Castle of Horror Anthology Volume 9

The Castle of Horror Anthology returns with stories of the young—horrible, thrilling, terrible flamin" youth at its most harrowing.

Featuring stories by David Bowles, Jennifer Brody, Julian Michael Carver, Debbie Daughetee, Carmen Gray, Ammar Habib, Jess Hagemann, Leanna Renee Hieber, Sam Knight, Alethea Kontis, Mike Owsley, Scott Pearson, S.N. Rodriguez, and Bryan Young.

The Most Dangerous game gets a very contemporary send-up in the world of sorority sisters on a Yoga retreat in Jennifer Brody's "Namaste." Alethea Kontis returns to the Castle of Horror with a castle-bound story of her own, the exciting, French romantic fantasy story "Blood From Stone," about a young woman turning to black magic for love.

"The Black House" by Bryan Young brings us a small-town-American love story of a boy and his (to reveal what would be spoiling it.) David Bowles' haunting "Shattered Intaglio" gives us a fresh alternate world of magic wielders and revenge.

A girl pours herself into her haunted hobby of gravestone rubbings while a family member wastes away in Debbie Daughetee's "The Black Door." Julian Michael Carver's "1/1" is a story about baseball card collection that would be right at home in an old issue of Tales from the Crypt.

The Indian city of Amritsar is the locale for a classic tale of a boy, a curse, and a night in a haunted mansion in "The Curse of Amritsar" by Ammar Habib. In Jess Hagemann's strange, dreamlike "House of Many Rooms," young people are just… disappearing, so many of them that people have given up trying to explain.

Carmen Gray's "A Tale as Old as Time" tells of a sweet young girl whose growing anger against injustice may find a voice in dangerous power. Sam Knight's "The Light at the End of the Tunnel" is a Lovecraftean, post-apocalyptic story that oscillates smoothly between comfort and slimy fear.

In "I am Laid to Rest in Maine," Mike Owsley gives us the narrative of a young person, now dead, coming to terms with their own demise—and maybe not staying that way. Scott Pearson came to us with "The Creature in Jay Cooke Park," a companion story to "The Loneliness of Monstersm" which appeared in Castle of Horror Anthology Volume 7: Love Gone Wrong. Here, three friends encounter a strange visitor in a world where such visitors are arriving more and more.

Amidst a raging hurricane, a young woman struggles to survive against the elements, both physical and supernatural, in an effort to be reunited with her younger sister in S.N. Rodriguez' "Penumbra." And Leanna Renee Hieber returns to the spooky Colorado town of Glazier's Gap, the location of her book Ghosts of the Forbidden, with the tale of a 17-year-old rocker in 1999 who feels the weight of spirits all around her—spirits that may bear a deadly warning.