Local legend says it was a church. Campfire whispers claim devil worship and unconsecrated land. Old timers explain the lone grave as remnants of evil. Having watched far too many horror movies, a group of teens wander into the woods with a Ouija board, planning to play with the dead and scaring each other in the process. But the group quickly learns ghosts of the past are not the only dangers, as the present can be much more haunting.

Nick and the boys return from the summer's last hunting trip to find the streets empty, the beachfront and park abandoned, and the windows of their own homes boarded shut. The hunters have become the hunted, in an apocalyptic plague that pits man against beast-very tiny beasts. And Nick is determined to keep his strength, courage and family alive during what could very well be the last winter of their lives.

This 450 page anthology of the first year of LampLight Magazine collects four amazing issues from September 2012 - June 2013.

Features the complete serial novella "And I Watered It With Tears" by Kevin Lucia.

Fiction and interviews with Robert Ford, Kelli Owen, Ronald Malfi, and Elizabeth Massie.

J.F. Gonzalez takes us through the history of the genre with his Shadows in the Attic articles. LampLight classics bring you some of those past voices to experience again.

Fiction by William Meikle, Nathan Yocum, Rahul Kanakia, Ian Creasey, Mandy DeGeit, D.J. Cockburn, Christopher Fryer, Christopher Kelly, Tim Lieder, Jamie Lackey, Matthew Warner, Sheri White, Dinos Kellis, S. R. Mastrantone, Mjke Wood, Delbert R. Gardner, Michele Mixell, Sarah Rhett, Armel Dagorn, E. Catherine Tobler

A missing girl. A found fingertip. A puddle of blood without a body. A small town neighborhood full of rumors and imagination through the eyes of its youth. Their world is a combination of grass stains and dried mud-the badges of childhood, that often look like blood in the right light.

Hal Maybury's suburban existence was a dull void; an endless cycle of pubs, cigarettes and dysfunctional matrimony. But all of that changed the night a drunken wander led to the accidental discovery of an invisibility suit. With his outfit of choice allowing him to enter any building, listen to any conversation, eat, drink and ride public transport for free Hal's London becomes a humorous and illuminating misadventure. But he never expected it to take on biblical proportions.

The town of Mackinaw is all but abandoned at the end of tourist season. Now, with an approaching blizzard, a strange transport ship has crashed along the frozen shoreline-its escaped cargo genetically engineered for only one purpose... Death. Howling winds hide the screams of townsfolk, as retired biology teacher Ken Jardine leads a small group to first understand and then destroy what they're dealing with, before the storm gives the upper hand to the Live Specimens...

Detective Mark Baker is an honest cop and an all-around good guy. After a chaotic night, Mark starts to reexamine his role in the system he no longer believes in. That's when an ominous letter arrives from his estranged sister. She sounds distraught, suicidal. Her words send him on a mission to a small Midwestern town, uncertain if he'll find her dead or alive. Valley Mill is a quiet little utopia. Everyone gets along. There's zero crime. On the outside, it's exactly what Mark thinks society should be. But what Mark discovers behind the pristine fences and closed doors is far worse than anything he could have imagined. And he learns very quickly to be careful what you wish for...

Horror is pessimism at its bleakest. Worst-case scenario. The darker side of reality. The glass half-empty. The situation unfathomable. In Black Bubbles, Kelli Owen presents classic genre tropes-ghosts, murderers, zombies, what you'd expect (sans sharks)-but it's the characters, rather than the tropes, that experience the story, speak of the horrors, and sometimes survive the inevitable. Sometimes. A decades-old crime shocks a family as evidence points to one of their own... An ancient evil hitchhikes its way to freedom... A child has an unusual fascination with decay... A woman excuses premeditation... Death takes a holiday... Science and good intentions make horrific bedfellows... A man hides from nightmares that invade his waking world... Kelli Owen's first collection gathers over 60,000 words, including a handful of out-of-print, difficult-to-find previously published work, a plethora of new pieces, story notes, drawings inspired by the title story, and an introduction by the legendary Thomas Monteleone.