The Long Low Whistle

Killer VHS #7

by Laurel Hightower

The sound of the whistle that split Patricia’s life in two still haunts her two decades later, its echoes leaving their indelible stamp on everything she does. The rift caused by her father’s unsolved death haunts her, pushing her to ever more dangerous attempts to put his memory to rest. Breaking into mausoleums in the dead of night isn’t how she pictured her life, but she’ll do almost anything to know what happened.

When a group of amateur cryptid hunters shows up in her small town, Trish doesn’t hesitate to take what might be her only chance to find answers, even if they’re searching in the last place she should be. A sealed, abandoned mine; tight underground passages filled with unseen creatures, and impenetrable darkness await the crew, but it’s the only path forward, and Trish won’t leave her father’s legacy buried, delving ever deeper into danger to where that whistle still moans.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Adult

Unknown Binding

First published November 4, 2025

About the author

Laurel Hightower is a bourbon loving native of Lexington, Kentucky. She is the Bram Stoker-nominated author of WHISPERS IN THE DARK, CROSSROADS, BELOW, EVERY WOMAN KNOWS THIS, SILENT KEY, SPIRIT COVEN, and THE DAY OF THE DOOR, and has more than a dozen short fiction stories in print.

Reviews

[Yarik · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Becky Spratford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starred Review in the October 2025 issue of Library Journal

Three Words That Describe This Book: cryptids, claustrophobic, cinematic

I did not mean to make those 3 words alliterative, but it works!

Draft Review:
In the seventh novella in Shortwave Publishing's Killer VHS novella series, Hightower takes readers deep into a Kentucky abandoned mine, delivering on the series promise with a story that is 100% “Goosebumps for Adults.” Trish’s life was forever changed as she waited at the bus stop the morning the emergency whistle from the mine went off and stayed on for days, marking a disaster that killed many, including her father. Now an adult, Trish returns home, looking for closure by entering the mine to find her father’s body. A group of five cryptid hunting podcasters are also in town, chasing the trail of underground goblins, but they are also in possession of a video from the moment the mine disaster happened. Trish joins forces with the podcasters as they sneak into the mine, travel its flooded tunnels, and encounter a monster that is none too happy to see them. Fast-paced, claustrophobic, and visceral, featuring original monsters, superior world-building, and lots of emotion, this is a must read for those who enjoy creature features and underground horror, but it will be especially poignant for those who are drawn to the power of grief horror.

Verdict: Hightower, consistently one of the best authors in the novella format right now, has crafted a cinematic, heart-wrenching, terrifying, and just plain fun horror story, perfect for fans of Whalefall but Kraus, The Luminous Dead by Starling, or Ghost Eaters by Chapman.



This is the seventh entry in the extremely satisfying, scary, and effective Killer VHS novella series from Shortwave Publishing. Each story includes a key moment involving a video recording. Also the series is pitched as Goosebumps for Adutls and this rings very true.

Trish was a little girl when the local mine had a disaster that killed her father, among many other men in the community. For days, the emergency whistle continued to go off. The story opens on that fateful day and then flashes forward 18 years. Trish is an adult. She moved away from town as soon as she could-- to escape the pain of losing her dad. But recently she has returned. She has been breaking into crypts around the outskirts of town, trying to find a way in to the long closed mine.

Simultaneously, a group of 5 cryptid hunter podcasters are in town. They are following a lead about some goblins that are said to be in the area. They meet up with Trish late one night with some interesting seismic data and a snippet of a video from the disaster that killed her father.

And then the story really begins-- the 6 of them are off to figure out what happened that night and to find what is living underground.

This story is fast paced, immersive, and SOOOOOO claustrophobic. The monsters are great, the action perfectly rendered. This is a must read for fans of mine or save horror, cryptic horror, even grief horror because Trish's grief is a big part of this story.

It is surprising and original. How she manages to pack so many extra details which build the backstory, characters, etc... without sacrificing the pacing is what makes this a star.

The point of view moves around as the group gets separated which helps to build the characters.

The set up is important to ground you (pun intended) but then just sit back and let Hightower tell you a nearly perfect mine horror story filled with grief and adventures and monsters!

Goosebumps for Adults is EXACTLY what this is.

For fans of The Luminous Dead by Starling, The Descent by Long, Whalefall by Kraus, and Ghost Eaters by Chapman

Laurel Hightower is consistently one of the best authors in the novella format. Corssroads, which is coming back into print early next year from Shortwave, is still one of the best novellas I have ever read.

[C.J. Daley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, a huge thanks to Shortwave Media for the physical arc. I love the Killer VHS series! And believe it or not, this was a first for me with this author.

