Publication Date: September 29, 2026
Dive into the chilling depths of Latiné horror with this groundbreaking anthology, edited by Bram Stoker Award winner Cynthia Pelayo, where each story reimagines immigration, colonization, faith, and folklore as the fears we inherit and carry across borders and generations.
Something followed us home. It crawled in with our prayers, slipped into our beds, watched from mirrors, waited in water, and learned our names.
Gathering chilling work from some of today’s most acclaimed Latiné voices, this horror anthology moves through haunted households, brutal landscapes, sacred spaces turned dangerous, and bodies claimed by forces both ancient and intimate. The dead murmur behind locked doors. Bones rebuild themselves under merciless suns. Love becomes a doorway for demonic hunger. Blood, devotion, and memory intertwine as the past presses back with teeth.
Something Followed Us Home is an unnerving, visceral, and impossible-to-shake collection that proves that what is carried forward does not remain quiet, and what follows us rarely leaves without taking something in return.
Featuring stories by: Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, Zoraida Córdova, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Mariana Enriquez, Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro, Xochitl Gonzalez, Leopoldo Goût, Ananda Lima, Juan Martinez, Mónica Ojeda, Daniel José Older, Cynthia Pelayo, Lilliam Rivera, Diana Rodriguez Wallach, Alex Segura
Just in time for spooky season, Something Followed Us Home is a chilling anthology of stories penned by some of today’s up-and-coming Latiné writers.
Edited by Cynthia Pelayo, these seventeen stories run the gamut of thriller, horror, mystery, and historical brooding that speak to the borderless nature of fear. But it also very much excavates those dark caverns of terror from the Latiné experience and perspective. Central themes that surface relate to the consequences of colonization, diaspora, and immigration, and how faith and folklore are tools that characters use to make sense of the senseless.
In “My Boyfriend,” Gerardo Sámano Córdova writes a tongue-in-cheek tale of Isidro and his possessed boyfriend, Felipe. Isidro, bored by Felipe’s “normal” side, wishes to see more of the demon inside Felipe, no matter the cost. “I hold hope Felipe will learn to enjoy his demon, let it loose once in a while without regret.”
In the feral and fierce “The Return of La Muelona,” Carolina Flórez-Cerchiaro takes readers to the small, haunted village of Santa Elenita del Mar, where the “ghost of the Spanish conquerors still lingered in the cracked facades of the town’s old houses…” and the curse of La Muelona frightens the few remaining villagers. When another seventeen-year-old girl resists her fate to be married to the plantation owner’s son, she and Isabel will meet and hatch their own plan for vengeance…and freedom.
Not all stories are equally interesting, and some of them require a high tolerance for magical realism, such as “Pomelo,” which asks readers to entertain the notion of a grapefruit tree giving birth to a man who transforms into an angel. But the authors who do turn out their tales in the finery of magical realism do so with artful expertise.
While most stories dig into the headier themes of imperialism, conquest, and gendered violence and rage, a couple are mysterious enough to leave the reader puzzling…what exactly did I just read? However, they are ably curated by Pelayo, who herself contributes her own story, the poignant “El Jibaro De Puerto Rico.” In this tale, a grandfather—who is also a spiritual medium—lives with his granddaughter, Victoria, as they prepare for “the last misa.” This is a table reading where the living can speak with the dead. What they see is the heavy hand of American territorial ambition and its effects on the people of Puerto Rico. The story ends with one of the anthology’s rare twists.
Something Followed Us Home offers up an eerie harvest of Latiné horror that hooks and cooks on a variety of levels.
Cynthia Pelayo is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago, and The Shoemaker’s Magician. In addition to writing genre-blending novels that incorporate fairy-tale, mystery, detective, crime, and horror elements, Pelayo has written numerous short stories, including the collection Lotería, and the poetry collection Crime Scene. The recipient of the 2021 International Latino Book Award, she holds a master of fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her family.
