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Phantom Constellations
Phantom constellations are all around us. Our lives. Our loves. All our relationships... all are phantoms. All only as real as we make them.
Are you seeing what you think you are seeing?
Are the connections that we make, objectively true? Or are they products of our minds, assigning meaning and sense, where there is none?
The stars in the sky exist, unaffected by how we how we choose to categorize them. The constellations are phantoms; the shapes we give them only as real as we make them.
This is a book of stories of haunted people, ghosts, and the Phantom Constellations all around them, bravely--and sometimes blindly--traversing the phantasmagoric happenings and psychological challenges in situations full of danger, uncertainty, grief, and tragedy, alongside a sense of hope, longing, mystery, and wonder.
Appearing for the first time here are four never before published stories written exclusively for the collection along with ten more of Braum’s tales including from the Shivers anthology series and a wealth of hard-to-find publications from around the world.
Like no other author of short fiction today, Daniel Braum communicates a sub-text in his writing that is as deeply emotionally affecting as it is disturbing. There is an ache hiding behind the words, revealing itself just enough to resonate with the reader before disappearing into the velocity of the story. PHANTOM CONSTELLATIONS is Daniel Braum’s fifth full short story collection of dark, strange tales, exploring the metamorphic tension between the supernatural and the psychological. Each of these stories, set in locations around the corner and around the world, evokes the Twilight Zone sense of the unreal and that mysterious, unsettling ambiguity found in classic weird and literary fiction.
Praise for Phantom
“The ghosts in Phantom Constellations look at you and you can’t look away. Another triumph from one of our most important writers of the strange.”
–Joshua Rex, author and historian
“Daniel Braum’s Phantom Constellations is a masterclass of quiet strangeness as he explores the liminal spaces and liminal periods of our lives. This collection solidifies that every reader of the weird should be reading Braum.”
–Jo Kaplan, Shirley-Jackson Award nominated author
“The stories in Phantom Constellations create a deep, strange, and often frightening journey through grief, regret, desire, and love. This is a truly phenomenal collection.”
–Scotty Milder, author, filmmaker, and podcaster
“Phantom Constellations explores both the horrors of the objective world and those that haunt us within. The prose is terrific. Braum is not a writer afraid to take his time to creep you out."
–Jeffrey Ford, author of Big Dark Hole
"Beautifully written, unforgettable stories that change how we perceive the night sky and our uneasy place beneath it."
–Norman Prentiss, Bram Stoker award winning author
The beautiful tales in Phantom Constellations explore that ambiguous, anxious borderland between the real and the imagined. [...] This is an impressive collection of stories.
–Steve Rasnic Tem
"There's a dreamy quality to this volume, making you think twice about what you're seeing in your mind's eye; a quiet magic that
Are you seeing what you think you are seeing?
Are the connections that we make, objectively true? Or are they products of our minds, assigning meaning and sense, where there is none?
The stars in the sky exist, unaffected by how we how we choose to categorize them. The constellations are phantoms; the shapes we give them only as real as we make them.
This is a book of stories of haunted people, ghosts, and the Phantom Constellations all around them, bravely--and sometimes blindly--traversing the phantasmagoric happenings and psychological challenges in situations full of danger, uncertainty, grief, and tragedy, alongside a sense of hope, longing, mystery, and wonder.
Appearing for the first time here are four never before published stories written exclusively for the collection along with ten more of Braum’s tales including from the Shivers anthology series and a wealth of hard-to-find publications from around the world.
Like no other author of short fiction today, Daniel Braum communicates a sub-text in his writing that is as deeply emotionally affecting as it is disturbing. There is an ache hiding behind the words, revealing itself just enough to resonate with the reader before disappearing into the velocity of the story. PHANTOM CONSTELLATIONS is Daniel Braum’s fifth full short story collection of dark, strange tales, exploring the metamorphic tension between the supernatural and the psychological. Each of these stories, set in locations around the corner and around the world, evokes the Twilight Zone sense of the unreal and that mysterious, unsettling ambiguity found in classic weird and literary fiction.