This one starts with a hell of an opening. A group of school kids waiting for the bus. What began as a normal morning. Then, the long low whistle, a sound that would reshape their mining town and their entire lives. Patricia, Trish, refused to get on the bus, something telling her her life would never be the same. I imagined that whistle like a klaxon, driving all normalcy, as well as warmth, from their bones. An accident was what it was called. Then as bodies were recovered, all except her father’s, blame started to be placed.

The jump to adulthood kind of took me by surprise, but I really enjoyed the fact that her loss was still the center of her attention. I mean, that is certainly unhealthy, but there is a strength and determination to that too. Perseverance. I just knew that readers were going to get to enter the mine shaft. I just knew it. And hated it, and read it in page-turning fervor. This felt like The Descent mixed with Anaconda and notes of The Chamber of Secrets in this claustrophobic caving story. I also enjoyed that it’s not just a creature feature, it’s urban legend and cryptid and found footage-y investigation with an emotional undertone to the story. I wanted to help Trish find answers, but I really didn’t want to go spelunking to do it. The underwater scenes reminded me a bit of The Cavern by Alister Hodge. Caves, darkness, tight spaces, and water or going beneath water are NOT for me, so this was a perfect horror to get under my skin.

There is a fair bit of brutality here. Dark, bloody, gross descriptions and intense injuries. Venomous, leaking, necrotic tissue. The author wrote some incredibly vivid things into this release. I’m here for it, but my lunch is not. Everything you’d want in a horror.

There’s some great found friendship too, even if it is through trauma bonding. But don’t misunderstand, this is certainly a novel with a body count. Hard fought answers, long kept secrets, and interesting beings too. And I really enjoyed how things tied together.

https://fanfiaddict.com/review-the-lo...

[unstable.books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, Laurel can write the shit out of a story. This is the 7th installment of the Killer VHS series from Shortwave Publishing and to say I was excited it was from Laurel Hightower was an understatement. In this story, we meet Patricia (Trish) who lives in a small mining town and it's residents live in constant fear of hearing the mines emergency whistle. But, when it sounds one random day, Trish knows innately it is going to change everything. This sound still haunts her twenty years later and pushes her to seek the answers she desperately needs to put her fathers memory to rest, no matter how dangerous. Then, a group of amateur cryptid hunters pop up. Trish takes her opportunity to help them as this may be her only chance to find what she needs to know. As the team descends into this sealed off mine, it is soon apparent they are not alone. This book is claustrophobic. The atmosphere is thick with dread and every dark corner seems to harbor some horrific secrets. Hightower's prose is taut and leaves no room to breathe. The reader has to squeeze through tightly enclosed spaces to find the way, along for the ride until the bitter end. Thank you so much to Shortwave Publications for sending me an ARC. You can preorder The Long Low Whistle directly from their website. It publishes November 04, 2025!

[Rebecca White · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was a gut punch from the very first chapter. Hightower had me in tears over characters we didn’t even know yet with how beautiful and heartbreaking her words are.

Somehow the author blends cryptic and grief horror seamlessly while giving us one of the most claustrophobic settings I’ve ever read about.

The anxiety and forbidding throughout every chapter was body numbing and made it hard to put this read down.

Thank you to Shortwave & Hightower for the eARC!

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This was an extremely entertaining and creepy story. I’m not someone who gets claustrophobic, but I genuinely felt it while reading about our characters trapped in this water-filled mine searching for a creature that may or may not exist. It was tense and frightening, and I wasn’t sure if they would make it out alive. I was also interested in what kind of creatures they might encounter and the descriptions throughout were on point.

I liked our main character, but the rest of the cast did lack depth. Still, I was so entertained by the story that I didn’t mind. Even though this was a short read, I actually think it could have been longer because I wanted more of the lore. All in all, this was a scary, action-packed story and one of the best from the Killer VHS Series.

[Billy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It would be days before the long, low whistle fell silent. In its absence, the silence throbbed, but for Trish, its warning carved a pathway in her brain.”

Do you have a favorite cryptid?

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that there are animals out there that have managed to stay hidden from the world. Maybe smarter than the average animal or bigger, but at the very least, they take what you think you know about the natural world and turn in on its head.

You might think you know what to expect going into The Long Low Whistle. Maybe something along the lines of the Descent? But I think it’s fair to say you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the direction the story takes.

This was my first book by Laurel Hightower and she did not disappoint. One of my pet peeves is characters that fall into simple tropes in horror stories: the jock, the nerd, the whatever. But the cast of characters in this novella are far from simple tropes. I found myself not only really liking them, but being surprised at their decisions some times as well as what happens to them.

