This week, we have a slew of announcements (including ’s recent book release), and three amazing stories featured by community members who have helped form the foundation of MM.

They all explore what we use to keep the dark at bay, and what happens when those things fail. traces the long history of fire as judgment and revelation in Victorian literature, from real London infernos to Dickens’s spontaneous combustions. tells the story of a town where everyone wears a silver bell to ward off evil (nothing could possibly go wrong, right). And gives us another preview into his revision of Dracula’s Ghost. He leads us into a quiet, haunted hallway, where portraits of the dead keep watch over the one woman who survived them.

Enjoy...if you dare.

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Announcements

Macabre Monday’s Summer Drive-In Contest:

A couple weeks ago, Macabre Monday kicked off a summer-long community event: the Summer Drive-In. Every week through the end of August, we’ll post a new scary prompt. Write something inspired by it (2,500 words or less), post it to the Macabre Monday chat, and it’s in the running. The team will curate favorites along the way, and at the end of summer, the community votes on the best of the best, and the winners get a shot at being featured in a limited-run Macabre Monday anthology.

Submissions are open all summer, so jump in anytime. You don’t have to start this week to participate later.

(To submit, simply link your story in the weekly chat. This allows us to easily facilitate community voting and keep track of things on our side.)

Prompt:

High Tide: A coastal town empties out every year on the same date, and nobody who stays behind will explain why.

Track the prompts via the post below!

Author Interview Series:

• In two weeks, get ready for the first release in our new Macabre Monday podcast series. Meet the author behind the horror. To start things off, we interview about her horror novella, Imp. If you would like to read the book before we dive behind the scenes, it is available for free on Kindle unlimited, or for purchase on Amazon. Ebook only.

  “It’s not a ‘he’, it’s an it.
  And I call it Imp.”

  Cal Thornton is struggling. After the film adaptation of his bestselling horror novel failed at the box office, his career has been on life support for ages, and he desperately needs a change of scenery...and maybe even a miracle.
  
  When his publisher sends him to Graft Creek Lodge for a silent creative retreat, Cal is skeptical at first. Even when he meets aging painter Richard Avalon, who swears up and down that there’s something special about Graft Creek. Something almost spiritual.
  
  As the retreat commences and the silence settles, Cal begins to suspect that there is indeed something haunting the woods around Graft Creek Lodge.

  ---

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• gave us a sweeping look at fire in Victorian literature. From the real inferno that consumed London's Tooley Street wharves in 1861, to Dickens's infamous use of spontaneous combustion in Bleak House, to Sherlock Holmes staging a fake fire just to see what Irene Adler would save first.

  Victorian Vignettes

  Fire in Victorian Literature

  On 22 June 1861, flames broke out in a wharf on Tooley Street, near London Bridge. The ensuing fire burned for nearly a fortnight. Warehouses packed with hemp, tallow, tea and timber became furnaces; molten fat ran into the Thames, and explosions tore through the night. The blaze grew so intense that it generated its own wind system…

  Read more

  8 days ago · 14 likes · 5 comments · A. B. Frank

• gave us "Silver Bells," a short story about a town that isn’t quite right. Everyone wears a silver bell from birth, supposedly to ward off evil. But it quickly becomes something far more sinister when the narrator loses theirs. A great folklore tale.

  Cobwebs and Candles

  Silver Bells

  Everyone in town wore a necklace with a silver bell charm hanging from it. Some were fancy with delicate filigree and gems while others were plain. A few didn’t even have silver chains, just the bell dangling from a leather cord…

  Read more

  7 days ago · 12 likes · 3 comments · Lauren Salas

• gave us a preview from his ongoing rewrite of Dracula's Ghost. Katherine Holmwood, a character pulled from Stoker's deleted drafts, sits alone with portraits of Mina and Lucy, the ghosts of her dearest friends still murmuring in her memory. A lovely, elegiac piece for anyone who's ever wondered what happened to the women left behind in Stoker's world.

  Dracula’s Ghost

  Dracula's Ghost - Revised Edition

  Here’s another of my favorite scenes from the ongoing rewrite of Dracula’s Ghost, one that uses a deleted character from Stoker’s original work…

  Read more

  7 days ago · 3 likes · Travis Blake

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

just published his second book of The Shieldbreaker Saga: Behind the Grin!

Buy the paperback here, from Books.by

Buy the ebook here, from Gimmebook

About the book:

PEACE BUILT ON A LIE CAN ONLY LAST SO LONG...

Unaware of the fate of their civilian caravan, the warriors of Hodrir join the Pohyor horde and take up residence as part of the warlord’s garrison in the proud, ancient, collapsing city of Ikune.

Kareva is still struggling to keep control of his madness as well as his people, and his heroics at Valtaa are only worth so much political capital, especially after he bent the knee to an outsider.

Meanwhile, tensions within the warlord’s inner circle threaten the all-important air of invincibility that binds the assorted Pohyor tribes to their leader—especially since Ikune has historically never stayed in the same hands for long.

The only certainty, in a city built on the illusion of stability, is that nothing is sacred enough to be completely safe when the truth finally comes out…

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Welcome to Macabre Monday’s Summer Drive-In.

A community event that will last until the end of August. Each week, a new summer scary prompt. The Macabre Monday team will curate our favorites, and at the end, we’ll open it up to a vote for your favorites!

Submissions start next week, and will be open all summer long.

The Prize: Enter to be featured in a limited time Macabre Monday anthology.

Rules:

1. Submissions must be 2,500 words or less

2. To submit, you must post to the Macabre Monday chat! This makes it easy for the community (and the admins) to access each week’s stories.

Prompts:

June 15th - High Tide: A coastal town empties out every year on the same date, and nobody who stays behind will explain why.

June 22nd - COMING SOON

June 29th - COMING SOON

July 6th - COMING SOON

July 13th - COMING SOON

July 20th - COMING SOON

July 27th - COMING SOON

August 3rd - COMING SOON

August 10th - COMING SOON

August 17th - COMING SOON

August 24th - COMING SOON

Something ancient and mysterious runs through the three featured storied this week. From a Lovecraftian horror at a weekend getaway, to the untempered revenge of the gods, each of these stories is a cautionary tale.

The forbidden wears many faces. Sometimes it’s a crumbling house on the moors that promises a quiet weekend and delivers something you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to unsee. Sometimes it’s the audacity of a minor goddess who dares to heal what the powerful broke. And sometimes it’s a century-old secret buried so deep in loyalty and punishment that by the time it surfaces, you can’t tell the executioner from the condemned.

Enjoy…but not too much.

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Announcements

• An author interview series is making its way to Macabre Monday! Featuring Substack authors we all know and love. Get ready to meet the people behind the stories!

• Summer is finally here. At least in spirit. As I write this, I’m outside listening to birds, and one particularly noisy cricket who seems confused about the time of day. Bees are buzzing. Ants are collecting for the colony. And I’m thinking about what an incredible time summer is for horror.

  Late fall and winter are simply too dreadful. Notice the manufactured cheer that the flurry of holidays brings. A reminder that the world is not always dark and dead, that light will come again. It can be hard to peer into Pandora’s box in the middle of winter.

  But during summer? Summer is the time for exploration, for trying new things. And in honor of that, I’d like to announce a new summer community event.

  Welcome to Macabre Monday’s Summer Drive-In.

  A community event that will last until the end of August. Each week, a new summer scary prompt. The Macabre Monday team will curate our favorites, and at the end, we’ll open it up to a vote for your favorites!

  Submissions start next week, and will be open all summer long.

  The Prize: Enter to be featured in a limited time Macabre Monday anthology.

  Rules:

  1. Submissions must be 2,500 words or less

  2. To submit, you must post to the Macabre Monday chat! This makes it easy for the community (and the admins) to access each week’s stories.

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• A remote house on the moors. A sleepless night. Something tapping at the window where no trees grow. What begins as a creepy weekend getaway curdles into visceral nightmare when the darkness outside finds its way in. delivered a cross between the creeping dread of a gothic story and something out of Lovecraft’s . Enjoy!

  Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

  The Spectre of Greymere House

  Written for a prompt by John Watson - Horror Author…

  Read more

  11 days ago · 14 likes · 4 comments · Wendy Cockcroft

• posted a short story, “Goddess of Gaps.” Meden, a minor goddess, cannot turn away from the widows of Troy, the fatherless children, the wounds that empires leave behind. But healing the forgotten is a dangerous act when the gods who made the wreckage are still watching.

  St. Sinjin

  Goddess of Gaps

  Read more

  14 days ago · 7 likes · 6 comments · Kate M. Sine

• wrote a reimagined origin story of the most enduring military treatise the world has ever known. In a crumbling prison-fortress older than memory, two men have shared a century-long ritual of punishment, strategy, and strange devotion. Each day, the eunuch Jia Lin journeys through a labyrinth to administer the ancient rite of lingering death upon the legendary general Ying Zheng. But between executioner and condemned, something far more complex than cruelty has taken root. A game of weichi. A brotherhood hidden in plain sight.

  D.W. Davison

  Lingchi (凌遲)

  Read more

  16 days ago · 14 likes · 1 comment · D.W. Davison

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

I noticed a common thread in the stories you all posted in chat last week. The question seemed to reverberate: what does it mean to get what we deserve?

The stories below don’t all answer that the same way. Some find fury. Some find resignation. Some find the dark, absurd comedy of realizing you never read the fine print. But they’re all circling the same wound. What happens when the time comes to reap what you’ve sown?

Enjoy.

Subscribe now

Announcements

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• gave us a quiet gut-punch about a man named Shaun, who spent fifty years bleeding for a company that handed him a gold-plated watch on the way out the door. Sometimes horror isn’t about the melodrama. It sits in the quiet dread of a life wasted. Enjoy “Gold watch Blues.”

Jason Duck- A Journey into Darkness

Gold watch Blues

Shaun stared at the gold watch that lay in the palm of his wrinkled, arthritic hand. The sound of half-hearted applause echoing around the small office, smells of BO and stale coffee lingering in the still air…

Read more

24 days ago · 6 likes · Jason Duck

• continued his serialized fantasy The Imperator's Spy with "Desperate Gamble," and if you haven't been following this one, now is the time to start. Our spy is trapped in a chamber with a ruler who may not deserve the loyalty he's been shown, and every move is a calculation between survival and conscience.

  Everywhere and Nowhere: Explore New Fantasy Worlds

  The Imperator's Spy, Part 26

  The soul magic within me probably could do nothing to counter the the earth magic surging through the imperator. But his invocation of demonic magic might make him vulnerable to the power of my Animaan ancestors…

  Read more

  21 days ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Bill Hiatt

• brought us “One Among the Herd.” A psychic cow walks into a slaughterhouse knowing exactly what's coming. What she does next is quiet, devastating, and morally complicated in ways the story doesn't flinch from. Mata also includes generous writing notes on metaphor families and point of view. In his posts you always find a genuinely useful exploration of craft tucked behind each story.

The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

Short ecohorror fiction: One Among The Herd

Hi everyone, I’m Mata and I send you short horror fiction every week…

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24 days ago · 15 likes · 6 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• opened Season Three of Beach Reads for Goth Kids with "Xtreme Mancation," and it is exactly as unhinged as it sounds. Marc is on a men's retreat that won't let him leave. His friend Braden is receiving a waterfall of increasingly desperate postcards. If you have never partaken in EJ’s Beach Reads for Goth Kids, and horror with a Hawaiian shirt is your jam, subscribe!

  Age of Aquarius

  Xtreme Mancation

  Welcome to Season Three of Beach Reads for Goth Kids, the original Substack summer horror extravaganza. All season long, I’m delivering salty stories with summery themes. So turn down your a/c and join me for heatwave madness, monsters that stalk from the shore, and things that go bump in the backyard. Oh, and they aren’t really for kids, just the misun…

  Read more

  24 days ago · 35 likes · 14 comments · EJ Trask

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Walk with us to the graves of terrifying monsters past. Reflect on their stories and the fear they conjured in the hearts of their victims. Be careful not to plant a shovel in the dirt or call out their names at a specified hour. You don’t want to wake the dead and take their place, do you?

Tell us, your faithful cryptkeepers, which dead horror villain lingers in your thoughts on this day devoted to remembering the dead. Share with us in the comments below or our weekly chat thread.

Subscribe now

Announcements

If you’re searching for inspiration on crafting your next horror tale, or you just want to devour a bunch of new scary stories, you’ll want to bookmark The Halls of Pandemonium directories that is curating weekly in his Substack newsletter. These directories offer daily prompts and linked lists of stories and poems inspired by those prompts from emerging and seasoned authors from around Substack.

The Writer's Journey

The Halls of Pandemonium: Week 4 Directory

I dearly hope this scheduling tool works properly. You humans put far too much trust in technology. In any case, hello and greetings! This is Lord Devereaux, speaking to you from the past…

Read more

24 days ago · 17 likes · Bradley Ramsey

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• A one-eyed magpie doll is a conduit for omnious things in Nils — ’s latest chilling tale.

Automatic Writer

Nils

The thread had snapped three weeks into December, but I was aware of my seasonal propensities, and so I closed my eyes as I fell into the emotional squalor of winter, trusting my anguish to subside w…

Read more

a month ago · 28 likes · 23 comments · Sean Thomas McDonnell

• Maurice finds a pulsating lump on his chest one morning. This is only the beginning of a frightening ordeal with The Thing Inside, a body horror story from .

Writing Fears

The Thing Inside

This is my response to day 17 of the Halls of Pandemonium. Today’s challenge was to write a short story or poem about somebody’s trauma manifesting in physical form on their body…

Read more

a month ago · 14 likes · 6 comments · M. Brandon Robbins

• This prose poem, from , centers on a girl whose trauma manifests as invasive flowers. Floral Revenant is an appropriate horror tale for springtime.

Tales From a Wilted Rose

Floral Revenant

This my entry for the Day 17 Prompt of Bradley Ramsey’s The Halls of Pandemonium. I’ve been meaning to join in on this challenge for a while now and today’s body horror prompt about trauma manifesting physically was too hard to pass up. I’ve also made this entry extra special by adding my own voice over with music accompaniment. I would love to hear you…

Read more

a month ago · 49 likes · 18 comments · Coral Evermore

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Do you love scary stories? Then you won’t be able to put down Eye See You — a terrifying new anthology from some of your favorite Substack authors.

Eye See You features 18 chilling horror stories centered on eyes and what they see and experience. These stories have been collected and edited by Erica Drayton of Top In Fiction (with a forward from , one of the resident Macabre Monday cryptkeepers.) Each story is designed to haunt your nightmares and make you see all sorts of things you were afraid to see.

Buy it now!

Grab your PRINT copy today: (click the relevant link below)
Amazon US / Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org
Walmart.com

Grab your EBOOK copy today: (click link below)
TiF Press Shop

Top In Fiction

🥳 Eye See You: A Horror Anthology 💀

Read more

2 months ago · 36 likes · 3 comments · Erica Drayton and The TiF Team

Eighteen horror and dark speculative fiction writers came together for a shared creative challenge centered on the concept of watching eyes. What those eyes witness, who they belong to, and why they watch varies wildly from story to story — yielding a collection as imaginative as it is disturbing. From quiet, creeping dread to moments of outright terror, these tales examine surveillance, perception, obsession, and the horrifying consequences of being noticed when you least expect it.

This anthology invites readers to peer into worlds where sight itself becomes a weapon, a curse, or a doorway to something far worse. The result is a haunting exploration of fear that lingers long after the final page-best read with the lights on, and perhaps the curtains drawn.

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces, and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Mother's Day was yesterday, and what better way to come down from all that brunch and flower-giving than with stories about what waits for you after you crawl in bed? Mothers teach us to be afraid of the right things. Strangers. Sharp corners. The deep end of the pool.

But the best horror knows that the things worth fearing don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they wave at you from the wall. Sometimes they bleed quietly in the night. Sometimes they love you so hard they hollow themselves out to do it.

Enjoy!

