Haunting Stories

*****A gothic Wednesday AU***** Reichenbach Academy has always thrived on silence. Pressed uniforms. Polished stone. Perfect control. And something ancient buried far beneath its halls. When a student collapses mid-class with glowing sigils carved into his skin, the administration insists the situation is contained. The students don't believe them. Thorn Rosales, a half-vampire psychic known for trouble, hears the disturbance before anyone names it. A song threading through the academy's bones. Xavier Thorpe, haunted by the Hyde and his past at Nevermore, begins drawing the same symbols appearing across campus, as if something is guiding his hand. Together, they uncover a truth Reichenbach has spent centuries burying. This is a slow-burn, lore-heavy gothic mystery about power, memory, and forbidden connection. Where silence is a weapon, and the walls are starting to sing.

In 16th century France, a darkness older than the Church answers when called. It does not seek salvation. An innocent girl is saved from execution, only to fall into the hands of the very horror that plagues her town. But monsters are not always born. Sometimes, they are made. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you read this story and like and comment and I become famous one day, I'll buy u lunch🫶 Will be updating with 1-2 chapters weekly. I have the first few chapters already written, but I kinda wanna establish a schedule, but if you want all that i have right now, i can make that happen too! You can take advantage of my people pleaser tendencies!! Hopefully, this pops off and I'm not here just talking to myself. xoxo

Folklore Nocturne: Book One by Elle Harlyn When Delaney's life is shattered by a near-fatal accident on a lonely English road, she awakens to a world where shadows breathe, secrets linger, and nothing is as it seems. Haunted by the memory of a mysterious stranger who saved her life-and left behind a single black rose-Delaney is drawn into a hidden realm of ancient covenants, vampire brotherhoods, and forbidden love. As she navigates the dangers of campus nights, cryptic tarot warnings, and the chilling presence of those who watch from the darkness, Delaney must decide who to trust and how much of herself she's willing to risk for answers. At the heart of it all is Enzo, a man bound by blood, secrets, and a promise that defies time itself. Quote: "Some loves are written into the marrow of eternity. Even the cursed can be saved, and even in the darkest places, a single rose remembers your name." Step into the world of Folklore Nocturne-a gothic romance where every shadow hides a story, and every heartbeat could be your last.

Velia has walked the earth for centuries, feeding in shadows and leaving nothing behind but silence. She is a predator perfected - immortal, untouchable, and long since numb to the fragile lives she consumes. Then one night, in a dim bar thick with smoke and loneliness, a man named Cole takes her hand and refuses to let go. He should fear her. He should run. Instead, he stays. Drawn by his warmth, his stubborn kindness, and the steady rhythm of a heart she cannot silence, Velia finds herself facing something far more dangerous than hunger: the possibility of love. But monsters do not get happy endings. As her thirst grows and her past begins to close in, Velia must decide whether to protect Cole from the darkness that follows her - or accept that loving him may be the very thing that destroys them both. In a world where immortality is a curse and restraint is agony, one choice will determine whether Velia remains a creature of the night... or becomes something more.

Death in the Downside is a museum of forever. Avery discovers that it's a lavish place and learns to lounge inside it, until a heartbeat breaks the silence. It pulses with a melody she once loved, leading her toward a forbidden stairwell and the impossible feeling that someone is waiting for her. She learns that: not all of the dead stay buried and not all of the living let go. Main Prompt: #17. You fall in love with someone whose heartbeat matches a song you haven't heard since childhood. Second Prompt: #82. You are in love with someone living and someone long dead. Neither one is willing to let you go. Open Novella Contest 2026 #ONC2026 ⚠️TW: Themes of death, grief, loss

They say spring is a season of rebirth. They never say what it might awaken. A princess rises in darkness. Can she save her throne - or was it never truly hers? A knight swears to kill. Can duty survive when truth is not as it seems? A thief steals from kings. Is freedom worth the price of chaos? A scholar hunts forbidden power. Or will the secrets she chases find her first? In a realm born from longing, nothing blooms without consequence. And some blooms are not meant to survive the season.

Celia Jones can talk to the dead, but getting on with them is a different story. She always has at least three spirits following her around, complaining about their relatives, or the inadequacy of their funeral arrangements. The latest is a murdered actress, Maude Domby, but she's less interested in denouncing her killer than in accusing the understudy of stealing her favourite pearls. When the charming but utterly fraudulent medium Stanley Winter holds a séance to contact Maude, Maude insists she and Celia should attend, to see people mourning her 'properly'. But the séance ends up implicating an innocent woman, and now Stanley Winter is banging on Celia's door, begging her to help him find Maude's real killer. Unfortunately, helping Stanley Winter could lead Celia to confront her other power - the one that's both lighter and infinitely darker than talking to the dead. ONC Prompt: 72. A real necromancer sits in on a fake séance.