Praise for Phantom
“The ghosts in Phantom Constellations look at you and you can’t look away. Another triumph from one of our most important writers of the strange.”
–Joshua Rex, author and historian
“Daniel Braum’s Phantom Constellations is a masterclass of quiet strangeness as he explores the liminal spaces and liminal periods of our lives. This collection solidifies that every reader of the weird should be reading Braum.”
–Jo Kaplan, Shirley-Jackson Award nominated author
“The stories in Phantom Constellations create a deep, strange, and often frightening journey through grief, regret, desire, and love. This is a truly phenomenal collection.”
–Scotty Milder, author, filmmaker, and podcaster
“Phantom Constellations explores both the horrors of the objective world and those that haunt us within. The prose is terrific. Braum is not a writer afraid to take his time to creep you out."
–Jeffrey Ford, author of Big Dark Hole
"Beautifully written, unforgettable stories that change how we perceive the night sky and our uneasy place beneath it."
–Norman Prentiss, Bram Stoker award winning author
The beautiful tales in Phantom Constellations explore that ambiguous, anxious borderland between the real and the imagined. [...] This is an impressive collection of stories.
–Steve Rasnic Tem
"There's a dreamy quality to this volume, making you think twice about what you're seeing in your mind's eye; a quiet magic that
- GenresShort Stories
312 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 15, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 18, 2025
Dark, literary, haunting; uncomfortable, original, definitely Aickmanesque; liminal, serpentine, surreal; Braum elevates ambiguity to an art form, drawing on exotic settings and an archive of human flaws, to arrive at stories infused with memory, echoes, and sheer fantasy. Capturing this sophisticated kind of prose and arresting imagery linearly and in appropriate detail, is a difficult task for any reviewer, and I for one am not even going to try.
"Phantom Constellations," similar to Braum's "Nightmarchers" collection, treats almost obsessively of what eludes one even in the most explicit form of horror: namely, the conviction that whether the situation is real or fantasy, supernatural or pedestrian, the world has no ultimate shape - so every story just ends in the mid-point of an exclamation, the illusion of the real ending always postponed. Hence these stories define closure as lying closer to an emotion than an explanation; a calm mystery punctuated by the demands of a spectral presence nowhere actually defined, only implied. They incarnate atmosphere, give solidity to the irresolute and deliver mere hints of a larger exploration, a piecemeal approach to existential alienation dressed with the canonic garments of weird horror fiction.
Of the fourteen tales within (of which four are new), take "A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross," my favorite story of the collection: blending three (or is it four?) different timelines together to end up with a trip to Belize, narrated from the sidelines, it might be a creature feature (about a cryptid in Belize); or the iteration of a daughter's trauma when her father abandoned the family; or simply a supernatural story of uncanny metaphysics and existential loneliness. This story is so rich with implication, perhaps only the title conveys something definite. Or the opening story, "Scarecrow and the Imposter," original to the collection - is it a demonic possession story? Dark urban fantasy? What's for sure is that the reader has arrived too late for the full story, the narrator is already far ahead, and a sense of escape and catching up soon fills the story, affecting both the protagonist who's chasing a demon who prefers scarecrows, and the reader, who feels permanently left behind.
The collection won't be for everyone, but the best things never are. It's not folk horror, or magical realism or dark fantasy. The writing feels occasionally chatty, some wordings heavily twisted, certains scenes crying out for clarification - yet most often (and paradoxically) silence prevails. If you enjoy Aickman's writing, or the SF writer Lucius Shepard's prose and his thematic focus on geography and culture (read his "The Jaguar Hunter" along with Braum's collection), then you'll love "Phantom Constellations"!
