THE CRYSTAL IN THE WALL
Skipping school on Friday afternoons had become one of our senior-year rituals. With only study halls and gym left on our schedule, why the hell wouldn’t we? I didn’t have a car, but Donger did, so we’d pile in and drive around, hunting for new places to get high in a town where nothing felt new anymore. Tommy suggested we go on an adventure—hike out to the giant cross near the Russian monastery. Donger bitched about potholes and gas, like he always did, but finally caved to our relentless peer pressure.
Autoplay Next: A Choose Your Horror Flash Fiction Story
A Choose Your Horror flash fiction story, written by Justine Norton-Kertson, from Nerd Horror Media.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE MILKING
One night, the milk turned blue.
At first, no one noticed. The cows still grazed, the barn lights flickered in their usual rhythm, and the machines kept churning their daily song.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE BOY WHO COULDN’T SLEEP
I hadn’t really slept since we moved into the house on Church Street, even though I finally had my own room.
I mean, I slept a little, but not a deep sleep. Not dreamless sleep—the kind that washes over you and leaves you feeling whole in the morning. Every night felt like being buried alive in cotton—suffocating in slowness, dragged into a paralyzed fog where I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, but something could touch me. And every morning, I woke weaker. Like I’d run a marathon in my dreams. Like something fed off me while I lay helpless.
REVISITING THE CRYPT OF MUPPET HORROR
Revisiting the crypt of muppet horror: a world where horror meets Henson’s Muppets. In a dark corner of reality that is familiar, yet eerily different, prepare for terror, laughter, and an existential crisis as your favorite felt friends star in their creepiest and most iconic roles yet.
THE NECRONOMIKIDS
Max smirked, unsheathing his favorite red pen—the one he always used for writing boss stats—and began copying the first sigil onto the Grimworld monster sheets. The pen moved like it knew the way without him. The moment the final curve closed into a circle, the basement shivered.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE FEARS OF A CLOWN
I dug in—and went straight for the comics. Wedged between faded copies of Heavy Metal magazine, I found it. Something about the way the tin clown caught the sun through the dirty storefront window stopped me cold. The colors were still bold, like it had been painted yesterday: orange, aqua, yellow. It sat frozen mid-rock on its little tin horse, just grinning like it knew something. It was creepy but it was cool as hell.
I had to have it. It would look perfect next to my trick clown bank. I bought it for fifty cents.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: Three Days to Animal
Three days without food or water. That’s how long it takes for a person to regress—mind, body, and soul—into a state of pure, animal survival. Three days, and morality starts to rot. Compassion peels away. You’re not human anymore. You’re a creature that will do anything to live—even kill.
That’s what they say, anyway.
But what I saw… he didn’t turn into an animal.
He became something hungrier. Something crueler. Something worse.
SENSELESS BY RONALD MALFI: BOOK REVIEW
Senseless is a Los Angeles centered, thriller filled with vampires, a human fly, a monkey, doctors, detectives and Hollywood predators. When the mutilated body of a young woman is discovered in the desert on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Detective Bill Renney, assigned to the case can’t deny the similarities between this murder and one that occurred a year prior. As Renney struggles to find suspects, clues and a grip on reality he must overcome ghosts pursuing him from all directions.
Is it a serial killer? A copycat killer? And how do a human fly, a vampire, an author on the run from her past, a narcissistic Hollywood producer and his drug addict son and a Hollywood shrink fit into the puzzle? They will all converge on Renney to make Senseless an unforgettable rubiks cube of horror you won’t be able to put down.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE RULE OF THREE
Lana Grant had built her entire brand on the fine line between fear and fun. Her TikTok series, “3-Minute Myth,” had started as a side project during her last semester of college in upstate New York. Now, with nearly 800K followers and a growing YouTube mirror channel, she was one of horror-Tok’s most popular creators—equal parts skeptic, storyteller, and scream queen.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: BROTHER
He was seventeen when the call came.
