December 2018. Issue 21.

Curl up someplace warm, try to keep the cold from your bones; check the locks, check behind the sofa (just to be sure). That chill’s not just winter at the door, it’s the sixteen tiny ghost stories right here, waiting to haunt you. Welcome them in... Welcome to issue 21.

Ghost stories strike a chord, there’s something about ghastly visions and voices from beyond that thrill us as much as they chill us. We love that shiver, in the safety of our own cosy homes. Ghost stories can run a whole rainbow of emotions though. We’ve got revenge and retribution, naturally, the dead who won’t, who can’t, let go. Then there are those aching for what they’ve lost: heartache, reflections and memory, echoes of lives and loves gone before. There’s fear and freedom, guilt and obsession.

There’s murder, of course there’s murder; nothing like an unnatural death to spawn an unquiet spirit. There’s a deep yearning, from both sides; from the dead for the simple things of life, or for life itself; from the living for what has been taken from them. There are soldiers and sailors. There’s a duke, a highwayman, tech support and... a pigeon.

What our authors have all achieved, whether their story be spooky or scary or heart-wrenching, is something that will haunt you, something that will linger even after the words are no longer before you. The stories, in their own ways, echo, they create their own ghosts, wandering through the walls of your mind.

Read.

Absorb.

Enjoy.

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Keep on scrolling for the stories, or bring up the whole issue here.

Alternatively, if you want issue 21 to forever haunt your digital devices, to read later when you have no signal (horror of horrors), when you're hiding behind the sofa or under the covers, there's a .pdf available for free right here (right click and save).