Hey. You may know me. You may not. My most popular story has 4.3k upvotes, so you probably do.

Tonight, I was hit out of the blue with a truly harrowing message.

”You have been permanently banned from SSS”

Apparently, I “harassed another member of the sub to the point to where they felt uncomfortable.”

I didn’t even know I did that. I try to be kind and charming to every person I talk to on Reddit. I would never even think of consciously stalking or harassing someone.

I don’t even know who I harassed.

Since I can’t really post on SSS anymore, I needed to spread my message here. Hopefully they don’t ban me here for this.

To the person I harassed:

I’m sorry. I never intended to do anything like that.

To the mods:

Perhaps permanently banning me was a bit extreme? I didn’t even know I was doing it. And you’ve seen me. I would never even hurt a fly!

This sub means a lot to me. I made so many friends here. Made so many wonderful stories here. My self-esteem was practically birthed here.

I’m a member of this community, and a respected one, too.

Please consider turning my permanent ban into a temporary one. I love this sub, and even the idea of not even being able to share my creativity keeps me up at night.

Sure, there are other subs I could post to, but this one, It’s so integral to me.

I couldn’t even sleep after seeing that message.

I can do a 30 day, even a 60 day ban!

Please, just give me another chance.

I think it's awesome that sss is doing a contest this month. If I may be so bold... I was wondering if the mods could also possibly be talked into something else. I was wondering if perhaps as a Christmas present to some of the frequent writers, that the rule of no continuations could be lifted for the month of December. Still a five hundred word limit to each installment, but just allowing the authors to further explore some short ideas. As long as, of course, each installment has a scare in it. Just a thought. I completely understand if that's not possible.

I noticed that one of my recent posts on SSS wasn’t particularly popular (link, but I can also paste it into the comments if that's easier), and it would be great if someone could give me some insight.  I understand that the content, or plot, of the story isn’t for everyone, so I’m more concerned with whether I made any glaring mistakes with the more technical aspects of the story (e.g., spelling/grammar, disconnected story beats, etc.).  I’m not sure if I made some sort of writing faux paus, or accidentally posted fan-fiction, or something.  It can be hard for me to distance myself enough from a story to determine whether these kinds of issues exist, so I would appreciate some feedback.

Thanks,

Hi I’ve recently started writing SSS and most of the people who read it also love it same as I do but I always have troubles completing it. I usually end up having two or more alternative endings which makes it sort of hard for me to choose between them for I fear people might not like it

Hello!

I genuinely don't know who remembers me. I used to be a very frequent poster, posting body horror short stories. Its so great to see the sub doing so well. Kudos to all the new writers taking this sub to so many new places. It's so good to see so many stories doing so well. It's giving me a slight itch... Love this sub!

A small milestone for most, but one I'm proud of regardless. I came into this community just for S&G's trying my hand at writing. The support and feedback I've received has been nothing short of a blessing making my efforts feel very much worth every second glued to my computer screen.

I can't wait to see what the future holds. High hopes I'll be right back here announcing my 100th story someday. For now, I'm simply posting this to express my gratitude and share my Story Catalog with every story I've put out so far.

Thank you all.

Sincerely, Yokaisheru

Hello! I need true horror stories you have if you’re willing to share!! ( Your Reddit username can be included or excluded from the video (up to you!)) Anything you got, I would love to hear!

Email is - malmalmars12@gmail.com

i use them to indicate a new scene. now i can't do it or see spaces in any post, past or present.

i put four spaces (pressed enter 4 times) between this sentence and the above and below paragraphs, so can you see the gaps, or does this sentence look like it's right next to the paragraphs above and below?

are others having this problem? (i know they roll out new things for some people and not others). is there something we can still do so that spaces appear?

edit: i also don’t know if the spacing of my latest story, “burn this house” came out right. can someone who can see spaces please post a screenshot of it? i’d appreciate it

Submissions are simple.

Leave a comment with the link to your story and that’s it! For multiple submissions, please edit your comment to add another post.

