Humorous Horror

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is celebrated as a master of the gothic tale of the macabre and the supernatural, but he also wrote a number of humorous and satirical tales, seven of which are presented here.

Kate and Michael, twenty-something housemates working at the same Trader Joe’s supermarket, are thoroughly screwed when people start turning into zombies at their house party in the Oakland hills. The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers.

While traveling back home from a job interview in California, Mark and Ally Thurston suffer a car accident in Middle of Nowhere Kansas. After walking for miles to the nearest convenience store, they are greeted by Hap, the store owner, who invites them to stay the night at his home.

Ava Birch is a ghoul. Still wading through the world of Supernaturals, she is discovering that daytime soaps have nothing on the drama in her life. Lisa Jenkins, her best friend and human companion, is training to join an organization that tried to eradicate every ghoul on the planet. Morgan, her so-called adviser, continues to answer in as little detail as possible...and now the faeries are causing people to have orgies in the middle of a shopping mall. Welcome to the real world of the Supernaturals where all that stuff you read is based on fact.

From across the far reaches of the internet, the community at Fark.com presents . . . Something Woked This Way Comes: The 2023 Fark Fiction Anthology. Our editors have worked feverishly to bring you the best short fiction of 2023 from the minds and imaginations at Fark, the online community where snark is king and wit reigns supreme. Gods. Angels. Devils (maybe.) St. Nicholas and sinners, foxes and dogs, the future and the past all come together with much, much more. And even better, for the eighth year in a row, all proceeds from the sale of this anthology will benefit an excellent ...

Men come and go, but magic is forever…right? Wrong. After a few months of letting witchcraft slide, Jane Madison discovers that not using her powers has her rapidly losing them. Meanwhile, her warder is avoiding her, her familiar has moved out, her mother is abandoning her again, and her grandmother is…getting married? With her world turned topsy-turvy, Jane is at her wits' end trying to set things right. Staking everything on a last-ditch spell that backfires spectacularly, Jane is left full of questions.

What is it with Olivia and ghosts? No matter where Olivia Kidney goes, they follow. Even when she and her klutzy handyman father start over in a new brownstone in New York City - owned by the mad, bad, and dangerous Ansel Plover - there is no escape from the weirdness that is Olivia's life. Their new living room is entirely submerged underwater, and Olivia needs a boat to navigate past the bobbing furniture and snapping turtles just to get to her bedroom. And then, there are the ghosts. The house holds secrets, lots of them - Olivia can feel it. Why, she wonders, was she invited to live there?

Matteo, an aerospace engineer, returns home after working on a recovered spacecraft, expecting a sense of accomplishment. However, an unsettling feeling gnaws at him, and he can't shake the sense that something is amiss. Despite a reassuring doctor's report declaring his health normal, Matteo's unease persists. As he succumbs to exhaustion and drifts into sleep, Matteo awakens to a reality beyond comprehension. No longer in his own body, he finds himself inhabiting the unfamiliar form of another being. Bewildered and disoriented, he discovers the shocking truth: his body has been hijacked ...

In 1838 Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce, to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days. Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred years. Blanca’s was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having lived in a world full, according to her mother, of ‘beautiful men’, she has found that in death it is the women she falls for.

Brad's mostly been a loner, content with his job and his tiny apartment. He's never thought much about being part of something. He's never really thought about the bigger picture. Until he meets a beautiful (and possibly psychotic) girl named Dawn. Dawn leads Brad into a vicious world as hedonistically carnal as it is brutal, forcing Brad to decide if he's going to dig deep within himself and continue to resist the community he's remained apart from his entire life or embrace it and accept his new reality.

Stanley's lonely. Before the strange events of the past few months, the self-proclaimed alien abductee and T.V. crime drama aficionado would drink and bowl with his friends, Herb and Dallas. Everything changes when Stanley becomes a zombie. With each bite, he gains a new friend. Soon, he has more friends than he would've ever thought possible. If he could just sink his teeth into Herb, Lois, and Dallas, they'd all be together again, and everything would be perfect.

