Description

Lurker in the Pines

By Joey Stardust

The woods remember what we forget.

When wildlife photographer Eli Mercer returns to his hometown of Hollow Pine, he expects peace, not prophecy. After a personal tragedy and a public breakdown, he seeks refuge in the quiet mountains where he once played as a boy. But the town he left behind isn’t the one that welcomes him home. People speak in whispers now—about missing hikers, lights in the forest, and something that moves just beyond the reach of firelight.

At first, Eli dismisses the stories as small-town superstition. Then he finds the first set of footprints. Not human. Not animal. Something in between.

As he begins to document the strange patterns, animals vanish, trees appear where there were none, and the forest itself seems to shift. The locals warn him not to go past the ridge after dark—where the wind doesn’t sound like wind, and shadows move with purpose. But when a child disappears and the search leads back to the lake where Eli’s sister drowned years earlier, he realizes the woods have been waiting for him.

Haunted by memory and driven by guilt, Eli begins to uncover fragments of an old government research facility buried deep within the pines—its purpose long erased, its experiments anything but human. As night falls, the forest grows restless. The deeper he goes, the more the line between reality and hallucination blurs, until Eli must face a horrifying question:
Is the thing in the woods a predator—or is it him?

Lurker in the Pines is a slow-burning psychological horror thriller about loss, memory, and the ancient hunger of the natural world. Joey Stardust weaves dread and beauty together with a poet’s touch, creating a landscape that feels as alive as the creatures that haunt it. Every creaking branch and whispering pine needle becomes a heartbeat, pulsing with something wild, ancient, and aware.

Fans of The Blair Witch Project, Annihilation, and True Detective (Season One) will find themselves drawn into this story’s dense fog of paranoia, folklore, and cosmic unease.

“You don’t get lost in Hollow Pine. You get remembered.”

What Readers Can Expect:

• Atmospheric horror steeped in Appalachian folklore

• A haunting blend of mystery, grief, and supernatural dread

• A character-driven descent into madness and revelation

• Vivid, cinematic prose and an unforgettable setting

• Twists that question the nature of memory and belief

Perfect for readers who love:

• Psychological and cosmic horror

• Small-town mysteries with supernatural twists

• Haunted forests and folklore-based suspense

• Emotionally driven horror with literary depth

Dark, poetic, and unsettling, Lurker in the Pines asks a single, terrible question—
When the forest watches back, what does it see in us?