I'm ridiculously happy.

It only happened because I made Barnes&Nobels' top horror of the year, which got me noticed by producers. I've had a few people approach me and my agent, and I ended up going with Jesse James Films.

I've had a few chats with them and Stephen Susco, and I'm so stoked for their vision for it.

I know it's going to be a long process, but the day I see my work adapted on screen is going to be one of those huge leaps in my life :D

Edit because I forgot to include a link to the announcement (can you tell I'm excited haha): https://deadline.com/2020/05/jesse-murphy-james-sears-bryant-jesse-james-films-1202937164/

Does he actually mean what he says and understand it? Or Is he Just like a very Complex parrot that mimicks fears and speech patterns with no true understanding of them?

1. Year Zero - Published by AWA Studios

Ben Percy (Wolverine) and Ramon Rosanas (Star Wars: Age of Resistance) team up to present an epic tale that offers a global look at the Zombie Apocalypse. A Japanese hitman, a Mexican street urchin, an Afghan military aide, a Polar research scientist, a midwestern American survivalist – five survivors of a horrific global epidemic who must draw upon their unique skills.

Story and Art by Benjamin Percy, Lee Loughridge, Ramon Rosanas

2. Tortured Life - Published by TPub

Richard is having a bad year. He’s lost his job, lost his girlfriend, put on weight… and developed the ability to see the deaths of everyone around him. Plagued by horrific premonitions, he decides to end it all, but there are old and powerful forces at work that have their own plans for his brainpower.

Story and Art by TPub

3. Psycho Path - Published by Rocket Ink Studios

Psycho Path is a graphic novel that shares stories of what it takes to break a person. Follow our three main characters on their journey to true psychopath in this psychological horror tale.

Story and Art by Rocket Ink Studios

4. The Drowning - Published by Co

A beauty influencer moves into an unusual apartment complex.

Story and Art by Co

5. The Kill Journal - Published by Failed Superheroes Club

The Kill Journal is a tale of Revenants and the Survivors who hunt them. Revenants are evil spirits back from the dead, wielding chainsaws and machetes, and their victims, the ones still alive, are taking a stand. Led by a half-mad preacher, they're ridding the world of these monsters before they become one themselves.

Story and Art by Failed Superheroes Club

6. WHAT REMAINS OF US - Published by Nixxus Nibelheim

Four friends experience strange phenomenons after one of them survived a trainwreck. As they try to understand what's going on, they will realize that things seems out of time but more importantly out of this world.

Story and Art by Nixxus Nibelheim

7. The Dark Side of Seoul - Published by Story Trove Comics

Spooky Korean folk tales come to life in English for the first time. Find out why Korea is the most haunted location in history.

Story and Art by Joe McPherson, Marc Pritchard, Shawn Morrissey, Tim Bauer

8. Hotell - Published by AWA Studios

You won’t find it on any map, but if you happen to be driving down Route 66 late at night and you’re truly desperate for shelter, sanctuary or secrecy, you might see a battered sign on the side of the road: The Pierrot Courts Hotel – where many check in but few check out.

Story and Art by Dalibor Talajić, John Lees, Lee Loughridge

9. Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste - Published by Markosia Enterprises

The life and times of Britain’s most infamous son. Occultist, genius, poet, prophet, mountaineer, drug and free-love pioneer, spy, scholar, and all-round bad egg. Summoner of demons and loser of friends. A prophet who wanted to save mankind but ended his days known as “The Wickedest Man in the World.”

Story and Art by Martin Hayes and RH Stewart

10. Transdimensional - Published by TPub

TRANSDIMENSIONAL is a sci-fi/horror miniseries created by Michael Gordon. The story focuses on Deacon Price, an emotionally broken underwater archaeologist who charters an expedition, under false pretenses, to a downed Soviet submarine that's been missing for decades. What he and his crew find there will not only put their lives at risk, but also the lives of everyone they've ever known! The story

Story and Art by TPub

And holy shit, his work is positively fantastic! I picked up a copy of Uzumaki, and I couldn’t put it down. Then I read The Enigma at Amigara Fault, The Long Dream, Glyceride, and Layers of Fear. His stuff is so creative and disturbing, and it’s really been sticking with me since I read it. I wonder what exactly it is about his work that hits such a nerve.

