Three Psychic Stories
by H.J. Dutton
…with commentary from bestselling author Philip Fracassi!
Psychics often appear in horror stories, but a limited number of those stories deliver horror about psychics. Many horror stories that feature psychics don’t derive their horror from them because the psychic characters are the protagonists and/or victims. For an example of horror about psychics, consider John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos and its 1960 film adaptation Village of the Damned. Both the film and its source material follow a town where women get mysteriously pregnant and give birth to vicious psychic offspring. These children are indisputably the antagonists, unsympathetic and scary largely because of their psychic powers.
David Cronenberg’s Scanners (1981) strikes a middle ground between psychics as horrifying and psychics as sympathetic. Where Cameron Vale and psychics like him have integrated into society and seek to use their powers constructively, other scanners, such as the film’s villain, Darryl Revok, view themselves as superior beings who deserve to rule over their lesser peers. Despite the sympathetic psychics we follow, the film’s horror still derives from their villainous counterparts.
Even though it revolves around a psychic, Stephen King’s Carrie (1974) and its 1975 film adaptation aren’t truly horror about a psychic. Little of the story’s horror derives from Carrie herself. Even the famous climax, despite the death and brutality on display, is arguably more cathartic than frightening after the horrors that precede it: the abuses Carrie suffers at school and at home. Carrie’s blooming psychic abilities function as an escape from the narrative’s Shirley Jackson-esque social/domestic horrors, all of which are firmly grounded in reality.
Below I’ve compiled a short list of stories about villainous psychics, all of which can be found in various short story anthologies and collections.
“The Mindworm” – C.M. Kornbluth (1950)
Classic science fiction. The POV, a telepath created through irradiated pregnancy, learns from an early age that he has the ability to feed on others’ emotions. From there, he documents his travels from town to town and the chaos he deliberately sows in each in order to spark negative psychic output.
“It’s a Good Life” – Jerome Bixby (1953)
Another sci-fi classic that explores the chaos that naturally unfolds when a child is given the powers of a god. The child in question, a boy named Anthony, transforms his hometown of Peaksville, Ohio, into a wasteland cut off from the rest of the country. To survive, its citizens must feign constant positivity despite their circumstances to avoid provoking Anthony’s rage.
“Soft Construction of a Sunset” – Philip Fracassi (2017)
One morning, Tom receives a hysterical call from his friend Marcus, who claims something terrible has happened at home. When he arrives at Marcus’s abode, he finds the place transformed into a surrealist Hell, the very molecules of the space having been warped. Things only get worse when Tom asks Marcus what happened to his wife.
For more tales of psychics and psychic communication, consider the following stories in Horrific Scribes:
Read Sam Arlington‘s short story “Best Seats in the House” in Horrific Scribes June 2025.
Description: A precocious little girl with a strong sense of justice is dismayed to find her beloved baseball corrupted with impunity by thuggish outsiders. Seeing no one willing to speak up, she sets out to make things right in her own unique and colorful way.
Read Angelique Fawns‘s short story “Final Rites Fan” in Horrific Scribes March 2025.
Description: A possessed room fan blows messages of vengeance. Who will be its next target?
Read Abby Nicole Yee‘s short story “Vision” in Horrific Scribes July 2026.
Description: A teacher who sees more than they let on and a vision of nature gone wrong.