Gordon Grice

Wrestling with Horror

2026-08-23T15:59:04.811-05:00

My latest story is set in the world on old-time pro wrestling. Hear Red Ripper on Pseudopod, the word's premier horror podcast, or just read it from their site.

Massacred by Sharks--A Historical Account

2026-07-06T13:51:00.003-05:00

Her Majesty’s Ship Magpie lay becalmed in the Caribbean Sea near Cuba. It was 1826; the Magpie had been on a mission to stop a pirate ship working the area. At the end of the humid day a breeze sprang up. The schooner had barely spread its sails to resume its voyage when the wind shifted to the south. The sailors saw a cloud on the horizon, lurid with the light of the moon. They knew it meant trouble. Soon the cloud was roaring toward them, swollen into a black mass. The sea in front of it was beaten into a snow of foam. There was little the crew could do. The squall toppled mountains of water over the gunwales and into the ship; it sank almost instantly. The storm passed, as if it had done its work and was ready to move on to some other chore.

In the confusion that followed, the eight surviving men found themselves clustered about a lifeboat that had washed free of the ship. It lay upside down in the water, capsized when too many people tried to climb in at once. Some men climbed on to lay along its keel. Others merely clung to the boat while treading water.

The commander of the ship, Lieutenant Smith, shouted for order. He told the men to work together to right the boat. Once that was done, two men climbed in and bailed with their hats; the boat might hold all eight if it weren’t full of water.

“A shark!” someone shouted. Everyone tried to climb into the boat. It tipped over and sent them all back into the ocean.

Once again, they turned the boat upright. Again two men climbed in to bail; the others clung to the gunwale and kicked at the water, hoping sharks were afraid of splashing. No shark approached them. The boat rode higher in the water as the bailing progressed. Soon two more men were able to board it and help with the work. The night passed in soggy labor.

Morning came, and so did the sharks. The men counted at least fifteen dorsal fins slicing the water. There was another panic as men tried to enter the boat. It capsized again. Lt. Smith ordered the men to put it right once more. They did so, and again two men went to work bailing. The sharks moved in among the men who were still treading water at the gunwale. They swam between them and bumped them. This is a shark’s way of investigating an object in the water to see if it’s edible. Particles of bone in the shark’s scales scrape an animal’s hide with each pass. The shark smells the blood. It confirms his suspicion that the thing moving in the water is edible.

Since the boat was once more nearly full of water, it rode low. Its gunwale was almost even with the ocean around it. The sharks swam right over the boat, slithering over the gunwales on both sides. One of the men in the water screamed. A shark had snipped his leg off. More screams followed. The water turned red. Six men remained alive—four in the water, still splashing in a futile attempt to discourage the sharks, two somewhat safer inside the boat. Lt. Smith ordered them to keep bailing. As he did, a shark bit his leg off. He stifled his scream; it could only discourage the men. He wasn’t able to keep quiet when his other leg came off. He let go of the boat and was beginning to sink when two of the sailors took him by the arms and lifted him into the boat. It didn’t capsize, perhaps because the lieutenant no longer weighed much. He lay with the severed arteries of his legs pumping blood into the boat even as the men continued to bail. He shook hands with each of the remaining men, telling them they had done well and were not to blame. Possibly he was still alive when the next panic came to capsize the boat and send him into the water for the last time.

Before long only four men were left, floating without food or water. Two of them became so desperately thirsty that they drank sea water, though they knew it might kill them. Sea water is saltier than the blood in the human body; a good quaff of it draws the moisture from the tissues. A person dies from dehydration in the middle of the ocean. One of the first symptoms of this dehydration is raving insanity. Both drinkers went mad and threw themselves back into the water. The sharks took them.

Only two men were left. They lay in the drifting boat until they were rescued by a passing ship.

To while away the eternal commercial breaks during Shark Week, may I suggest some factual material for your reading pleasure?

In Shark Attacks, I collaborated with National Geographic's team of scientists and editors to tell of sharks eating people--and vice versa. You'll read about these topics:

The Red Sea shark attacks of 2010.
A man swallowed whole by a great white.
The species most likely to remove your hands.
How humans inadvertently draw sharks to shore.
How a shark attack turned one woman against soup.
How sharks support the huge human population of this planet.

. . . and lots more.

And if you're still hungry after that, may I suggest The Book of Deadly Animals, available in paper or eBook form. Its shark chapter covers these topics:

The Jersey Shore attacks of 1916.
Motives for great white attacks, plus some of the most brutal cases.
Sharks in war, including the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis.
A record dive attended by oceanic whitetip sharks.
Jaws and our cultural reactions to sharks.

