Book picks similar to
The Lake Has Eyes by Marc Layton


horror
short
short-story
what-lies-beneath

The Seeding


David Shobin - 1982
    Sandra Fischer relaxes in bed. Moments later, when her husband enters the room — she is dead. One by one, the women are dying. The leading medical experts are baffled. There is only one clue: the rich, sweet scent of the tropics — the scent of life, seconds after each woman's shocking death.One dedicated doctor. One beautiful woman. Together they will enter an awesome new realm of medical knowledge beyond both life and death. For he will discover a terrifying secret. And she has been chosen for … THE SEEDING.

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones


Micah Dean Hicks - 2019
    Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going into those rooms... They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn’t want to know. Henry, Jane’s brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living.When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them.

The Amityville Horror


Jay Anson - 1977
    28 Days of Terror in a House Possessed by Evil SpiritsIn December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their dream home, the same home where Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers and sisters just one year earlier.the psychic phenomena that followed created the most terrifying experience the Lutz family had ever encountered, forcing them to flee the house in 28 days, convinced that it was possessed by evil spirits.Their fantastic story, never before disclosed in full detail, makes for an unforgettable book with all the shocks and gripping suspense of The Exorcist, The Omen or Rosemary's Baby, but with one vital difference...the story is true--back cover

Hammers on Bone


Cassandra Khaw - 2016
    He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable. He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Cold, Thin Air: A Collection of Disturbing Narratives and Twisted Tales


C.K. Walker - 2014
    These are just a few of the freighting stories contained inside. I invite you in to experience the hauntingly horrifying, the terrifyingly true and the unsettlingly unique texts within...

Boys Will Be Boys


Rayne Havok - 2020
    Everett and his friends are making their own memories; ones the girls aren’t going to want to be a part of. The boys forcefully include them anyway.

Women and Ghosts: Tales


Alison Lurie - 1994
    In nine spooky tales, Alison Lurie writes of women haunted by ghosts both literal and metaphorical: A woman about to marry Mr. Right is visited by the spirit of his first wife; a dead fiance haunts a foreign service officer every time she has an intimate moment with another man; the ghost of a girl in a Halloween costume disconcerts the perfect housewife. A secretary on a diet begins to see obese people everywhere she looks; a self-conscious poet is shadowed by her intrusive doppelganger; and a capricious, malevolent spirit seems to have inhabited an acquisitive matron's prized piece of furniture. Delightfully strange and beautifully told, these nine tales show Alison Lurie at her luminous best.

The Haunting of Seafield House


Caroline Clark - 2017
     Gail Parker never believed in ghosts and yet she knows her boyfriend does. Jesse saw ghosts as a child and has spent the last decade trying to reconnect with spirits. Every haunted house he has investigate has been a hoax or he has found a logical explanation for the phenomenon. That was until he found Seafield House. Stay after dark and you will never leave. That is the legend, but Gail does not believe in ghosts. At first the house is just dark and uncomfortable and Gail has enough problems of her own. There is a secret she must tell Jesse and she promises to do so after this weekend. Only things don’t go as planned. Soon she begins to doubt her own sanity. Strange noises, and draughts can be easily explained but did she really see those hands? Gail does not know if this is real or if she is hallucinating. When darkness falls Gail is trapped in the house with a lost child and she cannot find Jesse. Will they survive? Will they escape? Find out in The Haunting of Seafield House FREE on Kindle Unlimited. Also available by Caroline Clark: The Haunting of Brynlee House The Haunting of Shadow Hill House

Come Forth in Thaw: A Dark Fantasy Horror Novella about Trauma and Mental Illness


Jayson Robert Ducharme - 2021
    It is a popular destination for tourists, painters, hikers and even weddings.Yet the forest is also a place of great pain and torment, and is an equally popular destination to end your own life.The only thing young mother Eleanor Jackson has left in her life is her son Alan-a troubled teenager who has gone to the forest to commit the unthinkable.As Eleanor goes to find him in the forest, she witnesses bizarre and fantastical happenings that try to manipulate and distract her from rescuing her child.When the sun goes down, the specters of the tormented emerge.She will come to discover so much more than just her son.