Subscribe now

Announcements

and did a collab together, and the result is a murder zine! Buy Diary of a Murder here!

Diary of a Murder is an exclusive murder mystery from Bridget Riley (author of Naptime Novelist) and EJ Trask (author of Age of Aquarius).

Can two amateur detectives solve a cold case that everyone else has given up on? Drew and Jane are writers, but when they find the diary of a murdered woman, they’re suddenly inside the story.

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• brought us “Afterlife.” A gorgeously written piece set in 2138, where there's no earth left to bury the dead, and certain people carry souls so others don't have to. Tender and imaginative. One of the most quietly beautiful things I've read in a while.

  St. Sinjin

  Afterlife

  Read more

  a month ago · 2 likes · Kate M. Sine

• gave us “Shadow.” Who knew you could turn a prompt about a possum having peppermint tea into this. Eve wakes at 2am, as she always does. But tonight, her shadow waves at her. What follows is quiet, deliberate, and deeply unsettling.

  Writing Fears

  Shadow

  I wrote this off of a prompt from 501 Daily Writing Prompts: 501 Prompts to Unleash Creativity and Spark Inspiration by Tarn Wilson. I took a perfectly innocent prompt for a whimsical fantasy story a…

  Read more

  a month ago · 4 likes · M. Brandon Robbins

• dropped a sharp, thoughtful review of the new Canadian film Honey Bunch. If you haven't heard of it yet, consider this your sign. Maria writes about the film through a disabled lens, exploring how new weird horror can capture the specific vulnerability of long-term partnership, caretaking, and bodies that don't cooperate.

  Horror Addenda

  Honey Bunch is the new weird: A review of new Canadian thriller through a disabled lens

  With I Worn My Elbows by Scottish poet and musician Ivor Cutler playing in the background, Homer carries his injured wife Diana out into a lake where she can float in the water. It’s the first scene of Sims-Fewer & Mancinelli’s (2025) film Honey Bunch…

  Read more

  a month ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Horror Addenda

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

A new Substack horror anthology is out and available for purchase! of released a collection by names you know and love. Eye See You is a curation of 18 authors (and a forward by our own of the Macabre Monday grave tenders—clears throat—I mean, admins).

Buy it now!

Grab your PRINT copy today: (click the relevant link below)

Amazon US / Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org

Walmart.com

Grab your EBOOK copy today: (click link below)

TiF Press Shop

Top In Fiction

🥳 Eye See You: A Horror Anthology 💀

Read more

2 months ago · 36 likes · 3 comments · Erica Drayton and The TiF Team

Eighteen horror and dark speculative fiction writers came together for a shared creative challenge centered on the concept of watching eyes. What those eyes witness, who they belong to, and why they watch varies wildly from story to story-yielding a collection that is as imaginative as it is disturbing. From quiet, creeping dread to moments of outright terror, these tales examine surveillance, perception, obsession, and the horrifying consequences of being noticed when you least expect it.

This anthology invites readers to peer into worlds where sight itself becomes a weapon, a curse, or a doorway to something far worse. The result is a haunting exploration of fear that lingers long after the final page-best read with the lights on, and perhaps the curtains drawn.

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

This week we have something for every flavor of dread. A dead wife who came home with a letter and a demand. A young man alone in the Appalachians with his grandmother’s ashes and the creeping feeling the mountain knows he’s there. And a forgotten village on a Japanese mountainside where the most terrifying thing isn’t what haunts the living. It’s what the living did to deserve it. Three writers, three very different kinds of darkness, and every single one of them will stay with you.

Settle in. You’re going to want to read all of these.

Subscribe now

Announcements

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• posted “Hut at the end of our village”, a psychological horror story that works as a standalone tale, or as part of a greater web of interconnected stories.

  Set in a forgotten Japanese mountain village, this is the story of Noroi, a village outcast whom many believe is a monster. What happens when they decide to do something about it? Atmospheric, deeply human, and told with the kind of quiet precision that makes you feel the smoke in the back of your throat. Go read it, but maybe not in the dark.

  Wirrowac’s Playground

  Hut at the edge of our village

  Welcome to the playground…

  Read more

  2 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · J Wirrowac

• gave us the first chapter of his serial, Believe You Me.

  A young man heads alone into the Appalachian wilderness to spread his grandmother’s ashes. But with absolutely no hiking experience, the mountain wastes no time making him feel the weight of his family errand. To survive, he’ll have to remember his grandmother’s stories of all the horrors the woods are home to.

  This is a brand new serial, but I’m really excited to see where this one goes. Beautifully written, deeply atmospheric, and the perfect read for anyone who has ever felt the pull of somewhere they had no business going.

  Legendarium

  Directions

  « Introduction…

  Read more

  2 months ago · 3 likes · S.M. Osborne

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

just released the paperback version of their newest novel, Shadows of the Wall!

Summary:

Rome is dying, and the silence at the world’s edge is hungry.

At the frozen limit of the Empire, the wind speaks with the voices of the dead.

Praepositus Aelius Corven is the last breath of a suffocating command. Stationed at Hadrian’s Wall, he oversees a starving garrison and a stone barrier that no longer holds back the night. The supplies have stopped coming. The patrols are vanishing. But it is the silence from the north that chills the blood—a calculated, watching silence that suggests the enemy is no longer afraid.

The Picti are not just raiding. They are evolving.

Strange omens drift over the parapets: ash that smells of bone, wolves that judge the living, and voices in the mist that mimic Roman sentries with terrifying precision. As the discipline of the Legion crumbles into paranoia, Aelius is dragged into a nightmare beyond the shield wall—a captive of the druid Mael, a man who intends to dismantle the Empire not with swords, but by rewriting the souls of its soldiers.

Haunted by the memory of his stolen daughters and bound by a duty that has lost its meaning, Aelius must navigate a landscape where reality thins and the old gods hunger. But the ultimate horror waiting in the northern wilds isn’t death. It is the discovery of what has been taken from him—and the realization that some things are not meant to be saved.

When the Wall falls, the only path left is into the dark.

A.M. Blackmere

Shadows of the Wall: PREVIEW

Read more

2 months ago · 17 likes · A.M. Blackmere | Author

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

We have a new voice in the community! Cody Gaul comes to us from Iowa, where the winters are long, the isolation is real, and apparently the horror writes itself. A lifelong devotee of Stephen King and Adam Nevill, Cody writes the kind of slow-burn psychological dread that gets under your skin and stays there. Ordinary people, extraordinary darkness, and guilt that won’t stay buried. His debut short story collection is coming later this year, but in the meantime, he is publishing here.

Read "Miss Me?". It builds exactly the way the best horror does: quietly, then all at once. Give it a read, leave him a comment, and make him feel welcome.

Cody Gaul's Substack

Miss Me?

Did you really think it was going to be this easy…

Read more

2 months ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Cody Gaul

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

You made it. Another week, another reason to sleep with the lights on.

Inside this issue, we’ve got monsters, mayhem, and at least one ending you absolutely did not see coming (we checked). Whether you’re curled up under a blanket or reading this in a cemetery, we’re just glad you’re here.

Stay scared. Stay weird. And whatever you do, don’t go into the basement.

Announcements

• Yesterday, the Lunar Awards Season 11 horror winner , runner up , and honorable mentions and were announced! Our very own was the judge. If you haven’t had a chance, peruse the announcement, read the stories, and share with your friends.

Lunar Awards

Announcing Winners for LA S11 | Round 2 | Horror

Announcing the Winner and Runners up for Round 2 of the Lunar Awards: Horror…

Read more

2 months ago · 25 likes · 6 comments · Shaina Read

• has a short story, “The Clearing,” currently up for voting for the next Dark Descent magazine! Click the link, read the stories, and VOTE to show your support!

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• wrote a poem, “What Grew At Blackthorn Edge.” It has a lovely tonal range: folk-tale menace in the verse sections, then a dry, almost domestic intimacy at the end. Enjoy!

