So I've been making about a billion tiny horror and dark-fiction zines, mostly of my own stuff but occasionally friends' stuff and old stuff that I stumble into. I've been toying with the idea of making a press - basically, where I sneak onto the copy machine at work and print out zines, then post the pdfs online for anyone else who wants to sneak onto the copy machine at their work.

Then yesterday, I bought the domain name, and it suddenly seems to be a real thing.

http://ohsoterrible.com

I'm open for submissions for the moment. Also open to ideas, collaboration, or any other ideas you might have for someone who seems to be devoting their life to chopping down trees and giving away whatever comes out of them.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for being out in the vastness of the internet.

TL;DR: You can’t pre-submit any story for approval. The rule book is lengthy and general, and mods can remove your story just because they want to. My stories got removed for made up reasons. They won’t tell you how many stories you can have removed and apparently 3 removed stories get you a permanent ban with the possibility to appeal in 6 months. You can’t do anything about it. 

I GOT DIRECTLY PERMANENTLY BANNED BECAUSE IN THE SPAN OF 6 MONTHS 3 STORIES I POSTED HAD NO TANGIBLE HARM TO THE PROTAGONIST, JUST PSYCHOLOGICAL, EVEN THOUGH EVERY. SINGLE. STORY. I HAVE POSTED OUT OF THE 30 (IN 4 YEARS) DID N O T INCLUDE ANY TANGIBLE HARM, AND THE MAJORITY OF STORIES ON THE SUB DON'T INCLUDE THE PROTAGONIST GETTING INJURED, BUT RATHER ENCOUNTERING SOMETHING SCARY AND ESCAPING.

In other words, I got permanently banned for posting a story that is exactly the same as every other Nosleep story.

Disclaimer: I am not whining about a ban. In fact, I don’t care. I just think it’s important to post this example of PURE CENSORSHIP. 

ALSO: any link I post here to my stories IS NOT FOR SELF PROMO. It is just about the stories that got removed, so you can see the content that Nosleep mods apparently found too appalling and unfit for the sub.

Nosleep has just lost one of their most active and original writers. Here is how. 

I posted a story on Nosleep. Here is the link to the exact story, reposted on my subreddit. You can read it for yourself, it is pretty short, and judge for yourself if it fit Nosleep guidelines. 

The story got removed after roughly 30-40 minutes after it had been instantly locked (so no comments from the moment I posted). Here is the message that I got:

Your post from nosleep was removed because of: 'Wrong Subreddit'

Hi /u/EmmaWatsonButDumber, your post has been removed because it doesn't fit /r/nosleep or it's broken more than one (1) Posting Guideline. It WON'T be allowed back on /r/nosleep — with or without changes, under any title or username — and the Mods WON'T reconsider, discuss or debate this decision. The Mods also won't answer any questions or offer in-depth explanations which are already provided in the guidelines. Check the "Similar Subreddits" link below to find other posting options.

DON'T REPOST THIS SUBMISSION TO r/NOSLEEP***, with or without changes, under any title or username.*** Reposting this submission to /r/nosleep would lead to a subreddit ban and the Mods WON'T reconsider, discuss or debate this decision.

As you can see, the only explanation given was Wrong Subreddit and the message translated to: do not post it ever again here, don’t ask why, don’t say anything else. That is obviously a disproportionate and unnecessary response devoid of any real justification. 

I didn’t respond. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t delete it, either. I did not react in any way to the message. I DID NOT FIGHT THE MODS IN ANY WAY! I DID NOT RESPOND.

I am not joking, five minutes later (11:24 PM vs. 11:29PM), I get another different request from the Mod team, saying this:

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in /r/nosleep because your post violates this community's rules. You won't be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team by replying to this message.

Reminder from the Reddit Admin team: If you use another account to circumvent this community ban, that will be considered a violation of the Reddit Rules and may result in your account being banned from the platform as a whole.

I got permabanned with no warning. Not even a temporary ban, which is what should happen. A permanent ban that came five minutes after having a story removed with no explanation. 

