On a scorching hot summer day in Elkwood, Alabama, Claire Lambert staggers naked, wounded, and half-blind away from the scene of an atrocity. She is the sole survivor of a nightmare that claimed her friends, and even as she prays for rescue, the killers — a family of cannibalistic lunatics — are closing in.A soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder returns from Iraq to the news that his brother is among the murdered in Elkwood.In snowbound Detroit, a waitress t...

School is out and summer has begun. For eleven year old Timmy Quinn and his best friend Pete Marshall, the dreary town of Delaware Ohio becomes a place of magic, hidden treasure and discovery.But on the day they encounter a strange young boy sitting on the bank of Myers Pond, a pond playground rumor says may hide turtles the size of Buicks, everything changes.For it soon becomes apparent that dark secrets abound in the little community, secrets which come cupped in the hand...

At first glance, Phil Pendleton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is s...

From the outside, it looks like an ordinary American home, but since its construction in 1956, people have vanished as soon as they go upstairs, the only clues the things they leave behind: a wedding ring, a phone...an eye.In its sixty-year history, a record number of strange events have been attributed to the house, from the neighbors waking up to find themselves standing in the yard outside, to the grieving man who vanished before a police officer's eyes. The animals gathering in...

Welcome to Eddie's Tavern, the only functioning waterhole in a near-dead town. Among the people you'll meet tonight are: Tom, Milestone's haunted lawman, who walks in the shadow of death; Gracie, the barmaid, a wannabe actress, doomed to spend her hours tending bar in a purgatory of her father's making; Flo, the town seductress, who may or may not have murdered her husband; Cobb, a nudist awaiting an apology from the commune who cast him out; Wintry, the mute giant, whose story is told onl...

The perfect getaway...The perfect place to hide...Hocking Hills, Ohio is an oasis for campers, hikers, nature enthusiasts, and for those who just want to get away and lose themselves in the wild.And as long as you follow your guide's advice and stay within the permitted areas, you can expect to survive the night.Because deep within the dark woods, something insidious awaits, something few have ever seen, something ancient, unknowable, and insatiable....

When they were kids, Gillian and John used to visit the local cemetery every Sunday after church. It was a curious place for children to frequent, but they had their reasons. The main attraction was the lofty hill that separated the cemetery from the elementary school, and the act of tumbling down it like Jack and Jill was a ritualistic escape from the abuse they were suffering at their father's hands.It was an escape that lasted only until John's tragic death.Now, Gillian ...

In the wake of his infant daughter's tragic death, Steve Brannigan is struggling to keep himself together. Estranged from his wife, who refuses to be inside the house where the unthinkable happened, and unable to work, he seeks solace in an endless parade of old sitcoms and a bottle of bourbon.Until one night he hears a sound from his daughter's old room, a room now stripped bare of anything that identified it as hers...except for her security blanket, affectionately known as Blank...

From the Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of THE TURTLE BOY, KIN, and JACK & JILL.Somewhere out west there is a town called Milestone. You will not find it on any map. If you're lucky, you won't find it at all.Once a thriving mining community, the few souls who still dwell there know nothing of hope and everything of damnation. Because Milestone may appear near-death, a ghost town in the making, but it is very much alive.There are the stories of invisible barriers t...

"If you are hiding from yourself, don't expect anyone else to see you."Everyone has a secret. Everyone is someone else when the world isn't looking. Sometimes that person is good; sometimes that person is not. In Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke's latest terrifying collection of short stories, you'll meet thirteen people who discover the horror of what happens when those secret faces are removed and the true darkness that dwells within us all is unleashed....

Strange text messages portend a strange kind of apocalypse...Two brothers find themselves drawn to the only house in the neighborhood not decorated for Halloween…A man returns to his hometown to bury his overbearing mother, and finds more than memories awaiting him in the shadows of his childhood home…A young girl walks a lonely country road, recalling a rhyme that brings with it memories of death…A teenager hoping for romance gets more than he bargained for when the object of his desire i...

A hooded figure wanders a lonesome road waiting for a special someone...A criminal returns home to face old memories and new nightmares...A man awakes to find himself living in a mirror image of reality...and diners at a restaurant find themselves confronted with a terrifying revelation about who and what they are...These are the nineteen nightmarish tales that await you onstage in the THEATER MACABRE...From Bram Stoker Award-winning author Kealan Patrick Burke.