I’m also a fan of creature features and grief horror, and there’s something interesting about how this book combines the two, giving our protagonist Trish’s pain a physical manifestation.

Another great entry in the Killer VHS series from Shortwave and one that has made me excited to read more from Laurel Hightower.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Give me all the creature features!

The 7th Killer VHS installment is not to be missed. An old mine with something sinister lurking in its dark places? Yes, please!

At one point, I had to put the book aside for a bit because I got so freaked out that I became claustrophobic. That is some genius visceral writing.

Highly recommended to all you creepy crawly lovers out there.

[The Blog Without a Face · Rating 3 out of 5]

BWAF Score: 6/10

TL;DR: A grief-fueled, coal-country crawl that splices cryptid hunting with blue-collar disaster lore. It lands most when it stares straight into loss and corporate neglect, and when the tunnels feel like a living thing that wants you as a snack. A sturdy, tense read for fans of myth-soaked, low-light horror.

Laurel Hightower has built a reputation for horror about the people who carry ghosts in their ribcages while the world keeps working the night shift. This one fits cleanly in that lane, with a heroine shaped by a mine collapse and a town that remembers every rumor. Hightower’s Kentucky roots show in the textures: the whistle everyone pretended was quaint until it wasn’t, the memorialized shaft no one will let stay quiet, and the bureaucratic shrug that turns tragedy into paperwork.

The plot is simple and sharp. Patricia “Trish” Tichner grows up in the shadow of a catastrophic mine disaster that takes her father. Years later, a leaked safety video and a traveling cryptid podcast crew yank the scab. Trish wants answers. The podcasters want proof. The mine wants company. What stands in the way is sealed steel, rising water, and whatever moves when the earth coughs. The setting is rural Kentucky; the motifs are warning sirens, mausoleums with bad ideas carved into their foundations, and a long habit of telling the living to hush while the dead keep talking.

Hightower deftly braids three energies: survivor’s obsession, internet-age monster chasing, and old-region superstition that never really left the hollers. The standout beats are specific and cinematic. The opening sequence where the steam whistle becomes a dirge and the kids at the bus stop hold their breath like it might hold the mine. The graveyard spelunking through a mausoleum’s ossuary cutout that abruptly drops Trish into black water. The midnight office raid for the original tape, with the weary MSHA lifer catching them, raising a hand, and letting the alarm go silent like even he knows answers are owed. And the motel-room viewing of the footage, where the screen shivers, the rushing comes like weather, and the “is that water?” moment hits your stomach like ice. Each scene serves the same thesis: you can seal a shaft, but you cannot seal consequence.

This is lean blue-collar horror with a flashlight-beam sentence rhythm. Hightower keeps the camera close to Trish’s senses: itchy lungs, buzzing fillings, cold river panic. Dialogue moves the plot without turning into podcast banter, and the podcasting crew read like actual weirdos with day jobs, not exposition puppets. Pacing is brisk in the right places, patient when suspense matters. A few turns land a little clean, and the creature discourse sometimes leans on familiar goblin-outline lore, but the choices mostly honor the world. Prose wise, the book lives in verbs and nerves, not purple vibe-clouds, and that makes the shocks feel earned instead of ornamental.

Thematically, The Long Low Whistle is about complicity and the stories we tell to survive. There is the obvious corporate negligence thread, where safety culture becomes a slogan only the dead uphold. There is grief as geography, with Trish mapping mausoleums the way some folks map hiking trails. And there is the monstrous as feedback loop: something old in the ground finds our tunnels useful and our bodies convenient. Body immersion equals loss of self, but here it is also inheritance. You go under to bring someone back, and you come up a different species of person. The aftertaste is miner’s coffee and cold iron, and a question that lingers: did we make the monster by digging, or did the monster make us dig so it could eat easier?

In a year crowded with grief-driven horror and internet-native paranormal sleuthing, Hightower’s take stands out for its labor-conscious backbone and the way it lets haunt and hunt overlap without turning into camp. A solid, atmospheric, blue-collar cryptid crawl that does not reinvent the genre but delivers tense, believable scares and a sharp human core. The whistle may be low, but it carries.

Read if you crave rust and river-dark claustrophobia, plus a cryptid plot that treats folklore like a local union you have to respect.

Skip if you need your monsters fully explicated with a field guide and Latin name.

