A young man is meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Is his nervousness from the parents’ oddness or his own secrets?

Tyler Markham is a writer and horror enthusiast. Whenever he is not writing, or shivering under his covers with a scary story, he likes to spend time with his wife Chloe and their cranky ten-year-old dog Maggie.​

You can read "Indistinguishable" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

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Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

This week, we honor Martin Luther King Jr. Today’s story uses three voices—a house, narrator and historian—and music to tell the stories of generations of people from a town in the Deep South of the US. Yes, it is a tale of bigotry and racism at the micro and macro scales. But also hope and determination to make a better world and a better life. It’s a beautiful example of how ghost stories can change our own stories, the course of history, and our dreams.

Anne Watson has been writing, in one form or another, all her life, most recently focusing on fiction. She’s written news articles, book and art reviews, blogs, documentary films, podcasts, and for radio. She has two blogs, echolaliaredacted.com, which meanders through life's joys and sorrows; and countriesandcobblestones.com about traveling for a year with her daughter. Her writing can also be found on Canada's National Observer. Her first book,Thin Lines of Broken Time, represented by Anne Depue, is looking for a publisher. She’s currently working on a second book.


The music in this podcast is performed by Earle Peach, a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter from Vancouver who directs choirs and plays in musical groups, volunteers at and hosts music events, pursues social activism, and is still actively involved in the folk music community.

The voice of the historian is Tim Gould (my wonderful and helpful husband. He also wrote and performed the Kaidankai's opening music.)

You can read "Built on a Dream" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
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Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

Addicts can be ghosts, too. The aftermath of their deaths can be just as tragic as their lives.

Robert Pettus is an English as a Second Language teacher at the University of Cincinnati. Previously, he taught in rural Thailand and Moscow, Russia. His short stories have been published in numerous webzines, magazines, podcasts, and literary journals, including previously on Kaidankai. His novel, titled Abry, was published last spring by Offbeat Reads and is scheduled for republication this March with Flick-It books. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, Mary, his daughter, Rowan, and his pet rabbit, Achilles.

You can read "Walls. Singing Bushes" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
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Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

Today’s character lives in the arctic, long nights and depression are the least of her problems. She has to find a way to keep monsters at bay.

Katy England has been writing for longer than she likes to admit. A journalist and communications expert by day, modder and fiction writer by night. She spends much of her time in the great expanse of the Maine woods with her husband, triplets, and select fish. Her greatest accomplishments, to date, is that her children like her stories and that the crows come to her yard when she calls them.

You can read "The Long Night" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

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Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

This week's story: A midnight raid of the fridge leads to an encounter that just might give us a clue about where ghosts come from.

​John Shea is a technical writer with a B.S. in Communications from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.F.A. in Motion Picture and Television Production from the University of Southern California. He is extensively travelled and has been known to babble in French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Japanese. He dabbles in wordplay, palindromes, and is a part-time cruciverbalist and punster. He lives in the Dallas Fort Worth with his wife (a schoolteacher), two dogs of different age and disposition (exuberant and shyly playful), and a lawn that needs constant mowing, during which he contemplates plot lines and story ideas.

Martini glass photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.com.

You can read "Cookie Dough Bounce" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
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Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

An author has a litany of problems that most authors experience, and an additional one that few of us have to worry about.

John Shea is a technical writer with a B.S. in Communications from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.F.A. in Motion Picture and Television Production from the University of Southern California. He is extensively travelled and has been known to babble in French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Japanese. He dabbles in wordplay, palindromes, and is a part-time cruciverbalist and punster. He lives in the Dallas Fort Worth with his wife (a schoolteacher), two dogs of different age and disposition (exuberant and shyly playful), and a lawn that needs constant mowing, during which he contemplates plot lines and story ideas.

You can read "The Party Downstairs" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
Instagram
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Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

November 24 to December 24:
Please support the Kaidankai podcast. Donate any amount via PayPal through the Kaidankai website or Ko-Fi (preferred). For select donations, receive a digital ghost story anthology, a Kaidankai t-shirt, or special readings available only to members.