Fans of Scott Telek’s film writing have come to expect an irreverent, insightful and often outrageously funny take on films from the good to the very, very bad. The tradition continues in this fourth volume, archiving 43 movie reviews in the horror genre, all beginning with the letter D. It turns out the letter D is a good one for horror, as it contains the words “Dead,” “Don’t,” “Demon” and “Dracula.” And if you were trapped on a desert island with these movies (as well as fresh water, food and a TV and DVD player!) you would actually be doing pretty well, as many fine ...

Terrance O’Hara is a priest with a dark past and a secret. By day, he preaches the good book. By night, he hunts the creatures that stalk the innocent. Haunted by past actions and family sins, he vows to hunt down the demon lord who wronged his ancestors. Teaming up with the unlikely allies of Lucy, a succubus and lawyer by trade, and Mary, a day-walking vampire, the trio goes on a journey from Boston to New York, quickly falling into a rabbit hole of demonic conspiracy. Can Terry outrun fate and overcome his family curse? Or will Lord Barbatos claim another soul?

Lawrence Nurdle fancies himself a Goth Edgelord. His girlfriend isn't impressed. To convince her he's the edgiest guy in Toledo, Ohio, he joins a coven of vampires. The vampires kill Lawrence. Death just wants to enjoy a ballgame. But Death has a job to do and must collect the soul of Lawrence Nurdle. There's just one problem. Death can only collect the souls of the dead and Lawrence is now undead, like the rest of the vampires.

Something not quite human stalks the city streets under the full moon after the gay bars close. As the ravaged corpses start piling up, coroner Becky O’Brien and her unlikely allies realize they are the only defenders who can protect scores of unsuspecting pretty boys from a grisly, bone-crunching death by werewolf.

When you look into the abyss...the abyss looks into you. After dumping the body of a serial killer on my former boss’s desk, I handed in my cop badge, which I’ve replaced with an FBI badge. Yep, I’m a Fed. I work for Special Affairs, a clandestine department tasked with policing the occult underground. In the meantime, my personal life is a disaster zone. There’s a Yakuza boss who wants to kill me, and my crazy Hellicorn is going through an existential crisis. But it’s the evil warlock who is making my life a living nightmare.

For one young man, it is always decided by a simple code of chance taught to him by his mentor, a gruff truck driver named Petty who once took him under his wing. Now a trucker himself, the savant travels the quickest routes coast to coast through 1990s America, listening to the Top 40 Countdown and holding the fate of those he encounters in the palm of his hand.

Telekfilm’s horror movie survey continues with this fifth installment, including 35 reviews of horror films that begin with the letters E, F and G. Scott Telek continues to supply film reviews that combine hilarious, off-the-cuff commentary with encyclopedic film knowledge and rare insight into movie writing unlike any other. Here we have a towering bad movie colossuses in Exorcist II: The Heretic, which will exhaust you with the shocking depth and scope of its awfulness, and truly deserves a special place of its own because… it simply cannot be believed. Then there’s major studio ...

Sam's job as a parking attendant has always been boring. Until now. A hole straight to hell has opened up and evil lurks in the shadows of the garage. When management fails to help, Sam turns to her friends and coworkers. But, can a handful of burned-out employees save a city? Will Sam discover the secret of the parking garage without getting fired, or will she die trying?

Bestselling author Jason Hutchinson is at it again! By day, Brian is a talented, yet low-tier IT consultant... ...by night? Well, he's generally even less than that! Living in the big city isn't all it's cracked up to be. Brian's job sucks, his boss is overbearing, and he doesn't see much future in it. That is, until he walks into the halls of MCC, Magical Community College. Things are going well, at least until his first class session. He might have been a little bit distracted by gorgeous Pandora, the hot and overly-curious subject of his magical history class and allowed her to open ...