  Caro’s Writing Perspectives

  WHAT GREW AT BLACKTHORN EDGE

  Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason…

  Read more

  2 months ago · 12 likes · Caro Henry

• wrote (a self described) tasty short story for you, “Everything Is Better With Carbs and Cheese.” It's a darkly comedic short story that builds from awkward to genuinely unsettling. Give it a read (but maybe not if you’re hungry).

  The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

  Tasty short horror story: Everything Is Better With Carbs And Cheese

  Hey there, I’ve got your order for a freshly baked tiny horror story! I’m Mata, and every week I send out flash fiction horror via this newsletter…

  Read more

  2 months ago · 10 likes · 8 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• wrote a surprising short story, “Good Boy…” If you ever had the urge to find out why that guy is ghosting you, think twice.

  Dracula’s Ghost

  Good Boy...

  The park was a narrow strip of bottomland that followed the river’s path, too flood-prone for homes but ideal for the dog walkers and little-leaguers who populated its environs during the summer. Its hinterlands were largely undeveloped, an empty pasture reverting to forest and an abandoned golf course whose cart paths transected the weed-choked fairway…

  Read more

  2 months ago · 10 likes · 9 comments · Travis Blake

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Subscribe now

You can rest assured our passion for your terrifying tales here at Macabre Monday persists through all seasons. Keep on sharing the stories with us and we will do our best to spotlight emerging voices and seasoned authors alike in our weekly newsletter.

Subscribe now

New Voices

• If you enjoy reading tales of the unexpected, you’ll want to check out ’s author newsletter. Thinking about strangers has an assortment of creepy tales that feature surprising twists and turns. Go read his latest stories and welcome him to our horror community.

Thinking About Strangers

A collection of dark short stories by Andrew Birney

By Andrew Birney

• offers short stories for adults that sometimes incorporate a dark contemporary horror vibe. These stories are described as “Cinematic. Plausible. Devastating.” Intrigued? You need to check those stories out and welcome this author to our horror community.

New to the Macabre Monday community?

Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week.

• A new short story from called Loop and Snare explores the perils of finding things connected to you in an unfamiliar forest. Trask has a knack for crafting gripping and terrifying tales and this one is no exception.

Age of Aquarius

Loop and Snare

One spring day in the forest, when everything was soft green and baby pink, and a lacy border of frost still lined the edges of the little creek, there on a frayed loop of twine dangling down from a branch into the rushing water, I found a piece of paper with my name on it…

Read more

2 months ago · 36 likes · 20 comments · EJ Trask

• Who doesn’t love a classic “what if?” alternate timeline story? If you’re a fan of all things Godzilla, you’ll especially devour this creepy “what if?” Godzilla tale called The Godzilla Suit Incident. This is a collaboration between and . We hope other collaborations will be forthcoming in the near future.

Slasher

The Godzilla Suit Incident

History is full of monsters…

Read more

2 months ago · 8 likes · Skyla and The Godzilla Papers

• If you enjoy taking long walks in the park, you might be looking over your shoulder on your next walk after reading A Walk in the Park — ’s latest prompt inspired creepy tale. Sunny days at the park will never be the same.

Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

A Walk In The Park

Written to a prompt from Emerald City Ghosts about sunshine and daffodils and for Matthew Holvey’s request for stories with plague doctors in…

Read more

2 months ago · 8 likes · 4 comments · Wendy Cockcroft

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?

Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Have a book or a story in a magazine or anthology published recently?

Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

Announcements

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?

Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Welcome to the first monthly issue of Macabre Monday.

I have wanted to do something like this for a long time. If you’re here, you probably know the feeling, that specific hunger for people who take horror seriously. Not grimly, not academically (well, sometimes academically), but with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you grab someone by the arm and say you have to see this film or I need to talk about that ending.

This is a space for that.

You’ll find two articles today: a feature where we discuss the evolution of horror (monsters in particular), and a personal essay from your local grave tender, , about a night in Kauai that I still can’t fully explain. Both pieces are about the same thing: fear.

This issue is light (we’re just getting started), but like all of Macabre Monday, we want this to be yours too. Got a film or book you can’t stop thinking about? A horror opinion that needs an audience? Short fiction, art, a true (or half true) scary story? This zine runs on community, and I want to feature the people in it. Reach out1. Get weird with it. We’re just getting started.

New to Macabre Monday? Welcome to Substack’s horror corner. We host a weekly chat thread where you can easily post and find the best horror on Substack, each week we feature stories, articles and poems from the community, and once a month, you get a feature article like the one you’re reading. Stick around. You won’t regret it!

cracked

/krækt/

-adjective-

Damaged by a line or lines of fracture without complete separation of parts; breached but not yet broken. “The shell was cracked but had not yet given way.”

informal Of a person: mentally or emotionally compromised; structurally unsound though outwardly intact. Distinguished from broken by the implication that something remains — and that what remains is unpredictable. “Everyone could see she was cracked long before she admitted it herself.”

-verb-

Broke partially; caused to fracture without full separation. “She cracked the egg against the rim of the bowl.”

-noun-

crack of dawn; The precise moment at which light first divides the dark; threshold between night and what follows it.

“She was gone before the crack of dawn, and left nothing to say she had been there.”

Origin: Old English cracian, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch kraken. The sense of mental unsoundness appears c. 1700. The sense of exceptional skill emerges c. 2015, via online gaming communities.

Do you know what’s inside? Hmm? If you lean in, you’ll see it’s almost time. The thing is cracked. Not wide, but enough so that you can see a web of color inside. The color of blood. Whatever it is, we’ll find out together, won’t we?

This, dear readers, is how I came to write this feature.

Weapons.

It wasn’t just Weapons mind you. Over the last year, I watched a series of horror flicks, and had dozens of interesting followup discussions with fellow horror fans that planted the seed for this article.

The general takeaway was this: horror has taken a weird turn.

It’s not meant to be a criticism (I like weird). It is simply an observation about the genre. Horror has always knocked society on its heels a bit. Maybe I’m just party to a post-King/Hitchcock/Lovecraft/Shelley world that allows me the delusion of imagining that this (IT, Rear Window, The Call of Cthulu, Frankenstein) simply is, and always has been horror.

What is the this I’m referring to? I’ll sum it up: the evil is inside you. That’s right folks. The modern horror story is here to remind you that “the call is coming from inside the house.” But horror wasn’t always this way. Let’s crack it open a little wider, and see what’s inside.

I. The Mythical Monster

Let’s start at the beginning, with myth. The Minotaur, Medusa, Scylla and Charybdis. Grendel in his mere. These monsters occupy a fixed location — the labyrinth, the island, the underwater hall — and the hero’s task is to go there, confront the thing on its own ground, and survive the encounter. The monster is immovable. It waits. The horror of the encounter is the horror of transgression. You went somewhere you should not have gone, and now you must face what lives there.

What these monsters don’t do, is follow you home.

II. Medieval Horror

Ah, the time of the dreaded other. The devil, demons, and of course witches, who wield their power against the innocent.

The external monster was supplemented by the infiltrating one. The devil did not live in the forest. The devil was everywhere, in everyone, whispering at the seam of every mind that had not fortified itself sufficiently with faith. Evil was no longer in a place. It was a susceptibility. The horror had moved from landscape to the interior person, but it was still, crucially, an intrusion. Something from outside that had gotten in.

III. The Gothic Turn

The Gothic novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is where the modern horror lineage begins, and it is here that the monster’s inward journey takes its first decisive step. Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, and later Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker gave the genre its architecture (quite literally). The Gothic is obsessed with structures: castles, manors, crypts, old houses whose physical decay is a direct expression of the moral decay of the people inside them.

The monster is still largely external. Dracula comes from Transylvania. The creature in Frankenstein is built from other bodies and animated by transgressive science. But something is shifting. The Gothic monster is increasingly a reflection. Victor Frankenstein’s creature is explicitly the externalized consequence of his creator’s ambition, his hubris, his refusal to accept natural limits. The monster and its maker are bound. You cannot fully separate them. The horror is not just the creature. The horror is what the creature says about the man who made it.

IV. 20th Century Horror

Twentieth-century horror, particularly American horror, split into two streams that ran parallel for decades before converging. The first was the external monster perfected. That’s right folks, creature features, alien invasions, giant radioactive animals. These films and stories were not naive. They were allegories, Cold War anxieties wearing rubber suits, but their monster remained, formally, outside.

