What keeps you up at night?Is it politics? Money? Climate change? Maybe it’s something more obviously sinister, like murderers and ghosts?Cynthia Pelayo, a Bram Stoker Award-winning horror novelist from Chicago, asked herself and 16 fellow Latin American authors — living both outside and within the borders of the U.S. — to reflect on that question for a new anthology released this week titled “Something Followed Us Home: Tales of Latiné Horror.”In “Something Followed Us Home,” 17 short stories and an introductory foreword begin deep into dark timelines, such as in “Her First Cruise Ship” by Ann Dávila Cardinal, where undead and rotting American tourists stumble through the capital city of Puerto Rico. The book’s foreword is written by Mexican author Brenda Lozano, and editions are available in English and Spanish through a bilingual publisher.A man is possessed by a demon in “My Boyfriend” by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. A dog walker meets a famous writer under chilling circumstances in “The Rooftop Revolution of Selly Avilés” by Daniel José Older.Pelayo said she has been interested in exploring fear through the literary lenses of Latino authors for years. She said that the collection has been three to four years in the making.“There is this consistent thread that I've seen so much … our stories being told and carried generationally, and I really wanted to understand what haunts [these authors],” said Pelayo, who was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. “Is there a story? Is there a piece of folklore, a family secret?”Featuring an array of acclaimed contemporary authors, including Agustina Bazterrica, Isabel Cañas, Leopoldo Goût and Xochitl Gonzalez, whose book “Olga Dies Dreaming" was Chicago’s 2025 citywide read, the horrifying (and sometimes stomach-turning) stories weave together worlds in which human-made horrors and otherworldly ones converge. “Something Followed Us Home” features the work of 18 authors, including Ananda Lima (from left), Juan Martínez and Leopoldo Goût.Beowulf Sheehan; Provided; Barry Brecheisen/For the Sun-Times Pelayo’s story, “El Jíbaro de Puerto Rico,” is inspired by a real-life massacre that happened in 1937 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. A peaceful march turned deadly after police opened fire and killed 19 islanders and wounded hundreds more.Pelayo did not take submissions for the book, preferring to approach authors herself. “The range of storytelling that came to me was very fascinating,” she said. “There's a very haunting ghost story with Agustina Bazterrica's ‘Blue Flowers,’ which left me stunned after I read that story.” The Argentine author wrote “Tender Is the Flesh,” a 2017 dystopian novel that illustrates a world where animals, especially bovines and avians used for human consumption, have gone extinct.Some of Ananda Lima’s fears involve AI and how it has quickly changed the world. She wrote “Specter,” which draws on Brazilian folklore.In Lima’s story, the boogeywoman known as Cuca torments a young woman as she tries to navigate college life.“Cuca is very much a part of so many people's childhood,” she said. “It's basically a witch creature who has a crocodile head.”As she researched Cuca, Lima found links to similar stories from Spain and Portugal and learned about other creatures that helped evolve the tale. “It turned into a story about something that [is] creating a lot of fear and anxiety, which is AI,” Lima said.Many aspects of modern technological advancements make Lima nervous or scared, but “letting it simmer through fiction” is always a liberating outlet, she said. Lima divides her time between Chicago and New York City.Goût, a multidisciplinary artist from Mexico, wrote the ninth story in the book, “Luz Y Fer.” He was completing his recent novel “Rooted” when Pelayo reached out to him about writing something for the anthology.“My work usually starts with details of the character,” Goût said. “Sometimes I make a painting, and then those paintings become a different story. Some of them end up in an art piece, and some of them end up in a book.”But the vision for “Luz Y Fer,” a story about twins separated at birth, came to the artist in a “very vivid dream.” Goût thinks it was because he was recently researching Lucifer, a religious figure in Christianity who represents Satan or the Devil after his fall from heaven.“Lucifer is a great humanist in some pre-Catholic religions,” Goût said of his findings. The story is meant to flip religious and traditional views on morality on their head, and think of life and situations beyond the frameworks of good and evil.“We are products of extraordinary layers of and collisions of culture, and that's what I wanted to do with ‘Luz Y Fer,’” Goût said.Pelayo and a handful of authors will appear at a book launch event Thursday, held at Downtown bookshop Exile in Bookville. That talk will include Lima and Northwestern University English professor Juan Martínez.The book was published through Primero Sueño Press, a bilingual publishing house from Atria Books and Simon Schuster that translates to “first dream” press.When Pelayo called Goût, she’d barely gotten the publisher's name out before the artist immediately agreed. “‘Yeah, I'm in,’” he said. ...read more read less