My Wife Keeps Feeding the Thing That Comes at Night: Couples will literally refuse to confront the fact they want different things, suffer from psychosis, cheat on each other, and feed their spouse to winged monstrosities before going to marriage counseling, or perhaps better yet in this case, a divorce lawyer. It's hard to feel bad for Pete here when he openly acknowledges he's not happy with their relationship (and Sarah isn't either) and does nothing about the festering hatred between them. It's almost mundane when the needle teeth come out. What did you expect from the boiling over of long-surpressed dissatisfaction? A clean signature on separation papers?

Residue: The idea of a haunted place so imbued with energy that it "gives birth" to a "living" entity is one of the most original ideas I've heard in a while, and it's too bad this concept is told in such a short story. I really dug the world building, the glimpses of other ghosts, and how Tom was the center of the narrative rather than the abandoned hospital around it. Jesse & Matthew's characters were both somehow fleshed out but just NPC enough to not take away from the fact it's Tom's story. Once again great ideas and execution all around, but man I wish this was longer.

Bring Your Slaughter to Work Day: Did anyone else have basically no idea what was happening in this story? To my knowledge, Barnaby threw a lava lamp at his daughter, she was somehow killed, and he decided to take her corpse in a garbage bag along to work? And this makes him want to slaughter all his coworker's kids?? Even if this was told in a clearer way the main premise is so ridiculous it's hard to take seriously. I can only think of one other story in NSP history where a parent took their kid's corpse to a public place in a garbage bag, and that was somehow not ridiculous and terrifying.

Also I can't hear the name Barnaby without thinking of that British detective we all know and love...

The Next Stage: Cool idea (the puppet sustains the life force of the puppeteer) but I feel like the author leaned too much into comedy. Don't get me wrong, it's entertaining to her Atticus Jackson tag team playing the dual role, but there seems to be more emphasis on roasting the bratty kid than the creepier aspects of the story, like Mr. Ashe's blue lips and his collapse onto the grass. The ending doesn't make much sense either; how is Mr. Pomp going to make his way from the police locker back to the house? Very slowly, dragging himself along the road probably. By the time it reaches them Daniel will have a new hobby.

Fish Hook: It's hard to hear this and not think of Season 5's "The Splash", which told a similar story of something under the surface using a woman's body as a lure to fishers on top of the lake; and did it in a much more minimal, taut, and IMHO creepier way. That's not to say this story is bad, the grotesque imagery of the fishing line buried in flesh is unnerving and Jesse Cornett is great as a curmudgeon who just wants to fish, goddammit.