Deathbed Digest: Spring 2026
15 original horror stories. No survivors.
Greetings, gory goofoffs!
Welcome to the second edition of Deathbed Digest, a quarterly wrap-up of the Horror Stories by Comedy Writers we've published since last fall, along with lovely original art by Becky Munich. But before we leap into the stories you may have missed, here are a few bits of (haunted) housekeeping.
Who wants a Deathbed sticker?
Yes, the time has come for a sticker of your very own, to neatly affix on the back of your laptop, skateboard, or casket of a hated rival. Want one? Simply post about Deathbed on Instagram or Threads and tag us @DeathbedWriting to help us spread the word.
You can share a link to your favorite story (track it down using our brand new Find a Story page) or just let your friends and followers know that DeathbedWriting.com is your favorite free newsletter that publishes Horror Stories by Comedy Writers. We see the post, we drop you a DM for your address, we mail you a sticker. Easy peasy.
If you don't do social media, just send us an email explaining why you want a sticker, and we'll probably just send it anyway. We love you.
Deathbed Season 2
As I write this, we are officially at the end of Deathbed's first phase, and will be transitioning from a weekly cadence of free horror stories by comedy writers to a monthly cadence, meaning the next original horror short story by a comedy writer you will receive as a subscriber will be on Monday, May 4.
The goal will be to use the spring and summer months to stockpile great stories and come back gunz-a-blazin' for the fall and spooky season. So what does that mean for you? Nothin. You get less email. Cool, right? So. Are we ready for the stories? Let's go! (Clicks on Flashlight under chin)
These Comedy Writers Are Killers
Since our last Deathbed Digest in December, 2025, Deathbed has published 16 original short horror stories from 11 comedy writers, performers, podcasters and filmmakers who have written for incredible shops including The Simpsons, David Letterman, Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, Euonia Review, The A.V. Club, Slackjaw and more.
Our final story of the season was 555, a story from Steve Young, prolific writer from both Late Night with David Letterman and the Late Show, about a Hollywood player who suspects he might be getting played when he starts receiving mysterious phone calls from 555 numbers. Steve is also the subject of the terrific documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway, which is well worth your time.
We kicked off the season with two deliciously decadent holiday-themed stories, Nibbles: A Christmas Nightmare from Ritch Duncan and Season's Greetings from the Carsel Family, from Kevin Maher, both of whom truly seem to understand that the true meaning of Christmas is about giving stories about severed, possessed feet, and cannibalistic elves, not receiving them. Try to remember that yourselves.
From Ritch, we also had Tophouse, about a murderer who can't seem to find his way out of the department store he killed in, and The Day George Danvers Bought The Farm, a twisted look at the afterlife (and our first story that included an actual deathbed!) Kevin also added the sublime Final Girl Ted Talk, which gave 1980's era slasher films a modern LinkedIn spin.
Jeffery Kaufman and Ben Zelevansky wrote two stories each for us. From Ben, Survival Job, about the problems of surviving as an artist in a world where monsters want to slurp out your brains, and No More Mr Nice Guy, a highway drama about a Cybertruck owner who notices a car trailing just a little too close. Special shout out to Mike Falcigno of Grindhouse Gallery Tattoo, who provided great original art for that piece. From Jeffery, we had two short, descriptive first-person spine-chillers; Just Relax, which, (to avoid spoilers,) is about going up, and Atlantis, which is about going down.
St. Louis based comedy writer and video game designer Todd Mitchell gave us Rematch, a startlingly scary story of violent videogaming gone wrong in the 1990s console era. The wonderful Gena Radcliffe returned for a Valentine's Day violence-fest called Sweet Nothings, and contributing editor Dan McCoy was back with a gruesome tale of the men who make pulp horror comics called Noted to Death.
If you're looking for a Mother's Day shocker in the coming months, look no further than one of the two day-in-the-life stories about moms having difficult days we got in from Janine Annett and Kate Wilkinson, who brought us Muted, and Preserverance: Or The Bag Of Bones respectively.
Finally, we had one of the most outright terrifying stories we've published on Deathbed to date. From sketch comedian and filmmaker Doug Bost, we got Blood Makes Noise, which, as you will read, it absolutely did.
And one GORE thing...
Thanks so much to you, our subscribers, and also a special thanks to Kevin Maher, who is stepping aside as a contributing editor, but will maintain the role of editor emeritus on the site. The Crypt door is always open.
We'll leave you with this parting message Kevin got for us (you'll have to watch it on the site) from Eileen Dietz, Pazuzu from The Exorcist:
If you're reading this in your Inbox, thank you again for subscribing. If you're not, get on over to Subscribe.DeathbedWriting.com and sign up for free.
See you in May!
Your pals at Deathbed.
