Folkhorror Stories

In 1983, the quiet village of Nuhara hears an Adhan that should not exist. It comes from an abandoned well. Only one person hears it each night. And when the final word is spoken, one rule remains: Never answer. Because something buried beneath Nuhara has been waiting for the village to remember. And Azeem is about to discover why. Some things were forgotten for a reason.

Keana Greene was abducted as an infant and raised by a religious cult without ever knowing her true identity. When a mysterious encounter causes her to question everything she's ever known, the dark secrets of her faith begin to reveal themselves. Suddenly plunged into a dangerous world of magick, myth, and horror, Keana enlists the help of two strangers as she seeks to uncover the truth behind her ancient powers before falling victim to a sadistic killer intent on eradicating her entire bloodline.

This is a short, speculative folk horror piece. It is weird, original and under 2000 words. (A nice quick read.) While my current novel project is a Sci-Fantasy series, horror will always hold a special place in my heart and A Good Yield is the first in several short horror fiction pieces I have authored this year. I hope you enjoy.

Long before foreign ships reached the islands, there was a village hidden between the sea and the ancient forest of Gubat Marilim. The people of Talindaw lived by the old ways. They respected the spirits of the rivers, feared the darkness beyond the trees, and followed the warnings passed down by their ancestors. One of those warnings was simple: Never answer when someone calls your name from the forest after sunset. For generations, no one dared to break the rule. Until a fisherman disappeared. Three days later, he returned. He looked the same. He spoke the same. He remembered his family. But something about him was wrong. Then Liraya began hearing voices from beneath the houses-voices belonging to people who had been dead for years. As more villagers vanish and others mysteriously return, fear spreads through Talindaw. No one knows what is happening, and soon the villagers begin questioning the people closest to them. Because whatever is hiding in Gubat Marilim does not simply kill its victims. It brings them back. And Liraya is beginning to suspect that some of the people she loves may have already returned. But the deeper she searches for the truth, the more terrifying the question becomes: If the dead can return wearing the faces of the living... how can anyone know who is still human? And when a voice that should have been buried forever begins calling Liraya's name from the darkness- will she be brave enough not to answer?

A Ferris wheel operator on a traveling Arizona carnival learns why veteran crew never ride the wheel alone after dark: stopped at the very top, on the right kind of quiet desert night, you can sometimes see a second midway in the distance - the lights of a whole carnival that vanished without a trace seventy years ago, still closing down for a night that's never quite finished ending.

Jo inherits her family's Montana cattle ranch and finds an old branding iron locked away in a chest her grandfather never let out of his sight - a mark that binds a person to the land itself. When a young ranch hand is accidentally branded during a grass fire, Jo has until dusk to find a way to release him, using a secret only the iron's opposite face was ever built to hold.

Kit Aldren is not a good kid. He knows it. His parents know it. Two schools have already put it in writing. So when the car comes up the long road to Ashenden Hall - grey stone, a hundred windows, a clock tower with a face on all four sides, standing alone on a bare hill with nothing else in any direction - nobody in that car thinks he doesn't deserve it. Ashenden is a very good school. The lawns are kept. The results are excellent. There is a waiting list, and parents cry in the car park out of gratitude, and every boy who leaves goes home polite, and quiet, and easy to live with. On the afternoon Kit arrives, two hundred boys are standing in rows on the front lawn, watching a man in a black coat beat a boy with a stick. The man is not hurrying. The boy is not crying. He is looking, across four hundred yards of grass, straight at Kit's car. Nothing at Ashenden is locked. There are no fences and no bars and no dogs. The front door stands open all day. Kit can walk out of it whenever he likes, down the long road with grass growing up the middle of it, and nobody will stop him or shout after him or even watch him go. Nobody has ever got anywhere. Every morning before the first lesson, two hundred boys sing the school song. Nobody has ever listened to the words. Kit is clever, and he is a liar, and he has never once in his life met a rule he couldn't get out from under. He has one year. And Ashenden has done this before. Ashenden, Ashenden, take us in, wash the wildness from the skin. Leave your shoes beside the door - you shall want for them no more.

Renya has spent his whole life chasing the story everyone else calls a fairy tale - the one his older brother died believing. Six years after Rowan vanished beyond the legendary Ice Wall, Renya convinces his gap-year friend group to go find the truth for themselves. Waiting for them on the other side of the sea is Kellan - a guide who's been closer to the Wall than anyone alive, and who sought Renya out long before this trip was ever his idea. Between them: a family secret neither of them knows they share, a curse that swallowed an entire expedition, and a pendant that might be the only way back out. Some invitations aren't as innocent as they seem. And some truths cost more than the people chasing them are willing to pay.

Monsters, curses, and talking trees weren't on Jack Mendez's to‑do list-until his dying mother's secret lights a flame that draws the ancient forest straight to his door.

Greywater was supposed to be safe. Small town. Friendly neighbors. Quiet streets. Just one problem: The smell. Everyone says you stop noticing it eventually. But when people begin acting strange, skin starts peeling, and whispers of something called Rotbreathers spread through town, one girl starts paying attention. Because the closer she looks, the worse the smell gets. And something downstairs is breathing.

