July 2025 (Issue 154)

We have original short fiction from Kristi DeMeester (“Asking For It”) and Anne Mai Yee Jansen (“Hungry Ghosting”). Our Horror Lab originals include a flash piece (“The Hearth”) from Benjamin Percy and a poem (“The Neighbor’s Cat”) from Kevin Varghese. For nonfiction, we’ll be featuring an interview with film director Kevin Greutert. We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” plus author spotlights with our authors.

Cover art by Jakub Krechowicz / Shutterstock

July 2025 (Issue 154)

Editorial

Editorial, July 2025

by Wendy N. Wagner

Luckily for me, the ghosts in my house aren’t nearly as toxic as the ones in this month’s issue. Sure, we sometimes wake in the night to feel phantom dogs jumping on the bed to join our pup (who seems unfussed by these strangers).

Fiction

Asking for It

by Kristi DeMeester

The first and last time Calvin asks me about ghosts is on our fourth date. He wears green because I told him it was my favorite color. His hair is freshly cut, and his jaw still bleeding from a hurried shave. I smile at these small things he’s placing before me as an offering.

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Kristi DeMeester

by Alex Puncekar

The title came to me first, and I built the story around that concept of asking for it. How I might subvert it. Because that phrase, to me, has always been how someone’s wants are placed on another person. The justification they hunt for to allay any guilt or anxiety or sense of culpability.

Fiction

The Hearth

by Benjamin Percy

The hearth is a trope of holiday songs and stories. It’s a warm place in a cold time, and families gather around it—for love, laughter, storytelling, a cup of cheer. This short story is an attempt at redefinition. I’m taking the familiar and approaching it from an unfamiliar, upsetting angle.

Nonfiction

The H Word: The Profane Illumination of the Weird

by Zachary Gillan

Weird fiction, it seems, is having a moment in the zeitgeist; horror, we’re told, is also having a moment in the zeitgeist. It isn’t surprising, given the state of the world, that these two modes are increasingly attractive to readers.

Fiction

Hungry Ghosting

by Anne Mai Yee Jansen

Used to be, you’d buy paper offerings and burn them to provide for your ancestors. Spirit money ensured they were taken care of in the underworld and wouldn’t have to roam the pitted streets of the afterlife suffering from starvation or homelessness. In this way, you could help your late loved ones avoid the terrible fate of becoming hungry ghosts.

Nonfiction

Author Spotlight: Anne Mai Yee Jansen

by Delia Cullity

I’ve never experienced online dating myself, but I’ve experienced a lot of the kinds of racism this character is subjected to. We live during a time when many people like to think of themselves as not being racist, but then they’ll say these things that reveal how clueless they are.

Poetry

The Neighbor’s Cat

by Kevin Varghese

CW: intent to harm an animal. Writing this piece felt like a hard look in the mirror. I wanted to be honest and vulnerable about feeling helpless, about the true cost of being a bystander. So, I anchored those ideas to the time in all of our lives when we have almost no agency or […]

Nonfiction

Interview: Kevin Greutert

by Matthew Rozsa

The Saw series debuted in 2004—and Kevin Greutert, perennial Hollywood horror editor, was there from the beginning. Greutert edited the first five Saw entries, helmed the next two (Saw VI and Saw VII), edited the two succeeding installments and finally directed what seems to be the swan song in the fictional universe of this Saw series, Saw X.