Burial Day Books is a boutique publisher of supernatural horror short stories. Once a month we feature an established or emerging horror writer. These short supernatural horror stories deal with elements of superstition, folklore or myth. We look for writers that are innovative but can also give a nod to past – classic horror. We feature scary stories with limited gore and limited extreme violence because of the belief that fear, true fear, comes from the unknown.
Every small town has that house, that suspected haunted house we’re told to avoid. Not all of us avoid it.
Megan Fairbrace is a speculative fiction writer and an all round horror enthusiast living in Kent, England. In between writing stories about haunted houses and boogeymen, Megan is an English student, studying for her BA.
It is best to know an areas local superstitions before wandering about exploring.
Andrew Richardson lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife, son, and a hamster. When not writing or working as a science administrator Andrew visits historical sites, watches his favourite football team, and takes long walks over rugged countryside. His lifelong interests of horror fiction and history often combine to provide inspiration for his writing, which includes three novels and several shorter pieces. For more on Andrew http://andrewjrichardson.blogspot.co.uk/
Alone I walked solemn
along the gravel paths
in the bleak shadows of the graves
when I saw an entourage dressed in black
with a coffin of finest oak
Who is buried in this late hour
so secretly laid to rest
in the most distant corner
in the field of death?
When I reached the open grave
the night laid still and desolate
curious I sneaked to the edge
and gazed surprised down
in the open empty coffin
when I felt a hard push
and fell headlong
in the soft velvet death
In the suffocating dark
I could hear
ashes to ashes
and earth to earth
that fell on my lid
and my brother and my fiancé
laughing as ravens from hell
Some dark nights of the year, terrible things like to lurk through cemeteries looking for something to eat.
Erin Cole is a dark fiction writer from Portland, OR with stories appearing in over 50 print and electronic publications, including Dark Eclipse, Eschatology, Aoife’s Kiss, Every Day Fiction, and more. She is the author of the mystery novel Grave Echoes and the horror anthology collection Of the Night. See more of her work at www.erincolewrites.com
Nathan J.D.L. Rowark is a poet and horror novelist from London, England. His works include over fifty poems and stories published in various e-zines, anthologies, and magazines since his return as a storyteller in 2010. He is the founder of Horrified Press (horrifiedpress.wordpress.com), and hopes to help publicise some of the great new stars working in modern horror today.
Return Fair
Nathan J.D.L. Rowark
Carried along on an excrement’s flume, the corpse of dear William left its tomb,
floating away by a tributary stance, to be righted once more and regain a lost stance.
Hitting the crest of a sewer built wave, without ticking pulse or a heartbeat to save,
last rights of passage dissolved in the hume, of a thick oozing liquid, his bones to consume.
Slipped from the graveyard, then stolen away, the earth was found willing to give William his day.
A chemical sludge from pipe fractured nearby, that had hole in its tunnel for a gentleman’s eye,
found worms passage teeming from a miscreant deed, as a cellular wriggled collective agreed,
the unjust of internments need turn on its head, so a constable’s murder could be forgotten instead.
Moulded in structure, yet weak from decay, three hundred years of mystery began to melt away,
until a fusion’s symphony, unnatural in its end, rose up the banished legacy of an England to defend.
Surveying self most vigorously, a thief taker replaced, arms and legs peculiar, from grotesque feet embraced,
William rose to greet the dawn, for the bell tower ring of his penitence cried. “I am fairly returned,” he remembered, “for no longer have I died.”
They wept: — memories staggered down the passageway.
Brought home through the torrents of scalding rain, they fled.
Paths of life dreamt; forever denied an angels mercy.
Forgotten, dispossessed, banished within our realm,
the spirit resisted the lures of life, be gone it whispered.
Twins flames of anger shone forth from the windows of that lonely home.
In the midnight hour, the soul’s pain shone in retrospective virulence.
Hatred for the living smelted the flesh, burnished the souls, which walked the lane.
Abandoned in the primordial depths, they despised the wicked living,
A living death, a seeker of flesh, it waited, it craved.
Emotional rot in its core, the beast of Hunter’s Lane resisted
the call to lay in its grave, come to me, it begged those without.
In the darkness of the window, it sought victims for play.
Withered from life’s destitution, the prey moved close.
A family’s wretched spirits gained a foothold within its lair.
The seeker concealed, spoke in dreams of murder and misdeed.
Darkness bloomed, shedding the light of eternal warmth,
as the malignancy cajoled the young one, join me it implored.
Forever unite with I; we shall explore deaths boundless light.
Within the home on Hunter’s Lane, she crept along those corridors.
While in her hand, the blade dripped with crimson nectar,
as the trail led from bed to bed.
Warmth fled as the steel turned red: — a soul’s death.
In the horrid expanse of her mind, desires of life rebelled; I am dead.
Her life of promise abandoned as she fled the shattered remains.
A corpse lay in the attic, her journey corrupted by the beast.
While along the lane, passerby’s whispered of the curse they bore.
The House on Hunter’s Lane: — a crypt for the dead.
Sometimes we have to do mundane tasks at work before heading home for the night. Sometimes those mundane tasks turn terrible.
Philip Roberts lives in Nashua, New Hampshire and has been published in a variety of publications, such as the Epitaphs anthology, Midnight Echo, and The Horrorzine. A full anthology of Philip’s short stories entitled Passing Through can be found on the Amazon kindle store. More information on his works can be found at www.philipmroberts.com.
Russell C. Connor has been writing about demons, serial killers, and the end of the world since he was five years old. His short work has appeared in “Black Petals Magazine,” “Alien Skin,” and “Sanitarium,” among others. He currently has six novels available, including the supernatural crime-noir “Finding Misery,” and “Whitney,” about hurricane survivors facing a deadly plague and a ravenous beast. His newest, a Bermuda Triangle horror novel called “Sargasso,” will be available in March of 2013. He lives in Grand Prairie, TX with his mistress of the dark, rabid dogs, and extensive movie collection, and has been a member of the DFW Writers’ Workshop for 7 years. For more visit: www.darkfilament.com
We are pleased to welcome 2013 with a horror poem by Allen Griffin.
Allen Griffin has appeared in Theory Train, Indiana Horror Anthologies 2011 and 2012, and several other cool places. He also has pieces forth coming in Innsmouth Free Press and several anthologies including Modern Lovecraft and Grave Robbers. (more…)
By: Marie Robinson
Many supernatural legends ensnare their prey with appearing to be illusions. In Celtic folklore, the Kelpie does just that.
Marie Robinson is a young woman from St. Louis, MO who has an obsession with the supernatural, Gothic literature, horror films and all things macabre. She is studying to be a folklore expert and is one of two writers for the horror blog Fascination With Fear. She has had three pieces published this year, one featured in an anthology released by Black Hound Digital Press and two can be read in issues of Sanitarium magazine. Her blog can be found here: www.fascinationwithfear.blogspot.com (more…)
