Story Spotlight: “When You Can Walk Away But You Can’t Leave” by DeAnna Knippling

In “When You Can Walk Away But You Can’t Leave,” DeAnna Knippling traps us inside a haunted escape room—where the real horror isn’t just the tech or the spirits, but the systems that refuse to let anyone go.

Sharon manages a haunted escape room in suburban Denver—one she designed herself, including the server room she now regrets. The technology is haunted, the players don’t know what they’re walking into, and Sharon is unraveling under the weight of her own creation. A brutal, brilliant story about trauma, control, and the ghosts we build with our own hands.

The lights went out.

She slapped the light switch again and the lights came back on for a second, then went out again. She sighed, closed her eyes. What she wanted to do was take the nearest server rack and shove it, fight it down to the floor and kick the shit out of it. She wasn’t scared. She was pissed.

Fuck this life and fuck this room in particular.

She took a deep breath, the cold air making her lungs hurt. Whatever. She was used to this feeling, the sense that the universe had wronged her somehow, that things should have been easier. It was just the room doing things to her, finding her sore spots and trying to stir up trouble.

She exhaled, imagining her anger exiting her lungs along with her breath.

Three or four breaths and the lights turned on again, all by themselves. She’d survived another encounter with the room.

But the kid hadn’t.

About the Author

DeAnna Knippling writes atmospheric gothic horror, mystery, suspense, and twisted tales from the edge of space & time. Her hobbies are cooking, taking long walks on Florida beaches, digging into the realm of open-source intelligence, fangirling over history, science, and psychology—and reading lots of fiction, graphic novels, and web comics while her tea goes cold.

Find DeAnna at: WonderlandPress.com

The Haunting Thread

This is hauntpunk at its sharpest—snarling, contemporary, and unafraid to stare into the server-side abyss. Sharon’s story is both metaphor and embodiment of emotional entrapment, workplace exploitation, and the dangerous edges of creative control.

Read the Story

“When You Can Walk Away But You Can’t Leave” appears in Haunted Places, available now from Blackbird Publishing.

📚 Buy the book from your favorite store

If you liked…

• Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica—for its body horror and societal systems critique
• The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer—for its slow-burn psychological breakdowns in speculative environments

…then you’ll enjoy “When You Can Walk Away But You Can’t Leave”—a haunted system story where the ghosts are only half the problem.

📘 Also featured in Haunted Places: “Scents Drifting on a Breeze” by Meyari McFarland, another layered story of haunting, identity, and emotional reclamation inside a space that’s never as neutral as it seems.