Check out my latest story Last Door on the Left, appearing in the December 2025 issue of Penumbric Back to Work, presented on the Creepy Podcast
New and Noteworthy:
NOW OUT! My novella,
The Bodies:
A police officer heroically solves the mysterious deaths of several women, only for another body to show up after the case is closed--twenty-five years later.
Congratulations! After your long trek through the vastness of the internet, you have reached D.H. Parish Stories, the website dedicated to the horror and speculative fiction written by me, D.H. Parish. Please rest, have a drink from the well, and take a look around.
Questions Nobody Has Asked But I Am Determined To Answer:
What kind of stories should you expect? Oh, anything that might shock and surprise and cause you to rethink what thought you knew. I generally prefer the horror of the everyday to the more fantastical, the wickedness of humanity over that of unholy monsters and cryptids, psychological terror to physical tortures, and slow burns to a more relentlessly pace. However, I prefer variety and the delightfully or wickedly unexpected, and a good story is a good story no matter the subgenre (the converse is true as well).
Why short stories? Almost all my writing is short stories. I think the short story is the ideal form for horror and speculative fiction. Not that novels don't have a place in these areas (and I am at work one myself), but I usually find it more fun/satisfying to wrestle with an idea or character in that more limited frame, both as a reader and as a writer.
What authors do you admire? My favorite authors in the genre growing up were Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, and Roald Dahl (the adult stuff), with the occasional Stephen King mixed in, and if you imagine a chimeric melange of them, coupled with the occasional dollop of humor, it is the effect I am going for in my work. That said, I think the best current writing today is/was that of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, whose recently finished BBC anthology television show "Inside No. 9" is a master class in brilliant storytelling, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Who are you? Like many (most?) writers, I have a day job to support my habit. I reside in the wilds of Pennsylvania with my wife.
Photos I find a little creepy, in a good way