Hello, all. I’ve seen a couple of times now when someone responds to one of my stories letting me know that they’ve shared it or included it on a video without actually asking me. (e.g., “This was a great story! I wanted to let you know that I’ve included it on my compilation here!”) Obviously informing isn’t the same as trying to hide it, but it also isn’t the same as asking. Have others seen this? What have they done about it? Does it break sub rules? Just looking for some insight, thanks!

Am I crazy to think that this subreddit is entering a new era? I have been posting here for a while, but the number of people reading and the number of upvotes has kind of gone crazy lately.

Now, let me explain this in a way that is very tangible.

The top three posts of the year have all been submitted in the last two weeks.

Now, as somebody who previous held that title, I can say that it took a LONG time to achieve. But suddenly stories are going huge and quickly!

Does anyone else feel like there are more readers than ever? This is an exciting time to write on this subreddit. I don't know if you all feel this, but it feels like every author is one good story away from being the top of the year! And that is awesome! We have readers people! Now is the time to write!

I don't know if I needed to even post this here, but honestly I'm just really damn excited. It has never felt better to post on SSS. I am so excited for the future of this subreddit, and I cannot wait to read and post more stories than ever. Is anybody else feeling the same? I just want to know that I'm not crazy.

For those of you who have heard of me, I'm pleased to announce that I've published a collection of my short-stories. Every story has been reviewed and in many cases edited. The paperback is over 600 pages in size and contains around 200 stories.

It's taken months to get to this point as you can imagine.

Anyways, you can get it here if you fancy it.

https://a.co/d/asWCkRi

Must admit that I don't post or keep up with SSS as regularly as I used to, but having a glance recently the most popular ones seem to be ones with AITA-like titles, content and comments. Personally, I'm not a big fan but each to their own - I'm a bit old-fashioned when it comes to titles myself. I think a title should be at least partly memorable.

Are readers/writers drawn to stories if they have a particular kind of title over others?

Hey everyone! Not sure how many of you have come across my stories, but I started posting regularly on SSS about two months ago. It's been a lot of fun interacting with the community. Between reading stories and chatting with other writers I feel like I've gotten significantly better at creating stories. Thank you to everyone who has helped with my journey.

I was writing a story every day and posting one every other day. I just recently hit 50 stories. It's a big milestone for me, so I'm taking this as an opportunity to take a break from writing and work on my editing skills. My plan is to edit and compile the stories into a small collection which I'll publish. I think it'll be nice to revisit some of my stories with fresh eyes and be able to finally share the ones that were over 500 words and couldn't be trimmed down.

I noticed that a lot of other folks on SSS have self-published short story collections. Does anyone have advice for a first-timer? What would you do differently if you were publishing for the first time again?

Once more, thank you to everyone who has been so supportive over these couple months. I don't know how long of a break I'll be taking, but I'm planning to check in and read some stories even if I'm not posting. Anyways, thanks for reading and happy writing!

I personally go by whether the upvotes/downvotes score is high enough to my liking in the moment. How do you guys decide- by the title of the story, by the author, or some other method?

A little milestone for the tiny short story app I launched a while ago. If anyone here has used it, I’d love to know what features you’d like to see. If you haven’t checked out it yet, it’s a great place to post your work and get some more exposure.

The tape recorder sat like a dormant relic on Juniper's cluttered desk. Dust motes danced lazily in the sunlight that filtered through the half-drawn blinds. With hesitant fingers, she pressed play, the old cassette whirring to life with a mechanical hum that seemed to echo through the quiet room.

At first, there was only static, crackling like distant footsteps in an abandoned house. Then, voices emerged, faint and muffled as if speaking from another realm. Juniper leaned in, straining to decipher the words. They were unintelligible, mere whispers in a language that felt both ancient and forbidden.

As the tape progressed, the voices grew clearer, and with them, a sense of dread tightened around Juniper's chest. She recognized snippets of phrases, fragments that hinted at rituals and incantations similar to the kind she witnessed in the Yukon. There were names spoken in reverence, names that belonged to entities not meant to be invoked by mortal tongues.

