WATTY 2016 WINNER of the HQ Love Award! Strange Yarns is a ball of tangled tales. Twisted, knotted, and intertwined. Like Tales of the Crypt, the Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits. Strange Yarns is not just a collection of ghastly tales, these are yarns, and yarns are sewed together. Follow the yarns and see the grand design... think of this as an evil quilt. Ghost, ghouls, and cannibals being studied for nutrition research, Strange Yarns has got it all. ALL EXCEPT HAPPY ENDINGS!!! (The Author's Lawyer's retain the rights to define happy endings.) I'd love it if you'd vote. And if you really like them please share with a friend. And if you hated them, please share with an enemy. *Josh Saltzman is a Canadian Comedy Award winning writer and director. Recently he was the head writer of season 2 and 3 of Inspector Gadget on Netflix. His other credits include Fangbone! (Disney XD), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Animated Series (Sony/DHX), and in live action Call Me Fitz (HBO Canada). Josh has also made lots of weird videos you can find on youtube.

A group of sexy seniors are gruesomely picked off at the biggest house party of the year after they attempt a séance to find out what happened to Ingrid Peltman, the most hated girl in school who disappeared exactly one year ago that night.

2022 Watty Winner || At the age of ten, Sanford Crow discovers the worst secret of all--his father is a serial killer. It was the year 1969. Sanford's dream was to grow up to be a detective. Putting his intuitions to the test, he conducts an investigation into his father. The discovery he makes brings his whole world crashing down, and to the culmination of one terrible Christmas morning. Twenty five years later, it's 1994. Sanford is a divorced and a recovering alcoholic, with an eight-year-old daughter named Sadie. His dreams of becoming a detective never came to fruition. Instead, he lives vicariously through his job of being a crime scene cleaner. As therapy begins to open up doors to his past that he'd rather keep shut, the same string of murders that his father committed when he was a child are happening again all around him. Sanford starts questioning his grip on reality. The answers he finds brings his past rushing back, and has him doubting everything he thought he knew about himself, his past, and his own sanity.

(The Deal was optioned by TNT!) The mysterious Lee Cutter and his Carnival of Wonders hold a secret darker than any of the citizens of 1930's Junction City, Kansas can imagine. When Mr. Cutter shows up to town early one morning promising an end to the dust storms that have decimated the town's crops and stricken many of the children with the brown plague, young Matthew Porter is spellbound. His little brother Luke is deathly ill from breathing the dust-laden air. Plus, it would be amazing to hear the sound of the rain on his tin roof again. But at what cost? In this chilling short story about sacrifice and the cost of happiness, Matthew will come face to face with the terrifying secret Mr. Cutter's Carnival holds and learn the heart-wrenching truth about what it means to make a deal with the Devil. Excerpt: The man leaned down and fetched a matchbook out of the black boot that rested on the bench. There was no dust there, either - not even on the bottom. He stood up and brought one of the matches to the tip of the cigar. I never saw him strike it, but it fired just the same. He held it to the cigar and puffed on it several times until the end looked like the inside of a coal stove. "Lot of 'em 'round here?" he asked again, shaking the match and exhaling the thick smoke into the air above my head. "Yes, sir. All over. They eat what's left of the crops, even the roots. My pa says that's the real plague." "Does he now?" The man looked amused. "He says we won't ne'er grow a crop again until God sees fit. No rain either." He turned his head and scanned the street like he was looking for someone. "You ever see God here in Junction City?" I looked up at him, squinting, but didn't know how to answer. I'd never seen God anywhere. "My name's Lee," he said, holding out his hand. "Lee Cutter. What's yours?"

Two runaway children steal a baby and attempt to raise it themselves in the world's most haunted hotel. To Ben and Sophie the abandoned hotel seems like the perfect place to hide. No adult will ever find them there. Within its strange walls they can be whatever they imagine: the world's youngest hoteliers, husband and wife - even parents. Then guests start arriving: the Ape and its master, the Egyptian man and his young daughter, and of course, Death. As Ben and Sophie slowly unravel the hotel's secrets, they realise they could become Death's next victims. They must find a way to warn him. If only they could talk to ghosts. Hotel Ambrose is an urban fantasy novel set in the 1980s. It will appeal to fans of Piranesi, Stranger Things, and Stephen King.

The world is changing. Scientists discover a new gene, pushing mankind further into evolution. The Darwin Gene. Triggered in adolescence, children start displaying special powers. With no understanding of what these abilities are, or where they came from, fear grips society. Children have no control over their newfound gifts and start to become a danger to themselves and others. Addy and Peter Decker are brother and sister. Peter has the ability to control and alter time. Addy can absorb the abilities of others, making her the most powerful of the Darwins. As society burrows deeper into chaos, and a new virus spreads, Addy catches a glimpse of a dystopian future, and a deep-rooted conspiracy to ensure that it happens. Addy and Peter, along with the help of others, must confront their abilities, rewrite destiny, and fight for a future worth saving.

A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar rug, and a sinister golfer makes his opponents disappear. Short stories for fans of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Roald Dahl, M.R. James, Paul Jennings, Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, & Somerset Maugham.