An intimate supernatural story
The Mortician’s Friends
“The dead are patient. They make no demands. They ask no questions.”
Daniel Foster has always found the dead easier than the living. Then the silent visitors begin to appear, and the lonely rooms above his funeral home no longer feel quite so empty.
For more than thirty years, Daniel Foster has cared for the dead. Then one of them opens her eyes.
The Story
The dead have never frightened Daniel.
It is the living, with their questions and expectations, that he has never understood.
Daniel Foster knows how to close their eyes, soften the evidence of suffering, and return them to their families looking peaceful.
Since losing his wife and young daughter, he has withdrawn into the aging funeral home beneath his apartment. His days are measured by humming refrigeration units, leaking pipes, and the quiet work of preparing strangers for their final goodbyes.
Then a silent figure appears beside the body on his table. Soon there are others. They never speak, but each arrives carrying the weight of something unfinished.
As the funeral home fills with visitors, Daniel begins to feel less alone. Yet headaches, missing time, and unsettling changes in his perception force him to ask what he is truly seeing, and whether companionship must be understood to be real.
The Visitors
They never speak. They do not need to.
Every presence brings a fragment of fear, tenderness, shame, or regret into Daniel’s carefully ordered world.
The Young Man
A frightened figure waits on the stairs, caught somewhere between the need to leave and the fear of being forgotten.
The Father
Anger follows him into the room, along with the crushing weight of everything he left unresolved.
The Woman
She washes her hands again and again, though some forms of guilt will not come clean.
At Its Heart
Not every haunting comes to frighten us.
This is a quiet horror story about grief, guilt, mortality, and the small acts of kindness that remain when nothing can be repaired. It lives in the uneasy space between ghost story and failing perception, where an impossible friendship may still be the truest thing in the room.
Are the dead seeking Daniel’s company, or is his mind creating friends where none exist?
For Readers Drawn To
Horror that stays after the final page.
Quiet Hauntings
Atmosphere and unease take the place of spectacle.
Human Grief
The deepest wounds belong to those still living.
Tender Darkness
A somber story that still leaves room for warmth.
Lingering Questions
The truth remains just beyond certainty.
What Readers Are Saying
Read in a day. Remembered long after.
I finished this book in a day almost a month ago; I just couldn’t put it down, and thinking back on it now, I’m still blown away.
Chris Allen’s ability to make you feel like you are a part of the story is absolutely stunning. You can feel the genuine emotion of each character, living, or…well… 😉
This is always the type of author I strive to read. Someone who can make you feel like you are IN the book, not just reading it. Disclaimer: however, once it ends, you are shot back into reality. You are genuinely mad that it had to stop. 🤣
By the end of this, I was in tears. Just pure genuine emotion radiating out of me as I closed out the story.
I will absolutely read this again, as I do most books that I fell in love with, and recommend everyone pick it up at least once.
I don’t do spoilers, so if you want to feel like I felt, go read this. Right meow.
Just finished it. I really enjoyed it, it was an easy read.
I grew up with avid readers in my family and I never had the ability to sit still. I have an attention span of a 2 year old. I just lost my dad this past November and 3 months and 2 days later mom passed. Been trying to understand death and was intrigued with all the characters and the color yellow. I think it’s actually the first book I’ve read from beginning to end in several years. You have a gift, thank you for sharing it.
Seriously good read. Really jumps into the horror early, and keeps you reading until the end…
A great book for anyone interested in the supernatural. Can’t say enough good things.
This book totally caught me off guard… I could not put it down and read it all in one sitting.
I found myself reading and rereading passages that were almost profound in their simplicity but exactly explained a feeling or emotion. This author is great. Really great. The story is sad and haunting, and you will not be able to put it down. I am sad it wasn’t longer because I didn’t want it to end.
Some friends arrive after goodbye.
Enter the quiet rooms of Daniel Foster’s funeral home in The Mortician’s Friends.