Novels like Dark Fairy Tales: Modern Day
Books Chinese readers most often put in the same booklists as Dark Fairy Tales: Modern Day, best match first.
- 51 Back When I Was a Folk Mage 我做民间法师的时候 I entered the trade at fourteen and spent six years as a folk ritual master. In the south, this line of work is called “spirit arts.” I watched it go from thriving to decline. This year marks my sixth year, and I’ve finally left the trade behind. This work isn’t as glamorous as it looks. We’re all rats crawling out of the sewers, and the bar for entry keeps getting lower. I’m writing these stories down now as a way to remember those days. 195Reads—Score10414d adds
- 52 The Person Under the Bed, the Eye on the Wall, the Peeping Tom Outside the Door 床下的人，墙上的眼，门外的窥 The person beneath the bed, the eye on the wall, the peeping outside the door 2Reads—Score—14d adds
- 53 Tales of Folk Ghosts 民间鬼故事说 Each story stands on its own. Leave a comment about what you'd like to read, then pick whichever ones you like. There's no need to read them in order. Some parts are bound to be less well-written, but others may catch your interest, so browse around. 69Reads—Score—14d adds
- 54 You Want Me to Catch Ghosts? 你让我去抓鬼？ My name is Lin Fan. I'm twenty-two, and I graduated with a college diploma in marketing. While other graduates had job offers in hand and were charging ahead, I graduated straight into a pit of misery. I was two months behind on rent, my pockets were emptier than my face was clean, and my only possession was a beat-up electric scooter that clanked at the slightest touch and looked ready to fall apart at any moment. Five yuan per delivery. I raced around in the wind and sun, but I couldn't plug t 41Reads—Score21514d adds
- 55 A Collection of Spine-Chilling Stories 惊骇故事集 The world is in turmoil, with strange and wondrous things hiding everywhere. Mysteries deep in the starry sky remain unsolved, while shocking cases unfold around a small town. Science fiction and suspense perform a double act, as Lovecraftian murders rise with the tide. The secrets in people’s hearts are hard to fathom. Just wait and see this collection unleash its waves of terror. The horror here is bizarre and grotesque, not some childish little scare. In an abandoned village shrine, a white- 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 56 A Collection of Horror Stories 恐怖小集 The gods are watching from three feet above your head, and even the darkest places will eventually see the light! This book collects stories from around us that will make you think twice and send chills down your spine. One short story a day, guaranteed to cure your little bouts of insomnia. This is Horror Shorts. I'm Strawberry Duorou. See you there! 1.2kReads—Score—14d adds
- 57 Notes on Strange Folk Tales 民间诡事札记 The countryside hides the strangest legends and lays bare the truest depths of the human heart. A single red embroidered shoe beneath an old pagoda tree holds a grievance and a hatred left unspoken. A strange peddler knocking at the door in the dead of night carries no ordinary goods in his pack, only old stories frosted over with time. A bronze mirror rising from an ancient well can reflect ghosts, but not the depths of the human heart... These curious tales scattered across bustling streets an 67Reads—Score—14d adds
- 58 The Great Tomb of Ailao Mountain 哀牢山大墓 The Great Tomb of Ailao Mountain 4Reads—Score—14d adds
- 59 Sacrificial Red: Strange Tales from a Deep-Mountain Base Station 祭红·深山基站·诡事录 Offering Red: Strange Tales from a Remote Mountain Relay Station 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 60 After Losing My Memory, One Terrifying Ghostly Incident After Another 失忆后恐怖鬼事接连不断 (An alternate world. No tired tropes, no invincible protagonist, no plagiarism, entirely original. Any similarities will be changed immediately. Comedy, deadpan humor, no official pairing, a touch of horror, and characters with sound values.) Accidentally drawn into a paranormal incident: a girl whose mouth has been sealed shut, the walking dead with no eyes to see, monsters covered in tumors that crawl along the ground... Is the world turned upside down, or is this an elaborate hoax carefully s 5Reads—Score—14d adds
