pine forest, rumored by locals to be “cursed.” They called it La Forêt Creuse—The Hollow Forest. Of course, we laughed it off. At seventeen, curses were just stories meant to keep kids indoors. But I’ve never quite laughed about it since. The path into the forest wasn’t marked on any map. It began behind a crumbling chapel, covered in ivy and shadowed by trees that looked like they hadn’t moved in a hundred years. As soon as we stepped under the canopy, everything changed. The air turned colder—dense, almost wet. Even the sound of our footsteps became muffled, like we were walking on memory foam instead of dry leaves. I noticed quickly that the trees leaned oddly toward each other, like they were whispering secrets above our heads. The light dimmed the further we walked, even though it was mid-afternoon. The forest was beautiful in a wild way—but it also felt… wrong. Not terrifying. Just quietly unsettling. Like the place knew we didn’t belong there. We kept walking until we came across a wide, circular clearing. At the center stood an old well, overgrown with vines, its stone rim cracked in places. It didn’t look used in years. Around it, the grass had died in a perfect ring, like something had sucked the life out of the earth. There was no sound—not even birdsong. That silence was the first thing that truly made me uneasy. Adrien, ever the adventurous one, leaned over the well’s edge with a smirk. “Probably full of bones,” he joked, his voice sounding too loud. I told him to knock it off. But then he froze. “You hear that?” he whispered. At first, I didn’t. Then I did. A faint knocking sound, like someone tapping wood from deep below. It was rhythmic—slow, then fast, then stopping altogether. We stood motionless. The sound returned again, sharper this time. Not an echo. Not a bird. Not wind. Something was down there. We didn’t stick around. We walked—fast—back through the trees. Neither of us said much until we made it back to the chapel. The sun had already dipped lower in the sky, and I swear the air felt warmer the moment we left the forest behind. Adrien laughed nervously, trying to play it off, but I could see it in his eyes—he felt it too. That well wasn’t just old stone. It was watching. Later that evening, we asked Adrien’s grandfather about the forest. He grew serious immediately. “People used to go there,” he said quietly. “They stopped.” We pressed him for more, but he just shook his head. “Some places are not yours to understand.” That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that knocking sound in my head. I even had a dream—though it felt more like a memory. In it, I stood at the edge of the well, and a voice whispered from below: “Dig deeper.” The next morning, Adrien insisted we go back—this time with a flashlight. I refused. Something in my gut told me the forest didn’t want us a second time. He went anyway. I waited for hours, pacing along the chapel wall. When he finally returned, his face was pale. He didn’t say a word. Just handed me his flashlight. Inside were scratch marks—long, deliberate lines gouged into the plastic handle. They hadn’t been there when we bought it. He never told me what he saw that day. Years later, I still think about that trip. I’ve since grown my own garden—vegetables mostly—and I often think of the way roots grow beneath the surface. Twisting through darkness, searching for something. That forest felt the same way. Like it was alive, but underground. Stretching, remembering. I’ve learned since then that every old place has its version of La Forêt Creuse. A hollow space where history hums and waits to be uncovered. Sometimes I wonder—was it a real mystery we found that day? Or just the part of ourselves that wants to believe something strange is always watching? Whatever it was, I never went back. And I never will.
By Sherooz khanabout a year ago in Horror
''Ghosted by a Dead Man''
By [ISRAR khan] I met Elias on a Thursday in April, the kind of day that smells like rain even when the sky is clear. We were both waiting in line for overpriced espresso at a pop-up café in Brooklyn. He wore a charcoal coat and a crooked smile, and when he spoke, his voice had the kind of depth you feel in your chest. Our conversation started with coffee preferences and ended with a dinner date. It was fast, but something about Elias felt like a rewind button — like I'd known him in another life. Over the next three months, we were inseparable. We had our routines: Tuesday night wine at his apartment, Saturday mornings at the used bookstore on 7th, lazy Sundays walking without direction. He told me his mother was a pianist who died young, his father an absent man with a drinking problem. He rarely talked about his past in detail, but when he did, it came out in scattered puzzle pieces. Elias didn’t have social media. No Instagram, no Facebook, not even a LinkedIn page. “I like to keep my life analog,” he said once. I laughed, but it left an odd taste in my mouth. Then one day — he disappeared. It started with a missed text reply. Then a full day. Then three. Calls went to voicemail. His apartment was locked, no answer when I knocked. I assumed the worst, then hoped for the best. Maybe he just needed space. Maybe it was me. After two weeks, I gave up. And then I did something I hadn’t before — I Googled him. The search results hit me like a punch to the gut. Elias Monroe, 29, died in a car accident in 2020. There was a photo. Same eyes, same jawline. Same lopsided smile. But that was impossible. I had met Elias in 2025. I double-checked the obituary. The article said he had been a poet. Lived in Brooklyn. Same bookstore we visited. Same street he said he lived on. The funeral was held in May—five years ago. For a week, I didn’t leave my apartment. I told no one. I thought maybe I had been tricked. Maybe someone was impersonating him. But there was no social media trail, no paper trail, nothing. Elias Monroe, as I had known him, had vanished — and legally, had already been gone for half a decade. Then things got stranger. One evening, I came home to find a note on my kitchen table. I live alone. It was written in his handwriting. “Don’t look for me. Just remember.” I should have felt fear. Instead, I cried. For the first time since he vanished, I let it hit me — the weight of loving someone who might not have ever really existed. But he had. I knew he had. I remembered the warmth of his hand, the rhythm of his laugh, the way he always turned his head to the left before saying something serious. I started to notice the signs. A record on the turntable I hadn’t played in months, spinning slowly when I woke up. A book left open to the page he once read aloud. The scent of his cologne hanging in the air like a question. Maybe grief plays tricks. Or maybe the veil between life and whatever comes after is thinner than we like to believe. I don't tell many people this story. The ones I have either think I made it up, or worse, think I'm still lost in denial. But I know what I felt. And sometimes, when the city quiets down around 2 AM, I feel him again — like a memory brushing against the present. Some people say being ghosted is the worst kind of pain. The absence. The lack of closure. I was ghosted — literally — by a dead man. And somehow, that’s how I know he loved me. Author’s Note: Some people leave quietly. Others leave impossibly. And some... never truly leave at all.
By Israr khanabout a year ago in Horror
"Trapped in the Jungle with a Leopard"
The sun had barely risen when we entered the jungle—thick, damp, and humming with life. I was part of a small group of wildlife researchers stationed in the Western Ghats of India. Our goal was to track and document elusive animals through hidden camera traps. It was supposed to be routine—data collection, photography, maybe spotting a monkey or two. No one expected what came next.
By Muhammad Saeedabout a year ago in Horror
The Stranger at the Bridge
The Stranger at the Bridge It was the last day of autumn when the leaves whispered secrets into the wind and the sky blushed with the orange hue of goodbye. As the sun dipped behind the hills of the quiet town of Eldershore, a lone figure stood at the old wooden bridge—where stories ended and sometimes began.
By Wings of Time about a year ago in Horror
