Tried writing a horror story with no monsters or ghosts and it broke my brain

I spent 3 days on this story about a woman finding old receipts from her dead husband that don't add up - just everyday objects. The beta readers said it was more unsettling than my gore-filled stuff. Has anyone else messed with 'mundane horror' prompts and gotten weirdly strong reactions?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaron_mitchell1mo ago

oh man yeah, the trick is to focus on that one tiny detail that just feels wrong without explaining it. for me it was a story about a guy who keeps finding his coffee mug in weird places around the house, like inside the fridge or under the bed. no idea how it got there, no explanation, just this nagging wrongness that made people freak out way more than any ghost story lol.

brianm661mo ago

I used to be skeptical of that kind of thing myself. Always figured you needed some kind of monster or ghost to make a story scary. But last year I read this short piece about a father finding his kid's old drawings from school and realizing the figures in them kept getting smaller and smaller each year. Nothing supernatural, just a normal parent noticing something off. That story stuck with me for weeks. Made me realize the scariest stuff is usually the stuff that could actually happen.

willowg881mo ago

YES this is exactly what gets me too, like @aaron_mitchell said about the coffee mug thing. I did a similar thing with a story where a lady keeps finding a single strand of long black hair in her sink and brush even though she has short blonde hair and lives alone. My readers said it gave them that crawling feeling on their skin way more than my old slasher stuff. The trick is to not explain it AT ALL, not even with a hint, just let the wrongness sit there like a pebble in your shoe.