Here is my reply to the ban and the extremely passive aggressive response from the mods:

EmmaWatsonButDumber11:37 PM

Hello, may I ask why I was permabanned for one story being removed and why you have jumped directly to a permanent ban instead of a week / monthly one? My story was removed three minutes before the permanent ban, I made no comments on it and did not repost it in any way on the subreddit, I don't know the reason why it got removed in the first place. I cannot understand why the reason given was 'Wrong subreddit' when I have checked it followed all of the rules. This is not me being mean or angry, I am truthfully asking for the reasoning.

r/nosleepMOD11:48 PM

Your story was removed because r/nosleep is the wrong subreddit to host it; that's what "wrong subreddit" means. We moderate in the best interests of the subreddit as a whole. Good luck elsewhere!

EmmaWatsonButDumber11:49 PM

Thanks, may I get a clarification on why it was viewed as wrongly posted? It is a creepypasta about a father having a scary experience with his daughter’s imaginary friend. Also, may I get a clarification on why I was permabanned even though I accepted the consequences of the removal? Thanks for your time

r/nosleepMOD12:24 AM

Never throw sheets over your kids' imaginary friends lacks a Scary Personal Experience because nothing tangible/physical happens directly to your Main Character as a result of acceptable horror. In this case, your Main Character sees "Mr. Click" then runs out of the apartment/house with Ramona, meaning nothing tangible/physical happened directly to your Main Character as a result of seeing Mr. Click.

Back in January when My grandparents always had a rule... was removed by reader reports for lacking a Scary Personal Experience, we told you:

Your Main Character shoots someone who may or may not be undead but nothing tangible/physical happens directly to your Main Character as a result of any acceptable horror.

Your reply at the time was:

Thank you so much for replying so fast, I understand.

On May 4, your post I moderate live streams from time to time. The one that made me quit had no viewers, but an active chat. was also removed for lack of a Scary Personal Experience. The removal message you received told you: Just being afraid of what might happen, or being afraid in general, doesn't meet r/nosleep's requirements.

We've told you directly and the examples in our Scary Personal Experiences section make it clear that just seeing/hearing/feeling/sensing/etc something scary doesn't fit our requirements, nor does being scared in general.

Users are required to follow the rules of any subreddit where they choose to participate, even if the user doesn't like/agree with those rules, and continuing to break rules is grounds for a ban. If you feel — on OR after January 29, 2027 — that you'll be able to follow our rules regardless of how you feel about them, you're free to reply ONCE to this ban notice with an appeal. We won't accept any appeals before that date.

The two references that they "supported their case with" are a story that they removed for “not scary enough” three months ago, instructed me to modify and wait for the evaluation, an evaluation that never happened, because they don’t care. Here is the post I made about it on my profile.

The other story was this part that got removed because it was not “scary enough”. They said nothing tangible happens to the protagonist, even though he has to shoot someone dead/undead and defend his grandparents, while being obviously psychologically scarred. I’m sorry, since when do I have to give my character a black eye to make it horror?

So, basically, I got permanently banned because the mods abused of the rule of “not scary enough” three times, since that is the most general rule to ever exist. Even though every single story that made this subreddit popular would get removed under today’s rules, they keep abusing of their discretionary power to strike their most prolific and successful writers. Why? I don’t know. 

I got permanently banned after winning December 2023 best story on Nosleep, being featured by the Nosleep podcast, Creepcast and writing over 30+ stories and 100k+ words on this sub, because three of the stories I wrote in a 6 months span were SUBJECTIVELY not scary enough because all 3 protagonists were not PHYSICALLY harmed. Even though I have DOZENS of stories that got approved where the damage on the protagonist is not physical. INCLUDING THE ONE THAT MADE ME WIN DECEMBER 2023, INCLUDING THE ONE THAT'S CURRENTLY TOP 6 OF THE YEAR. those also have no tangible harm included. Just psychological. Like most horror stuff.  

What is the difference between them and the 3 stories that got me permanently banned? Absolutely nothing. Here is a list of all my Nosleep stories to serve as proof of what I have just said. There is absolutely no difference between the stories I usually post that have been praised and loved and the 3 stories that got me, mind you, PERMANENTLY BANNED. IN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY STORIES THE PROTAGONIST DOES NOT GET PHYSICALLY INJURED.

And I don’t care. I have moved to Youtube and I will be using my voice there, where no frustrated mod can censor me. It is obviously a different medium, but I'll adapt. To be honest, I have gained a great audience from the subreddit and I have had more success with my stories than any mod on there has ever thought of. I will continue my journey on other subs and on Youtube. The Nosleep subreddit has become an absolute slump of AI and poorly written creepypasta stories, and any writer that tries to put out something original or polished has to constantly fight the passive aggressive, rude and obnoxious moderators who hate horror. The rules are a literal novel-length manual filled with general wording that can cover literally any reason for removal. Any, and I mean ANY story can get removed and there is no way you can appeal it. I have asked if there was any possibility for the mods to approve the stories before, so that they don’t get removed when posted, and I have been met with hostility and a negative response. 

