Horror Stories

The Lighthouse Keeper

Some lights guide us home, others keep us away

For thirty years, Marcus tended the lighthouse on Blackrock Island. For thirty years, he never questioned why ships always turned away. Tonight, when the light goes out, he'll learn the truth.

Elevator Ghost

The commuter hits every button to avoid the office, but the elevator shudders and stops between floors. A faint figure leans on the panel, apologizing for the delay. They talk about office coffee, tax...

Checkout Line Oracle

At the grocery store, the scanner starts beeping in full sentences. "Do not buy that melon. Call your sister. Trust the dentist." Shoppers pretend not to hear, scanning quietly. One man ignores the wa...

Silence Subscription

An app offers silence delivered in monthly installments. For a fee, it mutes inner monologues for an hour a day. At first, the quiet feels luxurious. Decisions arrive clean. But the invoices creep up....

Queue at the Time Vending Machine

At the mall, a vending machine sells minutes. Five minutes costs one secret. People line up, whispering into the coin slot. A student buys enough minutes to finish an essay. A parent purchases ten to...

Soundproof Confessions

A musician releases an album of silent tracks. The liner notes claim each track is filled with confessions only the listener can hear. Fans press play and swear they catch whispers of apologies, admis...

Deleted Scene Reunion

Characters cut from movies meet once a year in a bar near the studio lot. A pirate with no lines buys drinks for a background astronaut. A romantic lead deleted for pacing swaps notes with a singing t...

Clock Strikes Thirteen

At noon, the town clock rings thirteen times. People pause mid-bite, mid-email. The extra chime stretches the day by five minutes. Birds adjust their flight paths; buses linger at stops. Those five mi...

The Negotiator Plant

A houseplant begins bartering. It releases extra oxygen in exchange for gossip. The roommates comply, spilling stories about dates and deadlines. The plant grows lush, leaves glossy with secrets. When...

Rent-a-Memory

An online service rents memories for those who feel empty. You can borrow a childhood beach day or a graduation walk. The rentals come with vivid sensations and a ticking timer. One user rents a memor...

Time-Share Body

An ad offers a time-share body: mornings are yours, nights belong to someone else. The arrangement is affordable and oddly freeing. You wake to find dishes washed, laundry folded. In return, you leave...

The Rehearsal Mirror

A mirror in a thrift shop promises rehearsals for tomorrow. Stand before it, and it shows your mistakes before you make them. People queue with job interviews, first dates, apologies. The mirror revea...

Storm Chaser's Daughter

She chases thunderstorms the way others chase sales. In every lightning strike, she reads messages: coordinates, names, warnings. Her father, a retired storm chaser, says the sky is done talking. She...

The Last Phone Booth

In a busy square, one phone booth remains. It rings once a year. Whoever answers hears a single question tailored to their life. One year, a poet answers and hears, "Why did you stop writing?" The nex...

Forget-Me-Not GPS

A navigation app refuses to let you leave places you will miss. Every route recalculates back to a beloved cafe, an old school, a park bench. At first, it is charming. Then it becomes impossible to re...

Night Bus 404

Late at night, a bus with "404" on its display pulls up. Its route is not on any map. Riders board out of curiosity. The bus drives through neighborhoods that never existed: glowing markets, endless l...

Warranty for Miracles

A new service offers warranties on miracles. If your prayer glitches, file a ticket. Response time: two to three business days. One woman requests a replacement for a rain of frogs; she ordered butter...

Antique Shop of Alternate Lives

In the back of Mrs. Lee's antique shop, behind clocks frozen at moments no one remembers, sits a glass cabinet of objects with price tags that read "If: $10." Each item, when held, offers a vision of the life you would have lived had you owned it. A...

Reverse Archaeology

Instead of digging up the past, the Reverse Archaeology team buries it. Funded by a foundation obsessed with legacy, they create layers for future historians to discover. Maria, team lead, selects mundane artifacts: a grocery list, a child's drawing,...

The Day Silence Broke

At 10:02 a.m., sound stops. Air moves, mouths open, but nothing reaches ears. Car horns press silently. Birds flap in mute confusion. The world learns the texture of quiet instantly. Panic ripples—alarms fail, emergency broadcasts are useless. People...

Moonlight Tax

The Ministry of Luminous Resources announces a moonlight tax. Households must report how much moonlight they consume after midnight. Inspectors carry devices that measure glow on curtains. People laugh until fines arrive. Rooftop gardeners protest; p...

Glacier Post Office

Near the melting edge of Calder Glacier, a research station doubles as a post office for letters frozen decades ago. As ice calves, envelopes surface, sealed and stamped from eras when handwriting mattered. Dr. Elsie Tran catalogs each letter and att...