- 61 A Horror Story Lives Next Door 你的隔壁住着恐怖故事 Have you ever noticed how horror lurks everywhere in your everyday life? Listen. Listen closely... Where does horror come from? Nothing is scarier than reality. The unknown parts of our real lives, and the anxieties and desires we feel about them, are the greatest sources of horror. 11.6kReads9.4Score1.8k14d adds
- 62 From the Start, I Received a Letter from a Dead Man 开局收到一封死人来信 No romance, no harem, no cultivation The year he graduated from university, Ji Yao received a letter from his grandmother, who had been dead for six years. Five kinds of insurance and a housing fund, twenty thousand a month, and just six hours of work a day. Could there really be a job like that? What he didn’t expect was that, after the letter arrived, one misfortune after another would befall him… A train hijacked by ghosts, an old woman made of candle wax crawling out of a flame, a bizarre 7Reads—Score—14d adds
- 63 Tales of Ghosts and Soul-Soothing 安魂鬼事录 [Two male leads + fated reincarnation + supernatural suspense + tragic romance + mind-blowing twists] I'm just a soul-soother, yet the Tianxing Leixiao Sect saddled me with a “hot potato”: Chen Wushe, a man with countless secrets. And every one of Chen Wushe's secrets is tied to me. To solve the mystery, I have no choice but to take Chen Wushe on a journey to find the Pojun Blade. The soul of the Demon Lord Chongxiao is hidden in the strangely restored Pojun Blade! And the Tianxing Leixiao Sect 88Reads—Score—14d adds
- 64 Soul Collection, Volume Two 集魂录二 A pair of golden eyes, a whip, and a book. Bearing a new mission, Yao Yinsheng sets out to find a secret realm, a place that inspires longing yet no one has ever explored. The Soul-Gathering Record has returned to her hands, more mysterious than ever. Greater challenges and darker sides of human nature begin to emerge. Where, exactly, does hell lie? 20Reads—Score—14d adds
- 65 Frightening Folk Tales of Ghosts and Monsters 民间吓人的鬼怪故事 This book collects folk tales about ghosts and monsters from China and around the world, both ancient and modern. They include deeply moving love stories, myths where good and evil are repaid in kind, and eerie tales that will leave you trembling with fear. We hope you enjoy them. This story is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual events or people is purely coincidental. 24Reads—Score—14d adds
- 66 Infinite Horror Instances 无限惊悚副本 [Infinite Flow] [No Female Lead] [Mild Horror] [Not a Power Fantasy] [Not Invincible] Players tackle horror instances to gain power and wealth. No one who enters this place is kind. Each is the embodiment of one of the Ten Deadly Sins, with unfathomable darkness hidden in their hearts. But what awaits them at the end? What kind of ending could be worthy of all the turmoil and suffering they’ve endured along the way? I don’t know either. Perhaps the answer lies at the end of the book. 117Reads—Score—14d adds
- 67 Horror Urban Legends: An Unspeakable Fear 惊悚怪谈：不可名状的恐惧 Tomato Original, Mystery and Imagination, Supernatural Horror [Horror + Dark Style] [A collection of uncanny short stories, fear returns, Lovecraftian horror] [The gaze of an unknown presence. Good and evil lie in the human heart] Have you ever had a moment in everyday life that sent a chill down your spine? Perhaps it was hearing a cat cry while walking alone at night, the sound of marbles rolling across the floor upstairs, or a shadow glimpsed from the corner of your eye... Story One: Cat Syn 108Reads—Score—14d adds
- 68 A Ghost Knocks at Midnight 深夜鬼敲门 A collection of 40 traditional ghost stories, featuring all kinds of folk tales about ghosts and monsters. A rare collection of supernatural legends. 714Reads8.9Score—14d adds
- 69 Girls’ Dorm Rule Horror: Survive! 女寝规则怪谈：请活下去！ The Dormitory Girls’ Rules of the Strange: Survive! 102Reads—Score314d adds