It came from space!

It came from the sea!

It came from the atomic test site!

The threat was identifiable, and in the final act, destroyable.

The second stream was quieter and laid the foundation for modern horror. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959) gives us a haunted house that may not be haunted at all. Eleanor Vance does not encounter a monster. Eleanor Vance encounters herself, in a house that seems to have been architecturally designed to resemble the interior of an unstable mind. The horror is not that something got into the house. The horror is that Eleanor fits there so perfectly.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The Exorcist (1973). The Shining (1980). These books turned films were the foundational texts of horror’s mainstream golden age. All share a preoccupation that their surface plots obscure. They are all, at some level, about the family. What happens when the domestic space turns against itself? What happens when the husband becomes the threat, the child becomes a vessel for Satan, the mother cannot trust her own body or mind? The monster isn’t outside. It’s at home, eating with you at the breakfast table. It has a familiar face, and it knows you by name.

V. The Modern Horror Story

The last thirty years have completed the inevitable journey. Contemporary horror has largely abandoned the external monster as its primary engine. There are exceptions to this of course. The slasher, or the creatures in folk horror stories come to mind. But the most culturally resonant horror of the day has found terror definitively inside the self.

Hereditary (2018), a film about grief so severe it becomes indistinguishable from possession. Midsommar (2019), a film about a woman whose interior collapse is so total that a death cult begins to look like community. Pearl (2022) gives us a villain whose monstrous behavior is born not from supernatural infection, but from thwarted longing, from the gap between who she wanted to be and what the world permitted. The monster, in each case, grows from the inside out.

VI. Why Now

It is worth asking why horror is being presented this way at this particular moment in history. The external monster was always a projection. The wolf at the door was never just a wolf. It was poverty, war, the stranger, death. The monster is a container for what the culture can not say directly.

So what is horror saying to us now? We do not trust ourselves. We do not trust our institutions. We do not trust the appearance of good. We do not trust relationships, which are capable of concealing sustained cruelty behind the appearance of love. We do not trust our own minds, which are susceptible to manipulation, radicalization, and the slow infiltration of ideas that reshape us without our conscious consent.

The monster moved inside because that is where the fear lives now. Not at the border of our village. Not in the forest. Not in the dark beyond the firelight. Now we find ourselves asking…Do you know what’s inside? Hmm? If you lean in, you’ll see it’s almost time. The thing is cracked wide open now. I can see the gushing, pulsing red. The color of blood.

Let’s find out. Together.

It Happened to Me

“Lights Out”

By Shaina Read

In October of 2022, I took my family of four on our first vacation. We had traveled, but only to visit parents, friends, siblings. Never had we ventured out as our own little unit, and this was a big one. Kauai. I purchased tickets, reserved an Airbnb, and waited.

I have never managed to shake my fear of flying, but in my case, the anxiety is always a prequel to the act. Once I’m in the air, I can surrender to the inevitable. But in the months leading up to a trip (and that trip in particular), I spent many anxious nights imagining crashing into the blue ocean.

I grew up in Colorado, far from any water, and only visited the ocean a handful of times as a kid, including a cruise to the Bahamas. A family friend took me along on a trip with her daughter, when I was in third grade. To this day, nearly thirty years later, I can still picture waking up in the middle of the night, and peering out of the little round window in our cabin. Black ocean waves licked up the side of the boat. In the distance, dark water met darker sky. I was terrified.

Maybe my fear of the ocean started then. Whatever the case, I have made it a point to never stay away. You can’t let fear get the best of you. After all, life isn’t some horror movie guys. Right? Guys?!

Fast forward to this trip. It was great for the most part. We went on hikes and swam in the ocean and ate fish. The place I rented was on a cliffside. You could hear the waves crashing at night. The sound kept me awake. One hot night, I woke up sweating, the endless ocean loud and uncaring. All I could think about was how many people had died in its waters, their bodies pulled down into endless depths.

It sounds like death, I thought. (I promise, I’m not a downer. Really.)

Our days were much brighter. We spent most of our time at the beach. I swam, attempted (and failed) to surf, and explored waterfalls and bamboo forests. Before we knew it, it was time to go home. I packed our sandy clothes, put the kids to bed, and cleaned the place up before popping a Melatonin and heading to bed. The air was still and humid, and even with the windows open, it was too hot to sleep. Just as I finally started to drift, I remembered I had left the upstairs window open. My son’s bed was set up close to it, and in a panic I imagined what would happen if somehow he pushed through the screen in the middle of the night.

(Thanks mom brain).

I sat up, and heard voices out on the lawn below.

“Are you okay?” a woman’s voice called. I got up and saw she was with someone. Both of them were looking out to the ocean.

It was shallow and rocky below the cliffs. On our first morning there, we explored a few trails leading down to the ocean. Signs warned of the risks of going out at high tide. The waves were too rough, and the coral and rocks too dangerous for swimming. I followed the line of sight, and saw what looked like a flashlight bobbing in the water.

“Are you okay out there?” the voice called again, and I realized to my horror, that someone was out there. They must have wandered down the wrong trail.

The bright light dipped under the water for a moment, then came up again, shining towards the shore. I readied my phone, waiting, trying to decide if I was witnessing a drowning or a late night snorkeling tour in dangerous waters.

The window.

I remembered again, and rushed upstairs to close it. I planned to get dressed and go outside to see if I could help. But when I got back to my window, no one was there. The concerned citizens on the lawn had evaporated, and the ocean beyond was dark. There was no light, except for a quarter moon. Below, I could still hear the waves crashing.

I didn’t sleep well that night. During the dark morning drive to the airport, I searched for news of drownings. There was nothing. I kept checking in the following weeks, but I never found any stories that matched what I saw.

To this day, I question myself. I had just woken up, and we all know what melatonin dreams can be like. It’s possible I was still sleeping.

But I stood at the window and watched for minutes as the scene unfolded. I ran upstairs for a few seconds before coming back to a dark, empty night. I still don’t know what happened, but in the days after, I couldn’t help but think of the Will-o'-the-Wisp2. The old fae stories of distant fires and lights, said to lure people off of paths, and into bogs and marshes. I wondered if something was calling me, hoping I would offer a helping hand.

We’re looking to hear from YOU! The monthly issue is open to submissions from the Macabre Monday community. Have a review of a film or book? Want to post a horror opinion essay? Do you have short fiction that you want featured? Are you an artist looking for a spotlight in the horror community? Email us, leave a comment, or message us in the weekly chat.

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” — Stephen King

Steve King’s quote says it all, and the stories featured in today’s post were a brilliant escape into the underworld after a packed weekend. Next week is our first feature post after trying on this new format, and I can’t wait to deliver up a deliciously weird one for all of you. I know life gets busy and hard, but I want you all to know that reading your stories helped ground me this week. Much love to you all and as always, thank you for writing.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?
Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week

• posted a short story, “Hook Line and Sinker.” If you have never read J.J.’s work, fix that problem today. He is a brilliant horror writer who has published three books. My introduction to him was Waxwing Creek, a collection of interconnected horror stories that I gobbled up in a couple of nights. His newest novella, The Flowers at Flood House, is a must read for anyone who loves indie fiction. Beautiful, sad, and terrifying. Both are available in ebook or paperback on Amazon.

  David has loved fishing since he was a boy. But it isn’t the lake or his father’s memory that keep him coming back for more. David loves to see the look in their eyes, when they realize they’ve been caught.

  After Dusk

  Hook, Line, and Sinker

  Fishing. That’s what David called it. A ritual inspired by days spent with his father under a willow tree, by the lake, waiting for something to bite…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 8 likes · J.J. Walker

• wrote a 777-word horror story, “Low Stakes.” This one came as the result of a prompt randomizer. Read Mata’s post for the story, and a little behind the scenes extra.

  Doris Peabody’s job was easy: wait with the sleeping infant until the parents finished their gambling. But when a flashy casino dealer catches her eye, she finds herself in a high stakes poker game with all her money on the table. Her opponent isn’t folding, and she’s out of chips…until she decides to wager something more valuable.

