Isolation is a common theme. Many stories feature characters alone in spooky places like a dark forest or an empty building. It makes them more vulnerable.
The sense of isolation is really scary. For example, in stories where a person is alone in a big, empty house or on a desolate road. There's no one to help them.
In a '5 minute horror story', a woman wakes up in a hospital. She has no memory of how she got there. As she looks around, she notices that all the other patients seem to be in a trance. The nurses have a strange, cold look in their eyes. She tries to leave but finds that she's locked in, and she starts to hear screams coming from the basement.
One story could be about a girl who wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a dark figure at the foot of her bed. She tries to scream but no sound comes out. Then the figure slowly starts to move towards her, and she feels a cold hand on her ankle.
Once upon a time, in an old, creaky house, a girl was home alone at night. She heard a strange scratching at the window. As she slowly walked towards it, she saw a pair of red eyes in the darkness. Suddenly, the power went out. In the pitch black, she felt a cold hand on her shoulder. She tried to scream but no sound came out.
Here's a story. A man was driving alone on a deserted road at night. His radio started to pick up a strange, garbled signal. As he tried to change the station, he saw a figure in the middle of the road. He slammed on the brakes. The figure came closer and closer, and then he realized it had no face. His car wouldn't start again as the figure reached for his window.
One 'two minute horror story' could be about a girl who wakes up in a strange room. The walls are closing in and she hears a faint whispering. As the walls get closer, she realizes the whispering is saying her name, but she has no idea how she got there. It ends with the walls about to crush her.
One 'Five Minute Horror Story' could be about a girl who enters an old, abandoned house. As she walks through the creaky halls, she hears whispers. Suddenly, a cold hand grabs her ankle from under a broken floorboard. It's a vengeful spirit that was trapped there for decades.
Shirley Jackson is also known for her horror stories that can be read in about 20 minutes. Her story 'The Lottery' is quite famous. It has a very unexpected and disturbing ending. Ambrose Bierce is another author. His stories such as 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' can give you a good dose of horror in a relatively short read.
One great '20 minute horror story' is 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. It's about a woman who slowly descends into madness while being confined to a room with hideous yellow wallpaper. Another is 'The Tell - Tale Heart' by Edgar Allan Poe. The narrator's paranoia about an old man's 'evil eye' and his subsequent actions are truly horrifying. And 'The Monkey's Paw' is also a classic in this genre. It shows how a simple wish - granting talisman can bring great misfortune.