Amidst the disembodied sounds was hushed breathing, barely audible over the tape's aging mechanisms...

That's all for now. Will post more later.

Below is a paragraph from the short story I'm working on. I'm curious if the mood, atmosphere, and perspective are evident from this paragraph alone, without any context about the story. Also, feel free to critique it—both good and bad.

Here it is:

"Emma stood in the dim living room, staring at the window that shouldn’t be. Its glass was a perfect void, a black hole set into the wall of their New England home. It wasn’t just darkness—it was an absence, a nothingness that pulled at her soul. She could feel it whispering, promising power and freedom, urging her to act, to break the mundane bonds of her life. The voices from the void were insistent, their seductive murmurs wrapping around her mind like tendrils, planting thoughts of betrayal and violence."

Alone at night, she hummed a tune, only to shiver as the melody echoed back, disembodied in the darkness.

Hello all,

At one point I was a consistent contributor to Nosleep and Short Scary Stories under various usernames. But over time it lost its appeal and I got out of it. I've been lucky enough to have a few of my stories narrated on the Nosleep Podcast and one on Chilling Tales, but I recently decided to take my best and throw them together in a collection.

The Clown in the Church and Other Spooky Tales, a collection of my r/NoSleep and r/ShortScaryStories is now available in print and eBook on Amazon! Go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6NKVFRD to pick up your copy! If you have Kindle Unlimited, you can enjoy the book for free!

Leave an honest review thank you again.

🥁🥁🥁 Hi all, I’ve been posting about a new short story app I’ve been working on. Today is the day: I would like to invite everyone here to the iOS test flight app. If you don’t know what this means, it’s a way to have people try out an app before it’s launched on the App Store.

Here is the link to get the app: https://testflight.apple.com/join/KSF7zdMM

Please share feedback and let me know what you think. Right now I’m working on an easy way to import your stories. Cheers 🥂

Edit: it’s finally live on the App Store!

Here’s the link to download: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kestrel-stories/id6499554155

I posted a while ago that I was building a new short story app. Things are moving along well. My question for all of you is: what are some must have features you need to see in a short story app?

I absolutely love r/ShortScaryStories simplicity, like no “covers” or anything like that, just title and story. I want to keep things this way.

Also if there is anyone interested in becoming a beta tester for this app, please let me know and I can have you using it today.

Hey guys! I’m starting a YouTube channel where I want to tell real scary stories found on the internet and from actual people lol. Like the title says I’m looking for personal stories that people wouldn’t mind being shared. I’ve always had an interest in personal testimonies of truly unanswerable things and would love to start my channel off with some crazy ones! Thanks. If possible I’d love for as much detail as possible!

If you aren't aware of what's been happening behind the scenes at /r/ShortScaryStories, I suggest checking out my previous post. Don't worry, I'll wait. You're finished? Good! Now, for the update!

First, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who reached out or left a comment on my previous post. This outpouring of positivity gave me the necessary kick in the ass to not let this situation end as it did. I wasn't sure if I wanted to even put up a fight. After all, I wasn't confident anything could be done. But seeing all those nice comments helped me realize I didn't want to go down without making an honest attempt at fighting back.

Unfortunately, this has been a negative trait of mine all my life. I get easily dejected, disheartened, and lose confidence in myself. I assume the outcome of everything will turn out badly, and psyche myself out into accepting defeat.

Like I said, seeing all those positive comments made me feel as if I was letting down a lot of people, even though none of it was my fault. While my confidence about getting the situation resolved wasn't high, I realized I had nothing to lose in reaching out to Admin.

What's the worst that could happen? If they say there's nothing to be done, then I'm in the same boat as I was previously, and I'd have left the subreddit. But at least I could have said I tried everything, and then go about moving on.

However, the outcome wasn't the negative one I expected. Today, I received some excellent news from Admin. Our previously rogue moderator is no longer a part of the team. Admin has removed them, and restored full permissions to both /u/simbathesavage8 and I. We're going to work at getting the top moderator spot on the subreddit so we don't have to worry about this happening again. Plus, the top moderator now is also inactive. But that's behind the scenes work to be done.

