Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, we’ve got a bonus newsletter featuring projects from our community of subscribers.

Happy Tuesday, my friends! Welcome to the first Subscriber Spotlight—a special edition of Scare Me! highlighting horror happenings from our community.

This month brings an impressive range of projects, from novels and newsletters to an IRL haunt now in its 18th year.

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Thanks for reading Scare Me! Our next monthly Subscriber Spotlight will come out in early June. If you’ve got a project to share with our community, now’s the perfect time to send it my way.

Author Diane Corso’s supernatural suspense novel, Broken Things, relaunched last month! The second edition came out on April 14 with publisher Cantwell Rock Books.

Broken Things has earned an impressive 4.82 stars on Goodreads and was recently a finalist for the CIBA Shelley Award for Paranormal Fiction. The unpublished version manuscript won Best Fiction Writing and Best Supernatural/Paranormal Genre at the 2023 Page Turner Awards.

The Story: It’s been three years since blogger Maggie Oliver three years lost her husband and young son in a car crash that also stole chunks of her memories. She moves to her late husband's family cabin, hoping to get back to writing as she tries to redefine her identity.

But instead of peace, she finds herself haunted by the past at every turn. Even in her sleep, she finds herself drawn further into a realm that exists just beyond death. Maggie must bring peace to the spirits of the past or risk becoming trapped with them herself. An immersive, atmospheric story of grief, hidden truths, memory and moving forward.

Diane says: This writing journey is never boring, and never ends. It's a gift.

Where to Read: Amazon, Kindle Unlimited (through 7/2!), or wherever books are sold!

Follow Diane’s Journey:

When was the last time you went to a good haunt? If you’re in Central Florida, let me put subscriber Brian Wilson’s haunt on your Halloween map. (For a sense of Brian’s spooky sensibilities, check out his short fiction—such as “The Smoking Specter of Manhood.”)

Brian says: Every October, our home stops pretending to be a normal house and fully commits to becoming The Haunting at Willow Run. What started years ago as “let’s put out a few decorations” has turned into a full walk-through Halloween production with cemetery gates, fog, lighting effects, custom-built props, synchronized music, projection work, and enough strange little details to make the neighbors either very happy or slightly concerned.

We build a lot of it ourselves—because apparently buying normal decorations wasn’t inefficient enough. Using Light-O-Rama, xLights, and a healthy amount of sleep deprivation, we turn the yard into the kind of place kids love, adults photograph, and UPS drivers approach with caution.

Truth is, the display was never really just about Halloween. We’ve been doing this for more than 18 years, and somewhere along the way it became less about decorations and more about building something people actually remember. Families come back every year. Kids who used to walk through holding their parents’ hands now show up driving themselves, which is both flattering and mildly offensive.

We also use both our Halloween and Christmas displays to help support local charities, because if you’re going to spend this much time hauling skeletons and extension cords around, it should probably serve a higher purpose. Wilson Family Lights is part haunted house, part community tradition, and part very public proof that some people simply should not be left alone with power tools and holiday ideas.

Follow Brian’s journey:

Jennifer Smith discovered horror at thirteen through Stephen King's IT and never looked back. In her latest project, the Haunted Library Society, Jennifer is creating a newsletter and online community spaces for horror fans to gather.

Jennifer says: I'm a neurodivergent reader based in Colorado with a final girl mentality and a deep belief that the horror community is one of the most genuinely welcoming and intellectually alive reader communities out there. I'm also an ARC reviewer actively building relationships with publishers, so if you're a horror reader looking for what's coming next before it lands on the shelf, the Haunted Library Society is the place to be.

The Haunted Library Society is a Substack newsletter and social media community centered around a single belief: the best horror and dark fiction isn’t just about monsters; it’s about the choices made before the monster arrives. My approach, which I refer to as "Ethics in the Dark," goes beyond plot summaries and star ratings to delve into the moral complexities at the heart of the genre.

In each edition, I cover new releases, hidden gems, and voices that often go unheard, exploring a wide range of horror, dark fiction, and weird speculative narratives. I have a particular fondness for folk horror, feminist horror, literary weird, and translated works that deserve more attention. I'm also working towards some exciting ideas, like hosting reading events and women’s retreats tailored for fans of dark fiction and horror. These gatherings would provide a space to connect over the books we love and spark meaningful conversations about the themes they explore.

Join the Society:

Last summer, subscriber Bryan Farrell sent me one of the nicest emails I’ve ever received. His kind words about Scare Me! have kept me feeling motivated and positive on days when it’s felt challenging to balance creative work with everything else. The least I can do is give Bryan’s most recent book a shoutout!