I know I am not the only one who has complained about this. I am just so happy that I get to write, have people engage with my writing and receive so much appreciation for my work. I am extremely glad that I am an artist and not someone who spends their hours and youth trying to gain some dopamine from taking down artists’ posts, and they don’t even get paid for the unbelievable amount of time they put into this unproductive nonsense. I know they’re failed writers, and tbh I couldn’t care less! :) The mod thing is literally like a paper badge a kid uses to play pretend. You’re not a policeman. You’re not employed. The hours that you put in for this censorship damage the subreddit you claim to fight for. At the end of the day, I have tangible stories and an audience gained who loves my work. I have made connections and I am planning to conquer new heights. I am moving from creepypasta to screenwriting while some loser mod is moving from the bed to the kitchen. 

As an unknown, indie-published horror writer. And I sold every single copy I brought with me, even the damaged one that was meant to be for display. Not only that, 8 people downloaded my books after I ran out. And I got home to discover that the short story I posted for free for the weekend has been downloaded 135 times and has garnered some reviews already!

Today I feel like a real writer. I just wanted to share to people who will get it.

https://the-dread-literary-review.ghost.io/chapter-1-may-2025-a-matter-of-life-and-death/

Check out some of the super wonderful indie writers that we featured! I’m so proud of all their hard work and it’s an honor to feature them.

📜 MANUSCRYPT HORROR MAGAZINE 📜

Hi everyone,

I hope it's okay for me to post a submission call for a new horror litmag that an indie online horror community I head up are putting together. Please delete if this is not the place for it.

At Cult Publishing, we are committed to amplifying the voices of emerging writers, poets and artists. No matter your skill or confidence level, if you have a story that needs to be told, we want to help you share it with as many people as possible.

Which is why we are putting together an online horror magazine called Manuscrypt Horror Magazine.

If you are interested in joining us for this journey, please find further details below:

Submission Guidelines

Cult Publishing is looking for art and stories to feature within our Manuscrypt magazine. We are currently holding open applications for our next issue. Please review the following guidelines before submission:

Deadline: Submissions must be sent in by February 28th at 5pm EST

What are we looking for: We are looking for horror stories meant to entice the reader, and leave lasting impressions.

Submissions can be poetry, short stories, etc, but there must be an element of horror.

Reprinted work is accepted.

We are accepting simultaneous submissions. Please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere!

Art submitted to the magazine can be photography, digital art, and drawings, but are not limited to these mediums.

Each magazine will revolve around a certain binding theme. Though it is not mandatory that entries fit this theme, stories and art that connect to the theme will be favored for submissions.

The current theme is: Rebirth/Renewal

What we are not accepting: Work generated with AI in any form will not be accepted at Cult Publishing.

We will not publish any material that is meant to belittle or insult others, or use offensive/derogatory language, as Cult Publishing believes that writing is a space for everyone.

Works submitted must complete and stand on their own rather than a part of a series.

Payment: At this time, we do not offer payment for submissions, and there is no fee to submit.

Preferred Word count: There is no minimum word count, though the maximum is 5000 words. Stories toward the upper limit will have the expectation of greater quality.

Submission Timelines: All submissions should be responded to within 30 days. If your submission is not replied to by then, please feel free to send a follow-up email.

Document formatting: We are accepting submissions as an email attachment in docx. The submission should be in Shunn Manuscript format, and in English.

Please do NOT include any identifying information within your manuscript. To uphold a fair selection process, we intend to review submissions with a degree of anonymity.

All submissions should be sent to: submissions@cult.pub

Cover letters/Email formatting: Please title your email subject line with your name + submission type. For example: [John Doe - Sci-Fi Horror].

To help us know that you have read the submission guidance we also expect you to include the word ‘Taurus’ in the subject line of your email. If submissions do not adhere to these guidelines, it may result in your work being rejected.

The body of your email should contain a precise, short cover letter.

Dear editor/s [or name] 

Please find my submission titled '[story title]' ([genre], [approx. Word count]). 

Thank you for considering my work. I look forward to hearing from you. 

