Category: Haunted Passages

“Mom’s House”: A Haunted Passages Flash Fiction by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

My double is bored; I tell him it’s not my fault—he still looks at me judgmentally. So we have a staring contest, because they’re fun, and the loser has to give the winner a piggyback ride. “All the way to Mom’s house,” I drawl, raising the stakes. “Smoking cigarettes,” my double shoots back, knowing how much…
“Bunnyman Bridge Is Haunted”: A Haunted Passages Hybrid Piece by Colleen Kearney Rich

The legend is that a bus from the insane asylum crashed near the bridge and patients escaped. One patient was never found. But they did find the remains of several dead rabbits. I remember stopping at the Sonic for onion rings and a cherry limeade. Max always has these tiny bottles of vodka in the…
Ricky Ray Poem: “The Dream” for Haunted Passages

In which the monster emerged sludgehearted and fond of hares.And triplets were born of a wish that blew itself apart.Candleflame ignored the wind.Her face, thirty years on ice,the one my waking mind can’t find in the crowd.Water in the streets so high you could swim.I was a woman.I was a wolf. I could hear hunger…
“Sour Candy”: A Haunted Passages Flash Fiction by Lindy Biller

My mother carried bright colored candies with her everywhere. Usually Skittles or M&M’s. It didn’t strike me as odd until years after she was gone. She would stop at a red light and reach into the Ziploc bag in her pocket. She created her own complicated meaning system for each color—red meant turn back, green…
Fred Gerhard: Four Poems for Haunted Passages

Chill November On a chill November afternoonmemory of colorclings to skylike pitch dark twigs alivereaching for a summer sunlong gone a poorly dreamt expanseof slate fogpearly mistfar away and departingour livesour graves leaves space forautumn hymns in thelow quiet tonethat falling breezesknowand hum where we would gobefore we let goand throwour shivering limbs aliveto the…
“Styrofoam”: A Haunted Passages Flash Essay by Sarah Robbins

“This is you,” she says, with a riiip to the Styrofoam cup. “When you start out, you are pure and without flaw—the way God intended you to be.” She pulls a new cup out of the plastic sleeve lying on the picnic table and holds it in one hand, level to her face. I look down at…
“greetings from televillage”: A Poem for Haunted Passages by Ariel Clark-Semyck

I how the quiver of the camera makes it all seem so mine—my body flying over the bonnie green fields of the isle. my body sitting in the sodden rowboat of the old ferryman, the folds of his salty skin purling as he gabs on about last year’s failed crop. my body is a foot-soldier…
Madeline Vosch: “The Place Between Tongue and Teeth,” a Haunted Passages short story

At night it fills my mouth, this unnamable, unmournable ghost. I don’t know who it is, but on calm nights it tastes like smoke and cedar. On days when the wind sweeps in, hard and angry from the north, it tastes like ocean salt. It pushes against the corners of my gums, pressing down on…
Noah Thornburgh on B.R. Yeager’s cosmic horror novel Negative Space

Works of cosmic horror threaten to consume their characters by the end. We expect an ultimate resolution, not necessarily through an explanation of the mysteries that preceded, but by the total convergence of the experience in a singular mystery. The Outside snuffs out the characters, inspires madness in them, cripples them—some final effect demonstrating the…