. . . and lots more.

That's just the shark chapter, mind you; this book surveys the mightiest killers in the animal kingdom in text and photos.

A New Dose of Dread: Kiss

2026-06-25T13:36:03.211-05:00

Chthonic Matter Quarterly #14 is available as of today! Here’s the line-up:

It’s Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea by Derek Austin Johnson

Playing Out Late Down Home by Lynn Graznak

Kiss by Gordon Grice

What’s Behind The Walls by M. Stern

Au clair de la lune by Michael Gray Baughan

Salt Beet by Kay Vaindal

Search: Why is There a Mouth in My Floor? by Joshua Rex

Available in Paperback or eBook from Amazon.

Also available in Paperback and ePub from the Publisher.

New! Death and Botany Back Home

2026-05-13T12:52:51.667-05:00

See my story of sudden death and amateur botany on a trip to my alma mater. It's one of many cool things in the debut issue of Okie Modern. Free online.

Bald Eagle Plucks Squirrel

2026-03-22T12:19:00.001-05:00

Warning: rough language in this video.

Correspondents of mine recently witnessed a bald eagle taking the body of a gray squirrel that had been killed on the road. The eagle took its prize into a tree. There it began to pluck the squirrel, presumably to make it more palatable. Gray fur wafted down. One witness recalled times when he had found a pile of such fur with no tracks around to explain its origin—a mystery now resolved. In this very brief video of the incident, the squirrel is obscured in the tree, but the eagle and its fur-plucking are plain.

I visited the site the next day and found dozens of tufts of fur remaining beneath the tree. They weren’t in a pile, but had blown downhill in a sort of cone pattern. Most of them were gray, but we also saw white tufts likely plucked from the squirrel’s belly.

If you know bald eagles mostly from nature documentaries, you will have seen spectacular footage of them taking live fish. I live a few blocks from a river, and it’s far more common in my neighborhood to see the scavenged side of their diet—squirrels in particular.

Classic Vampire Poems

2025-12-26T14:58:00.018-06:00

(Click the title to hear a reading of each poem.)

"Der Vampyre" (1748)
by Heinrich August Ossenfelder
A new translation into English by Gordon Grice

First appearance of a vampire by that name in creative literature.

Christine, you pray so stiff and firm
In notions from your mother learned,
Like a soldier making foolish boasts,
Like country folk who talk of ghosts.

You don’t love me at all, Christine.
I’ll get you back for that, you’ll see.
I’ll drink from you some fragrant wine
And make myself a vampire in time.

While you’re pillowed in peaceful sleep,
I’ll lick the crimson from your cheeks.
I’ll kiss you, and take the time to taste.
Tell me, Love, are you afraid?

You will be. You’ll faint to my caress,
Like you’re floating down to death.
I’ll ask you then: Do you believe
In Jesus, or in your savior: me?

From The Giaour (1813)

By George Gordon Byron

. . . on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race.

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
But one that for thy crime must fall,
The youngest, most beloved of all,
Shall bless thee with a father's name—
That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!

Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
And the last glassy glance must view
Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
Then with unhallowed hand shalt tear
The tresses of her yellow hair,
Of which in life a lock when shorn
Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
But now is borne away by thee,
Memorial of thine agony!
Wet with thine own best blood shall drip
Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
Go—and with Ghouls and Demons rave;
Till these in horror shrink away
From Spectre more accursed than they!

"Vorvoloka"

from the film Isle of the Dead (1945)
Directed by Mark Robson. Written by Ardel Wray, Val Lewton, and Josef Mischel

What do you do, Vorvoloka?
What do you do behind locked doors?
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka!

Vorvoloka,
I have twisted rose briar
before your door.
The thorns that pierced His brow
will tear your flesh, evil one.

I have put salt in the fire
And a cross of ashes on your door—
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka.

Vorvoloka, born of evil,
Sinful and corrupt,
Your hands are bloody with violence
Your mouth bitter with the taste
of sin and corruption.

You are guilty and abhorred
Vorvoloka, Vorvoloka.

Illustration: Vampire (1895) by Edvard Munch

Horror for Christmas!

2025-12-12T13:07:00.000-06:00

Grendel Press is running a terrifying deal for Christmas — four beautifully printed books packed with dark fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction, all for $20. Each separately costs around $12.99, so the GP 2023 Collection is a real deal.

Included Anthologies

Paramnesia — psychological horror, unraveling identity, and unreliable memory. (Featuring Gordon Grice's creepy take "Real Estate.")
The Devil Who Loves Me — dark romance, supernatural seduction, and love with teeth
More Than a Monster — creature folklore, mythic beasts, and the humanity beneath the monstrous
Uncanny & Unearthly Tales — eerie, atmospheric stories that linger like ghosts.