Since this all started with /u/ForgottenWell getting their story removed and having the entire comment section removed, my first action as a fully restored moderator is to re-approve the story post and restoring all the removed comments back to the post. There are still some comments which remain removed, mostly AutoMod posts, and a non-constructive criticism.

So, we're back at the helm again, and ready to get back to business.

I am currently designing a collaborative short story collection for university. The collection is based around the rooms of a between reality hotel called "The Beaumont Hill Hotel". I am seeking submission which will be displayed on a website. I do not in anyway profit or own the stories featured and credit will be provided. Any interest would be massively helpful.

The general outline for stories is as follows:

Set within the mysterious Beaumont Hill Hotel, “A place between places” where broken people who have slipped through reality come to rest. There are 50 rooms which each contain a short story. Style can vary as long as the story can contain itself to one room and meets the genre of horror. Non mandatory use of a staff note to contextualise your story No more than 500 words Rooms require a status: Habitable rooms mean the events have already transpired and the room is free to be rented out Dubious rooms may still possess a threat to willing occupants yet are still deemed safe enough to be occupied, at a slightly decreased price point Sealed rooms have an active or growing threat within them and have become too dangerous to be provided to guests however further study is to be conducted Condemned rooms contain an active and spreading presence which poses a genuine threat to the entire hotel, the room will be destroyed and later refurbished.

I would be massively appreciative to any submissions.

I don't know quite why I like scary stories featuring animals so much. I'm not an "animal" person per se, we have a cat. I don't pet her non-stop and kiss her , but I do understand what she is thinking and saying, and she speaks through me to my children. They love that, although they are also mildly creeped out by it.

I think, more than the animals themselves, the way they are "intruders" into our organized man-made world, little aliens with different prompts and motives and ideologies, mingling and mixing with us. Our paths cross. The cats, the crows, the mice, the rats, the dogs, the racoons- watching us, coming up to us and then backing away. The strange, the wonderful and the scary can happen in those encounters.

Animals are a firm favourite of human storytelling of course- Aesop's fables and old myths and legends, Disney, Donald Duck and Scooby . We have always been fascinated by the animals among us and around us, and how we can use them to tell our tales even better, make them shine and sparkle.

Anyway, the point is, I love scary animal stories, and if you do too, check out the sub of the same name and if you have short scary stories featuring animals, you are welcome to post there.

It’s taken me a few days to wrap my head around what’s been happening behind the scenes at /r/ShortScaryStories and I think I’m finally able to accept that this is the end of my tenure as a moderator for the subreddit. I cannot begin to express how disappointed I am with what is happening, and I feel that if I don’t get this off my chest, I’ll be doing a great disservice to the community I’ve been leading through all these years.

As some of you might have seen in /u/ForgottenWell’s hiatus post, there’s been some issues within the moderation team lately. I use the word “team” loosely here because there is no longer a “team” of moderators at SSS anymore. Since Wednesday this week, /u/SimbaTheSavage8 and I have had our permissions removed to do anything on /r/ShortScaryStories except read modmail. If you aren’t familiar with reddit’s moderation duties, this basically means that we cannot do anything for SSS at all. We cannot remove rule breaking stories. That means we cannot address any reports. We cannot do anything productive to maintain the subreddit quality.

This wouldn’t be an issue if Simba and I were being replaced with more capable, productive, or dedicated moderators. Hell, I’d be glad to hand SSS off to another set of hands who’d take good care of it. People who are trustworthy, make decisions based on the best interests of the subreddit, and are active within the community. However, this is not the case now. Unfortunately, SSS is now in the hands of /u/ObstinateHarlequin.

This person was a moderator before I became one, and with the way Reddit’s moderation structure works, they’re above me on the power scale. They’ve got the ability to take away my permissions or outright remove me from SSS, if they want which after this post, I think I’ll be removed. They can ban whoever they want. Remove whatever story they want. Change the sidebar. Whatever they want to do.