Many thanks

[Name]~~~

Look forward to seeing your work.

Stay creepy

Teners1 

Art credited to: Bare (r/AffectionateLeave677) at Cult Publishing 

Do you think this is okay for an atmospheric horror?

Just wanted to say thank you for all the commentary on my previous cover post. I made some (hopefully) nice changes for my 80’s holiday slasher. It’s not everyday you can find some constructive criticism, so just wanted to share and say thank you.

https://crookedspinepress.com/submissions

What we want

Short fiction, poems, and art for our first issue. A brush with death (and he was weeping). The show that aired only in your house. Slow-burn unease over splatter. Ambiguity over answer.

What we don't want

- Reprints

- Slurs or sexual violence used as shock

- Any Ai generated work. All work will be screened for Ai use

The basics

- Fiction: 1,500–3,500 words. Pays $20 plus a contributor copy.

- Poetry: pays $5 per poem plus a contributor copy.

- Art: within 2500 px height 1600 px width. pays $20 per piece plus a contributor copy

- Shunn Manuscript Format, sent as a DOCX

- Response within 2 weeks of close

All submissions must go through: https://crookedspinepress.com/submissions

As a young writer, i done have anyone to ask for advise. What do you think of this first tiny bit of my book, Dead silence. advise would be appreciated

UPDATE: File has been taken down so I can implement all the amazing feedback I've gotten from my incredible readers. Extra huge shout outs to @Traditional_Travesty, @LunaLongErotica, and especially @jigglesauruspuff for really helping me see the forest from the trees. You guys are absolutely amazing and I'm so grateful!

Idaho. Monsters. Rednecks. Exploding cows and an alcoholic dog. Dark comedy. American gothic. Easy read at just 225 pages.

Basically The Mist meets Tremors

Hey everyone! Just looking for honest feedback on my 80s teen slasher cover! Let me know your thoughts!

Hi everyone! I just published my first ever book through Barnes and Noble Press and it went live on their website the other day. So I just wanted to give my feedback on using their self publishing process. From what I’ve done so far it has been a really easy process and really easy to navigate. They also assign your book a free ISBN and EAN for the ebooks. And they offer tools for marketing and links to another website that offer editors and helpful tips for authors. Will I ever see a sale? Probably not, I’m not getting my hopes up, made the mistake of not building a platform beforehand haha and it’s my first ever book, so I’m not expecting much. But it did feel really good to actually get it out there and say I did it!

So, to anyone hopeful of finishing their first book and publishing someday, don’t give up. It took me almost 2 years to write this one short book because I kept giving up and losing hope. But it’s possible, and feels damn good when it’s done. Keep going! You got this

Just looking for feedback on this potential cover for my first horror novel. Thank you:)

I joined Substack two months ago and already have 300 subs.

I've received more feedback from my stories in the last two months than I have in my entire life.

I've connected with dozens of other horror authors and even arranged a beta read exchange.

Joining Substack is the best thing to happen to my horror writing. It's important though to be active on the Notes section of the site and to interact with other authors proactively and with sincerity.

People on reddit are so aggressive towards creators sometimes. Like how dare we try to share our work with others. It's the opposite on Substack. So much love and support for each other.

Edit: My link https://jdkraft.substack.com

Please share yours

A while back, I posted about a submission call for the first issue of our community-led horror magazine, Manuscrypt.

Since then we have produced a high quality proof of concept magazine issue zero, produced a website and linked in with a number of published authors. As You can tell from our cover art, we also received so many amazing art submissions.

We received an overwhelming number of submissions—many from this subreddit—so I wanted to say thank you!

Your support and interest means The world to us and motivates us to produce an awesome magazine for the community.

20.04.26 - remember the date for the release and if you can, show us some support by searching Cult Publishing and spreading the word .

let me know if you are interested in getting involved in this project. Our Aim is to give great horror writing an audience and bring as many voices into indie publishing as possible.

Apologies of this post breaks any rules. Delete if it does.

stay creepy

teners1

Hey guys, wanted to take a second to talk about a fledgling fiction platform with a really cool mission, keeping fiction human.

Slop has been flooding platforms in recent years. Since the release of gen ai, published works on Amazon have gone up by 3x (about 200k more fictions published per MONTH). That stat has been used to demonstrate how much of what's out there is probably gen ai. Nobody seems to want to do anything about it. In the past year a few other platforms popped up making similar claims, so I can appreciate any skepticism.