The Old Man on Fire

2025-11-13T16:37:00.001-06:00

Luke’s home from the war, but his town’s not the same. The old man that stalked him when he was a child is dead—and more dangerous than ever. Can even a hair-triggered crippled Eagle like Luke stop him?

Find out in "The Old Man on Fire," part of the new anthology from Savage Realms Press. Necro-Sapiens features delightfully dreadful stories of the macabre from Gordon Grice, James Dorr, Angelique Fawns, and many more.

Return of the Zombies

2025-11-07T14:42:00.006-06:00

My infamous story of zombies in love returns in The Best of MetaStellar Year Four!

Readers first quaked to its lyrical horror a couple of years ago on MetaStellar, one of the world's most popular online science fiction and fantasy magazines. Now you can read it in paperback or eBook, along with half a hundred more tiny terrors.

My Latest Animal Encounters: Raccoons and Black Bears

2025-09-07T12:35:00.001-05:00

Raccoons by Wayne T. Allison

The raccoon has sensitive knuckles and a blood-curdling battle cry, as you’ll find out in the cover story I wrote for the latest Oklahoma Today (September-October 2025). Artist Madelynn Goodnight and I will show you a side of this familiar carnivore you probably haven’t seen before.

And, since this is the Animal Issue, you’ll find all sorts of other bestial doings inside, including my tale of backyard encounters with a black bear.

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service

My Latest Horror Story: Doctor Fouquet Creeps from the Shadows

2025-08-24T13:16:00.006-05:00

Behind the Shadows III: Dark Secrets has crept out of the shadows and into paperback. Or, whatever e-format you like, but I always prefer to hold the thing in my own tentacles. As promised, this anthology contains my darkest story yet, the hideous tale of Doctor Fouquet. He's back from the grave, but that hasn't helped his drinking problem at all!

Doctor Fouquet Emerges from the Shadows

2025-06-20T13:59:00.005-05:00

The publisher is doing a Kickstarter for this horrifying collection. Pitch in now for percs--and a chance to read my darkest creation, "Doctor Fouquet."

The Man-Eating Lions of Njombe

2025-05-07T14:59:00.004-05:00

Illustration by Rembrandt

Someone was missing.

The group of women had stood in the dirt road chatting. The bushes stirred nearby, and then everyone was knocked down. It took them a moment to recover their feet and their senses. That’s when they saw that one of them was gone. It didn’t take long to find the explanation. A lion was strolling away, already several yards distant, and in its mouth, held in a stranglehold, was the woman who had vanished from their circle without a sound.

In Njombe District, Tanganyika, in the early 1940s, people lived in fear. The lions had suddenly taken to eating them, and there was little the people could do. Few of them owned effective weapons. Their houses were mostly made of thatch—that is, grass. It was easy for the lions to break in at night, or even to punch a paw through a wall and drag a sleeping person out. Everyone was too poor to afford the tools that could have saved their lives.

One man who did own a decent weapon was the husband of the woman who’d just been snatched. He grabbed his musket and ran after the lion into the bush. He shouted for his neighbors to follow him, but they were too afraid. In the bush the man heard the sounds of lions feeding—moist sounds, varied occasionally by the crack of bone. Soon he saw, partly shielded by brush, the shape of a lioness. She stepped into the open. The fur of her chest and face was matted with blood. What she carried in her mouth made the man shiver with fear—in fact, he shook so badly that the percussion cap fell off his musket. It was useless. The lioness watched him for a moment, then turned around and carried her burden back into the bush.

What he had seen in the lioness’s mouth was a severed leg. His wife’s.

The Njombe pride of the 1930s and 1940s is estimated to have killed more than 1500 people. A game warden named George Rushby, who hunted the lions, noticed that the lions no longer ate big game like buffalo and zebra; they seemed to eat only bush pigs and humans. When they ate humans, they often devoured everything except the skull, which they would crack open like a nut to eat its nutritious contents. Several times, Rushby found a human skull like a bowl licked clean. The killing only stopped when the pride was exterminated.

