Author Description

Horror is the second anthology of voices from Alice Lloyd College, gathering work by students, alumni, and employees who wrote under the guidance of Cumberland Mountains Authors’ Guild founders Alex Hall and Kala Thornsbury. Here, horror is not one thing. Sometimes it arrives quietly through a presence that lingers too long or a memory that refuses to stay buried. Sometimes it wears a familiar face, rooted not in the supernatural but in what we know people can do. And sometimes it is almost laughably ordinary, like a red ink pen bleeding across a page with judgment and expectation. The stories in this collection refuse a single path or rule, moving through ghostly encounters, psychological unease, dark humor, and moments that feel unsettling because they hit too close to home. From the creeping dread of “If Only You’d Looked Back” to the slow-burn menace of “Home For Rent,” these pages invite you to read with the lights on or off and remember that horror does not always lurk in the shadows. Sometimes it sits right in front of us, holding a mirror, or a pen.