The Orchard of Lost Hours

On the edge of town, an orchard grows fruit from hours people lost scrolling feeds and waiting in lines. Trees bear luminous apples, skins shimmering with paused seconds. Farmers tend carefully, pruning regret. Visitors harvest lost time for a price....

Puppet City Revolt

In Arlo, marionettes perform daily in plazas, controlled by skilled puppeteers. Tourists love the shows. One stormy evening, strings dampen, and a puppet named Finch jerks free. Without the hand above, Finch explores, limbs clumsy but curious. Other...

The Sea That Remembers Names

Sailors whisper names to calm storms. Most think it is superstition. But this sea listens. When Elena, a marine biologist, tags whales, she hears the ocean murmur names back—old, forgotten names. She tests the phenomenon, saying her grandmother's nam...

The Warranty on Reality

Reality comes with a warranty, apparently. After odd glitches—stairs shortening, traffic lights swapping colors—an insurance company sends adjuster Cole to investigate claims. He carries a clipboard and a scanner that beeps near anomalies. People fil...

The Apartment Between Floors

Between floors seven and eight of a downtown high-rise is an apartment not on any blueprint. The elevator stops there only if you press 7 and 8 simultaneously while humming. Tenants who discover it find a cozy space with mismatched furniture, a kettl...

The City that Dreamed of Forests

Heron City keeps waking to saplings sprouting from concrete. Blueprints on planners' desks are covered with leaf prints. Architects panic; designs mutate into parks. Scientists blame a fungal bloom. Poet Imani suggests the city itself is dreaming of...

The Daylight Heist

A crew of thieves plans the impossible: steal an afternoon. They hack calendars, hijack city clocks, deploy reflective balloons to confuse sundials. At 2 p.m. Tuesday, time hiccups. Watches show 2 p.m. again. An extra hour appears, unaccounted for. T...

The Neighborhood Time Bank

At first, the time bank was a chalkboard nailed to a fence. “Deposit an hour, withdraw an hour,” someone scrawled, half joke, half dare. Most neighbors chuckled and kept walking. Then Mr. Alvarez wrote, “+2 hours babysitting credit,” and Mrs. Chen withdrew one, scribbling, “Need help watching Max Th...

The Sleepwalk Detective

Detective Arun Singh didn’t sleep like other people. He slept like a case file—open, active, restless. Doctors called it parasomnia. Therapists called it unresolved trauma. Arun called it inconvenient until he learned to use it. In dreams, he wandered places he had never been yet recognized from blu...

The Clockmaker’s Rebellion

In the town of Bellmare, clocks never disagreed. Church bells, wristwatches, oven timers—they all ticked in harmonious consensus, thanks to the Precision Guild. The Guild traced its roots to a clockmaker named Ansel who, centuries ago, built a master clock that whispered the correct time to every ot...

The Last Ferryman

The river between worlds had no name on any map, but everyone in the border town called it the Between. Boats crossed daily: paper barges of dreams, rafts of forgotten promises, ferries carrying souls who missed their connecting lives. Regulations were loose until the administration realized how man...

The Lighthouse in the Desert

They said the desert had no need for a lighthouse. There was no sea, no ships, only dunes shifting like tides of sand. Yet there it stood: a white tower on a dune ridge, its beacon sweeping over emptiness. It had been built by a collective of wanderers decades ago, funded by donations and stubbornne...

The Librarian of First Sentences

The Library of Beginnings occupied a single, long room lined with narrow drawers. Each drawer contained cards, each card bearing a first sentence from a story, novel, speech, or diary that had never been finished or had gone missing. The librarian, Ana, guarded them. People visited when they were st...

The Tide Accountant

Reema inherited the tide ledger and the tall stool on the pier. Every evening, she sat, pen poised, recording grains of sand taken by the sea and grains returned. Her mother had done it; her grandmother had started it, insisting the sea respected accounting. People chuckled. Reema knew numbers sooth...

Shadow Adoption Agency

Behind the old cinema, stray shadows gathered, detached from owners by bright hospital lights, careless deals, or simple neglect. The city, tired of odd flickers and complaint calls about “unauthorized silhouettes,” opened a Shadow Adoption Agency. Its front door was hard to find; you had to stand b...

The Painter of Laws

In the republic of Varo, no law took effect until it was painted. This tradition began after a revolution when citizens demanded to see legislation in a form everyone could understand. A painter, Alis, was appointed as interpreter. Decades later, the role persisted. Laws arrived as dry text; the Pai...