Category: Haunted Passages

Original Haunted Passages Short Story: “The Late Mrs. Cole” by Salvatore Difalco

Mrs. Cole lived down the street from us. People said she was a witch. They’d seen her flying around on a broom. And she had been spotted in Eastwood Park picking poisonous mushrooms by the back fence. She was also said to walk around the neighborhood with a shopping bag full of frogs. But most…
Short Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Splitting a Pig” by Austin Goodmanson

The machines in my daughter’s bedroom kept their rhythm for weeks. Beep. Beep. Nothing changed that I could prove. Then last week I sat beside her bed, rambling about whatever came to mind. Regrets from her childhood. When I said I was sorry, her cheek was wet. One tear. I thought it was a fluke.…
Haunted Passages Original Fiction: “Bupropion Hydrochloride, or, Pills for Vanquishing” by K. Degala-Paraíso

– 0-mg – Your sister has been evicted from her apartment—again. You count this to be her eleventh eviction. This time, instead of paying her landlord rent for the last three months, your sister bought: You’re not sure where she got the money for all of it, as your sister has never held down a…
New Haunted Passages Short Fiction: “Sleepwalking Too Close to the Fire” by Danila Botha

I stood on the ship’s balcony, my head hanging over the railing, thick clusters of orange vomit merging with the darkening sea like Postmodern art. Agreeing to this was like stepping into a floating dream that mixed toxic positivity with aggressive self improvement through gurus and pickleball, astrology, and Pilates. I could hear the judgement…
James Pate: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

Messiah of Evil (1973) We sit in the sun and wait. We sleep. And we dream. Each of us dying slowly in the prison of our minds. —Arletty, Messiah of Evil I’ve often thought of the human head as a meat radio. And cat heads too. And those of small, quivering birds flying too close…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “Galaxy” by Diane Zinna

My mom once told me, “You’re not pretty—you know that, right?” When I asked her through stinging tears why she would say that, she said, “Well, you have a horse face.” I was twelve. She also taught me the names of all the constellations. On the nights my stepfather filled the house with liquor and…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages: Emma Galloway Stephens

The Devil Beats His Wife When the devil beats his wife,rain and sunshine fall together. Hell’s housewife knows her husband’s daysare few—the rain falls rain on sun on rain. The devil’s a mobster, a debt collector—his wife waxes hell’s nine floors, washes its sooty windows.It’s a house of slamming doors. But slowly she learns not…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “A Plague of Grackles” by Adam Camiolo

It’ll happen slowly at first. He’ll come home a little early, make the turn onto their block, and he’ll see her, his wife, standing on the grass, barefoot, back turned towards the street, staring at the tree full of chirping birds. He may get out of his car, point to one and say, “honey, look…
Short Story for Haunted Passages: “I Cut Her Out of Me” by D. Avern

The panel buildings, painted in all the colors of the rainbow, stood impassively amidst the oak forest. They soared several hundred meters high, as if trying to reach the clouds with their rooftops, equipped with helicopter landing pads—clouds shimmering with every hue of a watercolor palette, diluted in warm water and poured into the clear…