Shadows & Stories

The Woman Who Crocheted Her Grief
The Woman Who Crocheted Her Grief
A dark and beautiful gothic short story about a woman who transforms her grief into art — stitch by stitch. Read more...
Walpurgis Night — When the Veil Burns Thin
Walpurgis Night — When the Veil Burns Thin
30 April. The last night before May. The night when darkness dances one final time before the light returns.Across centuries and borders, the last night of April has carried a... Read more...
Isolde and the Crimson Moon
Isolde and the Crimson Moon
There are nights when the moon bleeds red. The villagers called it an omen. They shuttered their windows, whispered prayers into the dark, and held their loved ones close. But... Read more...
Dearg Due — The Blood-Red Kiss of Irish Legend
Long before Bram Stoker gave the world Dracula, Ireland already had its vampire. Her name was Dearg Due — and once a year, she rises. Read more...
I Curse You
I wrote this in 2019. In a moment when someone took my wings — and smiled while doing it. I did not write it to heal. I wrote it because fury needed somewhere to live. It found its home here. — Emilia Stairs made of clouds, fleeting as mistI fell with a crash to the groundMy wings shattered…They scattered like broken crystalThey lie around me…The light illuminating within makes them shimmer in a thousand coloursI was so proud of them…I kneel and gather fragment by fragmenthoping I will miss not... Read more...
Into the Heaven of Our Souls
I wrote this in 2006.In a different life, in a different world — when I was someone who still believed that love could walk through iron doors and brush the dust from someone’s soul. It waited twenty years in the dark.Perhaps it needed to. Perhaps it was waiting for the right walls to live on. This is not a dark story. This is the darkest kind of love story — the one where someone chooses to stay. — Emilia The great doors… iron fittings… I touch them… they open…I breathe... Read more...
Arsenic, Darling
Some women are broken by the world.Others learn to break it back. This is a story of a woman who waited — for love, for kindness, for a single moment of being seen.She waited too long. What you are about to read was born in the quiet space between endurance and fury — in the rustle of a black velvet dress, in the scent of roses that should never have been black, in the steady hands of a woman who finally chose herself. Read it slowly.And remember — she had... Read more...
I've Gone Mad... and I Know I Haven't
Some loves do not end with death.They linger in the wind on the hill, in the dust of abandoned rooms, in the scent of someone who is no longer there — yet somehow, still is. This is a story of a woman who refused to let go. Who ran, fell, bled — and ran again. Who the village called mad. Perhaps they were right.Perhaps it doesn't matter. This poem was born from the darkest and most beautiful corner of the human heart — the place where love becomes something greater... Read more...
The Forgotten Princess of Książ — Daisy of Pless
The tragic story of Daisy, Princess of Pless — the most beautiful woman of her age, twice exiled from her beloved Książ Castle in Lower Silesia. Read more...
The Castle of Counts: Gravensteen and the Myth of the Iron Maiden
They said she could swallow a person whole. They said her iron embrace was the last thing traitors ever felt. They were wrong — and the truth is far more disturbing. Read more...
The Blood Countess: The Terrifying Truth Behind Elizabeth Báthory
She was beautiful, powerful, and utterly untouchable. Until the screaming could no longer be ignored. The true story of Elizabeth Báthory, the Blood Countess. Read more...
The Bride in the Well: The Dark Legend of Czocha Castle
Some castles hold their secrets in stone. Czocha holds hers in silence — and in the echo of a woman's cry that still drifts across the lake on moonless nights. Read more...