Books reading recommendations Five Scary Short Stories That Read Like Urban Legends When dark rumors, local legends, and disturbing memes suddenly become all too real… By Lorna Wallace | Published on December 18, 2025 Photo by William Nettmann [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by William Nettmann [via Unsplash] The first time I ever heard an urban legend, I was about 5 or 6 years old. My older brother and I each had a few friends staying over and while we sat in the dark, one of his friends told us a story called “Humans Can Lick Too.” It’s about a woman who lets her dog lick her hand for comfort when she hears a creepy dripping noise in the night. If you’ve not heard it before, I’m sure you can guess how it ends based on the title. It was one of my earliest experiences of horror and while I was suitably terrified, I was also captivated. In that spirit, here are five spooky short stories that manage to perfectly capture the creepily compelling feel of an urban legend… “each thing i show you is a piece of my death” (2009) by Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer Although urban legends are often most effective when they’re whispered between friends or shared aloud with a gathering (maybe at a sleepover), “each thing i show you is a piece of my death” is perfectly suited to being read because it unfolds through articles, emails, chat logs, and interviews. The mixed media story kicks off with an article explaining an urban legend known as “Background Man.” Essentially, a naked man keeps popping up in the background of obscure movies. Originally “Background Man” was thought to be a hoax, but the unclothed figure has been appearing more prominently in an ever-increasing number of films, TV shows, and music videos, leading to the legend being taken more seriously. Experimental filmmakers Soraya Mousch and Max Holborn find themselves caught up in the mystery surrounding “Background Man.” But although they’re treated as suspects by the police, they’re just as haunted by the unsettling phenomenon as everyone else. This story was first published in Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness (2009), but can also be found online at the link above, in The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (2014), and in Dark Is Better (2023). “Thirteen” (2013) by Stephen Graham Jones The teenage protagonist of “Thirteen” lives in a small town that’s home to an urban legend surrounding the Big Chief Theater. According to local lore, at that cinema there’s a trick to thinning the veil between the world of the movie and the real world, allowing fiction to bleed into reality. All you have to do is close your eyes during the scariest part of the film—this trick is said to be exclusive to horror movies—and then hold your breath for two minutes. It’s a simple idea pulled from childhood—I’m sure most of us were told at some point that we had to hold our breath passing a graveyard or going under a bridge for whatever superstitious reason—but in Stephen Graham Jones’ hands it becomes something far more creative and sinister. An audio version of this story read by Jones himself is available online at the link above, but if you’d prefer to read it with your own eyes then you can find it in Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre (2013) and After the People Lights Have Gone Off (2014). “Only Unity Saves the Damned” (2014) by Nadia Bulkin Bay, Roz, and Lark are three outcasts who have big plans to get out of their small—and, in their eyes, dead-end—hometown. They decide to shoot a video at Goose Lake which supposedly catches Raggedy Annie—an alleged witch who was hanged by the townspeople hundreds of years earlier—on film. Tales of Raggedy Annie haunting the town and the lake have been circulating for years and many people are convinced that this footage finally proves that the stories are real. But while the three friends should be enjoying their viral moment, their lives take an unfortunate turn for the genuinely creepy. Maybe it’s not Raggedy Annie they should be looking out for, though… This story was first published in Letters to Lovecraft: Eighteen Whispers to the Darkness (2014), but it can also be found in Nadia Bulkin’s collection She Said Destroy (2017) and online at the link above. “You Know How the Story Goes” (2018) by Thomas Olde Heuvelt There are many urban legends about picking up hitchhikers in the dead of night (essentially, don’t do it!), but Thomas Olde Heuvelt flips the script in “You Know How the Story Goes” by having the hitchhiker be the protagonist. Our main character is drinking at a bar and decides not to get a lift home with his friend—the designated driver—in the hopes of spending the night with a pretty girl. He fails. Faced with a long and cold walk home, he decides to try his hand at hitchhiking. The first lift he gets goes off without a hitch, but the strange woman who picks him up for the next leg of the journey takes him on the most terrifying ride of his life. The English version of this scary supernatural story can be read right here at Reactor (link above!). “The DEATH/GRIP Challenge” (2020) by Johnny Compton As a lover of movies that are so-bad-they’re-good, I deeply wish that I could watch DEATH/GRIP—the fictional film that kicks off the events of this story. Teenager Alicia and her dad Benito bond over their shared enjoyment of not only the movie, but also of the meme challenge that it spawns. All people need to do is taken a picture of one of their hands restraining the other while reaching for something funny and add some text to accompany it, always ending with a quote from the movie: “IT’S NOT ME, IT’S THE DEATH/GRIP!” When Benito gets a job at his brother’s office—which is not a working environment that he’s used to, being more of a hard hat kind of guy—he starts sharing increasing numbers of DEATH/GRIP Challenge memes to get through the day. It doesn’t take long for Alicia to start getting seriously worried about his growing obsession with the memes. There’s a good amount of humor in this short story thanks to the memes themselves, but that doesn’t take away from the horror, which really ramps up towards the end.As well as at the link above, you can also find this story in Johnny Compton’s collection Midnight Somewhere (2025). Have you got any recommendations of short stories that feel like urban legends? Whether it’s a new spin on a classic tale or an original story that has that happened-to-a-friend-of-a-friend feel to it, I’d love to hear your suggestions below![end-mark] The post Five Scary Short Stories That Read Like Urban Legends appeared first on Reactor.