THE GHOST MODERNIST

WELCOME TO THE GHOST MODERNIST. This is serialized horror fiction podcast, with every episode building upon the one before. Each season is novel length, broken into chapters, and a self contained story.  If you are new here, welcome! Interested in a story about a couple navigating both the state of Georgia and their new haunted house, then please start with Chapter One of Season One (the House Uns...

Chapter Twenty-One: "The lido deck was filling up again, with once eager vacationers milling around the deck. Coming down from the bridge, Chad Stafford thought, without the torn and bloodied clothing, without the limping, the scene looked just as it had when they’d set sail. They all had their own experiences abound the Baroness, just as Chad and Table Nine had, their own special and individ...

Chapter Twenty: "But now, hearing his shoes splashing across the Lido deck of the Baroness, and the footsteps of those pursuing him, Chad felt the weight of knowing how out of options he was. He’d ducked in, around and behind, weaving through the rain and the many drink kiosks and activity stands the baroness once offered, getting closer and closer to the bow of the ship, and finally he was a...

Chapter Nineteen: "Wives had poisoned husbands, husbands smothering or strangling their wives. Drunken friends got into fist fights, breaking noses and necks. Knives were slipped into handbags and the pockets of sport coats to be used in the middle of the night. There had been crucifixions. It was exactly the sort of controlled chaos he craved. The type of hatred, manipulation and violence th...

Chapter Eighteen: "On the lido deck, the knuckles on Donnie’s Fredericks left hand were stark white as he throttled the railing. He clutched the radio in his opposite hand with the same strength. Once, twice, he depressed the talk button, but let go without saying a word. Instead, he yowled, his voice dampened by the dense rain, and threw the radio overboard.” Remember, there are two types of...

Chapter Seventeen: "Teresa watched her husband pull the pistol out from his waistband, and hover it above Austin’s face. Marie’s attention shifted, and Teresa knew Chad wasn’t trying to scare her, rather giving her a not so subtle hint that their group had regained some measure of control. Marie’s hand was suddenly on Teresa’s knee.” Remember, there are two types of people in this world. The...

Chapter Sixteen: "Marie heard it as she stood up. A tapping. Soft, rhythmic, like morse code. Something intentional. The woman clutched the cart’s handle and searched her immediate vicinity, expecting to find one of Donnie’s lunatic followers crouched behind her, a sinister grin and a gleaming butcher knife drumming against the metal of the prep table to get her attention before striking. She...

Chapter Fifteen: "When the intercom cut out, the only sound was heavy rain pattering the waves and the soft whistle of wind through the sliding glass door. The blessed crispness of the ocean breeze was combatting the scent of raw construction materials and stale air inside the barren stateroom. Caroline could feel her own heartbeat. The rhythm pulsed in her ears. She could feel Greg’s hand, c...

Chapter Fourteen: "None of the group had said a word until they were safely behind the long glass counter. Teresa eased herself down to the carpet, wincing, groaning, the rush of their hurried escape catching up with her. Her husband crept around the rectangular area, opening drawers and cabinets, picking up staplers, rulers, ink pens, then tossing them back down, hunting for some sort of wea...

Chapter Thirteen: "When they had reached the waterfall, they heard gunshots. The first sounded like a firecracker, then two more. Screams. Glass breaking. The whole situation was foreign, like Greg was watching someone else’s life. Someone braver. The fourth shot was louder, closer, and Caroline began sucking in huge breaths. She was going to hyperventilate. Greg pulled the woman under, then...

Chapter Twelve: "Just under a foot tall, the stone sculpture was washed in a sickly green shade like oxidized copper. The passage of time, of being submerged in seawater, or buried in the sand, of changing hands, had eroded the sharp points of the wings, snapped off small pieces of the many searching tentacles, softened the once precise definition of the sculptor, but just to be in its presen...

Chapter Eleven: "Oh, I’m just fooling about,” Donnie said. “Forgive me, I don’t want to take up much of your time, but alas, this needs to be said. Many of you have come to me or to one of my many underlings with wild accusations or totally misguided complaints. Seems many of you have fallen under some sort of mass hysteria. Like we, representatives of Celebration Vacations, are keeping somet...

