#suburban horror | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

krystal-prisms · 8 months

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Honestly, urban and suburban horror is so under utilized

Getting lost in a parking lot full of endless rows and columns of cars. You can't find yours, you don't know how long you've been walking. You keep seeing cars that you think are yours, but they don't open when you try your keys. You press the horn button on your fob, but can't tell which direction the faint honking is coming from. The stalls are all full.

A grocery store late at night. No other shoppers are there. It's dark outside and yours is the only car in the parking lot. The aisles are filled with brands you don't recognize, but seem oddly familiar, all knock offs of each other. It's too cold. Your cart has a squeaky wheel. The cashier is the only other person in the store. They don't make eye contact. You don't remember what you came in for.

You're taking the garbage out late at night. Your elevator doesn't work so you have to take the stairs. The dumpster smells, and there is fluid on the ground beside it. You don't want to think about what it could be. You hear noises down the alley. You toss the bag into the dumpster, and run to the door. You fumble your keys and take longer to get in. You slam the door and lock it. The lightbulb flickers in the lobby.

Rows and rows and rows and rows of identical houses. You don't know how you got into this neighborhood, you can't afford any of the houses here. They all look the same, white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. A good neighborhood. A nice place to raise your kids. There are no kids. The weather is nice, the sun is shining, they should be outside. You drive your used car, looking for a turn off to the exit, but there isn't any. Just endless white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. You're sure you passed this area before, but there are no house numbers and they all look the same. The sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. Or another living creature in sight.

You're on the bus. Surrounded by people, you stare at your phone and ignore them. More people get on. Your stop is coming soon. More people get on. You sit at the back of the bus to avoid conversation. More people get on. Someone bumps into you, and you apologize to them, but you're not sure why. They don't acknowledge you. More people get on. Everyone is staring at their phones, ignoring each other. Your stop is next. You try to stand up to get to the exit, but there are people in the way. You can't get to the button to let the driver know you need to get off. You try to get to the door, but there are so many people in the way you can't move. The bus slows to a stop, and you try to push your way to the exit, but the bus is too packed. The doors open, but you can't leave, and nobody hears you when you ask them to move. More people get on.

You walk downtown. You pass a billboard advertising a product you've never heard of. You keep walking, passing flyers, billboards, screens, all selling things. Things to make you prettier. Smarter. More successful. A whole new person. A new person to fit into society with all the other people, but only if you spend money. For just a few dollars, you can have a better life with our product. You need our product. You would be so happy if only you had our product. Look at all these people in our advertisement, aren't they happy? Don't you want to be like them? You could be if only you just had our product. You can't afford any of them.

You're in a crowd of people, walking the sidewalk. You have your earbuds in. You feel someone watching you. You casually glance around, to try to catch someone staring. You can't pick out individual faces among the hundreds of other people. You continue on your way, thinking you imagined it. You imagine you hear footsteps, and walk faster. The feeling doesn't go away.

Your air conditioner is broken. You told your landlord, he said he'll fix it. It's been days. The air is hot and muggy. Leaving the windows open doesn't help the heavy feeling. The air from outside is just as warm, and carries the scents from the city. There should be sounds coming from outside, but the city is silent.

You're walking at night. You can't see even a single star.

#my bs #horror #urban horror #suburban horror #urban gothic #writing #my writing #city #horror writing #fiction

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thisaintourhome · 6 months

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one the spookiest sets of photos i've ever taken in a single night

east vancouver, bc. november 2022.

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sunnysynergy · 10 months

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This is a creature

This is its habitat

These are its claws, its defense mechanisms

These are its organs, festering with disease

This is its stomach. Creaking and growling with hunger.

It went through so much to get you here. To show you such vulnerability. Letting you in is a sign that it trusts you not to hurt it, and it trusts you to trust it not to hurt you. This creature loves you, cares about you, and wants to play with you, you think.

You hope that's why it locked the door.

#robot noises #suburban horror #architectural horror #i have no idea where this came from but you know what. take it.#unreality

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kayleerowena · 2 years

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🏚️🎲

a haunted house commission for quinn, commissioned as the cover of their ttrpg absurdia! you can grab a copy of the game now over on itch!