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has openly celebrated his government’s reshaping of speech laws, arguing that restrictions on expression are a necessary part of combating hate. Speaking with Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson, Minns said he wants “a situation where hate speech is not allowed and illegal in NSW and those who practice it are prosecuted,” adding that the state “does not have the same free speech laws that they have in the United States.” The Premier repeatedly linked speech regulation to public safety, connecting online discussion and public protest to the Bondi Beach terror attack. According to Minns, “hate speech, antisemitism” begins with chants at marches, “then it migrates online to a tweet or some kind of post,” leading to property damage and arson, and finally, “then you see this horrible, horrible crime.” He insisted that authorities “need to attack it at every single level,” a statement that positions censorship as part of the government’s crime prevention strategy. Minns described the Crimes Amendment (Inciting Racial Hatred) Bill 2025 as “absolutely vital” and called for “prosecutions of people” under it. That sequence of events has become a flashpoint, with civil rights lawyers warning that a law born from misinformation risks turning into a tool for political and social control rather than public protection. During the interview, Minns bristled at those who have questioned the law’s legitimacy or its impact on open debate. Minns went further, leaving the door open for expanding the legislation, stating, “I’m going to be judged on outcomes here, and if the law’s not fit for purpose, we’ll look at it again.” Minns also took personal credit for reshaping what he called “free speech laws” in the state. By asking the public to “give time” for the new rules to take effect, Minns is effectively telling citizens to get used to narrower speech boundaries. It’s not a pause; it’s a conditioning period. The longer these powers stay in place, the easier it becomes for “hate” to mean whatever the government needs it to mean at a given moment. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Chris Minns Defends NSW “Hate Speech” Laws Linking Censorship to Terror Prevention appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Trump: This Was the Year That Was MAGA

The one-minute timelapse shows the rover traverse the Martian terrain, and cross its own tracks from earlier in the year.

In his latest hate-Trump rambling December 17 Substack column, former New York Times columnist Krugman sneered, “An A+++++ Economy, My A++,” mocking the president’s assessment of the current state of the economy. It’s worth a reminder that Krugman just recently had the audacity to call Bidenomics the “triumph that nobody appreciated” in November. That’s basically the equivalent of saying the Biden economy was “A+++++.” Cue the canned laughter.  He’s the same person that gaslit Americans who were struggling under President Joe Biden’s overbloated multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spend spree that they were only complaining because they “hate” Biden. We’d advise him to sit this one out. Krugman wouldn’t know an “A+++++ economy” if it bit his “A++.” Oblivious to the obvious -- that Trump’s second language is hyperbole -- Krugman continued his pro-Biden babbling that “First, the economy that Trump inherited when he took office was in much better shape than today’s economy, with lower unemployment combined with faster job growth, and inflation trending down.” Did you catch that? Krugman somehow wants to be taken seriously on his critique of Trump while still openly defending the inflationary disaster Bidenomics inflicted on the U.S. economy in the first place! Jeez-a-loo! Not even a low-budget comedian could come up with as bad a joke as this one.  And yet, prior to Trump’s prime-time address, he whined that “[t]he details of his speech haven’t been announced, but it’s a good guess that he intends to gaslight Americans yet again, claiming that things are going well. They aren’t.” Krugman’s entire argument was based on distorting the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report, which showed the U.S. economy adding 64,000 new jobs, eclipsing the 45,000 estimate by Dow Jones economists, and the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.6 percent. In Krugman’s predictably warped, uncontextualized world, the “data show a weak labor market.” But he took it further: “The state of the economy looks even worse if we take a wider view of the labor market.” Here’s the problem, as pointed out by election and economic forecast firm Quantus Insights on X December 16, “The ‘weak jobs’ narrative doesn’t hold up when you look at the whole. From Sept–Nov, payrolls fell 41K, but private-sector jobs rose +121K while government employment dropped –162K.” In addition, noted Quantus, “Since April, private employment is up +333K, native-born employment +998K (Household Survey), and the native-born E/P ratio has edged higher. Add Atlanta Fed GDPNow at +3.5% Q3 growth and this looks like normalization after public-sector excess, not economic collapse or even a recession.”  Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni also repudiated the Krugman-esque line of reasoning, arguing in a December 16 column that “alleged weakness [in the job market] is almost entirely confined to government bureaucrats and foreign workers, while private industry is employing more Americans.” This, argued Antoni, is part of Trump’s gambit to reprivatize the economy away from the public sector. In fact, wrote Antoni, this was “the best November ever for employment among native-born Americans, up more than 2.6 million over the last 12 months and setting a record, albeit on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. Conversely, the number of foreign-born workers with jobs declined over this period by 21,000.”  See? Context matters, Krugman. But does anyone really think he cares? Not likely. The disgraced Krugman even bent the Sahm Rule — which stipulates that a recession begins when the three-month moving average of unemployment "rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to the minimum of the three-month averages from the previous 12 months” — into a pretzel in order to buoy his prediction that a recession was nigh. While conceding that a strict application of the Sahm rule isn’t possible due to the lack of availability of October’s numbers vis-a-vis, he then dubiously concocted his own version of the Sahm Rule to prove his point:  But if we do an interpolation of October’s unemployment rate by averaging over September’s rate of 4.4% and November’s rate of 4.6%, we can estimate that October’s unemployment rate was 4.5%. And those 3 months of unemployment numbers bring us within a whisker of the unemployment rise that, according to the Sahm Rule, signals that a recession is on the horizon.  But, as always, Krugman is being very hypocritical. In his latest piece, he’s using the Sahm rule to predict a recession. But when the Sahm Rule was about to be triggered under Biden’s economy in July 2024, Krugman downplayed and said in a July 30, 2024 New York Times column that “As Sahm has explained, her rule wasn’t designed to predict recessions.” He continued: “So are we entering a recession? A number of observers, including Sahm herself, have suggested that this time may be a bit different.” Double standard much? But don’t expect Krugman to exercise any modicum of logical consistency. That concept is about as foreign to him as using common sense.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel helped former Vice President Kamala Harris revive her late night book tour on Wednesday as the pair lamented President Trump’s “swift implementation” of a plan that is allegedly about “deconstructing government's ability to have checks and balances on abuse of power.” Kimmel began to wonder, “Do you think that—it's so crazy. And a lot of times, you can't help but laugh at it, but is this coordinated? Or is this just random chaos? Is this something—” After Harris interrupted to claim “it is not random chaos,” Kimmel continued, “You don't think so? You think it's intentional to distract us from the various things—”     Harris replied by launching into one of her famous word salads and bashing two of the left’s favorite boogeymen, “So, let's go through it. Again, I even map out—first of all, I know that it has felt chaotic, but what we are, in fact, witnessing is something that is a high-velocity event. It is moving quickly, which is the swift implementation of a plan that has been, in a large part, decades in the making. The Federalist Society—all of the work that has happened—Heritage Foundation—all this work that has happened over years that is about deconstructing government's ability to have checks and balances on abuse of power.” However, Harris’s examples of such abuse were underwhelming, “What we are witnessing in terms of the gerrymandering that has been happening for years and years and years. The desire to deregulate industries so that they will not be accountable to the consumers and the people of America. We are seeing a swift implementation of a plan that has been a long time in the making.” Of course, Harris only means Republican gerrymandering and ignores how deregulation actually lowers the ability of government to abuse its power. Nevertheless, she claimed that all of the “crazy” is meant to distract people from the economy, “And so what does he do? He keeps dropping bombs, almost literally, seems like he wants to.” Later in their interview, Kimmel began to ask what could have been an actually decent question, “Do you think about, and I'm sure you get asked about, why didn't the Biden administration release those [Epstein] files? Was that something that they felt would look bad while running against this guy? Or why didn't they come out during your administration? Harris portrayed the Biden White House as a simple bystander, “To give you an answer to that will not satisfy your curiosity. I will tell you. We, perhaps to our damage, but we strongly and rightly believed that there should be an absolute separation between what we wanted as an administration and what the Department of Justice did. We absolutely adhered to that. And it was right to do that. The Justice Department would make its decisions independent of any political or personal vendetta or concern that we may have. And that's the way it worked.” Instead of pushing back on Harris’s selective memory about how the White House and DOJ interacted, Kimmel let the issue die and went to commercial. Here is a transcript for the December 17-taped show: ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live! 12/18/2025 12:23 AM ET JIMMY KIMMEL: Do you think that—it's so crazy. And a lot of times, you can't help but laugh at it, but is this coordinated? Or is this just