There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.

Rain turned to ice,and lightning splintered, it splicedthe black sky, it seeped a bright white.All animals they fled,from the sky as it bled,pale death that fell veiling the night.

These friends – and he laid his hand on some of the books – have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London,...

Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the evilest motherfucker in the valley

There are things that go bump in the night

No valía la pena perder el tiempo en intentar cambiar el mundo; bastaba con evitar que el mundo lo cambiase a uno.

There are… otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that...

Jessica’s hand flew to her mouth. If she had any doubt, the next entry settled it.She read on, cool beads of sweat trickling down the back of her neck, hardly daring to breathe as the...

The basis of all true cosmic horror is violation of the order of nature, and the profoundest violations are always the least concrete and describable.

One should let one’s nails grow for a fortnight. O, how sweet it is to drag brutally from his bed a child with no hair on his upper lip and with wide open eyes, make...

The first rule in the book of love is acceptance.

My family has a Christmas tradition: Every year, they kill my mom.

It is this outer reach of existential abnegation – the moment where subjective identity deserts itself and becomes enslaved without consciousness of its subjugated condition – that Mirbeau consistently sought to decry with horror.

‘The Omen,’ ‘The Exorcist,’ those movies for me are the quintessential horror movies that still scare me as an adult.

My power grew angry that it was confined to my petite frame and pulled against my taut skin. Growing bolder, it tore through my skin to lay flat against my outer edge. The glowing energy...

There are dread secrets that none may know and have peace. More, secrets that render whosoever knoweth them an alien unto the tribe he belongs to, that cause him to walk alone on earth, for...

Horror is not unimaginable, it has neither the face of a monster nor the bat-wings of a demon. It is calm and tranquil, and it is durable, lasting whole days and nights, months; years, perhaps....

But the thing that . . . that I touched . . . ” I cried. “It was furry! It-” I stopped short, taken with a shudder. “I know,” said Herrick.

I don’t write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they’re not really; I don’t go there.

My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man’s.

The little girl’s face was from Will’s vilest nightmares. Cavernous mouth, distended chin, bastardized nose. The enormous, bulging eyes glared at Will, demanded he see the truth, commanded him to acknowledge his sin.

I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.

Thinking about such things soothed the creature as it dug at the base of a tall oak tree, deep into the ground, covering itself with dirt and leaves and moss; hiding, healing, waiting.

Max?’ he asked.’Yeah?”…What are you doing?”Shooting people.

You want some pie?”

I like to make blank pages darker. It’s this thing I do.

You shouldn’t have done that, Dave.

I was a spectator who had gotten free admission to a freak show.

All’improvviso i loro sensi si fecero più attenti. Man mano che si addentravano nel quartiere, un formicolio sinistro li pizzicò alla base della nuca. Un presagio di morte, la puzza di marcio,l’olezzo del mondo infernale.

my new website is now live on There are free short stories to download on it. Have fun!

I think that true horror is accomplished by slowly getting into your brain. The old way is much more scary.

There’s wickedness, dark as night. There are things that are wicked and if you touch them, they know you. They know where to find you now. – Knock Knock

They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn’t like to look at them. They were the walking dead.

‘Now I lay me down to sleep…’” To me, just random noise. Gibberish. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but I felt that, when it came to God, there was a broken promise in...

They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and...

But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The...

It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy

But it was not hateful bile that was thrust from me, it was an angry hatred that can only come from those that I had been repressed over the years. It was just subtle cracks...

Jane woke, stretched, and decided to kill herself. If she hadn’t found a reason to live by the end of the day she would jump from the rig. It felt good to have a plan.

Deadlines help me, but my muse hates them. My muse functions in fits and starts, and tends to take very long vacations. Deadlines are like a hot poker to his ass. They force us both...

Nothing says you care like sending someone a kitten.

As the helpless vampire watched the transformation, it started screaming. It was still screaming when his rows of razor sharp teeth sank into its throat.

Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that’s appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.

Living in Hell kept him aware of the possibility of Heaven, and he’d never felt more alive.

And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight. And now from these globules themselves as from the shell of an egg, monstrous...

As she walked to the stairway, he pulled her back with a light tug on her shoulder. “They’re responding to you now.”Turning to face him, she said, “Responding to me? What did I say?””The hallway...

It was not Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery; Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage....

I would like to turn in my skin and change it for a new epidermis. It feels as if I will never be able to rinse the sadness from my soul. All the while I...

I have learned one lesson in all this and I will share it knowing it will do no one any good. The lesson is this: “There are none more complicit in one’s undoing than one’s...

Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, “Have you ever seen a...