Category: Haunted Passages

Haunted Passages: “Swamp Thing Explains How Time Passes in the Middle of Dueling Crises,” a poem by Jack B. Bedell

It’s never a matter of value. When I’m standing at the edge of the cypress grove looking over the coastline, I can tell it’s receding, inching back into the swamp. No doubt the water’s rising. It’ll drown us all. Eventually. It’ll lick away every piece of swamp I stand on. But it’ll do it with…
“The Marienbad Disaster, Part I – The Doorways of Jadeaux,” a short story for Haunted Passages by Phil Shreck

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Phil Shreck is a writer living in Connecticut with his wife and three children. His short fiction has appeared in The Drum Literary Magazine, The Festival Review, Delay Fiction, and Misery Tourism. He is currently at work on his first novel, SMBH, which he calls a work of…
Three Haunted Passages Poems by Jordan Stempleman

Problem Solving I wanted to watch a Western,a dirtier the better Western, where everybodyaccidentally kills everybodyjust after they say in unisonThe purpose of pop cultureis summary, and just after they take off their hats,and long before they ever revealwho they really are.Guns are allowedif they’re always going off.And the people who do survivesurvive in spite…
“Dream of Me,” a Haunted Passages poem by David Ly

I’m walking downa cold tunnel. The walls curveup to a ceiling of water. An enormoustentacled shadowpasses over, making the hairs stand on the back of my neck.Ahead of me, a boy appearsturned away from me, dripping wet not even shivering.I tilt my headand so does he. My heart begins beating quicker because nobody should be…
“The Barrel”: A Haunted Passages Short Story by Holly Day

For as long as he could remember, the barrel had sat in the back yard, behind a locked gate and a very tall fence. Only the father had the key, and three times a day, the boy would watch his father take a jumbled plate of scraps out to the back yard to leave at…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “Squimbop Fever” by David Leo Rice

I drove all night in the truck I’d found parked in front of the house on Cielo Drive, windows open so the last of the names Jim and Joe could flow out, leaving me in a purified state that I chose to call the Brothers Squimbop, though I knew I was alone. I drove through lowlands…
“Digital Dreaming in Analog”: A Haunted Passages Short Story by Matthew Burnside

TUTORIAL It was on the thirteenth stage of one of those marble simulator games that Maxwell encountered a glitch and accidentally stole a glimpse of eternity. He was rolling full tilt toward the prismatic net when a ghost sparrow distracted him and he shot off a little too far to the right, ending up on…
“The Brothers Squimbop in Hollywood”: A Haunted Passages Short Story by David Leo Rice

After their disastrous tour of Europe, which had necessitated nothing less than complete rebirth from the womb of the witch who had claimed to be their mother, the Brothers Squimbop returned to America, disembarking at the edge of a New World that they could already see would never be new again. They quickly abandoned the…
Two Haunted Passages Poems by Pete Miller

Assessment: Disinterment Or if notdisinterred exactly,shaken loose by cravingsnot quite killed with the rest of you? All that coldgravel of the gravesiteyour brother paid for with a bottle anda justkeep the shovelshoved asidelike so much promised afterlife as you rose one dizzy momentthen dropped again to crawl? Did all your cousins’ carscooling in your father’s…