Nightmare Magazine - Horror and Dark Fantasy Story Podcast (Audiobook | Short Stories)

This episode features "Blood of the Idugan" by Lilia Zhang (©2025 by Lilia Zhang) read by Justine Eyre, and " Beak" by Ian Muneshwar (©2025 by Ian Muneshwar) read by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Old Brooklyn Magic" by Ian Li (©2025 by Ian Li) and "Glory Hole" by Neal Auch (©2025 by Neal Auch), both read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "A Girl Goes on a Date Alone at Night" by Cynthia Gómez (©2025 by Cynthia Gómez) read by Alison Belle Bews, and "The Witchdoctor's Revenge" by Nuzo Onoh (©2025 by Nuzo Onoh) read by Mirron Willis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Touch This Cancer, It Probably Won't Bite" by Josh Pearce (©2025 by Josh Pearce) read by Stefan Rudnicki, and "Pezcara" by Ana Hurtado (©2025 by Ana Hurtado) read by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "sharp house" by Samir Sirk Morató (©2025 by Samir Sirk Morató) read by Stefan Rudnicki, and "The Tugwort" by Lincoln Michel (©2025 by Lincoln Michel) read by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is episode features "in your mind, they still dance" by Ariya Bandy (©2025 by Ariya Bandy) read by Susan Hanfield, and "In Our Skin" by Kelsea Yu (©2025 by Kelsea Yu) read by Judy Young. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "The Sound a Rabbit Might Make" by Bruce McAllister (©2025 by Bruce McAllister) and "God of the Black Moon" by Dan Stintzi (©2025 by Dan Stintzi), both read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Annihilation of Red" by Anuel Rodriguez (©2025 by Anuel Rodriguez) read by Stefan Rudnicki, and "Karabasan" by Leyla Hamedi (©2025 by Leyla Hamedi) read by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "They Bought a House" by Osahon Ize-Iyamu (©2025 by Osahon Ize-Iyamu) read by Stefan Rudnicki, and "The Morning Room" by Katharine Tyndall (©2025 by Katharine Tyndall) read by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, listeners! Allow us to introduce you to Fear Daily, the brand new retro horror show that takes you into the shadows of the past, unearthing the 1990's most terrifying tales of monsters, madness, and life after death. Every day, from Monday to Friday, Fear Daily brings you two new stories of hauntings, monsters, cults and killers, all from the 1990s or before. Some of them might even be true, if you know where to look. Written by Brennan Storr of The Ghost Story Guys podcast, and narrated by Brandon Schexneider, creator of Southern Gothic, Fear Daily is pure handcrafted horror from two veteran storytellers. With most episodes clocking in around 25 minutes or less, Fear Daily is bite-size horror at its very best. Like what you hear? Find Fear Daily wherever you get your podcasts and at: https://podfollow.com/1755456394 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Mnemonic Burning" by Angela Liu (©2024 by Angela Liu), and "Before and After" by Steve Rasnic Tem (© by Steve Rasnic Tem) both read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Wait, Our Lord the Flayed One Comes" by Tania Chen (©2024 by Tania Chen) read by Roxanne Hernandez, and "Amelia's Story" by Adam-Troy Castro (©2024 by Adam-Troy Castro) read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "A Guide for Your Journey to the Green Hills" by R. K. Duncan (©2024 by R. K. Duncan) read by Stefan Rudnicki, and "Moon Rabbit Song" by Caroline Hung (©2024 by Caroline Hung) read by Susan Hanfield and Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode features "Sumbisori" by Jess Cho (© 2024 by Jess Cho) and "She Sheds Her Skin" by Raven Jakubowski (© 2024 by Raven Jakubowski), both narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Something tells you this two-pump station isn't a contactless kind of place. Google Maps gave up the ghost several miles ago. You go inside and pay in cash. Diolch, you add, your one word of Welsh; the cashier replies with something you don't follow. | © 2024 by Simon Gilbert. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month's Nightmare Short Shots episode features "Possession" by Martins Deep (© 2024 by Martins Deep), narrated by Stefan Rudnicki and "NotRob" by Isabel Cañas (© 2024 by Isabel Cañas), narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This whole business, it all started right about when I burned my church down. | © 2024 by Gemma Files. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My mother sits at the kitchen table in the moonlight, gazing at her folded hands. “Has your father returned with Lilah?” | © 2024 by Sam W. Pisciotta. Narrated by John Rubinstein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month's Nightmare Short Shots episode features "I Am One of Bluebeard's Dead Wives" by Bella D. Bonne (© 2024 by Bella D. Bonne), narrated by Roxanne Hernandez and "A Long Time Afterward" by Sonya Taaffe (© 2024 by Sonya Taaffe), narrated by John Rubinstein. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On an unmarked road somewhere in the Appalachians, a midnight blue Cadillac rolled to a stop, gravel popping under tires, headlights peering out into the discord of dusk. | © 2024 by Russell Nichols. Narrated by Mirron Willis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We hear you laughing as you speed by on the interstate. In spite of what you might think of us, we are a proud town. We don't need your understanding. We don't explain. You couldn't handle the answers. | © 2024 by Cody Goodfellow. Narrated by Nan McNamara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month's Nightmare Short Shots episode features "Painted Surfaces" by Guan Un (© 2024 by Guan Un), narrated by Arthur Morey and "Witches Sabbath" by Lisa M. Bradley (© 2024 by Lisa M. Bradley), narrated by Nan McNamara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nine years, fifty-two days, seven hours until hyadeic convergence. Kayla watched the hot, empty cake pan smoke on the kitchen counter. It was her husband Henry's birthday, and she'd planned a little surprise for him. | © 2024 by Erin Brown. Narrated by Nan McNamara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Haw Par Villa in the rain was a splash of garish color. The dark red footpath, glistening wet. The ornate tiered gate that greeted visitors with a carving of a tiger, etched in gold and blue. | © 2024 by Megan Chee. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month's Nightmare Short Shots episode features "Automaton Boy" by Sara S. Messenger (© 2024 by Sara S. Messenger) and "Phantom Taste of Apricot on My Tongue" by Richard Leis (© 2024 by Richard Leis), both narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The soldiers start rounding up us factory girls just before sunrise. | © 2024 by Thomas Ha. Narrated by Susan Hanfield and Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This poem sprang from its title, a product of old-school random-generator email spam. | © 2024 by Sonya Taaffe. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there . . . | © 2024 by Ally Wilkes. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the tiny abbey in the province of Tasselt—the only abbey in the region with both an abbot and his monks and a dozen nuns as well (a temporary matter that had somehow become permanent)—the abbot, whose skin had gotten paler even as the veins beneath it had become more pronounced, and who preferred darkness to light of any kind, had taken over the West section of the abbey, with its many, darker rooms. | © 2024 by Bruce McAllister. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you haven't seen it yet, you will. | © 2024 by Manish Melwani. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This poem began as a letter from a grandmother to her grandchild. It warns of uncontrollable wickedness and gifts them wisdom for how to survive despite it. | © 2024 by Beatrice Winifred Iker. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I first saw them one evening in May. I couldn't tell what they were: small, like kids, like me, but they rustled, raffia fronds for skin. | © 2024 by Victor Forna. Narrated by Mirron Willis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The question is, who dies at the end of this story? | © 2024 by Carlie St. George. Narrated by Alison Belle Bews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is something uniquely squalid and sad about estate sales. To traipse through a cluttered house, one of a teeming crowd here to bear witness to the end of a life and all that it held, not to pay respect but instead to lunge for whatever goodies you can find. | © 202 Daniel David Froid. Narrated by Ruth Wallman. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The opening line is my riff on Bach's chorale prelude “Come, Sweet Death,” one of his most profound. | © 2024 by John R. Turner. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It didn't come as a surprise when AJ told me she wanted to open our relationship. We'd been an item for four years, but by the middle of the third year the two of us had long since checked out. | © 2024 by James Tatum. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a nice man with a smart phone camera approaches them. It is also the phone he uses to record his real real reviews of the tacos from the authentic food trucks in Brooklyn and the scenes of the noble and earnest people at the bodegas in Queens. Places where honest people hang out and where he doesn't make friends with anyone. | © 2024 by Mark Galarrita. Narrated by Annette Oliveira. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the American saw me sitting on a stone in the river, his mouth opened and closed, a brown trout caught on a fishing line. He kept his eyes on me as he hurried to pull off his socks and shoes, as if I would vanish otherwise. | © 2024 by Shannon Scott. Narrated by Annette Oliveira. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This poem began as flash fiction, and was then whittled even smaller—perhaps ironic, given its subject. I wrote this to explore how we change in a relationship, how it isn't always healthy or best for us—or necessarily consensual. | © 2024 by E. Catherine Tobler. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I like car journeys in the passenger's seat. They give me time to think and rethink things beyond the shape of my life. I'm not allowed to play music, but I can in my head. Places blur. Memories tangle. Pitying voices from long ago garble in my ear on the thickened tongue of regret. “Muniza,” my husband says, eyes on the road. “Your skin is slipping.” | © 2024 by Fatima Taqvi. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before we left camp, we were informed about the dos and donts for living in our respective communities, considering we were strangers. Happenings that we newcomers saw as strange should not be enough reason to contravene the laws of the land. | © 2024 by Oyedotun Damilola Muees. Narrated by Janina Edwards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chuck was wire-sick again, so he hobbled up onto Jerome's porch one sunny afternoon, need curling his spine like a bent clothes hanger. Jerome was the guy who could get you whatever you needed, as long as what you needed was wire, or crank, or a pallet of Captain Chompberry cereal, or twenty cartons of stolen Lithuanian cigarettes. | © 2024 by Keith Rosson. Narrated by Paul Boehmer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Joseph Adams here, publisher of NIGHTMARE. I recently had the honor and great pleasure of collaborating with Jordan Peele to edit the anthology OUT THERE SCREAMING: An Anthology of New Black Horror, and I'm pleased to present this story from the anthology for NIGHTMARE's listeners. So please enjoy "The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World" by Nalo Hopkinson, read by Robin Miles. To learn more about the book, visit johnjosephadams.com/OTS. This audio has been provided courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from the book OUT THERE SCREAMING: an anthology of new black horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams; read by a full cast. "The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World" is written by Nalo Hopkinson and read by Robin Miles. This story and audio production are © 2023 by Nalo Hopkinson and Penguin Random House LLC.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

curses take root from root to root / is what they said / when they came for the tree /the tree that had shaded her since she was a baby | © 2024 by Adriana C. Grigore. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Her fingers, then, had folded around the clay, her mind entranced. Her fingers traced the soft wetness, pressed gently, pressed firmly, bent, rolled, pulled, pushed. The clay yielded to her rough-skinned hands like a willing lover. She had bent closer to the orange-red clay and closed her eyes. | © 2024 by H.B. Menendez. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wouldn't survive a slasher film. When the killer comes to town and starts popping off fresh-faced coeds, I'd eat it before we hit Act II. I have a great affection for those initial victims who seem to linger hauntingly over the narrative. | © 2024 by Jessica Luke Garcia. Narrated by Roxanne Hernandez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Annie slips into the club, she grins at Robert, all trepidation and excitement. She hardly disturbs the velvet curtains with her passing, so their weight surprises him. He pushes at the fabric to force his way in. The atmosphere is muggy and heavy. | © 2024 by George Sandison. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was inspired by my body, and bodies in general. What it means for a body to exist in spaces that find it unworthy, unholy. And how sometimes, we also have to carry our ancestry, our birthplace, in these very bodies. So we have bodies weighted with history and ancestry, but still found sacrilegious. How does one reconcile that? | © 2024 by Somto Ihezue. Narrated by Mirron Willis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I work in a tall brick room with peaked cathedral ceilings. At one end of the room there is a brick-lined chute, chimneylike, that opens up out of the ceiling seventy-five or a hundred feet above a yawning pit in the floor. Every so often, without much warning, a body will fall from the chute and tumble through the air. | © 2024 by Andrew Stover. Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My little brother once chased me through the house with an ax. He was joking, mostly. But it certainly didn't feel like a joke at the time. He plunged forward with a guttural battle cry at the start of the chase. His face sanguine, veins pulsing with rushing blood. Through his anger, he still had enough control to throw in creepy one-liners. I don't have a clear memory of what he said. Some insult à la Freddy or Ghostface? A classic along the lines of “I'm going to get you little girl”? Laughter. | © 2024 by Megan Kiekel Anderson. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pregnancy is an infestation. A hidden invasion. An invisible operative sneaks inside you, planting a package of foreign genetic material and forcing you to replicate it trillions of times. Soon, your hostage cell floats down your fallopian tube to the womb to feed on the blood-bed of your uterine lining like a vicious little tick. | © 2024 R.A. Busby. Narrated by Justine Eyre. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices