After Midnight Tales

A volunteer joins a mountain search and rescue team and is drawn into a terrifying supernatural reality while searching for a missing child. Under the guidance of a seasoned rescuer named Riker, the narrator learns that the girl is not human but a predatory entity that weaponizes compassion, mimicking lost children to lure rescuers into the wilderness. The creature imitates voices, appearances, an...

A team of contracted cleanup workers is dispatched to a desolate region of Kazakhstan to recover what authorities describe as harmless satellite debris. From the moment they arrive, the mission feels wrong. Their instruments pick up a human voice echoing from far beneath the ground—an impossibility, given repeated assurances that the object was unmanned. As excavation begins, the voice grows clear...

In the town of Doorvale, tradition rules every life. On their eighteenth birthday, each citizen is given a carved wooden box that reveals the role they will carry for the rest of their existence. Most are mundane. Some are honored. A few are never spoken of. When the narrator opens their box, they find a single word burned into the wood: Shepherd. No one will explain what it means. Whispers replac...

Revolve around the weight of inheritance and the terrible truths buried within isolated communities. In each tale, ordinary people are forced into unnatural roles they never chose—becoming caretakers of ancient entities, guides for the dead, or guardians of boundaries that should never be crossed. These duties are not symbolic. They are physical, violent, and inescapable. Deep beneath forests and...

A thrill-seeking narrator obsessed with imitating a famous urban explorer. Driven by obsession, he illegally enters an abandoned hospital in search of a hidden basement hatch. Inside the decaying service wing, he discovers a broken camera, signaling that someone had already gone before him—and likely never returned. As he descends deeper into the flooded, pitch-black lower levels, he encounters a...

A young resident of the isolated town of Door Veil, where every person receives a mysterious Box on their 18th birthday that assigns them an irreversible Role for life. Some roles are harmless. Others are feared. The narrator receives the most dreaded one of all: Shepherd—a forgotten position no one speaks about. To understand the task, the narrator is forced to seek out the town’s previous Shephe...

A series of detached first-person horror accounts, each centered on a disturbing anomaly that fractures reality in a different way. One story follows a lonely night-shift gas station worker who encounters a man trapped in a time loop, endlessly attempting to refuel a charred, nonfunctional car deep in the surrounding forest, unaware that his fate is already sealed. Another narrative unfolds in the...

A man whose life is irreversibly altered after a chance late-night stop at a remote, isolated building leads him into a secretive and disturbing organization devoted to attaining absolute happiness. Inside, he witnesses a ritual of overwhelming joy but is denied entry until he pays an unimaginable initiation cost—a price that is extracted immediately through the sudden, tragic deaths of his wife a...

A grieving father who moves with his young daughter, Ellie, back to his isolated childhood town after the sudden death of his wife. Hoping for a fresh start, he instead finds himself slipping into a nightmare when Ellie begins producing detailed, impossibly accurate maps—all guided by her mysterious imaginary friend known only as Mr. Map Maker. At first, the father dismisses the drawings as a copi...

Deep in the South American jungle, an exploration team discovered a German World War II bunker, long-abandoned and heavily fortified. During their investigation, they uncovered extensive evidence of a large post-war settlement, meticulously planned and secretly functioning as a closed-system laboratory for horrific medical experiments on its own inhabitants. Among their findings was the journal of...

A deeply burned-out office worker who is given a mysterious, unlabeled pill by a former colleague named Jason. One dose instantly delivers unparalleled euphoria and mental clarity, leading him to continue taking the pills despite fearing addiction. Each use, however, results in long periods of lost time. During these lapses, the narrator’s external life dramatically improves—promotions, new relati...

A Transitional Memory Escort working for Neurovia, a secretive company that creates synthetic, immersive reconstructions of clients’ memories to treat deep psychological trauma. The narrator’s role is to act as a neutral neural co-pilot, guiding high-risk patients through intense sessions while strictly ensuring a safe mental exit using synchronized neural tethers. During a session with a violent...

A series of horror narratives centered on monstrous encounters, existential dread, and the erasure of self. One story follows a cave-diving expedition where explorers confront an ancient, predatory entity, resulting in a gruesome death. Another depicts a town caught in an annual Run to escape terrifying, snow-bound Wolf Walkers. A father’s encounter with Mr. Map Maker, a shadowy being, forces him...

