If you found a door that was never meant to be opened… would you open it?
Some doors are locked to keep danger out. Others are locked to secrets inside.
In literature, we see it often: Narnia’s wardrobe, Alice’s rabbit hole, Coraline’s door to the Other World. These are just a few examples, but any mundane entry could be a story waiting to be told.
An abandoned fallout shelter. A hatch buried beneath Antarctic ice. A forgotten room behind a fireplace. A cave sealed by an ancient civilization. A rusted submarine airlock. A child's bedroom closet that suddenly appears where no closet existed before.
In this anthology, we will explore stories where someone ignores the warnings and opens something that should have remained shut.
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What waits on the other side isn’t always a monster—but it always comes with a price. From mysterious happenings and supernatural suspense to psychological thrillers and dark fantasy, The Unopened Door explores humanity’s oldest temptation: the irresistible need to know what's hidden behind the next threshold.
Each story in this collection will revolve around a door, hatch, cave entrance, or hidden room that should have remained sealed. But it doesn’t have to be dark and scary. It could be anything:
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crypt
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bunker
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elevator shaft
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cellar
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attic door
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mineshaft
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underwater cave
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vault
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portal
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mailbox
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hidden room
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window
… or anything else your mind can conjure. It can be any genre, any topic, any gateway your heart desires.
All you need is a door.
Go ahead; open it and explore what happens next.**
Submission Guidelines
Any genre is great. We’ve always had a combination, and the theme is what ties them together. If you have an idea, no matter how weird, we’d love to see it!
We especially love stories with:
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strong emotional stakes
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memorable twists
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eerie atmosphere
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clever premises
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literary quality paired with commercial appeal
Stories:
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Original and well-written--not AI generated!
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unpublished
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not under contract elsewhere during our review period
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7,000 words max word count
Submissions:
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Subject line: The Unopened Door
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Please include the story AS AN ATTACHMENT.
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Submissions may be sent in pdf, Word, or Google Docs. However, if accepted, we will ask for you to send the final story in Word for editing. Please plan accordingly.
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Body of Email. Please include…
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Author Name
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Story title
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Word count
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A short intro to you and your story
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Payment:
Authors chosen for publication will receive:
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a contributor copy
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$50
We ask for 12 months of exclusive print, ebook, and audio rights, and perpetual non-exclusive rights thereafter.
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Response Time:
Submissions close August 31, and we anticipate responding to all submissions between August 31st and September 10th. Publication is set for October.
**If we still haven’t convinced you how fun it could be to write about a door, here are some of our favorite comp titles where it’s all about opening that hatch:
Adventure
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Ocean’s 11: the team works to orchestrate the most sophisticated, elaborate casino heist in history, targeting impenetrable vaults (OMG, someone PLEASE write us a heist story!)
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The Inheritance Games: to claim her inheritance, a teen girl must live in a secret-passage-filled mansion and solve the hidden mysteries
Horror
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Backrooms: A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, leading to an endless network of interconnected rooms.
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The Haunting of Hill House: psychological dread tied to mysterious rooms and haunted spaces.
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The Cabin in the Woods: a group of college students staying in a remote cabin in the woods. They shouldn’t have gone into the basement…
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The Descent: a cave where some passages should never have been entered.
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Widow’s Bay: Deep underground, a cellar contains a chair with restraints.
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House of Leaves: impossible architecture and forbidden spaces that consume those who investigate them.
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The Shining: the infamous Room 237; all they had to do was not open the door.
Fantasy
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The Mummy: a librarian opens a book at a forbidden site, unleashing an ancient curse.
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Howl’s Moving Castle: a magical front door connected to a color-coded dial that opens to any location, with no travel or distance constraints.
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Pan’s Labyrinth: through the roots of a tree, into the earth, a fawn is returned to her magical kingdom.
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Stardust: a boy crosses a stone wall separating his English village from a magical realm to retrieve a fallen star.
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About Time: the men of a family time travel by stepping into a dark closet or doorway, closing their eyes, and thinking of a specific moment.
Science Fiction
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Annihilation: crossing into a forbidden zone unleashes psychological and physical consequences.
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Lost: the hidden bunker built in the 1970s serves as a secret underground research facility.
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Project Hail Mary: the hatch leads to a series of critical airlocks and doors in a space journey.
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The Matrix: “You take the blue pill--the story ends, you wake up in your bed... You take the red pill--you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
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Realistic
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The Diary of Anne Frank: the traumatic true story that starts with the secret room hidden behind a revolving bookcase.
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The Midnight Library: a fantasy-infused look at the meaning of life where the library and/or the overdose could be the portal.
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Palm Springs: a strange glowing cave opening that traps two wedding guests in a never-ending time loop.
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The Secret Garden: a girl discovers a neglected, walled garden that has been locked for years.
Romance
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The Unhoneymooners: Best man and maid-of-honor must step onto a plane and act like a happy couple when the bride and groom can’t make it to their tropical honeymoon.
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Message in a Bottle: During her morning jog, a journalist discovers a bottle protruding from the sand. Inside, she finds a story and future she didn’t expect.
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The Lake House: a relationship that forms between two people only able to communicate by passing letters through a mysterious mailbox.
We're looking for stories that linger after the last page. We love unsettling discoveries, impossible choices, bittersweet endings, and mysteries that invite readers to wonder what they would have done if they had opened the door themselves.