  The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

  Gambling flash fiction: Low Stakes

  Howdy, y’all! I’m Mata, and I send out tiny horror stories in all kinds of sub-genres every week…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 10 likes · 5 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• gave us “Who Looks Inside Awakes,” a new short story set in a mythic roadside tavern, where a mysterious one-eyed barman invites weary travelers to test themselves at his arm-wrestling table, under the watchful eyes of broken men who came looking for the same thing and never left. But this is no ordinary contest. To win, a man must face the ghosts he’s been running from his whole life. And sometimes, the only way to beat them is to stop fighting altogether.

  They said you couldn’t look for it. That need had to find you. The Man has walked a long road to reach The Traveller’s Fist, a place where men come looking for what life failed to give them. The barman has one eye, gold teeth, and a table called Bellodora. The rules are simple, best of three. But some things can’t be won by force.

  The Why & the Why Not

  Who Looks Inside Awakes.

  “Who Looks Inside Awakes…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 13 likes · 14 comments · Nick Winney

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?
Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

• recently published a novel, Cherry Kills, with independent publishing collective, Tiny Worlds Publishing. If you don’t know Sean’s work, you can find it here on Substack at . If you like punk, horror, literature, a little bit of cowboy and a lot of weird, you’ll love his work.

  

  Cherry Kills wants to be left alone.

  Unfortunately, her Alternates: an overprotective lug, a happy-go-lucky child, and a mute rabbit the size of a man, have other plans.

  The doctor calls them hallucinations, symptoms of trauma.

  But when her Alternates start interacting with the world around her, Cherry realizes it might not be all in her head.

  •••

  Sean Thomas McDonnell’s breakthrough novella is as unique as his characters. Written in a quick, punk style this paperback merges a 90s ethos of music and fantasy as it unravels the mystery of Cherry’s imaginary friends.

Have something published recently?
Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

Announcements

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?
Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

Subscribe now

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Post your work here or in the chat! We host a new thread every week.

New Voices

Have you checked out Midnight Marginalia yet? You should add it to your reading list. This substack from is devoted to sharing “notes, essays, and creative work written in the margins of the night.” Emma-Louise shares new flash fiction tales every Friday and recently started a new serial called After Dark Investigations that gives off a cool X-Files vibe.

You can get started on the first installment below:

Midnight Marginalia

After Dark Investigations Presents: The Barghest

The dog was the size of a pony…

Read more

2 months ago · Emma-Louise Smith

New to the Macabre Monday community?
Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week

• It’s no secret that gambling is highly addictive. Why else do casinos and lotteries make such big bucks everywhere? penned a dark flash fiction story, Low Stakes, that finds a babysitter on a winning streak she’s convinced can’t possibly end.

  The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

  Gambling flash fiction: Low Stakes

  Howdy, y’all! I’m Mata, and I send out tiny horror stories in all kinds of sub-genres every week…

  Read more

  3 months ago · 9 likes · 5 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• An injured witch flees from a brutal band of hunters who cut down her coven in Black Rabbit — a haunting tale from that’s a new entry in her Word Not World Series.

  St. Sinjin

  Black Rabbit

  Read more

  3 months ago · 9 likes · 4 comments · Kate M. Sine

• You’ll never look at fishing in the same light after reading Hook, Line, and Sinker — an unsettling horror story from that changes fishing from a pleasant hobby into a training ground for a sadistic killer.

After Dusk

Hook, Line, and Sinker

Fishing. That’s what David called it. A ritual inspired by days spent with his father under a willow tree, by the lake, waiting for something to bite…

Read more

3 months ago · 7 likes · J.J. Walker

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?
Reply to this post or respond in the chat. We’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Publish something new recently?
Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

Announcements

• Join in a weekly writing challenge with all through April. The theme for this challenge is The Fool. Stories will revolve around fooling, being fooled, or fooling around. Wendy is looking for the full gamut of human experience and the vagaries of human nature.

  Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to write a story of 1,000 words or longer about the epic stupidity of either your character or their victim. The stories themselves can be about anything from vengeance to pranking and everything in between.

  You can check out weekly prompts on Wendy’s substack newsletter.

Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

I'm a no-nonsense unwoke horror, sci-fi, and fantasy-loving nerd. Come for the stories, stay for the fun. May contain nuts.

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?
Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Post your work here or in the chat! We host a new thread every week.

New Voices

New to the Macabre Monday community?
Post a link to your Substack in the comments! We’ll feature your work in an upcoming issue!

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week

• of Slasher shared some dinosaur horror in The Extinction Files. If you have never taken a tour of through Skyla’s work, do yourself a favor and check it out. She explores horror as a genre through a series of archive entries, exposing the evils of the systems we accept and promote. Horror is the mirror. A strange combination of found footage and conspiracy dossier, this is a Substack you won't want to look away from.

  They said the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago. They were wrong. From the corporate hubris of InGen's island paradise to clandestine government labs experimenting in the shadows, humanity has been quietly pulling things back from extinction. But curiosity has a price. The Archive has been watching. The files are open. And somewhere outside a window in Chicago, something ancient is staring back.

• posted a piece from her The Word Not World Series (WNW), an interactive anthology, Black Rabbit

  When the hunting party came for the coven, they thought they had won. But Silas did not burn with her sisters, and now she’s ready for vengeance. A gorgeous and disturbing witch tale that left us wanting more.

• gave us a preview of his revised version of Dracula’s Ghost, a serialized novel (series of novels actually) that he has been posting on Substack since 2023, and let me tell you, the writing is stellar. It picks up with Arthur Holmwood, the fiancé of Lucy, one of Dracula’s victims in Bram Stoker’s classic.

  Four years after the nightmare ended, Arthur Holmwood has rebuilt his life. A new love, a coming marriage, and the mercy of fading dreams. The darkness of 1893 is long past. But when a sleepless night draws him back to Carfax Abbey, he discovers that time can not heal all wounds.

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?
Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

• published a book, Roses and Blood, Shadows and Magic: A Collection of Dark Stories and Poems. Get it on Amazon.

  Dark are the woods. Evil are the shadows behind every tree. Magic spells are chanted and woven. Creatures of nightmare reach out to take you. Blood drips onto the soft petals of a black rose. Be aware and be afraid.

Have something published recently?
Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

Announcements

• Today is the final day for horror submissions to Round 2 of the Lunar Awards. I (Shaina) am the horror ambassador, and is the guest judge. The winner and runner up will receive a publication contract to be featured in the Lunar Awards anthology,

Lunar Awards

Lunar Awards S11 | Round 2 | Horror

Welcome to Round 2 of the Lunar Awards: Horror…

Read more

3 months ago · 34 likes · 2 comments · Shaina Read

• Our very own announced an upcoming book, the finale in a trilogy, Bleeders: All Hell. Available now for preorder!

  Bleeders: All Hell is the explosive finale to the action-packed, darkly comedic Bleeders trilogy.
  
  Brody Tate, professional zombie apocalypse survivor and lifetime contender for World's Biggest Smartass, has a lot on his plate. After barely escaping a trap set by his archnemesis Silas, he and his ragtag group have holed up in a rainy church to figure out their next move.
  
  The mission? Rescue Alison, the very woman who betrayed them the last time they tried to escape New York City. Before she'd vanished, reasons unknown, she'd left Brody with more than a fire in his loins. He holds a mysterious USB stick, contents also unknown. But Brody intends to learn the answers to both questions she left him with, face-to-face. If that means going through Silas—and anyone standing with him—so be it.
  
  And that's if the chaos-loving Smiley cult doesn't get in the way.
  
  Can Brody save the girl, smite his enemies, and escape the bloodied grips of a city that wants to eat him alive? Or will his plans all go to hell?

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?
Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

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The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you’re not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

New (To Me) Voices

This was my first introduction to , but it’s clear that many of you have already discovered them. A writer focused on raw truth, unsettling questions, and the beauty found in broken places. Their work leans into themes of faith, grief, and justice without offering easy answers. If you haven’t had a chance, check out their writing.