This is the person who took away Simba and I’s ability to perform our duties. This is the same moderator who removed /u/ForgottenWell’s story several times after Simba and I both approved it multiple times.

We did not see anything wrong with the story and re-approved it. We tried discussing it with /u/ObstinateHarlequin said in the comment section of the story:

“This is a truly terrible, less-than-no-effort story and the next mod to reapprove it is getting their mop taken away.”

And to top it all off, they went and removed every single comment from the story to be extra spiteful about it.

When discussing the removals in modmail:

OH - “Removed because it was the laziest thing I’ve ever seen written on the sub”

HG - “That’s a bit hard and uncalled for. I’ve read the story myself 3 or 4 times. Simba also agrees there’s nothing wrong with it either so closing the comments was the next best thing.”

HG - “It seems as if there’s a disagreement here over the story still. What’s the deal? Simba and I approved it over and over again so you’ve clearly been outvoted on this. There have been much worse stories on SSS to remove but you’ve got your sights set on this one specifically for some reason. So what’s the deal besides saying it’s “lazy”? Cause it definitely isn’t a lazy story.”

OH - “Outvoted” - I’m sorry, you seem to be under the impression this is a democracy. It is not.

HG - Wow, so you decide to be a child about it and remove my ability to do anything on the subreddit. So mature. You haven’t done shit here in ages, yet you come back only to cause problems. I feel so appreciated.

OH - I asked you not to shit up the sub with a low-quality story that blatantly does not fit, you did it anyways. Repeatedly. You fundamentally failed at your duty as mod to enforce the sub’s rules

We believe their panties are in a bunch because FW’s story was one which can be seen as “political” since it has to do with the pro-life/pro-choice abortion debate. As we’ve (Simba and I and everyone else) always done with stories dealing with political/cultural/sensitive subject matter, we closed the comment section to avoid it becoming a free-for-all of discussion about matters other than the story. In this case, OH decided to firebomb the whole thread and remove all the positive comments leaving only the 2 comments expressing their displeasure with the story. 2 comments which are currently sitting in the negatives with their downvotes. Seems like OH’s opinion isn’t very popular.

So folks, this is the attitude and behavior of the new moderator in charge. A person who cannot be bothered to do fuck all for the community in the many years they’ve been around. A person who cannot put aside their personal feelings over a story and uses their power to remove things they don’t agree with. A person who uses bullshit excuses to remove stories from SSS and doesn’t take into consideration the opinions of the other moderators on the team. It is not a democracy, afterall, according to OH.

As I said above, I wouldn’t have minded handing off the subreddit to other folks. This isn’t a situation where I’m butthurt because I lost moderating power on SSS. It doesn’t really matter much to me if I’m in charge or not. I originally came to SSS to write stories and read the works of others, but now I know that I can no longer post there without having to worry about OH removing my stories merely for the sake of being spiteful. Then again, maybe I don’t need to worry so much given how inactive they’ve been for such a long time. I’m fairly certain OH will fade away back into the sewer they crawled out from sooner rather than later.

But hey, it is what it is. The damage is now done. I’ll gladly be removed as a moderator if it’s for the right reason, and I think arguing for /u/ForgottenWell’s ability to post a story which might rankle some feathers is a perfectly good reason. And it isn’t only FW. If it was anyone else, I’d defend them equally. My goal at SSS has always been to foster creativity and encourage people to write and share their stories with the world.

Obviously with some caveats like the rules of the subreddit, but otherwise, there weren’t so many unreasonable restrictions. I believe I stuck closely to this philosophy and I’ve let nothing else determine how I ran the subreddit. Sure, I’ve made some mistakes along the way (AITA??) and probably made a few people upset with me, but I always did it with good intentions, following my heart, and with the goal in mind of making SSS a safe and constructive place for authors to entertain their readers. You can’t make everyone happy, but I think I’ve done alright.

