Stephanie Campisi’s The Unfinished Business is a cozy middle-grade ghost story that treats grief and letting go with rare honesty. I dig into the craft, the comedy, and why this spooky middle grade ghost story for kids about found family and the dead we carry sits out in front of where the genre is heading.
Year: 2026
The Backrooms is Just a British Backshift With Better Lighting
“Liminal horror” has become a hipster buzzword, so here is what it actually means and where it actually lives: the back of the shop. From Skinamarink, The Exit 8 and Vivarium to Edinburgh’s Hunter’s Tryst and the council-house terror of Ghostwatch, this is the case that the Backrooms are just a British backshift, and that British working-class horror beats the American liminal void at its own game. The Americans get the empty void. We get the void plus a supervisor.
Stephanie Campisi on The Unfinished Business and the Ghosts We Keep
Stephanie Campisi kills off her mentor figure on page eighteen and rehires her as a ghost. In this interview the author of The Unfinished Business talks through her middle grade ghost story: grief played for laughs, a factory fire turned labour satire, and the one death the book refuses to console. Required reading for anyone tracking where cosy horror for kids goes next.
Steal Me by Helen Grant: A Folk Horror Novella That Reads You Back
Helen Grant’s Steal Me is a folk horror novella built on fairy-tale bones, set in a small Scottish town where a bookshop sells each customer the one thing they most want to hide. My review digs into the cursed bookshop, the Grimm folklore at its root, and why this Scottish Gothic chiller about desire and temptation belongs on the same shelf as the folk horror revival.
While They Watch by Leicole Lang: A Horror of Isolation
Leicole Lang’s debut horror novel While They Watch channels the spirit of classic isolation horror, building on sequestered distress to instil some of the most intense chills in recent literary memory. Taking time to establish character before ratcheting up the spookiness, this indie horror masterpiece delivers a slow-burn dread that explodes into pure, adrenaline-pumping fear, refusing to hand-feed answers and staying true to its uncompromising principles straight through to the end.
What Happened to Those Girls: Review of Carlyn Greenwald’s Chilling Thriller
Carlyn Greenwald’s What Happened to Those Girls drops three teenagers into a witch-haunted ghost town and lets only the bodies come back. My review digs into why this queer YA horror thriller, all grief and betrayal and small-town folk horror, hands its murder investigation to the one girl everyone wants to blame.
Horror Slots That Make Casino Play Feel Spooky
Horror Slots That Make Casino Play Feel Spooky Horror slots work because they borrow the oldest trick in the genre: a closed door, a strange sound, and a heartbeat that gets a little too loud. Instead of treating the slot format as a bright, cheerful machine, these games pull from … Horror Slots That Make Casino Play Feel SpookyRead more
Carlyn Greenwald on Her Queer Slasher What Happened to Those Girls
Carlyn Greenwald’s What Happened to Those Girls drops her most moody, body-horror-heavy book yet: a sapphic YA slasher where the toxic friend group doesn’t dissolve when the killer arrives — it’s the whole point. The Murder Land author talks survivor’s guilt, autistic representation, interstitial “found footage” chapters, and why losing someone who hurt you is its own kind of grief.
Doe by Rebecca Barrow: YA Horror in Verse That Breathes Dread
Rebecca Barrow’s Doe is a YA horror novel in verse that uses sharp, incantatory lines to build a dual-narrative story of jealousy, an ancient deer-like entity, and a deal that costs everything. Full review.
Dopefoot by Joshua Millican: Cryptid Horror With Teeth
Joshua Millican’s Dopefoot is cryptid horror that earns its monster the hard way, growing dread out of Northern California’s outlaw cannabis trade before the Bigfoot legend ever steps in. This Mad Axe Media release blends backwoods folk horror with gonzo extremity and lands as one of indie horror’s most distinctive reads of 2026.
Rebecca Barrow on Doe: Inside Her YA Horror Novel in Verse
Rebecca Barrow’s Doe is a YA horror novel in verse about a cheer captain, a centuries-tired deer creature, and the dangerous pull between girls. In our interview, Barrow digs into feminist horror, female rage, and why she wrote the squad as a single hive-mind “we.” A must-read for fans of Bad Things Happen Here and dual-timeline horror.
Roost by Hope Madden: A Folk Horror Built on Quiet Dread
Hope Madden’s Roost is a literary folk horror novella that follows twin sisters Joy and Hope across four Easter birthdays in a slowly dying Ohio town. With Catholic dread, small-town American gothic atmosphere, and a winged shadow that keeps coming home, this 2026 Lacandon Jungle Press reissue proves Madden’s gift for restraint. Here is why this coming-of-age horror sits with you long after the final page.
The Hands That Make You Flinch: Furry Puppet Studio, Why Horror Loves Puppets
Puppets in horror work because someone built them to be loved first. Furry Puppet Studio, the NYC custom puppet maker behind work for Apple, Casper, and Missy Elliott, shows why practical-effects horror keeps reaching for handmade faces. From Puppet Master to Dead Silence to Longlegs, the craft that delights is the same craft that frightens.
Harmed and Dangerous: Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?
When a true-crime blogger insisted the killings in Harmed and Dangerous were real, Jasper Bark watched his own fiction bleed into fact. The truth was an alternate reality game engineered by Crystal Lake Publishing’s Naching T. Kassa — Killer Sleuth, fake QR codes, recorded readings and all. This is how a piece of viral book marketing fooled even a seasoned hoaxer.
Women of the Weird West, edited by KC Grifant: The Frontier Reclaimed
KC Grifant’s Women of the Weird West gathers 25 stories and poems that hand the gun to every woman the old westerns left out. This weird western horror anthology from Brigids Gate Press blends frontier folklore, women in horror, and speculative western short stories into one of the sharpest entries in the weird west revival.