A new generation of authors are honing their horror skills online under a genre loosely defined as “creepypasta” – essentially urban legends for the digital age – including Wareham’s own Chris Maxim.

"We're telling campfire stories on the Internet, trying to see who can come up with the scariest story," he said.

For the past four years, Maxim has been writing short fiction, sharing tales of the weird, horrific or just odd on the “Nosleep” forums on Reddit.com, a popular social news aggregation and discussion website.

On Nosleep, stories are rated and commented on by Reddit users. Recently, Maxim’s novella “There’s Something Terribly Wrong With My Son” generated a lot of interest on the forum.

Without giving too much away, Maxim described the story as “about a single father, whose son seemed to be the epicenter of paranormal activity in his apartment so he goes to seek help…there’s a lot of twists and turns.”

Maxim posted the story in four parts online, tweaking the story based on feedback from Nosleep commenters. The story caught the attention of Youtube personality Rob Dyke who posted the story being read aloud on his channel.

The video garnered 400,000 views.

According to Maxim, that story has been the most popular one he’s written so far, but he has several others that have been collected in different horror anthologies has self-published a handful of other short stories.

As a fan of the unknown, Maxim said he searches for off-beat topics to base his stories around, drawing on experiences from his own family who share an interest in the supernatural.

For inspiration Maxim has turned to family members who started their own paranormal investigation group and his own mother and father who fled a haunted apartment Maxim likened to the Amityville Horror.

“I set out to write about weird things happening to ordinary people,” said Maxim. “Some fall outside of the horror genre into the bizarre and the unknown.”

Maxim said for now writing will remain a hobby while he works a full time job in retail, but he won’t stop searching for the macabre in the mundane.

For more information about Maxim or to purchase one of his books, visit www.christophermaximwriter.com.