They said it was a miracle—finally a matching donor, with a perfect heart. My parents cried tears of joy. I just stared at the carpet. I didn’t know what to feel. My big brother Danny had been sick for most of my life. Dilated cardiomyopathy, they called it. His heart was too weak, too big and just not good at being a heart. For years, I watched him fade—pale, tired, sometimes blue-lipped and wheezing after walking upstairs. But then came the transplant and then came the change.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE ALGORITHM FEEDS
The video was everywhere, a shaky, low-light livestream. A woman in her twenties. Makeup—perfect. Ring light—glowing. She leaned toward the camera, mid-sentence.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: FATHER
They kidnapped me from outside my apartment. One moment I was unlocking my bike, the next—a hood, hands, a vehicle that smelled like sulfur and old milk. I passed out.
I woke up, strapped to a table of cold metal—my wrists burned. The air buzzed with some frequency I couldn’t hear, but felt in my teeth. Inside I tasted dread as candles flickered while the smell of rotted flesh lambasted me.
I lifted my head to see my kidnappers in a large dilapidated open room. They’d arranged themselves with their backs to me mostly, in a semicircle around a wall. As I stared, the wall pulsed, shimmered and breathed. Like it waited for me—licking its lips to taste my fear.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE CRYSTALLINE VOW
They say when you’re dying, your life flashes before your eyes. But mine won’t stop replaying just one night—one scream, one blade, one name I still whisper in dreams. I broke a vow I never made, and they killed him for it. Now the crystal is humming again, and I don’t think I have much time left. So if you’re reading this, listen closely—because once I tell you, it won’t just be my secret anymore.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE GATEKEEPERS
There’s something lurking in the code, in the algorithms that’s preying on us—If you’ve seen this post, it might already be too late.
The door was open. It wasn’t supposed to be. It gaped like an invitation no one wanted, humming with silence. I stepped inside Justine’s apartment, whispering their name. No response. Just the kind of stillness that feels loaded. And then I saw the blood.
It was smeared along the edge of their keyboard—a perfect, curling half-print of a fingertip. Beneath it was a tiny message written in red Sharpie on the back of a Post-it note:
"Rule 0 is real."
That was the last thing they ever wrote.
THE DAMAGE OF GATEKEEPING IN HORROR
I have been having a blast on the NoSleep Subreddit, sharing horror stories and interacting with horror fans in fun, immersive ways. As a professor of Transmedia storytelling at RIT, community building and engaging is so important to me. Having been the Creative Director at DeviantArt and having overseen the development of many communities through curation and moderation, I was so excited to have the opportunity to play on Reddit with the Nerd Horror concept.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: POLLY MILLER ROAD
If you grew up in upstate New York, you’ve probably heard some version of the Polly Miller story. Witch. Murdered lover. Cursed swamp. The older kids always dared each other to go out there, to Polly Miller Road, after dark. I used to think it was all bullshit. Just local legend. But in the summer of 1999, I found out it wasn’t. Polly’s real—and she’s been waiting.
All we wanted was to run—me and Jess, two girls who’d gotten too deep in Carter’s bullshit. Swayed by the money, the free drugs, and that so-called safe compound tucked deep off Vickerman Hill. We had it made, but the cost was our souls, and that was too steep for me.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE CURIOUS CASE OF JORGE THE VAMPIRE HORSE
This is Jorge.
Jorge was a good little horse.
He came from Mexico.
He didn’t have papers—just dreams.
This is the Man in the Red Hat.
He was not the sharpest tool in the shed.
He was very mean.
He hid behind a cross and a gun.
And he treated politics like his favorite sports team.
The Man in the Red Hat hated Jorge.
GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: JACK’S TONIC
WARNING: Never drink a 150-Year-old Snake Oil Tonic—My Aunt did, and now she’s not human anymore
They told me the old milk house hadn’t been opened since 1947. My great-grandfather, Jack “The Milk Man,” died there—collapsed by the churn with his boots on. The room had stayed sealed ever since, the cold stone cellar beneath it undisturbed.
Until now.
BLACK MIRROR MADE A TRANSMEDIA GAME YOU CAN PLAY FOR SEASON 7
Black Mirror is back for season 7 on Netflix and along with it, comes some transmedia horror that brings the episode into the real world. Peter Capaldi's 'Plaything' episode introduces the creepy little game Thronglets—and Netflix has made the game a reality you can play right now.