The door was open. That was the first thing Seonghwa noticed. Not broken. Not forced. Not locked. Open. For the first time, he could leave. For the first time, he could be free. And for the first time... he didn't. Hongjoong was a monster to the world cold, controlled, and untouchable. But monsters don't fall in love. And they don't break when the person they love walks away. What begins as captivity slowly becomes something far more dangerous: trust. What begins as control slowly becomes dependence. And somewhere between fear and comfort, between manipulation and care, one question remains If you stay when you can leave... was it ever a cage at all? - A dark psychological BL exploring obsession, power, emotional dependence, and the fragile line between captivity and choice. Reader discretion advised.

"The devil couldn't reach me," I said. But he was already wearing the face of someone I once called love. ••• They say the devil lives in temptation, but I found him living in my memory, echoing in the voice that told me to stay when I should have run. He wasn't the monster of legends. He was just a quiet, mysterious man who perfectly reflected every fear and every wound I carried inside. This is the raw confession of a girl who thought she escaped hell, only to realize the final battle had to happen within her own skin, proving that true damnation doesn't come from below, but from within.

The mind is never silent. Shadows coil, whisper, and grow claws in the dark. A poetry collection of obsession, need, and the parts of us that refuse to sleep.

When seventeen-year-old Naya Porter moves from Boston to rural Georgia to live with her dad and aunt, she expects to be bored out of her mind. But there's something in the woods behind her aunt's house that has other plans for her. Something old and hateful that's trapped behind a twelve-foot-high brick wall that her family has guarded for generations. With the accompaniment of four new acquaintances from school, ranging from emerging crush to low-key nemesis, Naya must lead a deadly expedition through a breach in the wall where she'll encounter a nightmare-scape mash-up of horrifyingly real haunted houses. **New parts drop weekly on Fridays!**

In a village where the river remembers names and the soil listens, silence is never empty. Noziphozamandla (Gift of Power) returns home carrying a grief she does not yet understand-unaware that death has already crossed her path, that her bloodline hums with secrets older than language. At night, the drum begins to speak. Soft at first. Patient. Calling not to her ears, but to her spirit. Children chant where no children should be. Shadows move without bodies. And something small watches from the dark, waiting to be acknowledged. Rooted in South African ancestral lore and whispered truths of witchcraft, When the Drum Speaks is a slow-burning, unsettling journey into the unseen, where amadlozi (ancestors) walk beside the living, gifts are inherited in silence, and ignorance is the most dangerous curse of all. Some stories are read. Others are answered.

Thirty letters. Thirty ghosts of emotion sealed in ink. Each one addressed to someone I once knew my past self, my future, the ones I loved, and the ones I lost. Some letters carry gratitude, others ache with regret. Some are to people who will never read them, and some to memories that never left. This isn't a story of replies. It's a story of release of words left unsent, yet finally written. Because sometimes, healing begins with the letters no one ever receives.

Edmund comes to the remote village of Black Thickett to escape the life grief has carved out of him. He wants silence. Distance. A place where memories can't follow. But Black Thickett is wrong in quiet, unsettling ways. The broken road becomes perfectly smooth the moment he crosses the boundary. The cottages are too neat, too deliberate. And on a noticeboard full of dry flyers, only one poster is wet. A missing boy, smiling as if he doesn't know he's lost. The villagers won't talk about the disappearances. The forest at the edge of the village seems to breathe, and the deeper Edmund goes, the calmer he feels... dangerously calm. The forest can quiet his pain. It can ease his grief. It can make him forget. But not everything that heals you wants you to survive. Welcome to Black Thickett, where you'll find my entry into the ONC 2026.

Six months ago, the car crash took Maya's husband. Now, the ocean is bringing back his letters. "Why are you running, Maya? We haven't even finished the first chapter of our new life." Maya thought she was a widow. She was wrong. She is a witness. And in a town built on skeletons, the truth is more dangerous than the haunting. After the rain-slicked highway and the screeching tires that took her husband's life, Maya Sebastian flees to the secluded provincial town of Sombra. She seeks the kind of silence that only the deep province can provide. She expects to mourn in peace. She doesn't expect the letters. They arrive in her kitchen, tucked into old books, and pinned to her door. Hand-written, heartbreakingly familiar, and signed by Thomas-the man she buried months ago. He's watching her. He's protecting her. Caught between the cryptic warnings of her dead husband and the electric, dangerous pull of Elias Alcaraz-the man who pulled her from the wreckage and whose family owns the town-Maya begins to realize that the "Quiet Season" is a lie. In Sombra, the silence isn't peace. It's a scream waiting to happen. To uncover the truth about the accident, Maya must descend into a web of blood, blackmail, and a hidden cellar that breathes with a heartbeat of its own.