random chaos? Is this something— KAMALA HARRIS: It is not random chaos. KIMMEL: You don't think so? HARRIS: I do not. KIMMEL: You think it's intentional to distract us from the various things— HARRIS: So, let's go through it. Again, I even map out—first of all, I know that it has felt chaotic, but what we are, in fact, witnessing is something that is a high-velocity event. It is moving quickly, which is the swift implementation of a plan that has been, in a large part, decades in the making. The Federalist Society—all of the work that has happened—Heritage Foundation—all this work that has happened over years that is about deconstructing government's ability to have checks and balances on abuse of power. What we are witnessing in terms of the gerrymandering that has been happening for years and years and years. The desire to deregulate industries so that they will not be accountable to the consumers and the people of America. We are seeing a swift implementation of a plan that has been a long time in the making. And yes, part of the crazy is meant to distract from the fact the guy said, and I believe there were a fair number of people who voted for him who believed him when he said, on day one he was going to bring down prices. And look where we are. As of today, the price of food is up. Unemployment is up. Inflation is up. And so what does he do? He keeps dropping bombs, almost literally, seems like he wants to. KIMMEL: Yeah. Well, yeah. HARRIS: Right? KIMMEL: And has. Yeah. … KIMMEL: Do you think about, and I'm sure you get asked about, why didn't the Biden administration release those files? Was that something that they felt would look bad while running against this guy? Or why didn't they come out during your administration? HARRIS: To give you an answer to that will not satisfy your curiosity. I will tell you. We, perhaps to our damage, but we strongly and rightly believed that there should be an absolute separation between what we wanted as an administration and what the Department of Justice did. We absolutely adhered to that. And it was right to do that. The Justice Department would make its decisions independent of any political or personal vendetta or concern that we may have. And that's the way it worked.

The House GOP passed a bill outright banning transgender surgeries for minors, yet some Republicans still objected.Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's bill Protect Children's Innocence Act passed in a 216-211 late-night vote on Wednesday. This legislation would make it a felony to perform sex changes or provide puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children.'I wish that Republicans were as hell-bent on protecting children as Democrats are when it comes to mutilating them.'Although the bill was passed largely along party lines, both Democrats and Republicans had some defectors. On the Republican side, Reps. Mike Lawler of New York, Mike Kennedy of Utah, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Gabe Evans of Colorado voted against criminalizing transgender surgeries for children. Only three Democrats voted in favor of Greene's bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Donald Davis of North Carolina, and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas. RELATED: 'Send in the next guy': Nicki Minaj savages Newsom over his desire to 'see trans kids' Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Greene's legislation is one of two GOP-led bills on the docket targeting transgender interventions for minors. Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, outlined the key differences between Greene's Protect Children's Innocence Act and Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw's bill the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act."It's necessary because it bans the procedure outright," Schilling said of Greene's bill. "We need this nationwide, because children in California should be protected from these procedures just as much as the kids in Texas or Oklahoma or Alabama or Mississippi or Florida.""If we can't get the full ban done, we should at least make sure the taxpayers aren't paying for it, right?" Schilling said of Crenshaw's bill. "If you want a sex-change procedure, you should have to pay for it yourself. These are so expensive. They're so harmful to the individual. Why are you making us participate in this?"RELATED: Exclusive: GOP Senate candidate Wesley Hunt pushes bill barring education benefits for illegal aliens Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty ImagesBoth bills are useful because they force lawmakers to go on the record, articulating their degree of support for transgender ideology. Greene's bill saw near unanimous support from Republicans as well as near unanimous condemnation from Democrats. Crenshaw's bill puts forward a softer legislative approach, leaving room for moderates on either side to clarify their views on transgender interventions for children. "I wish that Republicans were as hell-bent on protecting children as Democrats are when it comes to mutilating them," Schilling told Blaze News. "There's a difference between the two parties and how fired up they are when it comes to their principles. I think not giving kids sex changes is so commonsense. But these guys will figure out a way to make it controversial and debatable." "If Republicans can't deliver on these things, or at least show that they're trying to deliver, voters are going to give up on us morally, financially, and politically," Schilling added. "This is a must-win for Republicans." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

BUSTED: Turns Out There WAS a Camera in That Brown University Classroom After All (What Are They HIDING?)

NBC News' WH Reporter Says Trump's Speech Was Nothing But Grievances, Lies and 'Blame Biden'

Morning Minute: All That Glitters...