A young-Earth creationist museum in rural Texas from his late grandfather, Elijah. While sorting through the kitschy, biblical exhibits, he discovers journals detailing secret experiments and a letter revealing that the museum sits atop a cave containing a literal "pre-flood" world. Exploring further, the narrator finds a hidden chamber filled with grotesque, mutated creatures and senses a powerfu...

A narrator who accepts a high-paying, three-day assignment from a man named Raymond: to keep his ailing mother, Marjorie, awake for exactly 72 hours, as her "neurological condition" requires she never sleep. Upon arrival at the sealed house, the narrator discovers that Marjorie is actually battling a supernatural entity that manifests through sleep and shadow, a force that has haunted her family f...

Two bored college students who torment their isolated, wealthy classmate, Jeremy. Their harassment leads them to follow cryptic directions from his locker to a remote cabin, which conceals a massive, hidden basement. Inside, they discover an unauthorized biological research lab linked to Jeremy’s family corporation, complete with a surgical room and cylinders containing grotesque, mutated organism...

A homeless man who discovers a strange, meticulously organized tent city beneath a highway overpass. He soon realizes that the silent inhabitants are members of a cult devoted to a monstrous, ancient subterranean entity that emerges during nightly rituals. After witnessing a newcomer brutally sacrificed and absorbed by the pulsating, grotesque creature, the narrator understands he is trapped and f...

A young city boy who moves to the quiet town of Hollow Brook and quickly befriends three local kids, bonding over a secret treehouse hideout in the woods. Despite the town being on edge over a missing girl named Sarah, the friends dismiss warnings, believing their parents are just overly cautious about curfew, and spend the night in the hideout. Their decision leads to a terrifying encounter with...

A narrator and his former caving partner, Ryan, who discover an unmarked, collapsed cave on the narrator’s new property, tempting them back into the dangerous hobby he had previously abandoned. Inside the surprisingly large cavern, they find ancient animal and human remains covered in gnaw marks, along with unsettling petroglyphs depicting a massive, distorted monster attacking humans. Their explo...

A gig worker employed by a food delivery app who, driven by financial need, accepts a triple-pay delivery to an address famously avoided by all other drivers. After repeated deliveries where the food is left untouched and instructions become increasingly bizarre, the narrator breaks protocol and enters the desolate residence. Inside, they are violently attacked by a long-limbed, pale, monstrous en...

A member of Phantom Echo, a highly classified military special operations unit, recounting a disastrous mission to an abandoned research facility in Wyoming. The team was sent to investigate missing local police officers, only to discover that the officers had been mutilated and displayed as grotesque human sculptures in the facility’s basement. Their investigation is cut short when an unfathomabl...

A man who retreats to a remote cabin after the death of his old dog, Jasper, only to discover that the land is a "thin place" attracting malevolent entities. Locals offer cryptic warnings that the area sits on ancient burial grounds, but the narrator’s grief makes him vulnerable. He begins hearing unsettling, specific sounds—whining and footsteps—that suggest something is mimicking his deceased do...

A married couple on a remote retreat. The husband fondly recalls his wife’s eccentric habit of asking if he would still love her if she were a grotesque insect. During a hike, they encounter a strange, still spring where the wife swims, immediately exhibiting dramatically altered behavior and mysteriously losing her cherished protective rosary. Later, a hideous, weeping creature attacks their cabi...

The story is told from the perspective of a small-town cop, Officer Brims, in rural Iowa, investigating the disappearance of the Barnes family. Upon entering their home, he discovers the entire family dead at their dinner table, apparently victims of a dark ritual, evidenced by a pentagram carved into the ceiling and an open journal. The journal reveals the parents’ attempt to resurrect a lost chi...

The story takes place in Yaro Crossing, a small, isolated town with a strict, unspoken rule: residents must never open the door on Sundays. The narrative follows Tom, a retired army veteran who moves into a vacant cabin and dismisses the town’s warnings as superstition. Soon, he begins hearing recurring three-part knocks on Sunday nights, unsettling him and terrifying his dog, yet he refuses to he...