- 70 The Truth About Earth and the Moon 地月真相 The Truth About Earth and the Moon —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 71 The Forgotten, the Unwritten 被遗忘的人，不被书写的人 [A collection of linked stories. Read them one at a time, or follow the overarching plot.] There are always so many people in this world who are forgotten, whose stories are never told. The protagonist is a law-school underachiever who has failed the bar exam twice. Unable to find work, he turns to writing mystery novels just to make ends meet. By a twist of fate, he becomes entangled in one strange and baffling case after another. As he and his companions peel away layer upon layer of mystery a 10Reads—Score—14d adds
- 72 The Water Ghost 水鬼 Water Ghost 8Reads—Score—14d adds
- 73 A Collection of Horror Stories from the Yin-Yang Spirit Medium 阴阳领仙人之恐怖故事合集 Have you ever been to any of these places? Abandoned hospitals, school dormitories, morgues, funeral homes, factories, shops that make paper offerings... There are many places like these along life's journey. Perhaps all sorts of unclean things are right beside you, and you have no idea. This book has seven volumes, each with 100 stories, taking you into a world unlike any other... Readers from every corner of the world, if you have the courage, come on in! 2Reads—Score—14d adds
- 74 Tales of the Uncanny in Jiangnan 江南诡事录 I was born in an old town in Jiangnan, and from childhood I loved hanging around beneath the eaves of the old teahouse. I would listen as Zhou the Blind sipped his strong tea and spun yarn after yarn, recounting the strange tales he had heard over most of his life. Half of what this book records came from the stories passed by word of mouth beneath the teahouse storyteller’s gavel; the other half came from what I saw and heard as I grew up wandering the streets and alleys of Jiangnan. Now the te 13Reads—Score314d adds
- 75 The Horror Face Mask 恐怖面膜 Never buy cosmetics from social-media resellers without thinking twice. Some of them can cost you your life! Soap made from human fat, face masks made from human skin: let me expose the horrors lurking among online resellers... 68Reads6.4Score—14d adds
- 76 The Soul Collection Record 集魂录 Yao Yinsheng had never seen her grandfather, not even once. But she had been able to see spirits since childhood, and after witnessing the Black and White Impermanence spirits seize a soul when she was eight, she began having strange dreams. In them, an old man would often say to her kindly, “I’m your grandfather!” Regardless of whether Yao Yinsheng wanted him to, the old man taught her all sorts of things in her dreams. Then, when she turned eighteen, he suddenly produced a booklet and asked wi 221Reads—Score—14d adds
- 77 365 Nights of Corpse Tales from the Gorge 峡江尸话365夜 The poorer and more desolate the land, the stranger the tales; deep in the gorges along the river, there are stories of the supernatural. My hometown lies in the mountains of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, in an area where several ethnic minorities live together. Before Liberation, it was a backward wilderness beyond the reach of government control. Over the long course of history, many baffling things happened here. After I was born, I heard plenty of chilling tales of strange happeni 120Reads8.0Score—14d adds
- 78 My Roommate Is Two Thousand Years Old 舍友两千岁 Zhong Helian discovers that her roommate, with whom she shares an apartment, isn't alive at all, but is a two-thousand-year-old zombie. After going through one perilous adventure after another, she gradually comes to understand him better. Did they meet by chance, or are they bound by the karma of a past life? The world has always had a hidden side. Perhaps some demons and spirits are living right beside us. 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 79 404 Midnight Radio: The Underworld Frequency 404午夜电台之幽冥频率 [Mystery★Science Fiction★Supernatural★Wild Imagination★Social Commentary★A mind-bending story in every chapter] Have you ever been tuning through the radio frequencies at midnight when you suddenly heard a station that doesn't exist? The 404 Midnight Radio: Ghost Frequency broadcasts only on FM 404 MHz. It's a channel that doesn't exist on any broadcast spectrum and can't be received with ordinary equipment. You can't search for it or subscribe to it. You can only “stumble upon” it. The host, Li 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 80 A Collection of Dark, Twisted Fantasies 黑病脑洞合集 This is a short story collection. “Dark” means a character turns evil, and “sick” means an obsessive, possessive love interest. In short, all the stories contain one or both of these elements to some degree. If that’s not your thing, please don’t click in. Content warnings: 1. Second-person point of view, possibly with some third-person narration. 