The Family Spirit — Back in Print!

by Lillian Csernica on February 26, 2017

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Digital Fiction Publishing, my ghost story The Family Spirit is back in print.  This story originally appeared in Weird Tales.  If you know what it’s like to endure the company of the really strange members of your family during the holidays, then you will feel for Ben Harper as he meets his girlfriend’s family for the first time.  Here’s the opening paragraph:

Ben sat in the armchair, rattling the ice in his scotch. Five of Janice’s weird relatives sat around him, smiling and watching him like they were waiting for him to do his trick. It was Christmas Eve. His folks were on the far side of the country, busy with his sister’s latest crisis. That left him without any real plans, so he’d accepted Janice’s invitation to spend the holiday with her family. Now he wondered which was worse, the silent tension of old grudges between people he knew and supposedly loved, or the crawling anxiety of finding himself trapped with a boring version of the Addams Family.

Of all the short stories I’ve written, this is one of my three favorites.  I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.  Enjoy!