Category: Haunted Passages

Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag, a novel by Adam Johnson

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I used to have a very bad habit that routinely got me into trouble. And I call it a habit, but really it was probably something closer to a crosswired tic—a kind of subconscious psychic defense mechanism—I couldn’t help it, I swear—but regardless, my insistence on its innocuous,…
“Omens”: A New Haunted Passages Short Story by Andrew Bertaina

When the moon appeared, a violent red sphere riding low on the prow of the sky, everyone in the village watched it with an admixture of wonder and terror. Children pointed at it with stubby fingers, asking their parents about the gigantic moon, trying to capture it by closing their hands. Parents whispered to their…
Haunted Passages: “Possession” by Lauren Brazeal Garza

Mother, suddenly they were everywhere—dozens of chittering advertisements for an “EVP consultant.” In scrutiny of all who passed, their art-deco lettering burst fiercely from those printed slime-green flames, offset by supersonic purple. The text beckoned, FLAMORA: witness of all. Resolutions through recording. Beneath this lurked a local phone number. I put off calling her for…
Haunted Passages: Five Poems by Howie Good

App-athetic (1) Strange how you arrive with no address in mind. Objects begin to misbehave, clocks to bend and stretch. And then a procession of pallbearers carrying empty coffins enters—creased, stained, stoop-shouldered. The century feels a lot longer than a hundred years. (2) Facebook announces a suicide prevention app. If the heart stops beating, it…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Matthew Weddig

after a generally positively reviewed yet deeply boomerfied slasher released in 2022 when you are too old to fuckall you have left to you is murder your only options now arerent out the farmhouse in the backblock the exits with your frail bodythe passage of time owes you this muchwhy should the young bodies be…
“Crabgrass,” a new short story by Michael Cole for Haunted Passages

Diane woke calling out for someone, startled, in the same way that she would occasionally wake with a laugh, or even crying, embarrassed at the sharp blow of emotion dealt from a dream that was already fading. “Hello?” she said, still half asleep, chasing after a specter that had run a cold finger down her…
Anybody Home? a horror novel by Michael J. Seidlinger, reviewed by Dave Fitzgerald

It’s sometimes disturbing to think about the ways in which traditions evolve. Nothing, after all, starts out as a tradition. The word, by definition, carries in it the implicit understanding that an idea or act has happened a number of times, across a lengthy period, with some level of sustained intentionality. Human civilization functions around,…
Haunted Passages: “Rooftops,” a new short story by Michael Cole

Just after 9:30 in the morning on a Wednesday in June, the creature tore down Michigan Avenue, upending taxi cabs, snagging awnings from storefronts, its talons leaving three-foot gashes in the asphalt. A few minutes later, the emergency sirens began to sound. In that time, the beast had emerged from Lake Michigan, traveled alongside the…
“Familiar,” a Haunted Passages short fiction by Betsy Sharp

Lara, taking the dark path behind. Lara, cold night air. Jacob in the kitchen, frying his ambition in kid-chatter. Jacob cupping plans like colored marbles, yearning for more than can fit in his two hands. He unpacks the lunchbox, Noah playing dinosaur on the back of the sofa with his jacket pulled over his head…