Weird Horror issues 4 and 5 (Undertow Publications, Spring & Fall 2022). Covers by Drazen Kozjan and Barandash Karandashich.

I love watching a new fantasy magazine get its sea legs. It’s been a real treat to see this decade’s crop of best new mags — including Tales from the Magician’s Skull (edited by Howard Andrew Jones), Startling Stories (helmsman Douglas Draa), New Edge Sword and Sorcery (edited by Oliver Brackenbury), and Wyldblood (Mark Bilsborough) — carve out unique identities, and grow better and better with each issue.

One of the best of the new lot — and there are times when I think it is the best — is Weird Horror, published by Michael Kelly’s Undertow Publications. Michael has been editing horror and dark fantasy for over a decade, and he’s one of the most gifted and respected editors in the industry. The roster at Weird Horror reflects that; in the last two years they’ve published new fiction from the best new horror writers in the biz, including John Langan, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Evenson, Josh Rountree, Stephen Volk, Steve Duffy, and Richard Strachan.

But the very best mags don’t rely on fiction alone. And what really makes we look forward to each new issue of Weird Horror are the lively columns by an enviable stable of authors, including Simon Strantzas On Horror, Orrin Grey Grotesqueries, Lysette Stevenson’s The Macabre Reader review column, and Tom Goldstein’s Aberrant Visions.

[Click the images for even weirder versions.]

The first two issues of Weird Horror, October 2020 and May 2021. Covers by Sam Heimer and Nick Gucker

Weird Horror is an attractive oversize magazine that will keep you up late during the cold winter nights — and introduce you to many of the best the writers that people will be talking about in years ahead. It could use your support — order a copy of the latest issue here.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents for Weird Horror 4.

“Sunder Island” by Derrick Boden
Simon Strantzas on Horror: Next Wave Horror, by Simon Strantzas
Clowns at Midnight, by Orrin Grey
“The Floating House” by J. F. Gleeson
“Fever Girls” by Linda Niehoff
“Camera’s Eye” by Daniel David Froid
“Arachnids in Your Bed: An Interactive Bedtime Story for Children — and Adults” by Sarina Dorie
“Milk Teeth” by Annika Barranti Klein
“Whenever It Comes” by Steve Rasnic Tem
“Hurled Against Rocks” by Andrew Humphrey
“Fields and Scatter” by Ashley Stokes
“Figments of the Night” by Armel Dagorn
The Macabre Reader, by Lysette Stevenson
Aberrant Visions, by Tom Goldstein

And Weird Horror 5.

Fear Without the Threat, by Simon Strantzas
Parallel Evolution: A Tale of Two Muck Monsters, by Orrin Grey
“In the Dead of the Wood” by William Curnow
“Deathflower” by Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe
“Husteria” by Charlotte Turnbull
“Aperture” by Dan Howarth
“The Rider” by Brian Evenson
“The Shadow of His Bones” by J. T. Bundy
“Coffin Texts” by Richard Strachan
“The Invitation” by Megan Taylor
“The Eighth Room” by Zachariah Claypole White
“Lemmings” by Kirstyn McDermott
The Macabre Reader, by Lysette Stevenson

Weird Horror is edited by Undertow head honcho Michael Kelly. Issues are 84 pages, priced at $15 in paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The magazine is published twice per year; you can order all five issues directly from the Undertow website.

We previously covered Weird Horror here:

Undertow Publications Announces Weird Horror Magazine
Weird Horror #3 Now Available

See all our recent magazine coverage here.