A Nightmare: Poem by Christina Rossetti

2025-04-14T11:14:00.004-05:00

A Nightmare (Often printed in a bowdlerized form as "A Coast-Nightmare." The text here is Rossetti's uncensored version.) I have a love in ghostland— Early found, ah me, how early lost!— Blood-red seaweeds drip along that coastland By the strong sea wrenched and tossed. In every creek there slopes a dead man’s islet, And such an one in every bay; All unripened in the unended twilight: For there comes neither night nor day. Unripe harvest there hath none to reap it From the watery misty place; Unripe vineyard there hath none to keep it In unprofitable space. Living flocks and herds are nowhere found there; Only ghosts in flocks and shoals: Indistinguished hazy ghosts surround there Meteors whirling on their poles; Indistinguished hazy ghosts abound there; Troops, yea swarms, of dead men’s souls.— Have they towns to live in?— They have towers and towns from sea to sea; Of each town the gates are seven; Of one of these each ghost is free. Civilians, soldiers, seamen, Of one town each ghost is free: They are ghastly men those ghostly freemen: Such a sight may you not see.— How know you that your lover Of death’s tideless waters stoops to drink?— Me by night doth mouldy darkness cover, It makes me quake to think: All night long I feel his presence hover Thro’ the darkness black as ink. Without a voice he tells me The wordless secrets of death’s deep: If I sleep, he like a trump compels me To stalk forth in my sleep: If I wake, he rides me like a nightmare; I feel my hair stand up, my body creep: Without light I see a blasting sight there, See a secret I must keep.

NEW STORY: A Series of Elegant Heads

2025-03-02T13:07:00.004-06:00

Proud to be included on Doric Literary, a site dedicated to short stories in the classic style. My piece is about an artist who likes to mess with your head. And not just yours--he'd actually like to create A Series of Elegant Heads.

Fruit-Drunk and Flying

2025-02-09T12:27:00.001-06:00

In the January-February 2025 issue of Oklahoma Today, we’re all about the food. My colleagues wrote about foods humans can eat, but of course I was interested in animal food—particularly the diet of the fruit-drunk little bird called the cedar waxwing.

Man-Eaters of Kamchatka: A True Tale

2025-02-05T23:50:00.000-06:00

Kamchatka Brown Bear
Kandukuru Nagarjun/Creative Commons

In 2011, Igor Tsyganenkov and his 19-year-old stepdaughter Olga Moskalyova stopped at a wild spot along the Paratunka River to retrieve a fishing rod they’d left behind. They’d been camping near the village of Termalniy on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. The country there is famously beautiful—streams winding through birch forest, the steam of geysers snaking from rugged hillsides, the whole view ringed with snow-patched volcanoes. Much of the country is given over to national parks. Fishermen there had run into trouble in the past: the brown bears of the area liked to snatch the fish they caught. Most years there were plenty of fish for both species, but animals tend to choose the easiest method. It’s easier to take the catch humans have left hanging than to wade into the water and catch the elusive fish. Usually this habit caused nothing more than scares and a lost catch. The danger came from the close association bears were forming between people and easy food. Already, a few bears and a few people had been killed.

Igor was about to become another such victim. Among the reeds of the riverside, a brown bear appeared and attacked him. He seems to have died quickly; his skull was shattered and his neck broken. Perhaps the bear killed him with a single swat of its paw. Olga’s death lasted much longer. She saw what happened to Igor and ran away. Running is the wrong thing to do when a carnivore is in a predatory mood: it seems like an invitation to chase. The bear pursued. Once it had her down and was biting chunks out of her legs, Olga did something unusual. She phoned her mother.

“Mom, a bear’s eating me!” she said. “It hurts so much! Help me, Mom!”

Her mother, Tatiana, thought it was some macabre joke, but then the tone of Olga’s voice struck her with fear. She heard growls—and crunching. Olga begged the bear to stop. The line went dead.

Tatiana frantically phoned Igor. She got no answer, of course, because he was lying dead some 200 feet from Olga. But Olga was still alive. She phoned again. The bear had come back, she said—with its three cubs. “They’re eating me,” she told her mother. The line went dead again.

By this time Tatiana had phoned relatives and police. It was obvious that no one could arrive in time to help, but what else could she do?

Nearly an hour after the first call, Olga phoned again. She was free to do so because the bears had gone to eat Igor’s body. She told her mother the pain was gone. “Forgive me for everything,” she said. “I love you very much.” And the line went dead.

Igor’s brother and the police reached the remote site thirty minutes later. They found the bears feeding on Igor’s body. Olga lay dead and partially eaten. Authorities brought in a team of hunters, who tracked down and killed all four bears. It would be unwise to leave even the cubs alive, they said, in case they’d already learned the lesson of how to eat humans.

Ambrose Bierce's Mythos

2025-01-03T23:03:00.002-06:00

Long before H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce wrote his own series of linked horror stories. This video discusses "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1886), "Visions of the Night" (1887), "The Death of Halpin Frayser" 1891, and "The Moonlit Road" (1907).

