Halloween Treats 2026: Communication!

Every year since I’ve started this blog, I’ve published a few classic open access stories of horror for the Halloween season! In recent years, I’ve started to make a theme for each year. This year, the theme is “communication”: the transmission of information from one point to another, often but not necessarily both ways! This may not seem like a particularly spooky topic for a horror story, but read through the following collection of stories and you can decide for yourself… Sorry, Right Number (1953), by Richard Matheson. Later retitled “Long Distance Call,” this story about an old woman who receives increasingly unsettling phone calls is a classic with a chilling ending! The link takes you to the Internet Archive issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction. Illustration from the original magazine publication of “Sorry, Right Number.” The Night Wire (1926), by H.F. Arnold. This Weird Tales short story is a gem that I only learned about recently via social media! News telegraph operators pick up…