Bent But True

For the ones who feel too much, think too hard, and refuse to disappear. I write fractured fairy tales, raw memoir, and horror that shows the monster is never just a person—it’s the system that erases us. This is truth that doesn’t flinch—Bent But True!

By BentButTrue

• The Pilot by
  In a silent, deep-sea research station, a technician becomes complicit in a system that uses children to interface with something emerging from the ocean’s depths.

Featured Stories

Standout posts from last week

• The Witch of the Blue Ridge Mountains by
  A reckless young man living on the outskirts of Appalachia crosses paths with a sinister old woman at a remote reservoir. What begins as an unsettling encounter spirals into something far darker, as he becomes the target of an ancient, vengeful force tied to the land and the violent past of his community.

• Must Be Stress by
  A lab worker dismisses a series of strange symptoms, until she wakes to find her body has transformed overnight into something inhuman. As reality sets in and a panicked call from a coworker reveals a catastrophic breach at her workplace, she’s forced to confront the horrifying truth: whatever she’s become is only the beginning.

• Ten faces of death by

  A stunning multi-media post by Katherine, both poetic and jarring. If you haven’t had a chance to see her artwork, don’t miss this post.

Community Recommendations

Have a story you think deserves more readers?
Reply to this post or respond in the chat we’re always looking for pieces the community loves.

Recent Publications

Have something published recently?
Post a link in the comments, and we’ll include it in an upcoming issue.

Announcements

Have an announcement to share (releases, calls for submissions, or milestones)?
Let us know in the comments or the chat, and we’ll help spread the word.

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The chat is open. Bring your stories, your poems, your freshly published pieces and your works-in-progress. Bring the thing you wrote that you're not sure anyone will understand. Someone here will. Come say hello.

Happy Monday ghouls!

and here - for those of you who don’t know, John and I are the grave tenders at this Macabre corner of Substack. We have spent the better part of a year (maybe two?) keeping the lights on at MM, but over the past few months, we have found ourselves struggling to keep up.

Writing weekly articles on top of reading through each week’s stories and posts, along with curating special features is proving difficult in the midst of everyday life things (dogs, kids, jobs, personal newsletters and writing) the two of us are dealing with day to day. For that reason, we have decided to switch things up.

John and I got together to talk through what we want to provide the community, as well as what would be a realistic schedule for the both of us to write articles and contribute, and here is what we decided.

We’re making a small shift to the format of the newsletter.

Macabre Monday has always been about giving horror writers on Substack a community. It provides a place to find readers and be recognized for the work you all are putting out each week. The weekly mentions have been a big part of that, and we want to keep that momentum going.

What we’re changing is the structure.

Instead of pairing a weekly written post with the shout-outs, we’re moving toward a format that feels a little more like a digital horror zine.

Weekly posts will focus on recognizing writers and highlighting work from the community through a few consistent sections:

• New Voices – Writers who are new to the community or posting for the first time

• Featured – Standout stories or writers we want to highlight that week

• Published – Community members with recently published work in magazines, anthologies, or books

In addition, we’ll be introducing a monthly feature article. These will be more editorial in nature, something closer to a zine piece than a quick post. Expect essays, horror commentary, themed pieces, and possibly even featured art (calling all you artists out there).

The goal is to keep the weekly recognition of writers while also creating space for more thoughtful and creative features once a month.

We’re excited about the shift and the opportunity to shape the newsletter into something that feels a little more like a small horror magazine built around the community.

Thanks for writing each week and keeping things rolling!

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Have a book that you want featured in our Published section? Drop us a line! Be sure to include your name, the work(s) you want featured, and links to your books. We’ll add your book to a living section of this newsletter, and be sure to feature your works in our weekly posts!

Bite-sized horror tales can pack satisfying scares into small packages.

That’s the charm of a drabble within the horror genre. It takes a moment and tells a story that lingers with you like a guest who refuses to leave.

This is your third chance to try your hand at crafting your own dark drabble. We invited drabbles twice last year in January and in August. Now the time has arrived to form a complete drabble trilogy.

For those who are unfamiliar with this story form, a drabble is a story that’s exactly 100 words (excluding the story title). No more. No less. Every word counts in these brief tales. This also means every word in a drabble can leave a lasting impression on a reader.

Feel free to share your drabble in the comments below this newsletter, in our weekly chat thread, or on Substack notes (while tagging the Macabre Monday hosts, Shaina Read and John Coon).

Let’s see what scares you pull from your twisted minds in exactly 100 words.

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Substitute Crypt Keepers Wanted

• Do you love horror like you invented the genre?

• Are you an active participant in Macabre Monday?

If you answered yes to both questions, we want you to join our ranks as a future Macabre Monday guest host. Your next step is to contact one of the hosts (Shaina Read or John Coon) and let us know you’re interested in guest hosting for a week, and we’ll put you on the list.

The Horror Digest

A selection of recent memorable Macabre Monday offerings:

• What if aliens tested humans with questions like we do with ChatGPT? explores this scenario in a clever and dark sci-fi/horror tale.

The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

Silly sci-fi flash fiction: Are you alive?

Greetings! This is Mata, promptly bringing you another morsel of horror…

Read more

4 months ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• You won’t look at a game of chess the same way after checking out this scary tale from about long distance chess.

After Dusk

Checkmate

Elisa remembered the early letters. The joy that filled her mother’s face when one arrived…

Read more

4 months ago · 20 likes · 10 comments · J.J. Walker

• If you haven’t read a zombie poem, you need to experience it at least once. delivers the first of many zombie poems to come in their newsletter.

A Ghost in the Doorway

Prelude to an Unearthing

Black beetle legs scritch the prelude of an unearthing…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · M. N. Tarrint

• An acclaimed voice actor has a dark secret fueling his talent in ’s twisted tale.

Omniverse

Studio Time

Live, before a studio audience…

Read more

5 months ago · 1 like · Thaddeus Howze

• Few things are scarier than a rogue AI assistant as proves in this creepy sci-fi/horror tale.

  Writing From Weird

  A Helpy Home Hand

  Written for Bradley Ramsey’s “Flash Fiction February Day 16…

  Read more

  4 months ago · 14 likes · 16 comments · Leeron Heywood

• Do not break an old lady’s glass birds, or as you’ll find out in this tale from , it will not end well.

Legendarium

Shattered

Clair swept broken pieces of glass into a tidy pile, mixing dust bunnies in with the glinting shards. She hummed to herself an aimless melody in rhythm to her strokes. The whisper of the broom bristles and the tinkling of the glass accompanied her tune in a tiny symphony which broke into a percussion solo as she gathered the debris into a dustpan and cl…

Read more

4 months ago · 2 likes · S.M. Osborne

Valentine’s Day is around the corner, but here at Macabre Monday, that means more than soft colors, sweet words, and candy hearts. In the world of horror, love is often one of the most powerful forces we carry. Love transcends. That is why folklore and fiction alike are crowded with lovers who refuse to stay buried, promises that outlive the people who made them, and devotion that curdles into obsession. The same emotion that inspires poetry can also inspire terror; after all, nothing is more frightening than the fear of losing what we love.

Romantic horror thrives in small moments: a whispered vow, a lingering touch, a message that seems innocent until you read it twice. This Valentine’s week, we’re celebrating that uneasy overlap, the space where sweetness and dread share the same heartbeat. We’re inviting you to distill that feeling into something tiny and sharp, like a love note with teeth.

Community Contest: Candy-Heart Horror

Write a micro (think two-sentence horror, but we’re not being strict here) horror story that could live on a Valentine’s candy heart. Keep it short, punchy, and deceptively sweet. Your entry should capture romance twisted just enough to unsettle, blending affection with unease. Submit one original micro-fiction story inspired by love, obsession, heartbreak, or devotion gone wrong. We’ll feature our favorite entries in next week’s newsletter and crown a community favorite. Keep it brief, keep it chilling, and let your horror hide inside something that looks like love.

Post it in the comments here, or in our Macabre Monday chat!