ETA: I just wanted to add some thoughts about Uzumaki, because it was magnificent. I think that the choice of spirals was brilliant because the spiral is a shape that is aesthetically pleasing, so seeing the body horror mixed with that shape means that your brain can’t decide if it’s horrific or beautiful. While it seemed episodic, it was masterfully tied together by the main characters, and I love how things are somewhat, but not completely, explained at the end. The creativity was just off the wall, and I never really knew exactly what was going to happen next. It’s really a masterpiece of horror fiction.

ETA 2: I was at the beach with my friends yesterday, and one of my friends found a spiral shaped seashell. When she showed it to me, she said my face looked like I was having a war flashback or something. Ito sticks with you.

and a clean-up crew spin-off.

Alright, hear me out:

Every episode opens on the blood-soaked, absurdly elaborate aftermath of a famous horror movie. The team has to process the scene by the book while the sheer ridiculousness of what happened keeps leaking through. The comedy comes from deadpan professionalism colliding with pure nightmare logic. The horror comes from realizing some of these “impossible” details still don’t add up.

Sample episodes:

“The Cabin”

The team arrives at a remote cabin in the woods. Five college kids. One survivor. A mountain of blood, but almost no bodies. The lead detective keeps insisting the “tree people” angle is just grief-induced psychosis… until the forensics guy finds sap that tests positive for human DNA.

"the Hotel"

Team arrives to an old mountain hotel, trying to figure out where are the bodies, whose blood was drained for a whole hallway and elevator to be covered with

“The Wish”

A series of extremely specific, highly improbable deaths across the city. One victim is crushed by a falling piano that wasn’t on any nearby roof. Another is found inside a bottle. A third appears to have aged sixty years in a single night. The only consistent evidence is a fragment of red crystal and witness statements that all begin with “I only wished for…”

“The City”

A cruise ship docks in New York with most of its passengers missing and the remaining ones in pieces. Then the bodies start appearing on the streets of Manhattan, same machete wounds, same size-14 boot prints. The team must coordinate with NYPD in pursuit of a slow-moving hockey masked undead revenant, that is somehow still faster than the cops.

“The Road”

A string of missing persons along a cross-country route, all young, all traveling light. The remains that are found show precise, almost careful consumption, nothing wasted. The surviving witnesses describe the perpetrators as soft-spoken, lonely, and strangely polite. The forensics team keeps noting that the bite marks are human.

She and her friends try to summon candyman in the restroom, then the window open by itself.

"Not today, not today!" She says as she dipped out seconds before her friends gets slaughtered by the very person the summoned. She made the best decision ever that saved her life.

I want to listen to a short, tales-from-the-crypt-style story for bed tonight. I been listening to 'Scary Story Podcast' but have heard most of them now and looking for something similar that doen't go over 30 mins.

Either that or a short audiobook that I can doze off to in fear.

What happens when you write fan fiction for your favourite movie?

If you're Peter Watts, you get nominated for some of the biggest horror and science fiction awards. It's a punchy short story told from the point of view of The Thing itself. And it's really, really good.

With John Carpenter's The Thing (deservedly) popping up in so many discussions here, I'm surprised this story doesn't come up more often - there are some posts about it, but the most recent one I can see is from seven years ago.

I'd also recommend Peter Watt's other short stories, but what I keep coming back to are Blindsight and Starfish - they're diamond-hard science fiction novels with a huge density of ideas (Only Greg Egan comes close to Watts in that department, IMO). But they're also pretty horrific in their own right, and easily qualify as horror. Blindsight has got vampires; QED.

(edit: grammar)

