100+ Short Horror Stories: Read or Listen for Free
Explore our Ultimate Collection of Spine-chilling Tales with Immersive Audio Narrations
Loading stories...
Showing 20 stories of 35 total
Unlock All Stories
Create a free account to access our complete collection of short horror stories, bookmark your favorites, and get personalized recommendations.
The Web's Best Free Horror Library
Let's be honest: finding good horror online is hard. That's why we built this archive. Whether you have five minutes to kill or want a long-form mystery to solve, we have something that will make you check the locks twice. From classic ghost stories to our new immersive audio narrations, everything here is free and terrifying.
Don't Just Read. Listen.
Too scared to look at the screen? Put on your headphones. We are adding professional audio narrations to our best stories every week.
Creepypastas & Classics
We collect everything from viral internet creepypastas to old-school paranormal tales. If it's scary, it belongs here.
Always Free. No Paywalls.
Horror should be accessible. Read thousands of free horror stories without needing a subscription or a credit card.
Midnight Snacks
Most of our tales are short horror stories designed to be read in under 10 minutes. Perfect for a quick thrill before bed.
What kind of horror do you like? If you are into the subtle stuff, check out our psychological thrillers—the kind where the monster is inside your head. If you prefer jump scares and gore, we have plenty of scary stories to read that go straight for the jugular.
We also have a soft spot for true horror stories (the ones that might actually happen to you) and those classic short horror stories with a twist that leave you staring at the ceiling. Whatever your poison, ShortHorrorStories.net is here to ruin your sleep schedule.
Top Free Stories
Scale Matters
He thought confidence was control—until he stepped into a world where precision meant power. What begins as a seductive dinner with a woman who refuses to play by social rules descends into a meticulously crafted nightmare, where arrogance is measured, reduced, and repurposed. As boundaries collapse and scale becomes punishment, he learns too late that some people don’t argue with dominance—they redesign it. This is a psychological horror story about obsession disguised as order, misogyny reduced to scale, and the terror of realizing you were never being tested—you were being curated.
Dress Rehearsal
The performance is flawless—too flawless. Every movement lands with impossible precision, every pose held a fraction longer than comfort allows. From behind the scenes, it becomes clear that the beauty onstage is carefully managed, sustained by systems the audience will never see. As applause rises, strain builds where elegance is meant to hide it. This story descends into the unsettling space where art demands obedience, perfection overrides humanity, and the most disturbing truths are concealed behind velvet curtains and standing ovations.
Open House
A man prepares his house the way others might prepare a body or a ritual—carefully, patiently, with devotion. Heat rises, moisture settles, and decay is no longer treated as failure but as purpose. As isolation deepens and the boundaries between home and self begin to soften, the house responds, growing attentive and hungry. Open House is a claustrophobic descent into obsession, transformation, and the seductive comfort of surrendering to something that promises belonging at any cost.
The Room that Thinks Like Me
The world still works. That’s what makes it worse. The city stands unbroken. People speak on cue. Every day unfolds exactly as it should—except for the moments that hesitate. Reflections lag behind their bodies. Rooms seem to listen. The air feels heavier when certain thoughts surface, as if the environment itself is paying attention. At first, it’s easy to ignore. To call it stress. To call it coincidence. But as the glitches begin to mirror emotion rather than action, a more unsettling possibility takes shape: the world may not be responding to reality—it may be responding to him. The Room That Thinks Like Me is a quiet psychological horror about solipsism, simulated existence, and the unbearable suspicion that loneliness isn’t a side effect of the system—it’s the design.
A Proper Host
A police officer comes to the door expecting answers and finds hospitality instead—gentle conversation, practiced kindness, and a home that seems eager to put him at ease. As the visit stretches on, courtesy begins to feel like confinement, and cooperation slips quietly into consent. A Proper Host is a slow-burn psychological horror about the unsettling power of politeness, the trust placed in familiar rituals, and how fear often begins the moment we stop questioning why we feel so comfortable.
The Last Number
Trapped in a burning apartment with no way out, a man uses his last moments to send the message he’s been avoiding for years. As smoke fills the room and time collapses, memory, regret, and muscle-deep habit guide his hands faster than thought. Survival comes unexpectedly—but the truth arrives with it, quiet and devastating. This is a psychological horror story about misremembered love, the cruelty of almost reaching someone, and the lingering terror of realizing that even at the edge of death, you can still send your final words to the wrong place.
Clean the Table
A lifetime of criticism turns the simplest act—being fed—into something transactional, then cruel. When a grown son returns to the home he once ruled with his opinions, his mother offers one final meal, prepared with patience and precision. What follows is an unsettling reckoning about entitlement, control, and the quiet fury that can grow behind domestic devotion. Clean the Table is a dark psychological horror story that explores power dynamics, parental sacrifice, and the terrifying consequences of never learning when to stop demanding more.
The Shape of Nothing
Fear isn’t always loud. Sometimes it waits in reflections, in the corners of certainty, in the things you insist don’t exist. In the isolated Fire Tower Four, skeptic Arthur dismisses legends as childish nonsense—until the storm and a companion’s warning prove that denial can be deadly. The Inverse Man is no ghost, no monster with claws or fangs. He is the void made flesh, a living absence that trades places with those who are absolutely certain he isn’t real. The Shape of Nothing is a tense, psychological horror about skepticism, cosmic rules, and the terrifying cost of certainty in a world that refuses to honor it.
After Dark
Some rules aren’t meant to be understood—only obeyed. The warnings were simple. Don’t whistle after dark. Don’t cut your nails at night. Don’t linger in mirrors when the sun goes down. The protagonist laughs them off as village superstition—until the night begins to answer back. At first, it’s subtle: a sound in the dark, a reflection that lingers too long. Then pieces of the body begin to rebel, growing, separating, remembering where they came from. What creeps through the house isn’t just watching—it’s reclaiming. After Dark is a supernatural psychological horror about inherited fear, ancestral knowledge, and the terror of realizing that the body can betray you long before the mind catches up. Because some traditions aren’t myths—they’re boundaries. And crossing them means something else gets to come through.
Surface Tension
Surface Tension is a quiet, devastating horror story set during a family road trip that should have been forgettable. At a nearly empty motel pool, two brothers break the rules the way kids always do—laughing, splashing, pushing their luck while the sun lingers overhead. What begins as harmless play slowly gives way to unease when something unfamiliar appears beneath the water’s surface. The story unfolds through a child’s perspective, capturing the confusion and fear of realizing that adults sometimes know far more than they admit. The pool becomes a liminal space—part playground, part threshold—where reflections don’t behave as they should and attention feels heavy, invasive, and hungry. The horror isn’t loud or fast; it builds through subtle sensory details, distorted reflections, and the creeping sense that being noticed can be dangerous. At its core, explores themes of inheritance, silence, and the terrifying cost of survival. It asks what children are protected from, what they’re prepared for, and what waits patiently beneath the calm surface of ordinary places. Tense, atmospheric, and deeply unsettling, this story lingers like the memory of cold water closing over your skin—quiet, inevitable, and impossible to forget.