I Found Horror Complete Series

I Found Horror is a series of standalone books. Each tells a story of terror inserting itself into your everyday life.

Ben Farthing has been hailed as "The Master of Mazes" (Drew Stepek, Godless.com), and I Found Horror is the prime example of that title. A young father flees a labyrinthine circus tent with his toddler. A grieving grandson explores an underground television studio infested with puppets. Familiar places turned terrifying.

'I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls'

Chapter 1

The first night I slept in my missing grandpa’s apartment, a puppet came out of the wall and stood over my bed.
I woke to a sound like cardboard ripping.
Grandpa’s old box fan buzzed white noise, drowning out the city traffic outside.
I lay perfectly still in bed, judging whether the ripping noise had been a remnant of a dream.
My cat couldn’t take the blame because she was curled up between my ankles, wheezily snoring.
A streetlamp outside the window slipped its urban glow past the curtains, providing an uncomfortable level of visibility.
I’d closed the door before bed. The hallway window didn’t have curtains, so even more light from the city street glowed under the old door.
Grandpa’s apartment had creeped me out ever since he’d moved into it when I was a teenager. It was a familiar but weird building: renovated from an old kid’s TV studio into apartments. But they gave the apartment to Grandpa as a thank-you for decades of puppeteering service. How could he not move into a free apartment in New York City?
Still, it was strange to think that in the same space where I lay frightened right now, I’d once watched puppets teach me the alphabet.
I wished I was watching them right now, four years old, early morning TV glowing in my parents’ basement.
Anything other than wondering what had woken me up in this creepy apartment.
Next to the door sat Grandpa’s old desk, where he used to pay his bills and study his Bible. A large wardrobe blocked three-quarters of my view of the closet doorway. I say “doorway” because Grandpa had for some reason removed the closet door itself.
Waking up in a dark, unfamiliar room had my animal brain on high alert.
And my inner child told my animal brain that the worst threats came from the closet.
I strained my eyes to decipher the shadows beyond the wardrobe.
My cat let out a wet sigh.
I could see a dark mass in the edge of the closet that had to be Grandpa’s shirts still hanging up. Above them, dark smudges must have been stacked on a shelf.
Down below, where it was too dark to make out his religiously polished leather shoes, I thought I saw the depth of shadow deepen, as if something had shrunk away from my gaze.
My heart raced.
I almost bolted out of bed to wake up my cousin in the guest room, but I stopped myself.
It was the middle of the night.
I was in a strange place.
Hell, I’d been living in a farmhouse upstate for the past fifteen years, and now I was in New York City. I was out of my element. Of course I’d be easily creeped out.
A car drove by outside. Its subwoofer overpowered the buzz of Grandpa’s old fan.
I rolled away from the closet to face the nightstand and wall.
I decided to turn on a gardening podcast to put me back to sleep.
Before I could reach for my phone, I noticed something strange about the wall two feet from the bed.
The light and shadows of the bedroom gave a patch of the plaster an almost furry texture. I couldn’t make out the depth of what I was looking at.
The texture, readjusting its posture.
Something was standing inches from my face, right at the edge of the bed.
I froze in terror. A furry torso leaned against the comforter. Furry arms hung limp.
I didn’t dare turn my head to look up. I childishly hoped this thing hadn’t noticed me roll over. My only option was to be so still as to not be seen.
I stretched my eyes upward as best I could. The furry torso was pear-shaped, bulging outward on all sides around the belly. I could barely make out its head. From this low angle, I saw a mouth as wide as a dinner plate, and above it, two pingpong ball extrusions that must be eyes.
I want you to understand that I’ve had sleep paralysis hallucinations before. In most cases, the terror comes before the hallucination. The fear center in the brain being activated that kicks the whole thing off.
But the key point is that you’re paralyzed. You struggle to move as a shadow figure spider-crawls up your wall. You know that if you could only wiggle your toes, your body would unlock and the terror would disappear.
As the five-foot puppet stood over me, I was perfectly able to move. But I didn’t dare.
I silently begged the puppet to walk away.
It lingered over me. I watched the bottom of its chin out of the corner of my eye.
It reached out a thick, furry finger to poke my arm. There was too much strength behind that finger.
I swallowed a whimper.
The puppet let its arm drop back to its side.
Its right hand had led its movement, as if a string or stick were moving the hand and the arm was following behind. Its left arm hung dead.
The puppet tilted its chin downward and I saw its face.
One pingpong ball eye stared directly at me. The other pointed lopsided at my cat.
The rumble of a garbage truck came from up the street, growing louder as it drew closer.
Still, the puppet watched me.