Tell me, gloom-seeker — your reply?

While I haven't experienced what my protagonist did in my latest horror short, The Dead Ones, I've had my fair share of undeniable encounters. The first time — in a haunted apartment in Dayton, Ohio — I refused to believe what was right before my eyes until that entity shoved me into a brick wall.

If your answer to the title question is no, then you might think I'm crazy. I don't blame you. I thought I was going crazy. But how do you deny the unexplainable when you bear witness to it? To apparitions and severed hands and instruments that play themselves in empty rooms?

A story for another time, perhaps. But it served as inspiration for The Dead Ones, a short glimpse inside the head of one who saw far more than I did, and the madness took its toll.

The only reason I made it out of the psych ward was that I learned to ignore them. The dead ones. They hate the term ghost. Psychiatrists call them hallucinations. Tell that to the medications that never made them go away.
— an excerpt from The Dead Ones by Rayne Corvus Miller

But enough about that. What I'm obsessing over is the gothic horror novella concept that sprung from writing this piece. It ties four of my previously published shorts together in the same fictional universe. The idea is haunting me in the best possible way.

We're talking dark gods and creatures of the night — and something that makes even them fear for their undead lives.

Curious? Stay tuned. Hit subscribe if you haven't already. Your inbox won't become the Rayne Corvus Show, I swear. (I hate that crap, too.)

With haunted sincerity,
🦇 Rayne (they/them)