Each Halloween, DreamForge presents "Dark Visions," Tales for Halloween. We add one new strange tale, this year featuring Angelique Fawn's "Body Count" and provide links to haunting tales from previous DreamForge issues. We've got vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, and visits to twilight realities. Each tale links to its original publication in DreamForge online and all are free online. Enjoy!

After a notorious womanizer makes the mistake of grabbing the wrong witch at a bar, he's transformed into a cat. Trapped in her home, he hunts small prey and plots his escape while reflecting on his past misdeeds. Will he find a way to reverse the curse and reclaim his human life? Does he want to?

In a chilling Halloween tale, Devon Hand finds himself imprisoned and hanging from a gibbet, branded as a witch, and left to die under the watchful gaze of an impatient raven. As he battles thirst, pain, and the weight of a grim destiny, a twist of fate gives him a new perspective—one that takes him on a spectral journey. Bound by love, and a promise to protect, Devon embarks on a mission beyond the grave.

Combine the inspiration of beautiful blown glass art of Dale Chihuly, with the love of love of horror, and a writing contest and you come up with a scary, strange adventure tale set in the desert. Enjoy!

What do you desire? Money? Fame? Power? Pleasure that mortal hands cannot provide? Or will a quiet presence, a good book, and a lovely chat do just as well?

Other than the materials from which it was made, every detail mimicked a human heart. The shape, the size, even wires running like vessels along the surface. It served no true function for Oscar, merely providing the sound of a heartbeat. A sound muffled to all but the most attuned ears, such as my own.

Is Purgatory a place of purification or one of temporary punishment where souls in need of improvement are made ready for Heaven? Or is it one last chance for the worst of us to show some remorse? Either way, it takes more than a few sweet scents to approach the gates of Heaven.

Even at times when history is the most broken, and the predators among us seek new advantage, there is reason and self-sacrifice enough to give hope.

Yet another DreamForge enthusiast with a penchant for dark tales, Jamie brings us a story in classic “Twilight Zone” style with an opportunity for redemption in a backward ticking clock.

Once a master craftsman of nightmares, Nordri labors under a curse of empathy. The curse has tangled around his soul and linked him to those suffering from the dreamforger's art.

If there are spirit guides for the living, let them be as John Jos Miller envisions them, given form by the written word and empowered by a belief that grows out of love.

Z-Spot is a fun tale of love and decay after the Zombie Apocalypse that shows us that when the world ends, we just need to get on with it!

Jean Martin takes us through the streets of our native Pittsburgh in this tale that pits a Russian immigrant against a vampire. While the beast of darkness and blood preys on the weak, our protagonist - a former sharpshooter at Leningrad - is anything but weak.

When a powerful mage falls ill, and his top aides are busy, a junior apprentice and the scullery boy team up to deal with a challenging commission.

Some people swore the house was haunted, that the Madonna had appeared there on the day the angels drew forth their fiery swords and the devils hit back, hard

A bit of flash fun about the emergence of fossilized spirits.

Vampire Hunters enter a cursed village in search of a creature of the night. But the curse is of mortal origins and an unexpected ally awaits.

He had thought about it many ways since the disaster began. Perhaps the last of the patricians had felt this way at the sacking of Rome. He was watching the fall of a civilization, a great change from which something dark and brooding would emerge. And the light would not be seen again for a thousand years. Or perhaps all of his understanding was no more use than the shocked glance of a Cretaceous beast, some dinosaur watching the fall of the asteroid that would doom its kind

Flash fiction about a storm, a wind-blown soul, and a hardscrabble man with a burlap sack.