Happy Goat Horror

Dark bleatings, Happy New Year, yay it’s 2026, and yippee ki yay motherfu**ers. I read 517 short stories across multiple anthologies and collections last year, and that’s not even including stories in anthologies I was somehow involved in (conflict of interest and all that). Nothing makes me happier than reflecting on all the great stuff I got to read over a year and compiling lists of my favourites.

I’d like to note here that this was SO hard to narrow down, and that the many authors I wasn’t able to include should not be offended if they don’t see their scary tales listed here. The general calibre of short stories I read this year was absolutely insane.

This is my Top 25, complete with links to the books they came in (I do not use affiliate links, this is just in the interest of making sure you can easily find them if your interest is piqued!).

25|| Dinner Time – by L. F. Shelly (Echoes in Dark Places)

Stephen’s invited to a dinner party and when he gets there he discovers things about his neighbours that no one would ever want to find out. The ending served this story beautifully.

24|| Discomfort Food – by Phil Sloman (Broken on the Inside)

What starts as what seems like an odd and funny horror story about a woman who hears the cries of “murderer” from the food she’s eating, swiftly turns into a layered psychological nightmare. I simply could not believe that such a comical concept became so dark. Excellent story, and excellent story telling, too.

23|| Snowman, Frozen – by Tim Foley (Tales Nocturnal)

The imagery is so disturbing – a true winter horror tale. Arthur is staying in a remote mountain cabin during winter, and he notices a snowman appears outside. It’s just out there, staring. And then it…does something even scarier.

22|| Dog, Cat, and Baby – by Joe R. Lansdale (The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale)

A nasty little flash fiction with the darkest streak of humour ever, and I enjoyed it immensely. Jealousy between a dog, a cat, and a baby. I have to say, Lansdale really did capture the essence of the typical dog and cat.

21|| To Drown the World – by Thana Niveau (Unquiet Waters)

A woman develops, let’s say, an unconventional relationship with the sea and the secrets it contains. This story was so odd, so beautifully told, and so appropriately flowing, considering the theme. It had a real feel of ‘something bigger than us’, and in a twisted way, it felt like a tale of karma. I loved it.

20|| Hunted to Extinction – by Premee Mohamed (The End of the World As We Know It)

It’s a little more than 20 years after the events of the novel (The Stand), and a small community is shocked when one of them comes across a child – the first any of them have seen since Captain Trips ravaged the world. There is initially no suspicion, only awe, but of course there’s something going on here.

19|| Older Than God – by Sharon Gosling (Scary Stories to Tell at Night)

I’m a little obsessed with this one and I think it’s probably my favourite in the anthology, Scary Stories to Tell at Night. A girl and her religious dad move to a town so tiny it can barely be called a town, and she meets a girl that issues the most bizarre and unsettling warnings you could possibly hear of a new, strange place. Great writing, some wonderful lines, and outstanding folk horror.

18|| Aspects of Emptiness – by Paula D. Ashe (We Are Here to Hurt Each Other)

Everyone has a face beneath the one we wear. A face only truly visible in the dark. Once you see it, you simply cannot abide the mask you’ve been wearing all this time…

17|| The Body Booth – by Pedro Iniguez (Fever Dreams of a Parasite)

A reporter hears rumour of a unique and truly freakish art exhibit, created by a retired doctor, and manages to get in to a private viewing. The art piece is…interactive. This is right out of the Clive Barker book of weird body horror, and it’s some of the weirdest body horror I have personally ever read. 

16|| Ending in Ruin – by Sharon Gosling (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural: Volume 3)

Petra is on a trip (cycling and camping) and has not packed well. She hasn’t brought enough food for one thing, and one night when she decides to bed down in a graveyard, she finds an egg that seems to have been left quite deliberately in a particular place. She can’t stop thinking about eating it, and so she eventually does. Big mistake.

15|| The Shadow of His Vibrance – by Kay Chronister (Fever Dreams)

 Folk horror crossed with scifi, with a lovely, anxiety-inducing undercurrent. A woman is summoned to clear out her dead father’s house, and she resents making the trip. Both she and her mother are not close with the man, barely seem to know him, and don’t like him. She finds that the village is an odd place full of people who seem to worship her dad, and they say weird things. It was so creepy and my mind was just screaming at her to get the f outta there.

14|| What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night – by Michael Marshall Smith (Scary Stories to Tell at Night)

A little girl wakes up one night and struggles to get out of her room, not because she can’t see through the pitch blackness, but because the door handle doesn’t seem to be where it normally is. The further we go into this story, the more dread-inducing it gets. I loved it.

13|| Nocturnal Pursuits of the Elderly – by Mark Towse (Poison Ivy)

This story is about a married man that drops his wife off to her social gathering every week and then goes off to enjoy his own secret dastardly weekly hobby. The thing I liked the most about this story is a spoiler that I refuse to inflict on you, but it’s a great story and I loved where it went. It’s dark!

12|| He’s a Righteous Man – by Ronald Malfi (The End of the World As We Know It)

Post-apocalypse, a town struggles with the deathrate of its infants. Everyone there is immune to the virus, but it’s still in the air, and unfortunately the new children that are born aren’t immune. A man believed to be a prophet, Jacob, is due to pass through the town as he makes his way around the country trying to sew hope. The ending is nothing short of delightfully dastardly.

11|| The Funnel – by Tim Major (Great Robots of History)

This one gave me chills at the end when I realised what was happening. Mr Freed goes to see a woman called Faye, who has a collection of extremely lifelike automatons, that he wants to write an article about. Two children, AI, particularly freak him out for some reason, and he wants to leave.

10|| A Forest Haunt – by Michael Jess Alexander (Shadows and Whispers)

Julian chops wood in a forest and comes across a bizarrely close circle of trees, and discovers that they’re impenetrable. Curious, he cuts through one to get inside the circle and finds a journal, containing details about the mystery.

9|| Awaiting Orders in Flaggston – by Somer Canon (The End of the World As We Know It)

A girl has been living in Flaggston since the apocalypse and the events in Vegas at the end of The Stand. The people there, now directionless because Flagg is gone, become obsessed with her because she didn’t dream at all during the initial chaos. They’re sure she will receive the next set of instructions, and not knowing what to do until then has not brought out their nicer side. Horrifying, anxiety-inducing, and fabulous.

8|| Acolytes of the Famished Giant – by John Langan (Great British Horror 10: Something Peculiar)

You know, I really love it when I’m reading horror and the phrase ‘the old ways’ or something similar comes up. Because the old ways always tend to involve sacrifices. This is a very tense story about a family visiting Granda, and the old dude giving his young grandson a knife, which his mother verily disapproves of. It’s not just a gift for the sake of a gift…

7|| Forgetting – by Lisa Morton (New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural Volume 3)

A couple take a little trip to relax, following the death of the lady’s mother, who had dementia for her last couple of years. The trip is not relaxing, however, because memory loss appears to be sweeping the nation, and everything becomes increasingly confusing. The author captured the very real horror of this kind of scenario so well that I feel uncomfortable even discussing this story, and her writing is fantastic.

6|| Chloe.Claire1 – by Willow Heath (Managing and Other Lies)

OMFG what a great story (and an absolute nightmare!). It’s written as a series of comments, mostly on YT, between Chloe, a fan, and Faye, the creator she likes. Willow runs a YT channel so though this story is obviously inspired by that, I sincerely hope the Chloe character is more from her imagination and not from actual lived experience because….eeeeeeeee.

5|| It Has Eyes Now – by Christopher Golden and Tanya Pell (Fever Dreams)

My toes are still curled after reading this one. Just when I was wondering if any story this year was going to scare me as much as Sarah Langan’s ‘I Miss You Too Much’ from last year, this story rears its head. To the authors I say, with the greatest respect, how f***ing dare you do this to me right before I’m about to go to bed? The last couple of pages of this one are so terrifying that I’m now delaying bedtime. It has been a very long time since I read something that scared the shit out of me, but shitless I now am.

4|| You Got Me, Babe – by Emma Rose Darcy (Pretend You Don’t See Her)

This made my flesh crawl. A woman worries for her friend when he leaves a night out and then no one hears from him. When she turns up at his place to check on him, she’s surprised to find he’s been locked away writing, with the help of his new girlfriend. Only, when she meets this girlfriend, things are clearly not right, and the story escalates from there. This is the most twisted story of a muse I’ve ever read, and I ate up every word.

3|| Epilogue: O Little Town – by Benjamin Kurt Unsworth (Into Wrack and Ruin)

What an excellent Christmas horror story! A Santa is chosen each year to…well, let’s just say he won’t be riding around in a Coca Cola float, Ho Ho Ho-ing at spectators, that’s for sure. Wonderful folk horror and I only wish it was longer, even though it was the perfect length. I absolutely loved it and have crowned it the Current Champion of Christmas Horror.

JOINT 2ND AND 1ST PLACE BECAUSE I LOVE THEM BOTH FOR DIFFERENT REASONS AND JUST CAN’T DECIDE ARRRRGH

The All-Embracing Nature of a Plastic Bag – by Benjamin Kurt Unsworth (Into Wrack and Ruin)

Written from the first-person perspective of a plastic bag that is used as a murder weapon, this one is horrifying and hilarious, in an extremely dark way. It is thoroughly entertaining and the less I tell you, the better, but who knew such a thing could have so much personality?

AND

Grace – by Tim Lebbon (The End of the World As We Know It)

Bloody hell, what a story. A group of people are in space when Captain Trips rolls across Earth. In one way, how fortunate that they’re not there to catch the virus. In another, oh dear lord, there’s no longer anyone stationed at mission control to help bring them back down. They’re stranded.

It’s not just the additional nightmare of this universe that Tim conjured that makes me love this story so much, but how interconnected with the world of The Stand that it truly felt. It’s the kind of story that could only be written by a true King fan that also happens to be an excellent writer.

That’s all, folks!

Bleeeeeeat!