"Phantom Constellations," similar to Braum's "Nightmarchers" collection, treats almost obsessively of what eludes one even in the most explicit form of horror: namely, the conviction that whether the situation is real or fantasy, supernatural or pedestrian, the world has no ultimate shape - so every story just ends in the mid-point of an exclamation, the illusion of the real ending always postponed. Hence these stories define closure as lying closer to an emotion than an explanation; a calm mystery punctuated by the demands of a spectral presence nowhere actually defined, only implied. They incarnate atmosphere, give solidity to the irresolute and deliver mere hints of a larger exploration, a piecemeal approach to existential alienation dressed with the canonic garments of weird horror fiction.
Of the fourteen tales within (of which four are new), take "A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross," my favorite story of the collection: blending three (or is it four?) different timelines together to end up with a trip to Belize, narrated from the sidelines, it might be a creature feature (about a cryptid in Belize); or the iteration of a daughter's trauma when her father abandoned the family; or simply a supernatural story of uncanny metaphysics and existential loneliness. This story is so rich with implication, perhaps only the title conveys something definite. Or the opening story, "Scarecrow and the Imposter," original to the collection - is it a demonic possession story? Dark urban fantasy? What's for sure is that the reader has arrived too late for the full story, the narrator is already far ahead, and a sense of escape and catching up soon fills the story, affecting both the protagonist who's chasing a demon who prefers scarecrows, and the reader, who feels permanently left behind.
The collection won't be for everyone, but the best things never are. It's not folk horror, or magical realism or dark fantasy. The writing feels occasionally chatty, some wordings heavily twisted, certains scenes crying out for clarification - yet most often (and paradoxically) silence prevails. If you enjoy Aickman's writing, or the SF writer Lucius Shepard's prose and his thematic focus on geography and culture (read his "The Jaguar Hunter" along with Braum's collection), then you'll love "Phantom Constellations"!
January 3, 2026
Daniel Braum had a big year in 2025, releasing two books, both collections of short stories. The second of these is Phantom Constellations, released by Cemetery Dance. If you’re familiar with Daniel Braum’s work, you’ll know that he writes slow-burning stories of the strange and liminal. One of my favourite aspects of his stories is when you’re not sure whether the narrative has slipped into alternate dimensions for a brief moment, but the characters have experienced something profound. Quiet and silent, yet profound.
While the stories in Phantom Constellations are similar, there are some, like Scarecrow and the Imposter, the collection’s opener, that throw you into the strange without the ambiguity. Scarecrow throws you right into dimension-hopping, no apologies. It’s refreshing, surprising, and definitely weird.
Braum’s stories are also known for genre-hopping, evident in Hand of Fire, a science fiction romp about the impending apocalypse filtered through a Jewish lens that feels angry, full of fire and prophecy. It also has a strong correlation with the Terminator films, which was a lot of fun to read.
The title story appeared in the first collection Daniel released in 2025, Creatures of Liminal Space, which explores drug abuse, recovery, filmmaking, drug-fueled trips through the desert, broken relationships, and self-reflection. It was a joy to return to Phantom for a revisit.
Personally, though, and as a horror fan, the collection really shines with the addition of The Exorcist’s Red-Haired Daughter. This story has Daniel Braum’s most gory scene he’s ever written and will likely ever write again, but that’s not the only reason I love it. The characters breathe off the page, and The Cure’s music haunts the background of this self-reflective trip to a concert in New Orleans, filled with curses, witchcraft, and a few strange, reality-bending situations.
Overall, this collection, while different from other collections of Braum’s, fits right in with his canon of writing. It feels like a progression in his writing, even though some of these stories are older. I love Braum’s stories for their slow-moving, self-reflective moments, which draw me into the characters. Braum’s characters speak to me on a deep, personal level. I relate to them. They remind me of Stephen King’s characters; they’re just regular people like you and me experiencing something extraordinary. And you, as the reader, are invited to be changed and right along with them.
While the stories in Phantom Constellations are similar, there are some, like Scarecrow and the Imposter, the collection’s opener, that throw you into the strange without the ambiguity. Scarecrow throws you right into dimension-hopping, no apologies. It’s refreshing, surprising, and definitely weird.
