The audio production of my psychological horror story Me, a Hero is now available to listen to for free on the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. It’s about a man who joins the search for a missing girl in hopes of making an appearance on the local evening news.
Content warning: stalking (implied)My story starts around the 17:30 mark.
My technohorror story Blame has been published in Soul: A Paranormal Anthology by Graveside Press.
Blame is about an audio engineer at a software company investigating strange sounds heard during customer voice chats. It’s a “found footage” story told through emails, Slack conversations, Reddit threads, phone transcripts, and more unusual artifacts like git commits, JIRA tickets, door entry logs … even a Walmart receipt.
Content warning: misogyny, sexual assault (mentioned), suicide (mentioned)
The audio production of my horror drabble Everything You Know About Witches is now available for free from the Tiny Frights podcast. It’s about a woman about to be burned at the stake, and the (mostly) mistaken assumptions that sent her there.
The audio production of my nostalgic 1980s “kids on bikes” horror story Many Deaths Before Dying is now available on The NoSleep Podcast. When a giant, silvery puddle appears in the field where they play, four boys encounter an inexplicable horror that will change them forever.
I’ve had a number of stories produced by The NoSleep Podcast over the years, but this is the first full-length story that has appeared in a regular episode. It took almost two years for this to be released, but I’m so happy with the end result. They did an excellent job with the casting and production.
Content warning: suicide (implied)My story starts around 44:45.
My psychological horror story A Perfect Fit has been published in Mono No Aware: Stories on the Fleeting Nature of Beauty by Culture Cult Press. It’s about a middle-aged woman who will do anything to maintain her youthful appearance.
I stepped back to admire Poppy’s frame, noting the slight swelling of her hips and the fine vertical lines above her upper lip. The ghost of a gray hair peeked out from the bangs she had added to hide her creased forehead.
“Poppy! Look at you!” I gushed. “How are you so perfect?”
My cryptid horror story No Bones, Just Skin has been published in the Children of the Dead: Lost Lullabies anthology by Wicked Shadow Press. It’s about a brother and sister who have a terrifying encounter with an abúhukü, a rainforest demon known for dissolving the bones of its prey and leaving the empty skin behind.
Content warning: mild gore“What happened to him?” Manuel asked. The filthy soccer ball he had been dribbling along the jungle floor rolled to a stop in a mud puddle on the side of the trail, suddenly forgotten.
Manuel’s older sister, Liliana, stood next to him, looking up at the body hanging high in the tree overhead. The carcass was little more than a shriveled husk of a man, a wrinkled bag of skin draped boneless and formless across the jungle’s dense lattice of vines and branches. It was almost as if the man had been turned into a garment, as if someone had slit him down the back, extracted his skeleton, then tossed him carelessly into the tree like an old bathrobe.
The audio production of my underwater horror story A Sinking Feeling is now available to listen to for free on the Ocean Horror Stories: Part 1 episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour. It’s the story of two survivors trapped in an air pocket in a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. And they’re not alone.
Content warning: child neglectMy story starts around the 23:00 mark.
The animated version of my post-apocalyptic horror/sci-fi story One Last Step has been released on the Storiaverse app, which combines original animation with text to create a unique interactive reading experience. The app is now available for free on both iOS and Android.
My horror story Something’s Wrong With Mom has been published in Lockdown Horror #8 by Black Hare Press. It’s the story of two brothers who wake up in the middle of the night to discover that their mother is on the ceiling. Again.
I actually submitted this story way back in May 2020—it’s one of my very first acceptances. The Lockdown Horror series was put on hold for a long time, but it finally found it’s way to print. I’m glad it did … the cover art is awesome.
Content warning: suicide (implied)
My Halloween horror story, Uncle Pumpkin’s Tongue, has been published in Issue 5 of 7th Circle Pyrite. It’s about a Halloween carnival ride with a sinister secret.
I wish I had warned someone about Uncle Pumpkin. Maybe I could have stopped him. Maybe I could have saved those poor kids. But until recently, I had no memory of the man at all. It was only after the bodies of the missing children were found—one boy still clutching a deflated pumpkin balloon in his shriveled, blackened hand—that I remembered what happened that night. And I realized that one of those kids could have been me.
Warren Benedetto 