The Kaidankai website donation link: https://www.kaidankaistories.com/shopdonate.html
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststories#

This week's story: A 9-year old boy has figured out how Santa travels around the world in one night. He plans to use his knowledge to get more gifts than he earned for being a good boy. Will his plan work?

L.N. Hunter’s comic fantasy novel, ‘The Feather and the Lamp,’ sits alongside works in anthologies such as ‘The Monsters Next Door’ and ‘Best of British Science Fiction 2022’ as well as Short Édition’s ‘Short Circuit’ and the ‘Horrifying Tales of Wonder’ podcast. There have also been papers in the IEEE ‘Transactions on Neural Networks,’ which are probably somewhat less relevant and definitely less fun. When not writing, L.N. unwinds in a disorganised home in rural Cambridgeshire, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
Links: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/L.N.Hunter.writer
Amazon: https://amazon.com/author/l.n.hunter
Linktree (publications list): https://linktr.ee/l.n.hunter


You can read "Observer Effect" at Free Kids Books, an educational rsource for elementary and middle school students.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

Follow us on:
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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
Instagram
Facebook
Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

November 24 to December 24:
Please support the Kaidankai podcast. Donate any amount via PayPal through the Kaidankai website or Ko-Fi (preferred). For select donations, receive a digital ghost story anthology, a Kaidankai t-shirt, or special readings available only to members.

The Kaidankai website donation link: https://www.kaidankaistories.com/shopdonate.html
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststories#

This week's story: A woman, tired from Christmas shopping, takes a shortcut home. What she witnesses will affect her forever.

Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from near Cambridge, UK.who also taught in India and Tanzania. She started writing a year ago after spending time in hospital following an accident. Her work has been published in a number of magazines from 12 different countries, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Germany, Croatia, and Romania among others.


You can read "Skating on Thin Ice" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

Follow us on:
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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
Instagram
Facebook
Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

November 24 to December 24:
Please support the Kaidankai podcast. Donate any amount via PayPal through the Kaidankai website or Ko-Fi (preferred). For select donations, receive a digital ghost story anthology, a Kaidankai t-shirt, or special readings available only to members.

The Kaidankai website donation link: https://www.kaidankaistories.com/shopdonate.html
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststories#

This week's story: A woman—strong, independent, driven—suffers an indignity that many women fear, and have experienced. As a ghost, will she be able to have her revenge? And will it satisfy her?

You Lin is a writer whose pieces explore darker themes consistent with the fragments of her identity. Her work has been published by Archer Magazine, The Bitchin' Kitsch, A Coup of Owls, and The Minison Project's Pop-Up Pride Issue, among others. Locally, you can find her work at Malaysian Indie Fiction, Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art, and NutMag Volume 7: Inheritance. When she's not writing self-deprecating poetry and fiction, you can find her questioning the purpose of her existence, overworking as usual, and losing faith in humanity.


You can read "They All Drown" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
Instagram
Facebook
Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].

November 24 to December 24:
Please support the Kaidankai podcast. Donate any amount via PayPal through the Kaidankai website or Ko-Fi (preferred). For select donations, receive a digital ghost story anthology, a Kaidankai t-shirt, or special readings available only to members.

The Kaidankai website donation link: https://www.kaidankaistories.com/shopdonate.html
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststories#

In today's story, a young boy has an imaginary friend who is artistic in unusual ways. The boy pays the price for his friend's 'talent.'

Tim Law lives with his family in Southern Australia in a little town called Murray Bridge. He is pretty sure that the Library where he works is haunted, although it is quite new so he is still trying to figure out why. Tim is starting to discover the joy of telling horror and ghost stories, exploring the darkness that he did not know was there.


You can read "My Friend Shane" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.

Website: kaidankaistories.com

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The Kaidankai Podcast features original short fiction exploring horror, fantasy, science fiction, and the strange.

New episodes every Wednesday.

Subscribe on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the stories at kaidankaistories.com

Follow the show:
Instagram
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Bluesky

Have a story you'd like us to read? Send submissions to [email protected].