I’d read haunted hotel stories online and rolled my eyes at every one. Cold spots, footsteps, a lady in white at the end of the hall. Then I spent five nights in Room 309 of an old railroad hotel in Montana, and every time I hung the Do Not Disturb sign, somebody turned it around … Read more
I always thought scary bigfoot stories were for people who wear camo to the grocery store. Then my dad and I spent a weekend at his cabin in the Washington Cascades, and something in the trees learned his knock. I’d heard plenty of bigfoot horror stories from guys at the gas station. None of them … Read more
Most hitchhiker horror stories are about what happens after you stop. This one is about a man I never stopped for. I passed him at three different exits on the same empty stretch of Nevada interstate, forty miles apart, and he was always holding the same cardboard sign. I’ve heard plenty of scary hitchhiker stories … Read more
Telling ghost stories at Christmas is an old tradition. Long before anyone told them at Halloween, families sat by the fire on Christmas Eve and scared each other. These twenty short Christmas horror stories keep the tradition going. All original, all set during the holidays, most of them inside a house full of lights and … Read more
The best two sentence horror stories work like a trapdoor. The first sentence is the floor. The second one opens it. We wrote forty of them for you, all original, sorted into four groups. Read them one at a time. Then go check that the back door is locked. Two Sentence Horror Stories at Home … Read more
I didn’t want this to be a sasquatch encounter story. For the first two weeks, I thought it was a prank. Somebody on the crew messing with the new guy. That’s what trail crews do. But nobody on our crew could have built those stacks, and by the end, none of us were laughing. We … Read more
Some of the creepiest urban legends have nothing in them that sounds scary when you say it out loud. In Baltimore, the one my grandfather told me is about a man in a gray suit who asks you what time it is. That’s it. He’s polite. He has a nice hat. He asks the time. … Read more
Every kid in Callis, Kentucky, grew up with the same small town urban legend. If you parked on the Gilly Creek bridge at midnight and flashed your headlights three times, the Lantern Lady would come walking up the creek bank toward your car. I was forty-four before I found out who made her up, and … Read more
My new house horror story starts with something every buyer hears at closing: “The sellers left the garage remotes in the kitchen drawer.” There were two remotes in that drawer. The garage door opener had three programmed. I’ve read a lot of scary stories with a twist since then, and none of them started with … Read more
This Halloween stalker story is about a costume I spent six weeks making by hand, and the person who showed up wearing a perfect copy of it at three different parties in three days. I’ve read a lot of adult scary stories since, and none of them felt as close to home. I’m a dental … Read more