Humanity is struggling to survive in a world that's no longer theirs. Liv, a scavenger leading missions to the edges of the city for food, medicine, and iron, knows things are getting worse. Every trip feels more desperate than the last. Humanity has an expiration date-the forest, and the creatures that dwell there, just have to wait them out. When a mission turns out to be a trap and Liv wakes up on the wrong side of the tree line-alone, disoriented, and for some reason not dead-she learns the forest doesn't just kill people or take their souls. It changes them. She doesn't know what she's becoming. Only that it's something way stronger than what she was. And that killing things never felt this good. Murderbot meets The Cruel Prince-with a whole lot of psychological horror My entry for onc2025, based on prompt 125: I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. - Frank Herbert

A late night, a cool breeze, a stroll on the beach and.... What's that noise?

Year: 1974 - Kerman Province, Iran In the shadow of Jabal Barez, where the desert kisses the mountains, eight villages made a blood-oath beneath a crimson moon: "Never speak of Mahfam. Never walk its soil. For those who enter... do not return." They called it "The Village of the Jinn." Its name meant "Moonlight" in ancient Persian - Mahfam - but the elders whispered it was named for the pale glow of the full moon on the night the jinn held their weddings. No one knew if Mahfam was real. No one wanted to know. Until the night eighteen children vanished without a trace.

In the quiet hills of Darjeeling, something ancient has awakened. when tragedy strikes the Rai family in the peaceful villageof Mansi Gaw. It sets off a chain of eerie events that no one can explain. Children fall ill. Shadows whisper. And at night, something moves in the forest. as school teacher John Rai searches for answers, he is pulled deeper into the haunted past of his family- and the terrifying rituals of the jhākris, shamans who peak with the dead. with faith unraveling and fear spreading, a horrifying truth surfaces, some spirits never rest, and some bloodlines are cursed.

Every night at 3:00 A.M., Kolkata holds its breath... because that is when three women walk the city-White kurtis. Red borders turned black, barefoot and silent. They do not speak. They do not stop. They hunt UNTIL...

(I have another book titled The Outsiders which is a collection of original sci-fi stories, sorry about the confusion!) The Outsider is a story that follows a typical family moves into a small, quaint farm town only to get terrorized by a monstrous entity trope. What makes this story special to me is my history with it. When I was really young, I was heavily into horror. Through this, I discovered a youtube channel called Moon Raven Tales. This channel brought stories from the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" trilogy to life in ways you can't get just by laying bored in bed at night. Although I grew out of the channel, recent developments in made me do a little searching. I discovered a channel called Moon Raven Legends which has archived a good portion of the videos on Moon Raven Tales which included "The Outsider" This was my favorite as a young child. I think I watched it almost every night like it was my favorite bedtime story. So now that I've rambled on about it trying to spoil as little as possible (which is difficult from how short it is, regarding it's meant for verbal retelling) I'll be very appreciative if you read my rewriting of this tale! (I mostly did this as a small writing exercise)

A short horror story - Part 1 What started as a simple mix-up turned into something else entirely. Would you stay on the bus... if it stopped by the cemetery? 👻 Let me know if I should post Part 2... #horrorstories #shortfiction #busridegonewrong #halloweenstory #creepypasta

Paranelope, a ghost hunter who's been cancelled for faking evidence, must discover the truth behind a local cryptid in order to clear her name. -- Penelope, better known as the ghost hunter PARANELOPE to her millions of followers, has only ever wanted one thing: to find solid, irrefutable proof of the supernatural. But when her ex-boyfriend outs all of her evidence as fake, her fans and the rest of the Internet are quick to turn on her. Now not only is Penelope betrayed, heartbroken, and #cancelled... She's not sure what to believe in anymore. Seeking refuge, Penelope lands in the quiet little mountain town of Ridgestone, far away from the city and reliable cell service. But Ridgestone isn't as quiet as it first appeared, and washed-up influencers aren't the only thing haunting its surrounding woods. The little town is home to a cryptid, a legendary monster, just like the ones she used to hunt. A monster that seems particularly interested in Penelope. If only someone would believe her... Rankings ------------ Featured on the Front Page Featured in Don't Get Ghosted #1 in #Paranormal #1 in #Cryptid #1 in #Creature #1 in #FolkHorror #2 in #Ghost #15 in #Horror

She said no. It killed her husband. Then took her child. Now it wants her. Gachsaran, 1985. One promise. One stalker.

In the quiet Yorkshire village of Hawley, nothing ever truly changes - or so it seems. On the last day of summer, eleven-year-old Isobel "Izzy" Hartley and her friends welcome a new girl into their circle. But when a strange wind sweeps across the moors and leads them to a boy left for dead among shattered mirrors, Hawley begins to unravel. The boy, Cedric, remembers nothing of how he arrived there - only the feeling that something followed him through the glass. As Cedric struggles to understand the world he's woken into, Izzy is forced to confront memories she has spent years avoiding, while the village itself reveals cracks in its history: distorted reflections, missing time, and an ancient presence tied to the moors and maybe Cedric himself. What began as curiosity turns into consequence. Friendships are tested. Secrets surface. And as the mirror-world presses closer, the children realise that Hawley is not haunted by ghosts - but by something that watches, waits, and remembers. Because the moors do not call everyone. And once they choose you, they never truly let you go.