Nightmare Magazine, Issue 170 (November 2026)

We have an original novelette from Lyndsie Manusos (“Horse Girls”) and a short from Shiwei Zhou (“The Warehouse of Exiled Things”). Our Horror Lab originals include a poem (“What Wears The Flesh”) from Rukman Ragas and a flash (“Pricks”) from Laura Garrison. Our nonfiction will include a Plumbing the Depths column from Zachary Gillan, and horror film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas joins us with an H Word essay.

Cover art by Joe Therasakdhi / Adobe Stock

Nightmare Magazine, Issue 170 (November 2026)

Editorial

Editorial: November 2026

by Wendy N. Wagner

I believe dark fantasy provides a wonderful arena for magic, myth, and the darker side of the human experience to meld into each other. Every now and then we get a story at Nightmare that feels particularly magical or mythical, and those are the stories I like to highlight in our November issue.

Publishes Online on 11/4

Fiction

Horse Girls

by Lyndsie Manusos

Vesper was not a horse girl. It was not for lack of trying. She wished she loved horses as much as her ex-best friend, Holly. Holly, with her graceful legs, and a perfectly rounded head that looked good in any helmet. Bike rides be damned, Holly looked like her head was made to be protected, whereas Vesper felt like her skull was too elongated, too narrow, for any helmet or hat to fit.

Publishes Online on 11/4

Author Spotlight

Author Spotlight: Lyndsie Manusos

by Devin Marcus

Adolescence, and the awakening of feelings in that stage, is ripe for exploration. These awakenings have such powerful fingerprints on our lives. I also wanted to write a bitter character who experiences a moment in the past and does not let that moment go. Grudges make for the most delicious material in horror.

Publishes Online on 11/4

Fiction

Pricks

by Laura Garrison

The girl is distraught, but the OB-GYN assures her some body hair loss is a common stress response, especially after trauma. Peering at the girl over half-moon glasses, the doctor cautions her that it might grow in a little thicker, but the girl hears thicket, like the untrespassable patches in the woods. She nods anyway—sure, fine; whatever.

Publishes Online on 11/11

Nonfiction

The H Word: Everything Old Is New Again

by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

When my child was very small, I did my best to use my expertise as a horror film critic to inoculate them from all the scary things out there that I possibly could. Mine is a skillset with what we might gently describe as one with limited utility, but I hoped—however naively—that my knowledge of horror movies might in some way help them,

Publishes Online on 11/11

Fiction

The Warehouse of Exiled Things

by Shiwei Zhou

Surely, that upbeat girl working the cemetery is pulling your leg when she gives you the address and the yellow plastic tag. Your grandparents—both behind the same plaque in the columbarium now—left something behind for you, she said. A bus, a train, a pedicab, and two hours later, here it is, as described: a sprawling warehouse, big as an airplane hangar.

Publishes Online on 11/18

Author Spotlight

Spotlight Interview: Shiwei Zhou

by Clay Vermulm

While there are many excellent stories that have been written out of fears of the future, the fear that drives this story is my own fear: that even the deepest memory of home and belonging can prove false, an illusion. To go back to a place expecting a true homecoming, only to realize the place has changed and I have changed and we no longer belong to each other in the same way.

Publishes Online on 11/18

Poetry

what wears the flesh

by Rukman Ragas

Expose your stomach, let me burrow into
what made you make me. Tell me; how does
a name, a prayer, catch like a burr in your
throat; what makes you sidle closer,

Publishes Online on 11/25

Nonfiction

Plumbing the Depths: Against the New Weird

by Zachary Gillan

What do we talk about when we talk about the New Weird? The conversation typically starts with a familiar story: Around the turn of the century, an intrepid band of writers, primarily based in England, remade weird fiction into something weirder, more daring, more suited to the modern day: a new weird fiction.

Publishes Online on 11/25