Hopefully, the community can continue running well with whoever is left at the end of the day there. But as I’ve shown you above, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Not entirely sure of what is coming next. So far I’m still a moderator on the subreddit, but I’m pretty sure this post is going to get me kicked out. If not, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I might step away voluntarily. I never set out to be a moderator. I was a writer back in the day. Maybe I’ll go back to doing that instead.

Anyway, it’s been a fun ride and I’ve met so many wonderful people. I wish everyone great success and look forward to reading all your future work.

I know some of you don't know me, don't care, or know me. That's fine.

I've been writing for r/shortscarystories since May, 2021. And while I love this community, I've been thinking of retiring or semi-retiring since last year, 2023. I probably won't write sss stories anymore, but I'll be around somewhere. I'll probably semi-retire, comment on stories once in a while. Not sure.

But the reasons are my wish on focusing more on my other writing projects (which are fantasy) and that my horror ideas have run dry.

I thank sss for enjoying my stories and for the wonderful, thoughtful readers I've come to know over the years.

Thank you.

EC299

Hello everyone, ForgottenWell here! We are making this post to announce that we will be taking a hiatus from posting on ShortScaryStories.

Rather than just disappear into the ether, we thought we would explain the reasoning behind why we are choosing to abstain from posting on this Subreddit.

One week ago today we posted a story to SSS titled “Women Should Know Their Place.” The story was about a misogynistic man who went on a date with a genius surgeon, and then woke up the next day to find he had a live fetus implanted in his stomach. We wrote the story to be a crowd-pleaser, and in that regard we were highly successful.

The story had twelve-hundred upvotes after the first twenty-four hours! We’ve had a lot of successful stories on this subreddit, but that story actually took the record for the most upvotes in twenty-four hours. We were convinced that it would quickly rise to the top post of the month, and after some time be one of the top posts of the year! Not only that, but we had over a hundred comments on the story, and all but one lone comment was positive.

People loved the story, and we were excited to continue to watch it rise through the ranks of our stories!

Unfortunately a few hours into the second day of being posted, the story was removed from the subreddit. The reason given for removal was that our story broke Rule 11 and was “poorly composed.”

We were very confused by this. We’ve had stories removed before for Rule 7, not being scary enough, but we’ve never had a story removed for being “poorly composed.”

We messaged the Mods asking if there was any way to appeal having our story removed, and it turns out the Mods were not sure why the story was removed in the first place! The story was put back up, and we were happy the mistake was corrected!

But then the story was taken down again. We messaged the mods, and they put it back up again. Then it was taken back down again.

After some back and forth, we learned that an old, inactive Mod had come out of retirement specifically to remove our story.

According to this Mod our story was “shitting up the sub,” “truly terrible,” and the “laziest thing he’s ever seen written on the sub.”

They claim the story is “exceptionally poor quality,” but we believe that the truth of the matter is that they were offended by the story's pro-choice messaging.

We hoped that they would get bored of removing our story and move on with their life. Instead this Mod decided to escalate. He nuked the other Mods’ ability to regulate the story so they could remove our story a final time. Then they went in and individually deleted every single comment on the story, destroying all evidence that the story was widely loved.

We are very disappointed by this Mods’ actions, we maintain that our story did not violate any rules and should not have been removed unfairly from the subreddit. Furthermore, multiple Moderators and the comments of dozens and dozens of redditors also maintain that the story was not poorly composed, not to speak of the close to fifteen-hundred people who upvoted it.

We considered putting this whole ordeal behind us, and continuing to post on this subreddit. Unfortunately, we realized that our stories might never get a fair shake again now that this Mod has taken over. That we would have to censor our writing to fit their delicate sensibilities or else potentially face retribution, and we will never change our stories to fit someone else’s worldview.

We love this community! Over the past sixteen months we’ve posted 236 stories on this subreddit. We’ve read wonderful stories, and found kinship with truly talented authors. It’s sad to see it all go down the drain because of one inactive Mod on a power-trip.

And so for that reason, we have decided to go on a hiatus. Rest assured, we will be writing more than ever! But as long as this Mod is in charge of the subreddit, we feel it would be best to post our writing elsewhere! Somewhere we won’t be targeted unfairly!