Helme House


J.R. Erickson - 2021
    However, she soon discovers that Helme House harbors dark secrets including people who have vanished from the house and never been found.As Rowan digs into the history of Helme House a series of troubling experiences soon become deadly.Helme House is the second stand-alone novel in the Troubled Spirits Series-where paranormal fiction meets true crime.Do you believe in ghosts?

A Hollow Dream of Summer's End


Andrew Van Wey - 2012
    All seasons must end.For three fifth-grade friends, this summer's last sleepover takes a dark turn when a game goes wrong and a creature as old as time itself rises from the dark woods to claim them. Trapped high in a treehouse by a twisted monster below, their friendship is tested as they discover the true meaning of terror. Tonight, they must fight for their lives to keep out the nightmare, and the madness it brings. There is no escape.
 There is no salvation. There is only the treehouse, the hungering horror below, and the dawn that may never come...A Hollow Dream of Summer's End is the Opening Chapter in a Harrowing Series, where Fantasy meets Horror at Childhood's End. 28,000 words // 106 pages // Horror - Thriller

Six Feet From Hell 1: Response


Joseph Coley - 2012
    An EMT for thirteen years, he is used to responding to the sick and injured. The accident, however, has released a toxic gas that not only kills the living in close proximity, it reanimates the dead as well. With his family fifty miles away across the mountains of Southwest Virginia, he enlists some of his fellow EMTs and paramedics to join him so he can get home safely. In the first book of the Six Feet From Hell series, Joe has to fight through the chaos of the undead to make his way home, praying that his wife and son will still be alive when he gets there...

Resisting Madness


Wesley Southard - 2019
    You’ll discover how far a prisoner will go to be with his dying wife, and what lurks between the walls of that Louisiana jailhouse to keep him there. You’ll find out how deep a man can cut himself to dig out the past. You’ll meet a college professor whose fear of flying might be the least of his worries. And you’ll learn how a sister’s love for sweet treats can reunite a broken family…whether they want it or not. Aliens and lot lizards…disembodied lips…the voice of God Himself… Thirteen stories and a brand new novella from horror author Wesley Southard. Within these pages, we all go a little mad…

The Dark Dark


Samantha Hunt - 2017
    An FBI agent falls in love with a robot built for a suicide mission. A young woman unintentionally cheats on her husband when she is transformed, nightly, into a deer. Two strangers become lovers and find themselves somehow responsible for the resurrection of a dog. A woman tries to start her life anew after the loss of a child but cannot help riddling that new life with lies. Thirteen pregnant teenagers develop a strange relationship with the Founding Fathers of American history. A lonely woman’s fertility treatments become the stuff of science fiction.Magic intrudes. Technology betrays and disappoints. Infidelities lead us beyond the usual conflict. Our bodies change, reproduce, decay, and surprise. With her characteristic unguarded gaze and offbeat humor, Hunt has conjured stories that urge an understanding of youth and mortality, magnification and loss, and hold out the hope that we can know one another more deeply or at least stand side by side to observe the mystery of the world.

Terror in the Shadows: Volume 3


Ron Ripley - 2019
    A dark ritual turns a woman obsessed with supernatural powers against the people who love her most. A possessed TV proves that old B-Movie monsters can still terrify an unsuspecting audience…Scare Street’s roster of authors brings you eleven new tales of supernatural horror, in one blood-chilling volume. This macabre collection of short stories is guaranteed to get your pulse racing, and send shivers down your spine.Each deliciously dark tale will haunt your dreams, and keep you reading long past the witching hour. But wait…What was that noise? Did something move in the shadows?Just keep telling yourself… it’s only a story.