Currently rereading this book, and honestly, not only is it my fave Grady Hendrix book (though I love all of his) but it's one of my favorite books in general. I'm a huge fan of the slasher genre and the Final Girl trope, and so I love seeing it explored in the book and all the references and easter eggs (the names of the final girls referencing the actresses of the final girls they're based on, the article excerpts throughout, the fictional franchises mirroring real life one's throughout, etc) scattered through each chapter. The concept itself, of a bunch of real life Final Girls coming together in a support group, is really awesome and cool in general. I really like Lynette's character arc (and her awesome plant Fine) and I think her trauma (the survivor's guilt, hyperarousal, paranoia, isolation) is written pretty well and I just felt absolutely terrible for her how she was wrong every time about what she suspected was going on. I feel like everyone is the group was written pretty well and have really distinct personalities, and I just absoluelty love how unapologetic and chaotic Heather is. Skye and Stephanie give me MAJOR Richie and Amber from Scream 5 vibes (especially with the reddit excerpt in the beginning), does anyone else feel that way lol? I really like the ending where the girls refuse to continue the cycle of violence and stay together to try to bring Stephanie into recovery. The book is getting a movie adaptation from Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky 2020, The Paranormal Activity franchise, etc) and although I am so stoked for that, after what a disappointing disaster the My Best Friend's Exorcism adaptation was, I'm gonna go into it with cautious expectations when it comes out. Overall, I really love the book, though I totally understand why it could've fallen flat for some people and has mixed reviews compared to his other ones. What were your thoughts on the book?

I Had a thought the other day that I just wanted to get off my chest... should horror movies or... even... Movies in particularly including aliens really count as..."Fiction"? Obviously you cant really see the realism or non fiction when it comes to different beings that the human mind can't comprehend but... who's to say it cant be real? I Mean come on what are the chances that we are the only living life in the entire universe? The real mystery is if they have came to earth, so with there being tons of movies about Aliens which primarily take place in space and with them being called "Fiction", should they really? I'm just saying if the concept of Aliens is pretty much confirmed considering the low chances of us being alone in the universe, and most Alien Movies take place at a random area in space, Should it really count as FICTION if it's highly possible? Not trying to say its really high for us to encounter a xenomorph, all I'm trying to say is that it feels like putting the term "Fiction" makes it sound more impossible than it really is. I could always be wrong. What do yall think?

My wife and I have been listening to a lot of audio books together lately and just got finished listening to Misery. Can you recommend other books around the same length that are any good?

Thanks

While it is not read as widely today as it was during its heyday, Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera might be the most influential horror novel ever written after Dracula and Frankenstein.

I wanted to highlight some of the reasons why I think it is so important:

1. Eric is the first masked killer. Much has been written about Eric being the first character of this type. His influence can be seen in later horror villains such as Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, as well as in the masked killers of giallo and Krimi films.

2. He is one of the first monsters with a fundamentally human motivation. Whereas Dracula is a supernatural creature driven by bloodlust, and Frankenstein’s monster is the product of a scientific experiment, Eric is simply a horribly disfigured human being who lashes out at a society that rejects him. His rage is also deeply tied to his romantic and sexual frustrations: he is tormented by the fact that other men can have relationships with women he believes he could never have. This psychological dimension has been enormously influential in horror, and it also has disturbing parallels with certain forms of real-life violent crime.

3. Eric’s mirrored torture-chamber game is remarkably reminiscent of the death games of Saw and other sadistic horror films of the 2000s. The elaborate traps and psychological torment he subjects Raoul and the Persian to feel surprisingly modern.

4. The novel is structured like a mystery or case file slowly being reconstructed by the author. Leroux presents the story almost as an investigation into a series of strange events, creating an effect that is surprisingly reminiscent of later found-footage horror such as The Blair Witch Project.

5. The 1925 film adaptation is one of the most influential horror films ever made. It contains perhaps one of the earliest—and arguably one of the most effective—jump scares in cinema: the sudden reveal of Lon Chaney’s horrific face. There are also contemporary reports of audiences fainting or becoming physically distressed during the reveal.

6. Eric was one of Hollywood’s earliest iconic movie monsters. Even before Frankenstein and Dracula became major Hollywood horror icons, Lon Chaney’s portrayal of the Phantom had already established a template for the cinematic monster. Chaney’s pioneering makeup work was absolutely groundbreaking and helped establish special makeup effects as a crucial part of horror cinema.

7. Last but not least, the musical based on the novel became one of the most successful and financially lucrative stage productions in entertainment history. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera transformed Leroux’s story into a global cultural phenomenon, further cementing the Phantom as one of the most recognizable figures in popular horror.

