Category: Haunted Passages

Original Short Story for Haunted Passages: “Everything Got Worse” by Kelli Dianne Rule

November 1, 1991. Myakka City, Florida. The earth-moving machines had long sputtered out and all the workers were eating or sleeping so I got bored and decided to run off to explore the woods behind our construction site. Tall pines and old oak trees covered the floor in dry needles and acorns and when the…
Five Unfinished Poems for Edward Hopper: Haunted Passages by Matthew Thorburn

—Gas, oil on canvas, 1940 1. This gas man seemslike a banker in his darktie, brown vest, brilliantwhite shirtsleeves,his jacket maybe slung over a chair in the smallwhite station. He tidiesthe rack of oil cans.Turns them label-side out.Bald, unsmiling, alone, not lonely, he lookslike you. And the redenamel pumps waitin silence, heads turnedto look for…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Turnpike Dreams” by Dave Nash

Exit 18 – The George Washington Bridge connects the two ledges that rise from deep water in constant motion. On the New Jersey side, one hundred feet had to be blasted out to make it level with New York. Someone is always trying to cut us down, I tell Anna. She says I have a…
New for Haunted Passages: Four Microfictions by Salvatore Difalco

Say Cheese Let’s get this party started, Jack. Got no time to Mickey Mouse around the house tonight. Pirates and pickpockets are on their way. A fun bunch, as you’ll see. Try my special punch, I made it from an ancient Sumerian recipe, it’ll crack your teeth and give you wheels. Meantime I’ll spin some…
New Haunted Passages Essay: “giving yrself flowers: an act of love” by Erick Sáenz

“That’s what experience for human is: an amplification and intensification of our sense of ourselves amidst other presences in the world”—Lyn Hejinian // every time we leave the apartment i tend to the camellia bush down the street, varying pink hues smashed against the concrete the streets are unkempt with them // the botanical gardencoffees…
Original Short Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Saponified” by Taylor Hebert

So far, the honeymoon had been okay, but she couldn’t rid her mouth of the taste of soap. She had been brushing her teeth three times a day. Only breathing deeply could cleanse her palate—but with the next taste of anything, it was as if she had been gnawing on a golden bar of Dial.…
Haunted Passages Poem: “In the Dark” by David Cazden

Doctors gaze at Mom’s CAT scanthe way astronomers lookbetween galaxies.For space is mostly darklike our old staircasewhere I’d turnby the dim-lit landing,angling to the last steppast my brother’s closed door.Once he didn’t make the turn,winding up on the roof―legs over guttersamong boughsswaying like drunken angels.The last day I see Momin the memory wardshe has forgotten…
Haunted Passages: Six Poems from The Witch’s Flight by John Schertzer

The Witch’s Flight 1 I see you rounding the cornerwith your flag. You made it yourselffrom a table cloth, put some knobs on it, bright colorscalled yourself a beginningof something still undefined still nowhere to be foundand I am there beside youwaiting for it to happen. The Witch’s Flight 2 I saw you rounding the…
Hybrid Essay for Haunted Passages: “Over at the Frankenstein Place” by Joanna Acevedo

Over the past two weeks, please list the items you have lost. As a teenager I knew how to scam my way into the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They still did it at the Chelsea Cinemas, which is closed now, and graffiti adorns its sad plywood window coverings. But this was…