Monique Snyman

You ever feel like your junk might come to life and come for revenge? No? Then you haven’t met the Kasa-Obake. At first glance, the Kasa-Obake looks like a joke: a haunted umbrella with one leg, one bulging eye, and a tongue that hangs from its toothless mouth like it’s mocking you. But don’t be fooled. This freaky little yokai isn’t just a gag in a haunted house — it’s a centuries-old…

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere! Yes, it’s all sun, sand, and fun … and something is definitely scratching behind the wall. Forget everything you think you know about horror, friends. Cozy horror isn’t about slashing through the woods or hiding from masked maniacs — it’s the kind of creepy that tiptoes in during daylight. It’s teacups rattling on their saucers, a shadow passing just…

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a haunting unraveling of memory, loss, and the quiet horror of lives shaped by a system designed to keep people docile while their humanity is methodically stripped away. On the surface, it’s the story of Kathy H., a “carer” reflecting on her youth at an exclusive English boarding school. But the further in you read, the more the novel reveals that this isn’t a…

Welcome back to another edition of Monique Snyman’s Hall of Horror! This week, we’re covering the Hinterkaifeck Murders from 1922, and I have a theory about what may have happened … The Hinterkaifeck Murders Deep in the Bavarian countryside, in late March of 1922, something terrible happened. It was something so brutal, so inexplicable, it still haunts true crime circles today. On a lonely…

In Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur, Dean Van Nguyen tears the gloss off hip-hop’s commercial veneer and exhumes the revolutionary fire buried beneath it — a fire that still burns with the legacy Tupac Amaru Shakur has left. This is no sanitized celebration of a multi-platinum rapper or a crime-saga retelling of East Coast vs. West. Instead, Van Nguyen restores Tupac to…

In South Africa, one of the most interesting monsters you’ll ever encounter lives in the sky — and when it’s angry, the heavens split open. The Inkanyamba isn’t just a beast. It’s a force. A massive, serpent-like creature said to live in deep waterfalls near Pietermaritzburg and the Howick Falls in South Africa, its wrath summoned through violent storms, tornadoes, and thunder that shakes the…

There’s a particular breed of thrill-seeker who finds comfort in the macabre. You know the type — wide awake while the rest of the world sleeps, earbuds in, diving deep into decades-old cold cases, unreliable narrators, and killers who seem too smart to catch. Me … It’s me. I’m that type. It’s the 2AM true crime obsession. The thrill. The dread. The morbid curiosity that keeps you hitting “next…

Christina Li’s The Manor of Dreams is the kind of novel that will haunt you in ways you didn’t think possible. On the surface, it’s about a former Hollywood starlet’s death and a mysterious inheritance that throws two families into uneasy proximity. The story digs deep into cultural identity, ambition, resentment, generational grief, and the quiet terror of what gets passed down without anyone…

For the ones who mother quietly, fiercely, and in unexpected ways … It’s not all roses and tearjerkers this week. The stars are leaning into complexity: care that hurts, silence that protects, and love that lingers long after it should’ve let go. Whether you’re a mother, had one, lost one, or walked away from one — this week is about what it costs to care. So here’s your reminder: You don’t owe…

There’s something deeply unsettling about the black-eyed children, and it has less to do with what they are and more to do with what they almost are. They’re polite. Well-mannered. Soft-spoken. They usually appear in pairs, somewhere around the ages of six to sixteen, and they always seem to be in need of help. One might knock on your door and ask to use the phone. Another might appear outside…

Forget what you think you know about monsters. The Bunyip doesn’t stalk forests in the dark or come crawling through your window. Why? Because it doesn’t need to. Instead, it waits in the murky waters of Australia’s creeks, swamps, and billabongs … It is silent, watching, ancient, and when it strikes, there may be a scream, maybe a splash, but then? Nothing. The Bunyip is more than a creature of…

If used with intention and restraint, symbols become anchors that transform stories from flat to layered, giving your narrative a deeper pulse. But the trick isn’t using symbols; it’s planting them early and subtly enough that readers won’t recognize them until it matters. Let me be clear: heavy-handed symbolism is the literary equivalent of a neon sign screaming “THIS IS MEANINGFUL!” And trust…

We’re all used to the trope on screen: flickering lights, static-filled VHS tapes, grainy footage captured right before everything goes terribly wrong. But found footage horror doesn’t need a screen to crawl under your skin. On the page, it’s even more intimate … more invasive. You’re not watching the horror unfold, you’re digging it up piece by piece. These books come to you as transcripts,…

In Vanishing World, Sayaka Murata peels back the layers of modern detachment and reconfigures them into something stranger, lonelier, and oddly beautiful. This isn’t dystopians the way we’ve come to expect it. There are no flaming cities or rebel uprisings, no rigid authoritarianism. Instead, Murata offers something quieter and more terrifying: a future that’s already halfway here, where people…

When the cosmos gets cryptic, crack open a book. Welcome back to BookStrology! This week crackles like static before a summer storm. With the Taurus Sun cozying up to Jupiter, and Mercury finally behaving, we’re in our main character era — but it’s giving emotionally complex and dramatically unbothered. Add a Pisces moon midweek and we’re spiraling in slow motion (with great lighting). So,…

It’s the middle of the night. You wake up, but you can’t move. You’re fully conscious, eyes wide open, but your limbs are locked in place. A crushing weight settles on your chest. And then you see it … There’s something in the room. Watching. Waiting. Maybe it’s crouched on your chest, breathing against your skin. Maybe it’s lurking in the corner, smiling just a little too wide. Whatever it is,…

The Quarry Girls by Jess Lourey doesn’t ease you in. It grabs you by the collar and drops you into 1970s Pantown, a town where fear clings to every sidewalk and girls go missing without warning. On the surface, it’s all small-town charm and summer nights. But something’s rotting beneath that perfectly constructed facade, and Heather Cash is about to uncover it. Heather isn’t your average teenage…