Traci Ashbe Dark Epic Fantasy Author

We’ve got a couple more months before Halloween comes up, but scary stories aren’t just for the Autumn season. Fans of Horror, Dark Fantasy and high-tension Thrillers enjoy having their natural fears challenged all year round.

Ghost stories, in particular, enjoy an almost universal popularity. Who hasn’t sat in a circle of teenagers in their youth and exchanged frightening urban tales or related experiences with old houses or other places they thought might be haunted?

Ghost stories were popular as Christmas reading in Victorian English culture, hence Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Caroland other short ghost stories among Victorian literature. It seems that every culture has some version of stories about the dead who return in either a spiritual or physical form to torment the living.

If we’re not reading about ghosts, we might be reading about monsters either fantastical or giant creatures that mightjust really exist, or scariest…