Braum’s stories are also known for genre-hopping, evident in Hand of Fire, a science fiction romp about the impending apocalypse filtered through a Jewish lens that feels angry, full of fire and prophecy. It also has a strong correlation with the Terminator films, which was a lot of fun to read.
The title story appeared in the first collection Daniel released in 2025, Creatures of Liminal Space, which explores drug abuse, recovery, filmmaking, drug-fueled trips through the desert, broken relationships, and self-reflection. It was a joy to return to Phantom for a revisit.
Personally, though, and as a horror fan, the collection really shines with the addition of The Exorcist’s Red-Haired Daughter. This story has Daniel Braum’s most gory scene he’s ever written and will likely ever write again, but that’s not the only reason I love it. The characters breathe off the page, and The Cure’s music haunts the background of this self-reflective trip to a concert in New Orleans, filled with curses, witchcraft, and a few strange, reality-bending situations.
Overall, this collection, while different from other collections of Braum’s, fits right in with his canon of writing. It feels like a progression in his writing, even though some of these stories are older. I love Braum’s stories for their slow-moving, self-reflective moments, which draw me into the characters. Braum’s characters speak to me on a deep, personal level. I relate to them. They remind me of Stephen King’s characters; they’re just regular people like you and me experiencing something extraordinary. And you, as the reader, are invited to be changed and right along with them.
April 30, 2026
I’ve gone on record numerous times over the years about my love for big, doorstop type books. For a majority of my reading life, I gravitated towards them because I love the feeling of losing myself in richly developed worlds populated with a diverse cast of characters. In the hands of the right writer, this length is like magic. They’re portals into other worlds where anything’s possible; where the writer has the time and the space to let every aspect of the story breathe and unfurl at its own pace. Personally, it’s the journey the author takes me on that I derive the most joy from more so than the destination. However, after embarking on my personal journey into the world of book reviewing and writing fiction, there’s been a gradual shift in my tastes toward short stories. Don’t get me wrong, I still love novels, but as a reader, I’ve started to appreciate the craft that goes into effective short fiction and the elegance of the structure. As a writer, I’m drawn to the challenge of working within the constraints of the format and being economical with my choices. Reading works from writers like Damien Angelica Walters, John Langan, Mariana Enriquez and so many others taught me that not only are those same magical qualities possible in short stories, sometimes they’re much more effective.
That’s very much the case in Daniel Braum’s latest collection, Phantom Constellations, which features new and previously published stories. Braum establishes the vibes and theme of this collection in his introduction by saying that our lives, our loves, and our relationships with the world around us are nothing more than phantom constellations, only given shape by the meaning we assign them through our own worldview. That theme is heavily prevalent throughout Phantom Constellations and the genre-defying stories that thrive in the liminal spaces that border our reality and the realms of the unknown. These stories also made me realize something. Often when people discuss art that deals with liminality, the focus always seems to be on spaces, whether it be physical or metaphysical. But considering the nature of the word and the concept, why’s that always the default? Braum’s stories have a heavy focus on the concept and while he does explore it in terms of physical spaces, he pushes beyond that and applies that lens to emotions, relationships, and even story structure.
The first story in the collection, “Scarecrow and the Imposter”, is a great exploration of liminality from multiple angles. The story focuses on Nate Arcane, a man who dabbles in the occult, and who has dedicated most of his life trying to catch an entity known only as Scarecrow. Despite Nate’s knowledge of magic and demon hunting, Scarecrow is able to constantly evade his traps because it’s able to hop bodies whenever it senses it’s in danger. Considering Nate blames this entity for the tragedy that’s become his life, he’s unable to give up on his mission and must reluctantly rely on the help of his rival Ava. What follows is not only a final confrontation with the entity known as Scarecrow, but a confrontation with the mistakes he’s made and the paths his life could’ve taken. It’s a haunting story that examines elements of love, regret, and the choices that define us set against a backdrop of lush forests and small towns in the Catskills.
