Why Didn't You Just Leave is OUT NOW!
Ghost stories, both fictional and real
When I was a kid, I didn’t live in a haunted house, but my neighbors across the street did. They were the lucky ones. Not just because they got to experience the thrill of a haunting—oh, how I longed for that!—but also because their ghost was friendly.
To illustrate what I mean, one of these neighbors was a sleepwalker. Once, while sleepwalking, he tried to go down the stairs and fell—but something caught him. When he woke up, no one was there, but he had the distinct impression that an entity had saved him from a nasty injury.
This ghost never made any trouble for these neighbors. It was only ever a neutral—and on the rare sleepwalking occasion, benevolent—presence in their lives.
But not everyone living with a ghost gets to have such a pleasant experience. Some live in terror of that unseen thing lingering long after death.
Such is the case for most of the characters in Why Didn’t You Just Leave, an anthology edited by Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin. It’s been a delight to work with Julia and Nadia on this project, and the twenty-two stories within are a testament to just how horrifying a haunting can be.
Here, we’ve got agoraphobics unwilling to leave their spirit-infested homes, inmates unable to escape the phantasms in their prison cells, and workers with no choice but to return to their malevolent workplaces, if only for the paycheck. These sneak peeks are just a sliver of what you’ll find in this anthology.
Now, the most important question … how can you get your copy?
Get the paperback directly from us (and get a free copy of a Cursed Morsels zine!) here. You can also buy the ebook directly from us here.
To support indie bookshops, you could get a paperback from Bookshop.org here.
Or get either version from Barnes and Noble here.
Thanks so much for supporting independent horror! And don’t forget to sprinkle salt around your bed tonight!