2. Includes forced love, characters turning evil, possessive love, and women disguising themselves as men. There may also be multiple male leads, mea 998Reads7.0Score10514d adds
- 81 Genesis: Reboot 创世纪·重启 Genesis: Reboot —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 82 A Collection of Folk Ghost Stories 民间鬼怪故事合集 The faint of heart should stay away. This collection of ghost stories is all based on things I’ve seen and heard myself. Ghosts and monsters really do exist in this world. Call it superstition, or call it mysteries science has yet to explain. (Better to believe they exist than to assume they don’t.) 94Reads—Score10414d adds
- 83 Chronicles of the Supernatural 异灵实录 At three in the morning, check the list of the dead; let the ferryman guide your soul. Chinese horror stories, spirit-summoning, death notes. Some things can be explained, while other feelings defy description. A terror that makes you shudder as you think it over rises from the depths of your heart. After reading these 99 stories, you'll find yourself questioning your own life. There's a rumor that you should never stay in the last room on the ground floor of a hotel. The author once traveled ou 24Reads9.2Score—14d adds
- 84 Strange Tales, Volume 1 奇闻诡事录1 This is a collection of folk tales about the uncanny, strange accounts from across the land. Each chapter is a complete story, each tale a separate supernatural mystery, revealing the mysteries of yin and yang, folk taboos, and the obsessions of the dead. You never know when a casual remark might draw the attention of spirits lurking in the wilderness; when an old object you pick up might hold the memory of a tragic death; or when an everyday habit might already have crossed a forbidden boundary 20Reads—Score—14d adds
- 85 Zhang Laosan Tells Stories 张老三讲故事 Long, long ago, a strange calamity struck Kaoshan Village, deep in the old forests of Northeast China. Hunter Li Dashan kept watch over a coffin on a snowy night and encountered a weasel spirit that spoke like a human, asking him to give it a title. One careless remark from him exposed a bloody secret from twenty years earlier. When the statue of the Yellow Immortal on the ancestral hall’s altar split with bloody cracks on the night of a lunar eclipse, when a golden-haired weasel burst from a pe 8Reads—Score—14d adds
- 86 Grandma’s Ghost Stories 听奶奶讲灵异故事 I was raised by my grandmother. The bedtime stories I heard as a child were all supernatural events she had experienced herself. They scared me so badly I was afraid to go to the bathroom, but I could never resist listening to the end. What I didn't know was that the more stories I heard, the more likely they were to come true, and that I had plenty of secrets of my own. 152Reads6.7Score—14d adds
- 87 The Secrets of Bletchley Manor 布莱切利庄园的秘密 The Secret of Bletchley Manor 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 88 Blood at Jimen Gate 棘门血 Blood at Jimen 2Reads—Score—14d adds
- 89 Marks of Guilt 罪痕 Is there always evil behind every crime? Real cases reveal the truth about human nature. [Crime Investigation] [Not a Web Novel] [Not a Wish-Fulfillment Story] Strange and major cases, from human flesh takeout and a cat corpse found in a belly to a body hanging in Xian Lake, are uncovered one by one across the country. 2kReads8.7Score22314d adds