Since the book is so old, the copyright has expired and you can read it for free right here

Hi, everyone. I recently watched Invincible and noticed it had a lot of vampire themes in it. This includes with Thragg (and his "therapy skull") echoing historical figures like Alexander the Great and Octavian, but also Vlad the Impaler and Stalin in real life. The show is super violent, but also fixated on fascist and Communist "Red Scare" tropes that take "Nazi Superman" and really run with it. I've seen others like Vivian Strange and Thought Slime comment on Superman's existence within kayfabe and punk, for example, but not Invincible specifically (though Bornok's video on Tighten from Megamind hits on similar notes Invincible does). And conversely, James Gunn has made a similar "vampire Superman" with his 2019 Brightburn film.

I was wondering what people here thought about Invincible in particular? Namely its vampire themes on the Superman myth, similar to DBZ and other revivals, having fascist face/heel kayfabe elements (etc). :)

Edit: I was noticing a trend in the comments, namely the "supermen aren't vampires" kind. To anyone who says that, think about it like this: "vampire" = a metaphor, meaning to compare two unlike things (and which, in academia, is called "synthesis," or the [dare-I-say-commonplace] merger of differing ideas and works to make something new).

To that, asking "are supermen vampires?" is a poetic invitation to make such a comparison; i.e., supermen to vampires, or legendary alien beings tied to great power and wealth from other/older more notably barbaric (and extravagant) worlds and time periods; e.g., most famously, Dracula (demonized after his death but being a giant dick in real life), but also the Kurgan or Connor MacLeod, and evil Superman (or just Superman period, as vampires aren't exclusively evil beings; e.g., the Count from Sesame Street). Same goes for Thragg or anyone else in that show (even humans can have vampiric qualities; e.g., evil lawyers, or supervillains with no superpowers [other than money and unscrupulously abusing it] like Lex Luthor).

Examples:

The Leviathan's Labyrinth

Being turned into a jelly-thing by AM in IHNMAIMS

The Sarlacc Pit

Drukhari's living furnitures

Uzumaki's transmutation into a spiral

Scenarios where death would be a preferable option.

I've been making little monster/creature characters every now and again, and I want to make a project where I put them all together into an alternate version of Earth where they all exist but I'm not sure what to call the project. Does anyone have any ideas?

I watched "When Evil Lurks" last night, an Argentinan Horror from 2023 and it's absolutely great - one.of the best horrors I've seen in a while.

It got me thinking, what are the best Non-Hollywood Horrors out there?

I think many Indie or non Hollywood horrors are actually far scarier and original (I still like the Blumhouse movies like Insidious and the Conjuring and of course The Exorcist and The Shining)

Please let me know your recommendations! You'll find my list of must-watch horrors below:

EDIT: thank you so much for all the suggestions, so many films mentioned I've hardly heard of and I've been a massive horror fan for 20 years..

Rec

Baskin

Kill List

Barbarian (was this classed as Hollywood?)

Switchblade Romance

It follows

The Babadook

The Wickerman (the original)

MidSommer

Piggy

Green Room

The VVitch

The Ritual

As the title says, recommend your fave(s) and maybe explain why they impact you so much.

Mine is probably the Russian Sleep Experiment, a creeypasta with a terrifying atmosphere and a thrilling payoff at the end. It's so well written and it's so worth a read. Also shoutout for Who Goes There? (The novella that The Thing is adapted from). It's honestly such a solid piece of writing and holds up really well despite coming out 85 years ago! Give it a read if you haven't, you won't regret it.

Edit: As I've done in a previous thread, I'm going to make a list of all the suggestions (with their authors and where to find them). Hopefully some of you will find it useful:

• The Jaunt - Stephen King (Skeleton Crew)

• Candle Cove - Kris Straub (Creepypasta.com)

• Ben Drowned - Alexander D. Hall (Creepypasta Wiki)

• The Russian Sleep Experiment - OrangeSoda (Creepypasta Wiki)

• Guts - Chuck Palahniuk (Haunted)

• N. - Stephen King (Just After Sunset)

• Who Goes There? - John W. Campbell (Who Goes There?)