Released last October, Maw is a novella set in the atmospheric Scottish Highlands. Goodreads reviewers say it’s funny, creepy, cozy, and a perfect prelude to Halloween.

The Story: Seasons pass...leaves fall...daylight fades...but family is forever.

MAW is a haunting Autumnal horror novella set in the Scottish Highlands. It is a story about family, about the distances between us and the ties that bind us.

When Maisie receives a call for help from her grandmother Cora, she returns reluctantly to the remote country house in which the woman she and her sister know as Maw raised them in their mother's absence. It's Oct 30th and it's bad enough she was back just a few weeks ago for Maw's birthday and wasn't planning on returning until Christmas—and only then if she couldn't come up with a good enough excuse—it also means she's probably going to miss the Halloween party she was looking forward to in Edinburgh. With night closing in, she arrives to find Maw missing and her granduncle Jordie, Maw's older brother, bedridden and acting even more mental than usual.

As she waits for Maw to return and explain just what the hell is going on, she finds Maw's phone, left behind, and also her journal, which contains some very worrying entries about the strange events unfolding in this house perched on the edge of the wilderness.

MAW combines folk and cosmic horror, a little gore, a touch of humour, and a meditation app that is most definitely NOT user-friendly.

Follow Bryan’s journey:

Have I mentioned that I love Scandinavian noir? It’s an expansive genre that spans many authors, countries, and forms of media, and I enjoy it all. That’s what caught my attention about subscriber Albion Byrd’s indie audio drama, Skandinavien.

Albion has a very cool distribution system where you can purchase the entire series, ad-free, for $13.80 USD. It’s yours to own, forever, no matter what may happen to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You’ll also receive a digital script book.

About the Show: Skandinavien (4 hours 21 run time) is a dark, immersive horror audio series that delivers a complete story across 13 chilling episodes.

This original and unique audio drama is designed for fans of atmospheric horror and slow-burn suspense, and it offers a truly unforgettable experience.

Told with cinematic sound, haunting performances, and rich Nordic atmosphere, Skandinavien is a self-contained horror series you can buy once and keep forever. No ads, no subscriptions, and not on mainstream platforms. Just a cold, creeping story rooted in folklore, isolation, and the fragile nature of memory.

Put on your headphones. Listen in the dark. Some things don’t stay buried.

Follow Albion’s Journey:

I’m pretty certain I began following writer and editor A.C. Bauer on TikTok or Instagram, where Cat Eye Press (and its feline co-founder/demon, Frankie) first caught my eye. Launched in 2024, Cat Eye Press “specializes in horror fiction with the goal of celebrating subgenre and diversity through quality print and digital publications.”

Now, Cat Eye Press has successfully Kickstarted Don’t Go to the Vault—a new horror anthology featuring stories that center bank robberies. Scary ones. Where there’s something unexpected inside the vault.

The Anthology: Banks are some of the most secure places in the world—at least, that’s what we tend to think. But bank robbers have been challenging that notion, often to great effect.

Whether through violence, persuasion, or some mix of the two, bank robbers have managed to abscond with bank treasures ever since banks were created. No, they may not always make it very far afterwards, but the fact remains that they were able to steal from that great, big vault.

And while much of today’s banking is online, there is still something tantalizing about that giant vault full of valuables (just ask Hollywood). But what if that vault held more than just money? What if it held secrets? Mysteries? Or maybe… just maybe… horrors the world has never seen before?

That’s exactly what we want to see in Don’t Go for the Vault: A Bank Robbery Horror Anthology.

Open call submission window: April 15–May 20, 2026

Extended submission window exclusively for BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, Disabled, Neurodiverse, and other underrepresented voices: May 21–31, 2026

It’s true! Nat Cassidy is a very kind fellow subscriber. His new collection, I Know a Place, is out this week from Shortwave. I loved every story in this collection, and I’m looking forward to picking up the Barnes & Noble edition (which includes two bonus stories I’m dying to read).

I recently recorded an episode of the Macabre Daily podcast with Nat and got to ask all my burning questions—about wrestling with questions of spirituality in his horror, the importance of music, and whether his evil alter ego would be capable of stealing Stephen King’s career. (That joke will make sense to anyone who’s read his story about the Beatles.)

I Know a Place comes out today (May 5), and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

It’s been a little while, so I wanted to share some upcoming new releases I’ve got my eye on! On Thursday, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled newsletter with a roundup of the eARCs on my radar for summer and fall.

After that: We’re back in interview land for a conversation with Stephanie Gagnon of Books in the Freezer! It’s one of my very favorite podcasts, and I can’t wait to learn more about Stephanie’s experiences making the show.

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.