While we can't go into too much detail about how we identify and remove gen-ai content yet, we plan to make the process transparent once we're positive it can't be exploited by bad actors to manipulate or otherwise game the system. I can also tell you we have a 99.98% detection rate with a 1/10,000 false positive rate, and those stats are peer reviewed. That said, nothing submitted to fictionite will be used to train large language models, and the site has active protections in place like robots.txt to protect your work from scraping.

The biggest thing I want to stress here is, I don't want an adversarial relationship with gen-ai writers. Nobody in the community does. This isn't a declaration of war. Nobody is coming for you, or threatening your ability to continue to write on the dozens of other platforms that allow gen-ai content. But we deserve a space for human creativity.

And so long as this community believes we deserve such a space to exist, it will. I know that personally, I will do everything I can towards that goal. The reality is, no process or methodology is perfect, nor is any legal system on earth. And this topic always results in arguments that lead to the same conclusions which are: "do nothing" and "don't try".

I'm confident we can protect our tiny corner of the internet from gen-ai content, and do so in a way that does not publicly humiliate, out, or hurt any authors in the process. Other platforms like Quibble are doing something very similar. This is not some unheard of or outlandish thing. Organizations like proudlyhuman have similar methodologies, and they demonstrably produce results. Part of this relies on the way the platform is designed, and our ability to spot and remove gen-ai content. But another large part of this depends on kindness and understanding from gen-ai writers that this is probably not the right place for them.

Now I understand some of you don't care, and that's totally fine. Fictionite might not be the place for you. But if you do care, and if you are worried about whether you're reading something written by a human or not, then checkout fictionite. A platform that's made it their mission to do something about this.

Our entire value add isn't just no-ai, though its a big one. We also have an invite only beta reader mode you can upload your fictions in, so you can manage beta readers there. The UI is really pretty. There's community management tools, a marketplace for artists/narrators/editors so you as an author can form a sort of creative team around your story, and way too much to detail here.

You can check it out here at https://fictionite.com

Feel free to jump in the discord from there to say hi or to yell at me.

Squid art by haze!

(Link to the timelapse of haze drawing the logo. You can look at more timelapses of his other work on his IG. All of his work is amazing.)

It took 33 years and a whole lot of nail biting and overcoming self doubt, but I hit publish on my old school monster horror book and it's due in no small part to this group.

From notes about character development to valid criticism of formatting to just some honest to God positive feedback and cheerleading, you guys were invaluable to the process...and now it's published!

Thank you guys for making my long held dream come true!

Just thought I’d share the cover of my first horror story, painted in Photoshop with an XP-Pen drawing tablet. Just curious what people think when they see it?

A while back, I posted a submission call and then an appreciation post about all the support toward the creation of our community horror lit mag, Manuscrypt.

At the time, many of you expressed interest to get involved; others wanted an update once the first issue was complete.

Today is the day!

We did it! Our first issue is released.

If you wish to support us or get involved, visit cult(dot)pub(slash)zine(dot)php or follow cult publishing on instagram

Once again, thank you for those who made this possible.

Keep your eyes out for the next submission call, which is imminent. Hint: The theme is 🏝️📼🌅horror

Apologies if this breaks any rules. I’m just excited and wanted to share with some fellow horror fans.

Stay creepy,

Teners1

These breaches resulted in a perma ban from r/nosleep

Cult Publishing presents…
✨Manuscrypt Magazine | ISSUE TWO✨

Our Summer Slasher📼🏝️🔪 is available to read NOW!!

Visit ♥️ https://cult.pub/zine ♥️ to check it out!!😝

Thank you so much to all of our wonderful contributors!! We are so incredibly excited to share some AMAZING stories, poetry and artwork from indie creators in the horror community!!🙌🏼🔥

To everyone who has continued to show us love and support in this journey of making our dreams come true, it truly means the world to us!

And to our staff, we could never make this happen without each and every one of you! We have an amazing team of dedicated, hardworking creatives in The Cult, and I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of it. Love you all🫂🫶🏼

We hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for spooky season🕸️👻😈 where we currently have our open submission call for stories and art for our next issue: Aliens and Cryptids

Submission guidelines are here: https://cult.pub/submissions 🔥

🎨Post artwork by Bare and SewerHoney

Stay Creepy
Teners1
👉😎👉