“Twenty-Nine Palms in Reverse” is a story about Yuli and Noam, who travel to Twenty-Nine Palms to explore the desert and for Yuli to show Noam a different side of herself, to maybe let him see her for who she really is and form a stronger bond. At 35, Yuli is feeling restless and wants a future with Noam, but she has her doubts. Unbeknownst to Noam, Yuli has brought him here for her to decide if she wants to forge ahead in a life together or leave him. This is another excellent example of liminality and Braum’s theory of phantom constellations. Yuli and Noam are in a relationship together, but they have different views and meanings of what that relationship means. Noam seems steadfast in his feelings and is pushing for Yuli to let go of her past and for them to forge new memories together while Yuli clings to memories, stuck in between two phases of her life and plagued by visions of a woman only she can see in the distance of the desert. There’s a beautiful line in this story that really resonated with me: “Maybe the reason being a couple isn’t to know everything about each other. Maybe it is what will be seen together. The uncharted ground, like he said yesterday.” Because what is a relationship if not the ultimate liminal space?
Stylistically, I love that Braum included interconnected stories. “A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross” and “Tiki Bar at the Edge of Forever” both center around the same traumatic event, but it’s explored through the experiences of different characters and told in a non-linear timeline. I’m a huge fan of stories that upend traditional story structure and Braum does so beautifully with these two stories while remaining true to the theme of the collection. He also uses structure to explore liminality, as many of the stories end in ways that encourage further reflection from the reader. There are stories that end with a character’s life hanging in the balance and others that end at the moment a character is presented with a crossroads. While this may be frustrating to some readers who prefer a neat, clean ending, I loved Braum’s choices. You might remember at the beginning of this review that I mentioned I love the journey of a story more so than the destination and that certainly is a part of it. However, I also liked these choices because they mirror the messy reality of life. Not every story or event in our lives has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Some exist purely in a liminal state.
Braum states that good fiction is made from human choices and that is where both this collection - and Braum’s writing in general - soar. Every story is full of complex characters who make good and bad choices and wrestle with their flaws, grief, and regrets in a way that feels both authentic and relatable. Phantom Constellations is full of elegant prose and a heaping dose of melancholy and further proves why Braum is one of my favorite short story writers. If you’re looking for beautifully written fiction that isn’t afraid to blend the unknown with the ordinary and that pushes you to reflect, this collection is not to be missed.
That’s very much the case in Daniel Braum’s latest collection, Phantom Constellations, which features new and previously published stories. Braum establishes the vibes and theme of this collection in his introduction by saying that our lives, our loves, and our relationships with the world around us are nothing more than phantom constellations, only given shape by the meaning we assign them through our own worldview. That theme is heavily prevalent throughout Phantom Constellations and the genre-defying stories that thrive in the liminal spaces that border our reality and the realms of the unknown. These stories also made me realize something. Often when people discuss art that deals with liminality, the focus always seems to be on spaces, whether it be physical or metaphysical. But considering the nature of the word and the concept, why’s that always the default? Braum’s stories have a heavy focus on the concept and while he does explore it in terms of physical spaces, he pushes beyond that and applies that lens to emotions, relationships, and even story structure.
The first story in the collection, “Scarecrow and the Imposter”, is a great exploration of liminality from multiple angles. The story focuses on Nate Arcane, a man who dabbles in the occult, and who has dedicated most of his life trying to catch an entity known only as Scarecrow. Despite Nate’s knowledge of magic and demon hunting, Scarecrow is able to constantly evade his traps because it’s able to hop bodies whenever it senses it’s in danger. Considering Nate blames this entity for the tragedy that’s become his life, he’s unable to give up on his mission and must reluctantly rely on the help of his rival Ava. What follows is not only a final confrontation with the entity known as Scarecrow, but a confrontation with the mistakes he’s made and the paths his life could’ve taken. It’s a haunting story that examines elements of love, regret, and the choices that define us set against a backdrop of lush forests and small towns in the Catskills.