[Jess Theworddegree · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pitched to me as ‘Goosebumps for adults’ and that’s exactly what this one was.
The Long Low Whistle by Laurel Hightower is the latest in the @shortwavebooks Killer VHS Series and the first one I picked up.
It was so fun- like The Descent X Jurassic Park. It does exactly what it says - it’s a movie in book form. It’s visual, it’s fantastic, it’s claustrophobic and I loved it.

The lovely team at shortwave included this review copy in my order and I’m so thankful!

[Terry and dog · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really intense, and wild , angry, adventure underground in old mine passages. I loved the action and the history. The creatures were cool, although I would have liked to know more about some of them, that kind of got forgotten about towards the end. I did think the fight towards the end was a bit short, but I really did enjoy the whole atmosphere and it was a good, gory, fun fast read.

[Justin Soderberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The seventh installment in the Killer VHS series from Shortwave Publishing, The Long Low Whistle by Laurel Hightower, is a suspenseful claustrophobic cryptid horror tale that might be the best in the series so far.

The sound of the whistle that split Patricia’s life in two still haunts her two decades later, its echoes leaving their indelible stamp on everything she does. The rift caused by her father’s unsolved death haunts her, pushing her to ever more dangerous attempts to put his memory to rest. Breaking into mausoleums in the dead of night isn’t how she pictured her life, but she’ll do almost anything to know what happened.

When a group of amateur cryptid hunters shows up in her small town, Trish doesn’t hesitate to take what might be her only chance to find answers, even if they’re searching in the last place she should be. A sealed, abandoned mine; tight underground passages filled with unseen creatures, and impenetrable darkness await the crew, but it’s the only path forward, and Trish won’t leave her father’s legacy buried, delving ever deeper into danger to where that whistle still moans.

The opening chapters of The Long Low Whistle are already terrifying enough and this is only the setup for the story itself. Patricia's experience decades earlier are horrifying on their own, but that is just the beginning. Laurel Hightower purposefully grounds us in raw grief horror, then spins it into a horrifying claustrophobic cryptid tale that never lets up.

Dealing with life's unexplained tragedies is hard enough, but facing those tragedies while being surrounded by even more of the unexplained is harder. The blend of cryptid horror and grief trauma made for a truly spectacular novella. At times, I couldn't even explain why I felt so on edge and that's rare. I found myself terrified to turn the page. From the first sentence to the final period, Hightower had me hooked. t was hard to find a good place to want to take a break.

Hightower slides us into the world of Killer VHS with one simple clip from the day Patricia's father dies, an eerie and effective entry point within the confines of the Killer VHS series. This one clip launches us into a suspenseful, action-packed nightmare full of the unknown. These Killer VHS stories are truly Goosebumps for adults, but with a tighter, more complex thread that weaves them all together. It's a tough balance to pull off, yet each new author manages to find a way to pull it off.

The Long Low Whistle is a triumphal work of horror writing that kept me on edge from beginning to end. Laurel Hightower blends emotional horrifying moments with terrifying cryptid scares that made me want to keep the lights on. This is the kind of story you might not want to put down until you have finished the final paragraph. It's a haunting, unforgettable read that still has me reeling.

The Long Low Whistle - Killer VHS #7 drops on November 4, 2025 from Shortwave Publishing.

NOTE: We received an advance copy of The Long Low Whistle from the publisher. Opinions are our own.

[Adam Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Long Low Whistle is a triumph of sustained suspense, with the added flavor of grief horror that Laurel Hightower does so well, grief both long term and in real time.

The only thing that I can remotely compare this reading experience to is watching “Aliens” for the first time when I was 8 or 9 years old and the absolute anxiety the face hugger and radar scenes caused.

Except this books does it for over a hundred pages straight with little to no lulls at all. I was fighting taking a break from reading because my blood pressure was so high and having to finish immediately because I was so worried about what was going to happen.

Most books need trigger warnings because of the type of content, this book needs a trigger warning that it may cause panic attacks and stress induced nausea.

I really don’t even want to get into what the source of the fear is in this book, because I didn’t get any warnings and had to just deal with it myself, so go in blind and leave traumatized in the best possible way.

Thank you so much for this ARC (even if I feel like I need some medication to come down after reading it).

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to do the VHS-nostalgia bit. I don't know if there's some meta-instruction going out where you need to riff off a movie for your book in this series, but there are obvious links to, say, The Descent, plus your favorite cave movie, plus Anaconda, plus a few other surprises later on. Enjoyable story, with some emotional depth, and a generally convincing and lived-in sense of the environment. Plus an effectively claustrophobic atmosphere, with clammy underground/underwater terrors, and some bits that don't get fully explained and add to the atmosphere.

