The best kind of horror sends a chill down your spine and makes the hairs on the back of your neck prickle to attention. It makes you tense up as you read it, forces you to casually look around your empty house “just to be sure…” This type of story works best in bite-sized bits, giving you just enough information to scare you before letting your imagination take it from there.  Since Hollywood doesn’t seem too eager to give horror anthologies a chance (it took Michael Dougherty six years to get a Trick-R-Treat 2 greenlight), filmmakers are forced to find other means to tell their tales of terror.

Once such filmmaker is Michele Boyd. You might know her from her appearances with Team Unicorn, her role on The Guild, or perhaps you’ve seen her geeking out at a con (or several), but even if her smiling mug is unfamiliar, she’s had a brilliant idea — a series of seven horror shorts called Penny Horrors — and she’s looking to YOU for help.

Here’s how Michele explains it:

“I first got the idea to shoot Penny Horrors when I read a Reddit thread a few months back and got really creeped out by a lot of the ideas. I thought they’d make a fantastic series of micro shorts, but I had such clear ideas of what I’d love to do for them, I wanted to direct them myself. Not wanting to get in trouble with copyright laws, I contacted the authors to make sure it was cool to film their ideas, and settled on my top seven.  I filmed the first one, Mine, for zero budget (basically hugs and sandwiches), a two-person crew, and single person cast.   Most of the ideas are open ended, so there’s no killing of the monster at the end; it’s still probably hiding under your bed.”

The Kickstarter is live now here.

Here’s the first short, Mine, as well as Michele further explaining the concept:

There are come cool rewards being offered, such as a high resolution digital download of all Penny Horrors shorts once all episodes have premiered, and an ongoing behind-the-scene production diary. Keep in mind, Boyd is looking to shoot seven shorts in 30 days for $22,000; That means the money raised needs to go towards the production more than the creation of Kickstarter gifts.  A project like this isn’t about the rewards, it’s about the content, and if the Reddit thread is any indication of the spooky stories we’ll see in Penny Horrors, you can consider this money well spent.

If you want to donate, click the link above or, for the lazy, the link right here. In the meantime you can follow their progress via any number of social media sites:

http://pennyhorrors.com
http://facebook.com/pennyhorrors
http://twitter.com/pennyhorrors
http://youtube.com/pennyhorrors

What do you think of the short trailer? Did you read that Reddit thread? Super scary! Have a two-sentence horror idea of your own? Post it here or send it to my Twitter because now I just want to sit and read these freaky little stories all day.