As a teenager, I remember using my family’s phone service to load creepypastas onto a tiny Kindle - a trickle of bad scary stories one after the other. I would get on Reddit where, sometimes sure, I would browse r/nosleep, but I was never completely satisfied by the content there. There were cheesy YouTube narrations. There was r/FearMe. We cut to today and I’m getting my horror fix through podcasts like Knifepoint Horror or rereading the House of Leaves (great book), but I still kind of miss the forum vibe of those community-contributed stories. What websites do the rest of you use to scare yourselves? What are your favorite spooky stories? How have your tastes changed and is there anything you guys miss that we might rebuild here in the Fediverse?
Get into short horror stories. GOOD stories published by professional magazines like Nightmare, The Dark, Black Static, Weird Horror, Pseudopod. Those are all places that pay professional rates and who have won tons of awards. Anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow are also good, who does the Year’s Best. Crystal Lake Publishing is good as well, both their short stories, novels, and their podcasts. Weird Little Worlds is another indie publisher that has put out good stuff. (Disclosure: I’ve had stories published by both CLP and WLW—the Mother: Tales of Love and Terror antho I was in was a finalist for the Bram Stoker award this year.)
If you want good horror, you need to go to the places that publish it professionally. Issues are pretty cheap, and there’s plenty of free stuff on their sites as well.
Can you give your opinion on the difference between those magazines you mentioned? I guess I should just read them all.