Chapter Ten: "In that moment, Chad realized how profoundly little he knew about his and his wife’s safety aboard the ship. How little most people probably knew. And on the converse, how much trust they were putting into complete strangers. They were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, sealed within a gigantic metal coffin, with a cross section of humanity’s best, and worst, impossibly floati...

Chapter Nine: "The State of Wisconsin, especially in brutal winter months, felt like living on the moon. Not known for its mountain ranges, the area which many of his friends from other parts of the US called “lower Canada,” was redundant, one blank, snow covered field after another. This isn’t to say that Wisconsin doesn’t have its fair share of beauty, but when Austin Holt chanced a look at...

Chapter Eight: "During his many years of civilian medicine, especially in the emergency room, he saw the aftermath of car accidents and the slow devastation of long terminal illness. He’d seen the drunken naivety of trying to assert dominance over the explosive insistence of fireworks, and the sheer absurdity of what human beings choose to put in every one of their orifices, without a much ne...

Chapter Seven: "The Baroness had begun her journey. They were underway. Maybe it was this subtle rumble that woke her, pinioning from beam to girder, traveling up pipes and conduit, through kitchens and staterooms and supply closets, vibrating the bottles in the duty free liquor store and the poker chips languishing in their rounded wooden troughs. Or maybe it was the sound of the Baroness ch...

Chapter Six: "After the rush died down, and most of the cordoned off tables had been populated, a woman came hurrying through the main entry doors, looking a bit flustered, and it took Greg only a second to register her face. The Librarian. He watched her walk up to the hostess and move her lips. The hostess looked down, then pointed vaguely in Greg’s direction. He quickly looked around, sear...

Chapter Five: "While Austin felt stuck, imprisoned by the secret conversation, yet his body was moving. Like muscle memory, or a subconscious need to flee, he was wriggling he of the tight space between plastic chair and the video game’s glass top. His joints clicked and popped, even from being seated for a short period of time, and Austin waited, listening for the whispers to continue on, un...

Chapter Four: "The idea of a curse is nothing new. The covered bridge or the condemned barn, doors falling from the hinges, on the outskirts of your home town. The patch of woods where, supposedly, a witches coven met their violent end, or group of teenage satanists practiced gruesome ceremonies they thought might bring them power, or knowledge. Now, nothing grows, and the animals stay far, f...

Chapter Three: "This wasn’t the couple’s first cruise, and they were passed the point of being awed by the sheer enormity of the floating city, but the hallways on the stateroom floors were something Chad had never gotten used to. His door, number 220, was right about midship, and the corridor outside stretched on, it seemed, forever, in both directions." Remember, there are two types of...

Chapter Two: "Celebration Vacations obviously kept whatever information it had confidential, as they didn’t want to metaphorically sink their multi-billion dollar flagship before her second voyage.  Most of all, the cruise ship and the horrors the virus had created within its hull were just one of thousands, millions of stories emerging in the wake of the worldwide pandemic." Remember, t...

Chapter One: "Now, here they were, about to board Celebration Vacations’ flagship, The Baroness of the Open Waters , taking a one-off repositioning journey, from Cancun to Venice, dubbed, “Love on the Waves.” The description in the emailed brochure told him this was, “an escape for couples celebrating anniversaries; a rocking honeymoon, a simple getaway with an old lover; the perfect place to...

Chapter Twenty-Seven: "This was the woman Denny had married, had misquoted song lyrics to on a beach in Florida. The woman he’d spent twelve hour days studying with, preparing for exams, who he’d escaped from a one percenter biker bar in Cheyenne, Wyoming with, who he’d shared joy, grief, and sweaty sheets with. This was the woman who’d changed his life, who made it seem like there was someth...

Chapter Twenty-Five: "Everyone, it seemed, was iced over, stuck in place, waiting for someone else to make the first move, to cause the last crack in the dam.  And then a single, simple thought came to Denny’s mind: my wife’s dead. It was as if this thought, this horrifying recognition, one that made the bile rise in Denny’s throat, was the final straw." Remember, there are two types of...

Chapter Twenty-Six: "After centuries of watching humans bumble around, fearing and fighting against their eventual demise, the entity had begun realize that the fragility of the tiny human mind was incapable of accepting their insignificance, that they were as fragile and unimportant as rocks or blades of grass." Remember, there are two types of people in this world. The Haunters and the...