Category: Haunted Passages

Two Poems by Sean Burke for Haunted Passages

The Moon Lays Down a No Trick Hand When father left office a rag of colts followed on their hind legs. It was the damnedest thing. All that year, Ms. Jansen’s calves were born without bodies. Their heads—strange, unwieldy cabbages— sang ecstatically in the fields. The teens that always plagued the Cinemagic parking lot (and…
Honor Vincent: “Boots,” a Haunted Passages short story

It was, as it always is, the cat who first noticed that the number of ghosts squeezing themselves into the apartment was increasing. The cat shared the apartment with a man, two young cats named Mimi and Sisi, and the usual variety of things that made their crawling lives in the walls and dark corners…
Andrew Bertaina: “A Good Day’s Work,” a Haunted Passages short story

The man threaded his way down the long rows of bodies with an old wheelbarrow, careful as he rolled, to avoid an outstretched hand, a folded leg, the acrobatics of the dead. The light bore down on his back, harsh and unrelenting as he worked in the tree-less, thankless cemetery. Velvety beaked crows lined the…
“Becoming Gods,” a flash fiction for Haunted Passages by Steve Gergley

Oh, Jesus. Just try to relax. You’re okay. God. You’re okay, I’m right here with you, just like always. Just take it easy. Oh man. Okay. Yeah, that’s good. Don’t worry about getting up just yet. Just lay back and relax for a while. Okay. How are you feeling? I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand…
Haunted Passages: “Thank You for Shopping with CouchCart,” a short story by Tara Campbell

Tara Campbell (taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. She received her MFA from American University in 2019. Previous and upcoming publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and CRAFT Literary. She’s the author of a novel, TreeVolution, and two collections, Circe’s Bicycle and…
“Inked,” a Haunted Passages short story by Kara Oakleaf

My first tattoo appears the morning after Ian’s funeral. I wake up and press my hands into my eyes to keep out the reality of another day, and immediately, I recognize his work, his clean lines tracing a mountain range in the center of my palm. The skin surrounding the image is raised and red,…
Ben Segal: “Hungry Ghosts,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction

Ghosts eat ghost hamburgers from ghost cows. You can’t kill a ghost though, so the ghost cows are eaten piece by piece, fog slabs sliced off their lowing bodies. Such practices of piecemeal slaughter flourished in the time before refrigeration and were banned as cruel by Kosher law. Ghosts are in this way heretical, or…
Haunted Passages: “Pocket Scalpel,” a one-act play by Nathan Dixon

Cast of Characters C: A 32-year-old college counselor living in Durham, NC. Over the past several years she has been dealing with the news that she carries the BRCA-2 Breast Cancer Gene. She must undergo an array of preventative screenings every six months, knowing full well that in the (not too distant) future she will…
Michael Sikkema Haunted Passages Poem: “How to Be a Haunted House”

1 After the first rainshove up what’s beenburied in the flowerbedsThe teeth. The toy trucksThe steak knife 2 Use yourfaceto bendthe others 3 Bleed brighter 4 Stay inthe sharp partof the storyuntil it hurtsright. Findthat smallvoice andstretch it 5 Fog the changes 6 Manifest your walkersin earlier clothes 7 No neon 8 No fanny packs…