The sweeping sequel to Whispers of Ash and Bloom In a land where vines remember, and the soil sings in silence, peace is never truly quiet. After planting the Heartseed and restoring balance to the vineyard, Elena Moretti believes her legacy and her sister's long shadow have finally come to rest. But when a mysterious child emerges from the mist, born not of flesh but of forgotten intentions, the fragile harmony begins to fray. The Hollow Heir brings more than riddles; they bring a revelation: something ancient still sleeps beneath the vineyard, older than pact, older than bloom, and it's waking up hungry. As Elena navigates rising tensions within the Rootwarden Council, cryptic visions, and a land that seems to listen too closely, she must journey into buried memories, forbidden magic, and the ghost of her twin's final spell. What she finds is a choice that could unmake the very balance she fought so hard to restore. With prose as lyrical as it is haunting, Embers of Vine and Vow weaves legacy, language, and land into a spellbinding tale of mercy, memory, and the courage it takes to let the world bloom on its own terms. Perfect for readers who love atmospheric fantasy, sisterhood, and lush world-building where nature itself is a character, this is a story that asks: What happens when the land wants to speak and you become its voice?

He was born a gentleman. He became a scoundrel. And now, he's bound by a curse. After the death of his infant son, Dorian Vale is willing to do anything to save his grieving wife and rewrite destiny. His desperation awakens a dark power older than the mortal world... one that offers help at a terrible price. To protect the people he's already failed, Dorian will make the one bargain he can never take back. A bargain that will deliver him straight into the shadows... and eventually into the path of a girl named Lenora.

What happens when Death falls in love with the paramour he is gifted? Cursed to kill everyone he touches, beastly Lord Damien Casteel lives in anger and loneliness. During a rare game of poker, he wins the final hand against a petty criminal named Luca. The prize is a pouch of twelve precious gemstones. But Luca is determined to get the stones back, no matter what. Breaking into Damien's mansion to exchange the real gems for fakes, he is captured and threatened with death. Begging for his life, he strikes a deal: his freedom in exchange for his adopted son, Jemison, who will serve the lord as his paramour for twelve days; one day for each stone. Although he is reluctant to let anyone into his life, Damien is desperate to keep Jem away from Luca's abuse, so he agrees. What he does not expect is to fall for the tormented young man. Prompt used is number 46. We love broken, beautiful people. And it doesn't get more obviously broken and more classically beautiful than you. (Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid) My writing is AI-free. Any emdashes are here because I LIKE them. The poetic purply prose is here because I LIKE it. Computers don't write my stuff. The Muse inside my head who keeps me up till 3 AM and wants to drive me bonkers, does. Warning for: spicy situations, alcohol, some swearing, blood, abuse, and typical Christine darkness. There's no graphic sa, torture, gore, or animal abuse.

♟️🗝️ Set in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the story unfolds across the grand estates of two families whose fortunes and influence have been built over generations. The Fontaines and the Hadleys are bound by history, business, and carefully maintained appearances, yet rivalry and hierarchy shape every interaction within and between their households. The world they inhabit is one of polished floors, sunlit gardens, and shadowed corridors; a world in which wealth and lineage dictate worth, and social expectation weighs heavier than desire. Each family moves within its own rhythm, defined by tradition, discipline, and the inheritance of power, while the larger world edges toward war, shifting both perception and opportunity. Through the gaze of the younger generation, the story captures the tension of inherited expectation and the fragility of relationships shaped by legacy. It is a tale of households governed by hierarchy, of children raised to respect, observe, and measure, and of a society poised on the brink of upheaval. The aesthetic is slow, intimate, and precise: sun-drenched afternoons, stormy evenings, quiet corners where glances carry meaning, and every gesture, every word, is laden with consequence.

He was adored for his beauty and feared for his cruelty. Then he was cursed. Exiled to the bell tower of Saint-Sulpice, Édouard Valmont becomes a monster in the eyes of the city. Merely an unseen voice behind the ringing bells. But when a traveling performer named Lysander discovers the man beneath the deformity, something begins to awaken inside Édouard: a longing he has never known. Yet the cathedral hides more than stone and prayer. And when a powerful church official's obsession turns into a threat, Édouard must confront the darkest truth of all: redemption may require a price he cannot pay. A gothic tragedy of love, vanity, and the unbearable weight of becoming worthy.