In this collection of harrowing holiday tales, Ronald Kelly leaves 10 frightful and horrific gifts in the Christmas stockings that hang from the mantle of your cheerful fireplace. Ghastly and gruesome presents that slowly unwrap and burst into life while you are tucked, snug and warm, in your bed and take on nightmarish form in the icy winter hours of Christmas Eve, turning comfort and joy into terror and dread.

When you first enter The Halloween Store, things seem normal. Fun and frightful decorations, ghastly costumes and masks of the season, and bags of candy galore. Then, as you travel farther into its shadowy depths, things begin to change. The air smells of damp autumn leaves and candle-scorched pumpkin. The shelves of All Hallows’ Eve fare grow darker and more disturbing. Strange and unsettling things of Halloweens past and present lurk amid the cobwebs and dust....

From out of a shadowy backwoods hollow echoes a dark threat from the past, nearly a century lost and forgotten. The rural town of Harmony, Tennessee, possessed a disturbing secret; a secret so ancient that most of its residents were completely unaware of it. Even the last survivors of a vigilante raid long ago have filed the tragic events of that autumn night away, totally unaware of the evil that remains, dormant, but forever patient, among the tall pines and thick-leaved kudzu of a place known only as Hell Hollow.

They were called diablos hoyos. Vicious black-furred beasts that fought in the pit with the raw fury and savage ferocity of Satan himself. For their owners, they were a lucrative investment. For the people of Sulphur Springs, Texas, they were the best entertainment they'd had in a long while. For Bowie Kane, they were his darkest nightmare come true.

The rural town of Old Hickory. Tennessee was a quiet, picturesque community...until the O'Sheas came to town. Becoming the new proprietors of the town's only funeral parlor, with the help of their charming patriarch, Square McManus, the Irish family was wholeheartedly accepted by the local town folk. The thing began to happen. Strange things...horrible, unspeakable things...in the dead of night. The sighting of wolfish beasts congregating around an open grave in the town cemetery.

Down below the Mason-Dixon Line, deep in the shadowy hills and hollows of Tennessee, lives a teller of terrifying tales and a spinner of dark yarns unlike any you have ever heard before. Stories to chill your bones and pepper your flesh with goose bumps. What his true name may be, no one knows for sure. But, if you listen closely, you can hear his voice ringing through the dead of night!

Josiah Craven had been all but forgotten for nearly a hundred years. To his descendants, he was nothing more than an imposing image in an old tintype photograph and the subject of stories told in hushed tones before the fireplace at night. A traveling mountain preacher who had returned from his wanderings and died under mysterious circumstances - buried in an unmarked grave with a wooden stake through his heart. Dudley Craven had heard the tales, but never believed them...until his plow unearthed an ancient coffin in the center of a lonesome mountain pasture.

Little Cindy Ann knew things no one else knew and saw things no one else saw. Ever since she'd nearly died of fever, the gift of second sight had been hers. Only, it didn't seem like such a gift when the other children called her a witch and wouldn't play with her. Or, when her visions resembled nothing so much as her worst nightmares.

It was passed down from generation to generation. The legend of The Dark'Un, the strange beast that roamed Pale Dove Mountain. The dark monster that no one had ever seen - at least not and lived to tell about it - except, so it was said, old Fletcher Brice who lived at the foot of the mountain. No one really believed in The Dark'Un. It was just a story to make a child's flesh crawl.

The abandoned house at the end of Millhaven Road stands on blighted and barren ground, as if nature itself shuns this tainted place. It is known simply as Dead End House, and unspeakably terrible things happened there long ago.

The Pritchard family is quite content in their home on Deerfield Avenue...until Lorelle Dupree moves in across the street. The new neighbor is astonishingly beautiful...friendly...and seductive. Each member of the Pritchard family surrenders to her advances and Lorelle's influence changes them in shocking ways. Soon everyone on Deerfield is changing. And then the killings start. The new neighbor is not interested in borrowing a cup of sugar or using your weed-whacker. She's more interested in your soul.

In the summer of 1994, psychologist Daniel Hill buys a rustic farmhouse nestled in the rolling hills of West Virginia. Along with his wife and teenage daughter, the family uproots their lives in Ohio and moves south. They are initially seduced by the natural beauty of the country setting. That soon changes when they discover a hidden room in the basement with a well, boarded shut and adorned with crucifixes. Local legends about the previous owner being an exorcist come to light, but by then, all Hell has broken loose.

Welcome to Haver-Towne. The sedate colonial resort is the perfect place where Stew Fanshawe can get away from it all for a while. But instead finding tranquility and self-reflection, Stew finds something much more unique: a town that was once steeped in a quagmire of witchcraft, satanic debauchery, and centuries-old occult science. Indeed, Haver-Towne has a most colorful history: A warlock who sires children with his own daughter. A witch whose sheer diabolism staggers even the most demented. And a 300-year-old mansion in whose walls are embalmed the infernal secret of...Witch-Water.

Some girls are fearful, others are brave. One girl’s a princess, the next one a slave. But all girls are equal when they’re down in this cave, until just one is left standing—The Prettiest Girl in the Grave.

The year is 1875 and outlaw Salem Covington has spent the last 20 years collecting stories, possessions, and lives. Nicknamed "The Black Magpie" for his exploits during the war, Salem has carved a bloody trail across the western territories. Informed that his mentor, Comanche shaman Dead Bear, has been murdered. Salem vows vengeance on the perpetrators. Enlisting the help of an army scout and preserving the body of his mentor in a specially made coffin, he sets out in pursuit. But the choices of Salem's past that earned him the moniker "Black Magpie" are riding hard behind him.