Category: Haunted Passages
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Whispers in the Ear of a Dreaming Ape, a horror short story collection by Joshua Chaplinsky, reviewed by Avery Cook
Joshua Chaplinsky has concocted a collection of disturbing stories told through voices we haven’t heard from before: serial killers and their mothers, sex cult evangelists and athiest priests, time traveling daughters and undead fathers. Characters are trapped in physical boxes and mental chaoses, unable to escape with their bodies and their lives intact. Written like…
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Layla Saleeby on Soft Fruit in the Sun, Oliver Zarandi’s debut story collection from Hexus Press
Despite its focus on surreal body horror and strange characters who lick alleyway walls or get eaten by their children, Oliver Zarandi’s short story collection Soft Fruit in the Sun surpasses the limitations of shock value, instead developing over time a complex picture of paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anorexia, and emotional detachment from the world. Soft…
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Haunted Passages: “Samples from a Wichita Mountains Ontology,” a hybrid haunting by Seth Copeland
*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. One summer a man fell while rappelling in the Narrows//We could hear him moan up on a cliff/his friends bright puffy squirrels circling//A helicopter lifted him out to Oklahoma City//We never heard what his next ascent was / purple horsemint flanks the lakesidetower\\we gargoyle the boulders keepingpeople…
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“The Over/Under: A Triptych,” HAunted Passages fiction by Melissa Benton Barker
1. The Solid and the Vapor I was sitting on the sofa in my yoga clothes when the phone rang. I had just finished watching a re-run of The Office with my husband and children. My children had gone upstairs to brush their teeth and get ready for bed. “Melissa, you need to come over…
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“The Burial Party”: Vol. 9 Original Fiction by Adrian Van Young
In her invalid’s bunk on the steamer Virginia, the Nurse cannot stop throwing up. When the boat is in motion, it does not afflict her. She could stand on the prow with her face in the wind. But when the steamboat lies at anchor in the hot airlessness of the day, churning faintly, the Nurse’s…
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“call the necromancer”: Four Poems by Leia Penina Wilson for Haunted Passages
volta OR these snapdragon flower seed pods look like little skulls because it’s all imagination & horror baby can youimagine i liketo lookat myself& i never become obsessed— would youlike to lookat my gothic: all the virgin eyes in the worldare made of glass —horror —horror —horror accumulated knowledge abstract: to eroticwith pleasure to ward…
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“We’re a Creepy Bunch”: Hillary Leftwich Talks to Sarah Read, Author of the Story Collection Out of Water
Sarah Read is a force in the horror genre and has a long-standing history of publications in numerous top tier journals. She’s the author of a new collection, Out of Water (published by Trepidatio Publishing), and one I’ve been anticipating with excitement for months now. Sarah chatted with me over email communication over a week…
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In the Dream House, a Graywolf Press memoir by Carmen Maria Machado, reviewed by Benjamin Kinney
One of my favorite horror tropes is the house that builds itself. Inhabitants stumble into rooms they know they’ve never visited before. There is nothing overtly menacing about the rooms, at least initially—they have the same walls and ceiling and furniture as the rest of the house. The fear is in being disoriented, as well…
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Tales from the Crust, an anthology of pizza horror edited by David James Keaton & Max Booth III, reviewed by Ann Davis-Rowe
I love pizza. I could eat it at least every day, perhaps even every meal. So when I had the opportunity to review Tales from the Curst: An Anthology of Pizza Horror, edited by David James Keaton and Max Booth III, I was stoked! But also, admittedly, a little concerned—what if these stories turned me…
Heavy Feather Review 