Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories

A disturbing journey into the beauty that rests inside the very heart of darkness.
From the Bram Stoker Award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing and the editing duo who brought you the critically acclaimed small-town Lovecraftian horror anthology Shadows Over Main Street, comes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories.

Awe meets ache.
Terror becomes transcendence.
Regret gives way to rebirth.

Fifteen short stories and one poem span nearly every twisted corner of the horror and dark fiction genres:

A woman experiences an emotional reckoning inside a haunted house.
A father sees his daughter rescued after a cold case is solved, only to learn the tragic limits of his love.
A man awakens a vengeful spirit and learns the terrible price of settling scores.
A boy comes of age into awareness of a secret universe of Lovecraftian scale.
A young woman confronts the deathly price of existence inside a German concentration camp during the Holocaust.
And much, much more…

Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories features the most celebrated voices in dark fiction, as well as a number of exciting new talents:

Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Paul Tremblay, John F.D. Taff, Lisa Mannetti, Damien Angelica Walters, Josh Malerman, Christopher Coake, Mercedes M. Yardley, Brian Kirk, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Amanda Gowin, Richard Thomas, Maria Alexander and Kevin Lucia. Edited by Doug Murano and D. Alexander Ward.

With a foreword from Cemetery Dance magazine founder Richard Chizmar.

Proudly brought to you by Crystal Lake Publishing – Tales from the Darkest Depths

Interview with the Authors:

So what makes Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories so special?

John F.D. Taff: Usually, horror stories tell us the dark side of dark stories, the bad stuff that happens during bad times. It's expected that there will be horrors in the kinds of stories horror generally tells. But Gutted explores the other side of things, the darkness that's there in moments you might not otherwise expect; those moments that touch our hearts or resonate more strongly with our other emotions. It's that beauty—that unexpected emotional resonance that can reside comfortably, side by side with fear, in a good horror story—that separates the stories in Gutted and makes them quite unique.

Tell us more about your story.

Ramsey Campbell:

Occasionally I try to repay my debt to specific writers. Midnight Sun was my attempt to scale the awesome peak of Algernon Blackwood’s achievement, while The Darkest Part of the Woods clambered the Lovecraftian. “The Place of Revelation” goes for another giant of the field. If anybody guesses which one, I’ll count the tale some kind of a success. The naïve voice can be a highly effective way to tell a tale of terror, creating a tension between what’s told and how.

John F.D. Taff: My story is a distillation of my childhood. I grew up in the '70s, and I wanted to capture that time period as much as anything else. I also wanted to explore one moment during my childhood, when I got my first 10-speed bike—the freedom that bought a kid like me. It opened so many doors, the ability to go out on my own, far beyond my neighborhood. To explore the world, to discover new things.