June Indie Spotlight Feature: Tall Tales and Campfire Ashes, A Collection of Horror Stories.

C. L. Schneider
Jun 1
5 min read

Perfect for those that grew up on Goosebumps or Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark.

Blurb

You've been lost in the woods for hours. You walk around the bend to find two people roasting marshmallows. They look up and gesture for you to have a seat around the fire to listen to a story or two!

Tall Tales and Campfire Ashes is a compilation of the Campfire Ashes podcast. New and original stories of legends, monsters, and things that go bump in the dark. Grab your flashlights and let us tell you stories from your backyard or around the world!

Do you feel those eyes on you? ...No you didn't!

Did you see something in the tree line? ...No you didn't!

If you heard something...no you didn't!

Excerpt

Horror, but Make it Cottage Core

Life is about taking calculated risks. But in my case, there was no calculating this risk. It was the lesser of two evils. Either I let the jocks chasing me catch up and do who knows what, or I dip into the forest and hope for the best. Consider me hopeful.

Mom always told me not to go into that forest, take the longer way home, don’t even look in its direction. She used to tell my sister and me stories about how when she was a little girl, she used to hear the forest whispering to her, enticing her to come inside. One time she even saw little pairs of eyes staring out of the woods, looking at her. She never did go in, and to this day she made sure we knew not to go in ourselves. Sorry mom.

“I think he went this way,” I heard one of the meatheads yell as they ran past me. I didn’t go that way, I’m right behind the bush at the edge of the forest. If they took even three more steps closer, they probably would’ve seen me. This forest edge isn’t that thick. Idiots.

“Austin..” the forest whispered my name to me. I whipped my head around to see who was calling to me, but no one was around. A little ways away, I could see the fence lining my backyard. I don’t know what Mom was so afraid of, this forest isn’t even that big. And if I knew the shortcut through the forest would save me that much time to get home, I would’ve started taking it years ago.

I got up from behind the bush and continued walking toward my house, further and further into the woods. The wind whistled through the trees and the sun faded out of view in the dense mass of the treetops overhead. Except for one sunspot poking through, shining radiantly over a ring of mushrooms. The mushrooms seemed to glisten with life, but the Earth in the center of the ring looked sun-bleached and dead. “Strange,” I thought to myself, stepping closer to examine.

The light inside the circle looked almost distorted, like a glitch in a TV screen. I gently stuck my hand into it and the air was weighted in a way. Like my hand suddenly became lighter than air but the rest of my body outside the circle felt so heavy, like I was being pushed down into the soggy ground at my feet, being swallowed up by the Earth. I stepped a foot into the circle, half my body in, half out. The half outside the circle felt like it was being ripped away from me while the half inside felt like I was floating.

It was calm in the circle. Inviting. Comforting. It felt like life outside this circle was nothing but pain and suffering. I stepped fully into the circle, craving the peace and soft floating feeling.

Once fully inside the circle, the forest outside the circle faded away as though it was becoming distant. Like I was moving away from it while staying perfectly still. I couldn’t move if I wanted to. Even so, I wasn’t panicked or frightened by this. I felt an overwhelming sense of calm.

“Austin, nice to finally meet you,” a soft voice said into my ear. I couldn’t turn my head to see who was speaking to me, but she sounded young and sweet. “I’ve watched your mother grow up all these years from the forest edge, but she never came in for a visit.”

I tried to respond to her, tell her that my mom always warned us against coming in here, but my voice was trapped in my throat. All I could do was listen. Things were beginning to feel a lot less calm and peaceful now.

“Your mother has something I want, Austin,” the disembodied voice said to me. “And now it would appear I have something she’s going to want back. You.”

Fear set in now and I tried with all my might to scream or run but to no avail. The only thing I could move was my eyes. I looked around rapidly for the source of this voice, for anything within sight that might help me, but as the forest faded and blurred out, I was in complete darkness now, my body so rigid, stone-like. I crossed my eyes and looked in at my nose. It was grey, like a garden statue. That lighter than air floating feeling is fully gone now and I… can’t… feel… anythin-

***

“I know this sounds crazy, David, but I know he’s in here.” I hacked down another picker branch out of my way and crept deeper into the forest. “There’s nowhere else he’d be.”

“Kaitlin, you’ve told him his whole life not to go in here. Why would he be in here?” He put a hand on my shoulder.

I snapped my head around so fast to look at my husband, I thought my neck would break. “Because I know my son!”

I sucked in a breath and blew it out slowly. “I can feel his presence here, okay? Don’t ask me how, I just know.”

He nodded at me and we continued forward. I hacked one more thick branch out of my way before I saw it and dropped to my knees. A tall stone in the center of a fairy ring.

“Hello, Kaitlin. You’ve finally come to visit. We’ve been waiting for you.”

About the Author

Paul Ray is a YouTube personality, Twitch streamer and horror and fantasy author based in the haunted peninsula of New Jersey. Growing up surrounded by horror inspired a podcast about the things that go bump in the night and created this companion book with stories from our podcast.