Cailynn's Blog

They promised her a fortune. What she found was fear. In The Death of Mrs. Westaway, Ruth Ware delivers gothic chills, tarot symbolism, and a haunting meditation on fate and deception.

A bride, a burning cabin, and a mystery that refuses to rest. The Mysterious Death of Christina Kettlewell remains one of Canada’s most haunting unsolved cases — a story of love, fire, and confusion that still echoes through time.

Meet Maud, Sweden’s most dangerous grandmother. In An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good, Helene Tursten turns cosy crime into a darkly hilarious art form.

A snow-covered farm, a family silenced, a killer who may have stayed behind. This Macabre Monday, we unravel the mystery of the Hinterkaifeck murders — an unsolved crime that still chills a century later.

A chilling psychological thriller where wealth hides blood and family games turn fatal. The Family Game by Catherine Steadman will make you think twice before accepting that holiday invitation.

In 1860, three-year-old Francis Saville Kent was murdered inside his family home, sparking one of Victorian England’s most haunting mysteries. Years later, Constance Kent confessed — but did she tell the truth? This Macabre Monday, we unravel the secrets, scandals, and shadows of a case that refuses to rest.

They came to celebrate the new year. They left with secrets, lies — and a dead body. In The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley delivers wintry suspense at its finest.

In 1897, Zona Heaster Shue was murdered — but it took her ghost to reveal the truth. This Macabre Monday, we uncover the only case where a ghost testified.

This Frightful Reads Friday, we dive into Everything The Darkness Eats, a devastating, queer cosmic horror where grief feeds the ritual and darkness always wants more.

History hides them. Fiction remembers them. From the Romanovs to the Ushers, discover the family secrets that prove legacy can be the deadliest inheritance of all.

This Frightful Reads Friday, we descend into the lyrical, unsettling depths of Our Wives Under the Sea — a queer horror tale of love, loss, and transformation from the ocean's dark heart.

From coins on the eyes to post-mortem photography, mourning the dead has never been simple — or safe from the eerie. Dive into a chilling history of rituals that blur the line between remembrance and the supernatural.

This week, on Frightful Reads Friday, we return home — but not to comfort. T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones is Southern Gothic horror with teeth, trauma, and something watching from the garden.

From crossroads to graveyards, some soil holds more than bones. In folklore, the ground is sacred, haunted, and powerful — a place where memory, magic, and mourning intersect. In this post, we dig deep into global beliefs around cursed land, grave dirt in witchcraft, and ghost-soaked soil that never forgets. Dig too deep, and it starts to whisper.

In The Family Plot, Cherie Priest weaves Southern Gothic horror with emotional depth, inviting readers into a decaying mansion where every creaking floorboard holds a secret. With richly drawn characters, themes of grief and memory, and ghosts that whisper rather than wail, this story lingers like dust in a sunbeam — haunting, quiet, and unforgettable. If you like your horror slow-burning and soaked in sorrow, this one belongs on your shelf.

Buried alive—a fear as old as the grave itself. From Roman executions to Victorian safety coffins, history is filled with chilling attempts to avoid premature burial. Real cases like Alice Blunden and Eleanor Markham blurred the line between life and death, while Edgar Allan Poe turned that dread into literary terror. This post explores the psychology, history, and mythology behind one of humanity’s most claustrophobic nightmares.

Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is a gothic fantasy woven with spells, suffrage, and the strength of sisterhood. In this review, we explore how the novel captures both the magic of resistance and the haunting echoes of historical witch trials. Like The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, it asks: what happens when women’s power — whether sacred or chosen — becomes a matter of survival?

In The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling transforms marriage into a gothic nightmare of secrets, rituals, and forbidden knowledge. This review explores why the novel lingers long after the last page, from its occult imagery to its suffocating dread — and how it echoes the same fears that inspired The Girl Who Knew The Medicine. Would you step into Lindridge Hall, or run before the door closed?

Explore witch trial rituals from Salem to Scotland — how fear shaped accusations and still haunts horror fiction today.

The Year of the Witching review explores Alexis Henderson’s haunting gothic horror about prophecy, forbidden woods, and a young woman caught between faith and forbidden power. Immanuelle Moore is raised in a puritanical community, but the Darkwood calls her toward secrets that could unravel everything. Like The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, Henderson’s novel asks how societies decide who wields power — and whether it’s a sacred ancestral calling or a destructive curse.