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The Horror Digest

A selection of recent memorable Macabre Monday offerings:

• Dive into ’s most recent archive, “Possessed by Design.” This week’s file dives into horror cinema and real-world demons, tracing the thin line between possession and the wounds we choose to keep hidden.

  Slasher

  Possessed by Design

  > INITIALIZING ARCHIVE NODE 03…

  Read more

  5 months ago · 16 likes · 2 comments · Skyla

• Enjoy this dark reflection on the brutal making of heroes. A poem, “Forged for the Fall,” by

  St. Sinjin

  Forged for the Fall

  Read more

  4 months ago · 5 likes · Kate M. Sine

• posted a short story, “Curse of the Mountain Witch.” A chance encounter with a burning home compels a man to test the limits of fate, and his own willingness to defy it.

  Dracula’s Ghost

  Curse of the Mountain Witch

  I pass through the gate of our subdivision and slow the minivan to avoid the jolt of the speed bump, tired after a long day in the office. It has been a good day, and though I have not seen my therapist for three weeks, she assures me that the lengthening intervals between my appointments are perfectly normal…

  Read more

  4 months ago · 3 likes · Travis Blake

• blurred the lines between audience and accomplice in this bite-sized dystopian horror story, “Funny Socks.”

  strangeface

  Funny Socks

  “Close the doors slowly, don’t slam them. Just lead him in and make sure he is facing the wall…

  Read more

  8 months ago · 3 likes · Will

February’s first Monday intersects with Groundhog Day. You know what that means. We’re not simply talking about six more weeks of winter here.

To quote Thanos: “Dread it. Run from it. Destiny arrives all the same.”

When the groundhog sees his shadow in the land of Macabre Monday, it is a sign that six more weeks of horror are on the horizon. This isn’t your garden variety fear of waking up in the same small Pennsylvania town every day for who knows how long. All sorts of terror can take root in six weeks.

The groundhog seeing his shadow and thus predicting six more weeks of winter is a great starting point for other folk prophecy. In that spirit, here is a fun new writing challenge for you from the Macabre Monday crypt keepers.

• Write a story where a prophecy, omen or prediction reveals a dark fate for the main character. How do they react? What do they do to try to avoid or change their fate?

No word limit. Just write until the story is finished or your hands fall off at the wrists. Be sure to tag the Macabre Monday crypt keepers (, , ) when you post your story in your newsletter or share it on Substack notes.

Look forward to seeing what terrifying tales you all conjure up with this latest prompt.

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The Horror Digest

A selection of recent memorable Macabre Monday offerings:

• Check out ’s clever and dark ode to a dead mall.

  Age of Aquarius

  Liminal Spaces

  “Dear Fairview Square Mall…

  Read more

  5 months ago · 61 likes · 28 comments · EJ Trask

• Find out what happens when Jerry wakes up on a cargo ship where no one will talk to him in ’s latest creepy tale.

Writing From Weird

Earthbound Passenger Riding Cargo

Written for Luna Asli Kolcu’s “Myths of Winter - Week 8” event…

Read more

5 months ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Leeron Heywood

• You got to read this spooky take from on a Japanese urban legend.

Wirrowac’s Playground

口裂け女-The slit-mouthed woman

Welcome to the Playground…

Listen now

5 months ago · 7 likes · 3 comments · J Wirrowac

• Librarians flee to the forest in a town that bans reading in ’s haunting tale.

St. Sinjin

Sewn into Trees

Read more

5 months ago · 9 likes · Kate M. Sine

• Making a stop at a remote mountain diner takes a turn for the worse in ’s dark flash fiction tale.

Watson's House of Horrors

Flash Fiction Friday - The Diner

Jonas steered his truck through a seemingly endless series of switchbacks, now totally convinced that the GPS was leading him astray. The higher he climbed, the thicker the fog became, and with sheer drops off to his left, every turn became an invisible hazard to navigate…

Read more

5 months ago · 81 likes · 53 comments · John Watson - Horror Author

• Finally, here’s a dark retelling of Red Riding Hood from , who is a master at reinventing classic Grimm’s fairy tales.

D.W. Davison

Little Red Cap

Read more

5 months ago · 20 likes · 14 comments · D.W. Davison

Ringing in a new year is so much more than watching a ball drop and sharing a kiss. It is a blank page. A fresh start.

In Macabre Monday land, it’s also a season for new scares.

New Year’s resolutions typically fall by the wayside after a few weeks. People give up on keeping their resolutions. Sometimes, they forget why they made those resolutions in the first place.

With this in mind, we have a new story challenge for you:

• Write a story where the main character faces frightening consequences when they stop trying to keep a New Year’s resolution. Story length can range from 500 to 1,500 words. Short, sweet, and scary.

Post your terrifying tales on your Substack newsletter and tag the Macabre Monday crew (, , ) in the story and/or on Notes when you share it. Feel free to post in our weekly chat thread as well.

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The Weekly Digest

A selection of last week’s memorable Macabre Monday offerings:

• Getting a song stuck in your head takes a creepy turn in a new flash fiction tale from that features a haunting twist.

Jeanona Dias

Holidays

That years have passed, but you laugh exactly the same…

Read more

6 months ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Jeanona Dias

• A mysterious badger shows up as an unwanted dinner guest in a surreal tale from told in the form of a letter.

The Inciting Incident with Mata Haggis-Burridge

Why did you send us the badger in our dining room?

Happy new year! I’m Mata, and I’d love for you to stick with me through 2026 as I write one short spooky short story/micro-fiction every week…

Read more

5 months ago · 14 likes · 10 comments · Mata Haggis-Burridge

• Scars become words imparting an ominous message in ’s haunting new tale.

Sussurant Horror

Excoriate

The pain flowed like a river, or the coursing of molten slag from atop a black mountain. A volcano’s fiery innards caressed across my skin in a way that would have, otherwise, been sensual. Perhaps it was sensual, for the pain was my own, and only mine. There was a violent intimacy between myself and the inflictor…

Read more

5 months ago · 17 likes · 6 comments · Susurrant Horror

• The In The Bleak Midwinter story series from gets off to a dark and twisted start. Check out her substack throughout January for other stories from this month-long challenge.

Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

The Wailing

Written for the In The Bleak Midwinter writing challenge 2026 Day 1: Frosty Wind Made Moan. Come and join us…

Read more

5 months ago · 6 likes · 7 comments · Wendy Cockcroft

Share Macabre Monday

Happy Monday horror fans! Last night was the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the point when the world tilts farthest from the sun and we sit at the edge of dark. Ancient cultures celebrated this night, leaving behind the old year, and welcoming the coming sunlight. The solstice reminds us that light is not always a guarantee. To reach the light, we have to travel through the darkness first.

So as the shadows stretch and the hours thicken, I hope you feel the strange magic of it, the kind that blurs the line between wonder and unease. And since the night is generous with time, let’s fill it with something deliciously unsettling. Tell me: what horror stayed with you this year? A book that crawled under your skin? A film that refused to leave your head? A story, game, podcast, or urban legend that made the dark feel just a little too alive? How about a Substack writer? Share your favorites. I’d love to gather them, linger with them, and carry them into the returning light.

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The Weekly Digest

A selection of last week’s memorable Macabre Monday offerings:

• gave us a crime story about the lengths one woman will go to grow her garden, and reclaim the life she once had. Please enjoy, “What Goes Around.”

  Jason Duck- A Journey into Darkness

  What Goes Around

  Jane stood at the kitchen work surface chopping a variety of seasonal vegetables that she’d grown in her garden. She loved working with her hands and being with nature. Her husband, Michael always said she was an eternal hippy and teased her about it…

  Read more

  6 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Jason Duck

• responded to the Macabre Monday writing challenge with a time bending short story, “The Ouroboros Syndrome.”

  Wendy Cockcroft's Writings

  The Ouroboros Syndrome

  Written for the Macabre Monday writing challenge, hosted by Jon T, Shaina Read, and John Coon…

  Read more

  6 months ago · 9 likes · Wendy Cockcroft

A note: I have really enjoyed reading your stories this year. Thanks for writing, contributing to this community, and making Macabre Monday what it is. We have one more Monday this year. Let’s make it count.

- Shaina