“Twenty-Nine Palms in Reverse” is a story about Yuli and Noam, who travel to Twenty-Nine Palms to explore the desert and for Yuli to show Noam a different side of herself, to maybe let him see her for who she really is and form a stronger bond. At 35, Yuli is feeling restless and wants a future with Noam, but she has her doubts. Unbeknownst to Noam, Yuli has brought him here for her to decide if she wants to forge ahead in a life together or leave him. This is another excellent example of liminality and Braum’s theory of phantom constellations. Yuli and Noam are in a relationship together, but they have different views and meanings of what that relationship means. Noam seems steadfast in his feelings and is pushing for Yuli to let go of her past and for them to forge new memories together while Yuli clings to memories, stuck in between two phases of her life and plagued by visions of a woman only she can see in the distance of the desert. There’s a beautiful line in this story that really resonated with me: “Maybe the reason being a couple isn’t to know everything about each other. Maybe it is what will be seen together. The uncharted ground, like he said yesterday.” Because what is a relationship if not the ultimate liminal space?
Stylistically, I love that Braum included interconnected stories. “A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross” and “Tiki Bar at the Edge of Forever” both center around the same traumatic event, but it’s explored through the experiences of different characters and told in a non-linear timeline. I’m a huge fan of stories that upend traditional story structure and Braum does so beautifully with these two stories while remaining true to the theme of the collection. He also uses structure to explore liminality, as many of the stories end in ways that encourage further reflection from the reader. There are stories that end with a character’s life hanging in the balance and others that end at the moment a character is presented with a crossroads. While this may be frustrating to some readers who prefer a neat, clean ending, I loved Braum’s choices. You might remember at the beginning of this review that I mentioned I love the journey of a story more so than the destination and that certainly is a part of it. However, I also liked these choices because they mirror the messy reality of life. Not every story or event in our lives has a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Some exist purely in a liminal state.
Braum states that good fiction is made from human choices and that is where both this collection - and Braum’s writing in general - soar. Every story is full of complex characters who make good and bad choices and wrestle with their flaws, grief, and regrets in a way that feels both authentic and relatable. Phantom Constellations is full of elegant prose and a heaping dose of melancholy and further proves why Braum is one of my favorite short story writers. If you’re looking for beautifully written fiction that isn’t afraid to blend the unknown with the ordinary and that pushes you to reflect, this collection is not to be missed.
March 13, 2026
Daniel Braum is a master of strange stories where the setting is so rich you’ll feel transported to another place and where the “nighttime” logic of dreams prevails over the daytime logic of rationality. Some of my favorite stories in this collection include “The Fourth Bell,” a wonderfully genre-bending tale of a super-intelligent octupus, seven bells of mysterious mystical power, friendship, and loss; “The Ghost with my Father’s Coin,” a delightful ghost story that feels like a love letter to New York City of both past and present; and “A Loch Ness Monster Under the Light of the Southern Cross,” which is the most fascinating and creative take on the Loch Ness legend that I’ve ever read.
April 23, 2026
“Nothing is exactly as it seems in Daniel Braum’s latest collection, Phantom Constellations. Reality always seems one step to the left, where the expected dances with the unknown, a liminal waltz coiled in mystery that reveals unexpected truths. Settings and ambience are utilized to maximum effect, while a simmering melancholy, a shard of uncertainty, is often present in these explorations of lives out of balance. Braum is a fascinating wordsmith, a dealer in subtly strange stories that lingers long after the reader has set the book down.”—John Claude Smith, author of the Bram Stoker Award finalist, Riding the Centipede, and Our Savage Anatomies.
May 1, 2026
If you're a fan of psychological horror, grief horror, and twisted, dark, slightly ambiguous endings, this is for you. Personally, some of my favorite stories leave a little something behind for the reader to ponder and interpret. But I'm most struck by Braum's prose. There is something familiar, and comfortable and deeply immersive about his writing style. It feels almost like returning to an old forgotten dream. Or perhaps, more accurately, a nightmare. Truly a pleasure to read. Anything written by Braum is a must read for me from now on. I can't recommend this book enough.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews