Short Fiction

Dreams of the Ghost House in Black Sheep Magazine

My latest short story is in the new issue of Black Sheep, on sale now! Read an excerpt below and pick up your copy of the magazine (digital or physical) here.


There were only two homes on Lost Loon Lake, the Arthur’s sleek modern summer house and a gimcrack mansion directly across the water, half shrouded in pine and time. Its cracked and peeling Georgian columns and rococo balustrades spoke to a bygone era of old money, when for the ultra-wealthy bigger was always better. That place had two names and the first was Autumnhall, enormous and empty.

The older people of the nearby town (if twenty miles can be said to be near) rarely spoke of it, and even then, only to comment on something else. Brodie had heard his mother or his aunt or the women at the diner saying things like, “Don’t run around with Charlie Mayse, he takes girls past Autumnhall and dumps them come spring.” Or “Lord, I tell you she can’t keep a house! Her place puts Autumhall to shame.”

They used it like a ward, as if to diminish it in their minds. The younger people in town were nowhere near as reserved and it seemed like there was always some new wrinkle being added to the legend of The Ghost House on October playgrounds or whispered on late and wild drunken teenage nights.

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Poetry, Previously Published

The Ghost of Sigma Chi

My latest poem is up in issue 82 of The Pedestal Magazine. It’s a supernatural horror poem, with its roots in my college years. I was never a member of a fraternity, but I was friends with many who were and spent quite a bit of time in Greek houses. I even worked in a sorority house kitchen my sophomore year.

Every university has its share of urban legends and ghost stories, they’re frightening, but also comforting in their familiarity. By the time you graduate you’ve heard them all in every variation. I tried to capture the truth and horror of those kinds of stories with this poem.

The Ghost of Sigma Chi 
by Mack W. Mani
[The Pedestal Magazine – Issue 82]

 

Thanks for taking a look and be sure to check out the rest of the issue while you’re there!

 

Photo by  Oleksandr Pidvalnyi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Poetry

What Walks Here, Walks Alone (Audio)

This is a quick reading I did of a previously unpublished poem, set to silent film footage.

 

Written, performed, and produced by Mack W. Mani

Video: Alice in Wonderland (1903) courtesy of Archive.org

The title is taken from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The phrase “black chests and high back chairs” was lifted from the poem The Prophet’s Paradise by Robert W. Chambers

Special Thanks:

Jordan Seider & Elizabeth Laws

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