A frightening tale is only successful when the story at its heart is great.

Submit a Frightening Tale

Are you a writer with some frightening short stories that you’d be willing to share with our brave listeners?
Yes? Then please submit them here as a Google Doc, Word, Rich Text File or PDF.

Please include any information you want used as a ‘plug‘ this could be a new book, a tour? website, charity cause – whatever you want. It’s my way of thanking the authors for sharing their stories. So, how does it all work? Well… 

Submissions, are added to a reading queue and read in order of submission.
Once read, you will be contacted if I feel your story is a good fit.
Then you can authorize the program to perform your story.
Additionally, you are not held to any exclusivity rules with the stories you submit.

means you can allow other narrators to tell their own version of your story too.)

 I must preface that NOT all stories submitted will be suitable for a… Frightening performance.

I will say though, that your story will be read.

If your tale doesn’t meet the needs of a performance, it in no way means it’s a poor piece of work, but rather that it’s just not the right fit for this program. I implore you to continue, for a master fails more times than a beginner has even tried. Keep writing!!!

Please note that while I will never claim ownership of your story, I do claim ownership of the performance I create. Not in anyway that I want to monetize it, but in that they can only be listened to from Frighteningtales.com. This funnels listeners to visit here, in turn exposing them to other authors as well as you, and is part of the horror for the love of horror motto. It’s kinda how this all works.

Content Requirements

• Stories MUST contain the supernatural / paranormal in some way, shape or form. So many writers submit stories that have no paranormal activity nestled in its pages. But that’s the heart of the program, so be aware. There are enough crazy humans and psychopaths actually wandering the streets, for me to tell more stories of human on human horror. I prefer to keep a foot firmly planted in whimsy. Now, a crazy psychopath ghost… we can talk.
• Stories should be works of Fiction. Authors are sending me accounts of ghostly encounters they’ve had. Narratives that are a documentary style retelling of ghostly encounters you’ve had personally aren’t the format that I’m looking for… unless you can retell it in a way that reads like a story.
• Evil and darkness in all its frightening tales are well enough without racist hate. Again, this treads too close to reality for my liking. So please don’t hide your racist views in your writing; I’m not allowing it here.
• Overly sexualized stories sent to me get locked in a folder my wife keeps. In order to cater to the diverse audience that listens here, and knowing that not everyone enjoys explicit intimacy, I’m going to have to pass on sharing content that is overly sexualized. Implied intimacy for story purposes is tolerated. For example, “We spent the night exploring our bodies” vs a play-by-play of everything.
• Stories should be 1800 words to 4000 max. I like episodes to be around 20 mins, 30 is optimal. I max out at 45 mins. But shorter stories can be paired up with other shorter stories to flesh out a full episode. So, don’t hesitate to share.

  My analytics show that ALL listeners seem to cut out at 55 mins… this is why we collect data like this, so thank you everyone who accepts the cookies. Browser cookies are like digital inuksuks that say you were here.

• AI stories are out. I run chunks of each of the stories I get through 4 AI checkers to make sure that I promote hard-working, talented writers and not the algorithm. I use 4 because technology is only as good as the people creating it. If you write something, then AI polishes, copy edits or stretches it, I’m alright with that because the heart of it is still a living, breathing life form creating it. But telling a bot to write a story about a ghost that does this and this and then this, it’s not writing, and it doesn’t help you as a writer or my listeners.

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