Edgar Allan Poe's Murders

2024-11-03T08:57:00.000-06:00

Why did Poe write so many stories about murder? The terrifying true crime behind it all.

Halloween Special: Stupefying Stories for Free! Limited Time

2024-10-27T06:57:00.002-05:00

Stupefying Stories #26, including my monstrous horror story "Stone," will be free to anyone with a Kindle from Sunday, October 27, through Thursday, October 31. And if you don't have a Kindle, you can still get this issue free by downloading the free desktop app.

Here's the hype, and the table of contents, from the publisher:

IT'S OUR ANNUAL HORROR SPECIAL, AND IT'S A DOUBLE-ISSUE!
Edited by award-winning author and cyberpunk legend Bruce Bethke, STUPEFYING STORIES is the place to read tomorrow's famous writers today! Stupefying Stories 26 is our annual double-length horror special, and it features 22 all-new stories to thrill and chill you, written by—

Jamie Lackey - “Blood Apples”
Gordon Grice - “Stone”
Allan Dyen-Shapiro - “Midnight Meal at a Kobe Noodle Joint”
Karin Terebessy - “Bandages”
Jorge Salgado-Reyes - “Neon Blood”
Julie Frost - “Beverly Hellbunnies”
Kevin Berg - “Faceless”
Anya Ow - “Hungry Ghosts”
Jesse Dyer - “Losing Things”
Richard Zwicker - “Possession is Ten/Tenths of the Law”
Made in DNA - “Something CUTE This Way Comes”
Cass Sims Knight - “Slugging”
Nick Nafpliotis - “The Cerberus Protocol”
Beth Cato - “Water in the Bones”
Don Money - “Department of Murderous Vixens”
Chana Kohl - “Murder in the Shuk”
Patricia Miller - “An Absence of Shadow”
Robert Hobson - “Watershed”
Ray Daley - “The Haunted Spaceship”
Roxana Arama - “All Those Monsters”
Evan Dicken - “Sunk Ghosts”
John Lance - “The Mob”

Whether your tastes run to science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, or something so new it doesn't yet have a name, you're sure to find it in STUPEFYING STORIES!

Hear My Horrid Yammers

2024-10-03T14:41:00.003-05:00

Over on Youtube, I've been revealing all sorts of odd facts about classic horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James, and even William Shakespeare. I call the series Horrid Yammers. Drop in when you have a few minutes and take a listen.

Tales from the Dark Side Takes Bronze

2024-08-21T14:59:00.001-05:00

At the recent International Regional Media Association awards, my essay on nocturnal wildlife won the bronze for writing on Nature and the Environment. The piece first appeared in the September-October 2023 issue of Oklahoma Today Magazine. I'm grateful to editor Nathan Gunter and his crew for letting me do this kind of writing!

FREE STORIES!

2024-07-01T09:57:00.004-05:00

Horror stories (and a couple of essays on the genre) you can read for free!

Samantha's always so distracted. What's she thinking about--and what's she listening to? Her sister will regret finding out about the "Laughter from the Next Room." Read this quietly creepy tale free in the spring issue of The Arkansas International.

Killing is easy. . . but what do you do afterward? Venture into the world of crime with Where’d You Get That Ringtone?, free on Shotgun Honey. Not for the squeamish.

The true story of the gruesome experiments that inspired Frankenstein. Free in Gamut #1.

A lyrical tale of zombies. Read Hungry for Love by Gordon Grice free on MetaStellar.

"Mrs. Packer." A creepy, cringy tale of terror from Gordon Grice--FREE in Zone 3.

"Happy to Be Hollow." Essay about an old science fiction trope by Gordon Grice on Stupefying Stories. FREE!

"If Gold Runs Red" by Gordon Grice is the cover story in the November 2022 issue of Metaphorosis.

Read or listen free

In the summer of 1816, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron changed the world with a new breed of monsters. Also, "Doctor Polidori Shared a Case History." A monstrous transformation by Gordon Grice in the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter. (Free!)

New Horror Story: Laughter from the Next Room

2024-05-20T22:45:00.005-05:00

Samantha's always so distracted. What's she thinking about--and what's she listening to? Her sister will regret finding out about the "Laughter from the Next Room." A quietly creepy tale by Gordon Grice in the spring issue of The Arkansas International. (Free!)

Shocked! A True Tale of Theology and Scalpels (New story--free!)

2024-04-02T15:30:00.005-05:00

My true story of the gruesome experiments that inspired Frankenstein is free to read in Gamut #1!