If you want something really short, but still scary/creepy, Weekend America asked several prominent writers to create some scary flash fiction. You can read or listen to the stories. Some of them are truly creepy (Rickert’s Accomplice made me shiver and jerk around in my seat to see if anyone was behind me). There are also some exceedingly brief audio bits at the end with comments from some of the authors. M. Rickert talks about how she scares people with subtly, and I can testify that it works (I confess to being an easy intellectual/emotional scare, while blood and violence only make me grimace in distaste).

These stories are also good to look at if you are having a hard time crafting short stories or horror stories of any length. One of the reasons these stories work is even though they are brief (Accomplice is only two sentences) there is a complete story, with just enough information to get your imagination to run away with you.

Start running.