#haunted house #haunted houses #absurd horror #suburban horror #horror #horror art #horror illustration #this is prob one of my faves now & i'm so glad to finally be able to share it !!!#kaylee.art

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sequ0iart · 2 years

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perfectly normal cute pink house 💖

instagram | twitter | prints & merch

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unrememberedrooms · 1 year

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#this was an accident and i’m pissed that i didn’t get the actual photo i wanted but oh well somebody will like it B)#photography #night #house #dark #spooky #suburban horror #suburban gothic #dreamcore #weirdcore #sorry if i misrepresent ur aesthetic i’m grasping at straws here

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cultofcreatures · 3 months

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progression of the cosmic entity

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norrriey · 4 months

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someone to build a home with

twitter insta

#original characters #original art #oc #queer horror #lgbt horror #lesbian horror #suburban horror #illustration #norrriey

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measureyourlifeincake · 10 months

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put up some ominous @shelterwoodpod posters in my neighborhood

im hoping for some confused posts on nextdoor

#shelterwood #suburban gothic #suburban horror #(also hey maybe go to the link on the posters)

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silentcitystreetart · 11 months

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Motions of the base of the lilac trees bring great worry into the street. The suburban landscape filled with greenery begging for colour to expand. The frequency of last night electrical thunderstorm has shaken the soil to its very core. Cloud streak lavender skies bring a small reminder of summer time. The air is weird and everything is off it is time to reignite the spark.

#gothic americana #writers of tumblr #writblr #witchblr #canadian gothic #spooky #liminal tumblr #liminal #surreal #cryptid #cryptidcore #liminal spaces #regionalgothic #a story about you #suburban horror #duststirs

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lawofnamesmedia · 10 months

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We went to a movie theater in a dead mall yesterday.

#dead malls #liminal spaces #photo manipulation #suburban horror

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springtimebat · 1 year

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The Girl in the Back of the Class

She was more shadow than flesh. An outline of a person rather than an actual human being. Just one of those students who is there to take up the empty spaces in a classroom.

The only time anyone noticed her was when a member of the football team decided to torment them; smashing her into a locker, stealing their lunch off of cafeteria trays, administering burns to her sensitive wrists.

She didn’t show up to class in the fall. Her desk, with its creaking planks and runes etched onto its burnt edges, lay lonely in the Autumn-wine shade.

Her mom is wiry and ancient, living off benefit check after benefit check. She spends the day handing out missing posters to strangers instead of seeking employment.

The other parents in the neighborhood tut and fuss at this strange limbo of a woman. Now that her daughter is gone she should just fade away from public life; become a mournful silhouette against colorful wallpaper.

The girl was strange, alternative, lonely. No one cares to remember her in any significant way. Except maybe with embarrassment. Next year, she will be dug up with the rotting snow.

Still, no-one new moves into town. Her desk remains empty. Unloved. It takes the rest of the class two months to pry open her old locker. Their heads ache when the idea comes to mind.

The locker is covered in old stickers and permanent marker soliloquies. The lock has to be twisted inside out three times over before the door gives way. Its hinges seem to ooze an unnatural blue ooze. Territorial marks made by a girl who was never noticed.

She went to a lot of shows, they realize, shuffling through tickets from a year ago. Corrupted snapshots and polaroids display flashing stage-lights and mosh-pits.

One photo, tacked onto the locker door with wrinkled strips of tape, shows a figure with teased hair and ringed eyes. The girl had never smiled before. Death made her grin.

A war-torn notebook is buried inside too, along with several home-made zines in a misshapen drawer. Its cover is decorated with baby lambs and human skulls. They interact within speech bubbles, scribbled hastily on the page. They ask each other what the color of the sky is.

The zines belong to a collection, written almost obsessively over the girl’s high school years. Beneath the Wire. Her classmates go through them together as a makeshift research group, anticipating some kind of extensive eulogy. They instead discover something else entirely.

No one ever expected the dead girl to be funny but humor drips quietly across every page. Drawings depict herself as a gorgon, hair twisting and floating above her as its own entity, who turns various people from town into stone. Poems which don’t really rhyme retell times that she skipped school to people-watch. Multiple caricatures of people riding the bus are pasted into the notebook’s margins.

There’s a woman with a pink beehive that reaches the clouds, smoking ten cigarettes at once.

A couple with matching scowls, combat boots and spiked hair, who shoot lasers through the cracked bus windows.

An old man in a defunct army uniform, whose soul spews from his ass and rants about the “good ol’ days of ‘nam”.

The last page expresses the same attitude. There’s no sadness, no pain. Just a scribble of the chemistry teacher sodomising himself with a rolled up poster depicting the periodic table.

The class gather up all the vanished girl’s belongings and hand them over to her mother the next morning, putting an end to her spell over town. At least, to them anyway.

The mother takes everything home and arranges her daughter’s life on the kitchen table. It is a holy experience, like she’s identifying a skeleton. She gazes at the comics, the lyrics, the grinning photographs…they all seem to sink deep underneath her flesh. Finally, she lets out a small cry.

By the next week, she has stopped handing out missing posters. Now, she gives out copies of Beneath the Wire in the local park, a wistful expression on her face as winter approaches.