- 90 My Funeral Clothing Shop Only Takes Orders from Ghosts 我开的寿衣店，只接鬼订单 The day Zhang Zaizai took over the funeral clothing shop his grandfather left behind, he discovered it wasn’t an ordinary funeral business at all. The ledger was an order system for the underworld, the paperweight was a soul-pinning nail that kept vicious ghosts at bay, and even the “New Order” alerts from the delivery app came from “Mr. Li in Bed 3 of the morgue.” “Ding! Order accepted. Task: Deliver a peachwood comb to the Midnight Hair-Combing Ghost. Rule: Do not meet her eyes while combing h —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 91 Tales of the Unextinguished Lights 不熄灯异闻录 More chilling than ghost stories, these tales recount the uncanny happenings secretly passed down by our elders! Children will be too scared to walk alone at night after hearing them, and adults will want to pay their respects to their ancestors. This is a book of taboos that the village elders tried to keep from being written! This collection of short stories features folk horror, supernatural mysteries, thrillers, legends, strange tales, and fantasy from across China and around the world. 17Reads—Score214d adds
- 92 The Soul-Summoning Lantern 招魂灯 The Soul-Summoning Lantern 20Reads—Score—14d adds
- 93 The Great Song’s Hour of Peril 大宋危局时辰 The Song Faces a Crisis: During peace talks between the Song and Liao, a Western Xia assassination group massacres the diplomatic mission. The gold intended for the negotiations mysteriously disappears, and the two states wage war for four years, leaving a hundred thousand dead. A Vice Minister of Rites, a young general, and a mysterious swordsman join forces to investigate, only to discover that a traitor is hiding at the emperor’s side. The gold never left the Great Song! One person’s selfish 8Reads—Score—14d adds
- 94 I Was Five That Year, and I Flattened a Grave 那年我五岁，平了一座坟 I Was Five That Year When I Leveled a Tomb —Reads—Score—14d adds
- 95 Delusions: The Book of Ghostly Grudges 诡妄：鬼怨书 [Two heroines + Lovecraftian horror + thrills + madness + mutual devotion + smart leads] A meteorite resembling a ball of flesh crashes into Earth, bringing with it a god from another planet: the Mad God Mo Shanshan. The arrival of this uninvited guest awakens supernatural evils that have slumbered for ages, and a bizarre, terrifying feast of “god-making” is about to begin. 80Reads—Score—14d adds
- 96 A Dark, Daring Joke Every Night 每晚一个试胆黑段子 A reporter learns that a remote Miao village preserves an ancient paper-cutting craft. He tracks down an old woman who knows the technique and offers her a high price for a paper cutout. She agrees to cut out a chicken. Unwilling to demonstrate in front of him, she goes inside carrying a live chicken. A few minutes later, she comes back out holding a blood-red paper cutout. Terrifyingly, a blood-soaked chicken suddenly bursts out of the room. It has no skin... Dozens of bone-chilling horror stor 167Reads8.8Score5414d adds
- 97 60 Chilling Stories from Real Life 来自现实的60个惊悚故事 (Purely written by hand, not AI) Schemes! Poisoning! Possession! Framing... evil spirits! Returning from the dead! Ghosts! Curses... Terrifying and chilling stories based on real events, showing you the things that lurk in the dark world! Every story is a horror short drama! 21.3kReads8.9Score2k14d adds
- 98 The Departure That Year 那一年的离去 The Day They Left 1Reads—Score—14d adds
- 99 Ghosts in Pieces 散装见鬼 Do you believe there are ghosts in this world? I think that question is as impossible to answer as whether there are dragons in this world. The answer you hear most often is: Believe in them, and they exist. Don’t believe in them, and they don’t. But if you ask me, my answer is simple: Yes! Not because I believe, but because I can see them. Of course, I wasn’t able to see them from birth. It all goes back to the strange experience I had when I was six... 23Reads—Score—14d adds
- 100 The Vengeful Ghost Curse 怨诡咒 (Traditional supernatural horror + No System + Not a power fantasy + Deduction + Suspense) My coworker died. He died in his own bathtub. By the time the police arrived at his home, his corpse had already begun to rot and stink. His limbs had been gnawed down to the bone, and the coroner found undigested flesh in his stomach. That very night, I received a WeChat message from my dead coworker. It said I was next... 19.3kReads8.6Score1.4k14d adds