• Anansi Goatman - Anonymous (Creepypasta Wiki)

• NES Godzilla Creepypasta - Cosbydaf (Creepypasta Wiki)

• Three Visits to a Hidden Tribe - u/nazisharks (Nosleep)

• Borrasca - u/The_Dalek_Emperor (Nosleep)

• The Quiet Boy - Nick Antosca (Guernica Magazine)

• Children's Playground - Anonymous? (Creepypasta Wiki)

• All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man - C. M. Kösemen (PDF)

• The Enigma of Amagara Fault - Junji Ito (Gyo)

• Polybius - Anonymous (Creepypasta.com)

• White with Red - Anonymous (Creepypasta Wiki)

• WHO WAS PHONE? - Anonymous? (Creepypasta Wiki)

• Third Parent - u/Elias_Witherow (Nosleep)

• Has anyone heard of the Left/Right Game? - u/NeonTempo (Nosleep)

• Ted the Caver - Ted Hagemann (Angelfire)

• Lesser Demons - Norman Patridge (Lesser Demons)

• Candy - Anonymous? (Creepypasta Wiki)

• No End House - Brian Russell (Creepypasta Wiki)

• Uncle Gerry's Family Fun Zone - u/Red_Grin (Nosleep)

• A Distant Episode - Paul Bowles (A Distant Episode)

• Psychosis - Matt Dymerski (Creepypasta.com)

• The Things - Peter Watts (Clarkesworld Magazine)

• Gemini and the End of the World - Nexpo (Youtube)

• SCP 1879 - Anonymous? (SCP Foundation)

• I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell - u/searchandrescuewoods (Nosleep)

• Mute - Stephen King (Just After Sunset)

• The Man in the Black Suit - Stephen King (Everything's Eventual)

• The Boogeyman - Stephen King (Night Shift)

• I Am the Doorway - Stephen King (Night Shift)

• Look at Me - thatredguy (Jezebel)

• The Smiling Man - u/blue_tidal (LetsNotMeet)

• NSFW The Pancake Family - u/aapeterson (Nosleep)

• How to survive camping - u/fainting-goat (Nosleep)

If I haven't gotten to your suggestions yet, I should get to add them eventually!

The other day I watched a video about super disturbing books, which was a really bad idea since I can't handle upsetting imagery and I'm not in a very great place mentally. Why I decided to listen anyway, I have no idea except my morbid curiosity. I won't get into the book itself since it's too upsetting, but it was a lot of shock value and gross and psychologically f*cked up. Due to my sensitivity and fragile emotional state, it's been really affecting my daily life and I keep thinking about it over and over. I've tried looking for videos about how to deal with being disturbed from a book but I'm coming up empty handed, so I figured I'd try here. Even if you don't have advice, it would be a relief to know that other people have gone through this and that it gets better.

Thank you so much <3

Note: please try not to go into graphic detail of a disturbing book you've read 😅

Hi!

I've recently gotten back into reading and am currently very drawn to horror. Mainly classical horror, but I'm open to newer stuff as well. Recently read Frankenstein (would it be worth to also read the 1818 text?) and I'm planning to go for Haunting of Hill House next.

Looking forqard to your recommendations😊

so I've never read a horror book that has been genuinely scary. and that's saying smth because I am usually a pretty timid watcher of horror when it comes to movies. it has been a long time since smth truly gripping and scary. id love some recs please

On my Libby app, I'm waiting for 2-3 reserved titles to become available. The app has suggested some other things to read in the meantime, and I chose one called Dark Cities, a short story collection that centers around how the most huge, bustling city can hold the same types of horrors as spooky woods at midnight. The first story in this book is called "The Dogs" by Scott Smith.

I've been around the block plenty of times... Dark Shadows made my adolescence bearable; I've been reading Stephen King and Peter Straub since the mid 1970s, plenty of Clive Barker, stayed with The Walking Dead to the bitter end, etc. I hoped in vain to find the master of urban horror, T.E.D. Klein, in these pages...but know where to find him, in any case.

But with all that, the first story in this collection really rattled me. It concerns a young woman who goes in search of companionship in the pages of Craigslist, and, of course, gets quite a bit more than what she asked for. This story is, seriously, not for the faint of heart. The horror builds slowly. Everything you expect takes a turn at the last second, and even when you are fairly sure where it's going, the author quietly and dispassionately keeps it moving at a slow, logical, relentless, inexorable pace, and you are drawn right along in the current.

Plenty of horror fiction features cats, rats, birds, snakes, and wolves, but the garden variety tail-wagging buddies familiar to most of us -- in our friends' homes, if not our own -- are rarely presented as anything besides the heroes or the hapless victims. This story, well, let's just say it goes there. And it doesn't stop until the last four words. Try it, if you dare, lol!