I would say that, as compared to Cunningham's The Abyss, there's much less of a local sense of life here, less texture, which feels mandatory in a mining novel, since mine communities themselves occupy such a small but powerful narrative/political corner of contemporary America. That is invoked more than evoked, to the extent that the novel deals with that question at all of how the local economy works, or how traditional mining has been in the community, or what the protagonist has done with her life since the opening mine collapse (and where). I get that the novella form forecloses certain kinds of explorations, but a few of them in this vein seem to me to be necessary in a book with this setting. Huh, feel like I'm talking myself down a bit, to maybe like 3.6 or something, using a grading scale as precise and scientific as the one I deploy in class. I think that's fair, though; this is crisp, creepy, and vivid...and it could ground its story more strongly.

[Ashley Taglieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Bloody Valentine meets The Descent ... 3.5 stars.

Hightower's writing certainly delivers the emotional and heart pounding goods, but unfortunately she writes herself into a story corner, where she’s forced to use outside help to keep the characters alive and to provide the exposition about what exactly are the creatures that are taking out their little group quite efficiently and quickly. Sometimes you can make a creature way too lethal.

There is also the issue with the multiple perspectives in the middle of the novel, which are crudely done as you lurch from one group to the other with no falling action and picking up in the middle of the other scene. Almost like the reader is switching between cable channels and thus misses part of each story. The, just as the story was picking up and getting entertaining again, Hightower just ends the novel in such a lackluster manner that is a bit too much wave the magic wand and everything is suddenly resolved way for my reading tastes. Really the novel needed to be longer to drive home the emotional scenes and reduce the amount of exposition time needed in the middle. It felt more like a movie script than a novel in that way where Hightower almost seemed to have a page limit and had to cram the story in. Overall, it is a strong entry in the VHS series even with a few story and ending problems.

[Mindy Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

when trish is a little girl, there's a horrific accident in the mine her father works in and, though his body is never recovered, he's declared dead - and assumed to have been the cause of the accident; as an adult, trish, still wanting to find proof that her dad wasn't to blame for the tragedy, finds a way into the mine, where she encounters things far more dangerous than a cave-in. this felt like a movie i'd have come across on cable in the middle of the night as a teenager while staying in a hotel (we were far too poor for cable at home) and stayed up way too late to finish with the volume nearly muted so i wouldn't wake anyone else up. it was sad, it was intense, it was anxiety-inducing, it was fast paced. i had a good time, but i thought the ending felt strangely abrupt, which was unsatisfying and took away from my enjoyment a bit. bruv this series is so fun. if you still haven't read any of it yet idk what the god damn hell you're waiting for. 3/5.

thank you thank you alan/shortwave for the arc <3

[Jody Blanchette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my favorite book in the Killer VHS Series. It was terrifying the whole way through! Plus, it has all the things I’m afraid of: the dark, tight spaces, and monsters! Freaking terrifying.
Trish is on a mission to find out how her father really died in the mine. We see from the beginning that this isn’t going to be an easy thing to accomplish. She’s going back into the mine. It’s not safe. Dread..lots of dread. She meets some people and they join her. Great, more people to worry about. Yup. It’s a freaking disaster. Not only is the environment they are exploring dangerous, but there are creatures lurking that kill. You know it’s not going to end well for anyone.
I flew through this book. Maybe I’m one of those trauma porn junkies who slows down to see a car wreck. I was all in. This is top notch horror in a tiny package.

[Josh Buyarski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hightower is the master of grief horror and cryptids!

These killer VHS series books from shortwave really give you the deal that you’ve picked up one of those glorious B-horror movies from your video rental store.

Trisha is trying to find out what happened to her father in a mining accident that caused the whole shit down of a factory 20 years ago, when she meets a group of cryptid hunters going looking to get into the connected mines.

You get a lot of feels for such a short book.

If you like cryptids, caves, and a touch of heartbreaking grief this is for you!

[Bookish Satty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating - 3.5 Stars!

I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first half because it had most of the action scenes in it. Didn't like or care for any of the characters but I did like the lore behind the cryptid.

[Jessie-Punkersfictionreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another great installment in the VHS horror series from shortwave publishing. If you love creature feature horror then this one’s for you.
3/5 Stars

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an arc copy in exchange for honest review.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was gripping from the first page!

[Kylie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down, such a fun read! This book is perfect for readers who want a short action packed creature feature.

[Deanne Rupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4.

[Jana Earls · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

[AllyP Reads Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun horror book! So glad it didn't drag on forever like most books do.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this a lot - fast-paced, tense and mysterious. It felt like it ended too abruptly and left me with a lot of questions that it had seemed like it was going to provide answers to.