Seeing that it’s set in Northern England of the 1970s, today will also be a good time to get introspective about yet another thing that spurred me into my writing career. So, this week we focus on that particular decade, but most specifically on a series of horror books that I will forever associate with it, and which completely captivated me as I ventured into the world of adult fiction.
On a not dissimilar subject, for this week’s review, I’ll be taking a detailed look at an issue of Tom English’s excellent horror magazine, NIGHTMARE ABBEY: WINTER SOLSTICE 2022.
If you’re only here for the Nightmare Abbey review, you’ll find it, as always, at the lower end of today’s post, in the Thrillers, Chillers section. First of all, though, it’s …
I won’t say too much about SEASON OF MIST, as I find myself promoting it on here every September, October and November. Instead, I’ll just post the back cover blurb, remind everyone that it can be had in paperback, ebook or on Audible (in two formats, freestanding or as part of a ‘waning of the year’ Audible collection, THE DEAD TIME), and I’ll then close with select quotes from some of the excellent reviews that it’s received over the years.
That time of year again
I won’t say too much about SEASON OF MIST, as I find myself promoting it on here every September, October and November. Instead, I’ll just post the back cover blurb, remind everyone that it can be had in paperback, ebook or on Audible (in two formats, freestanding or as part of a ‘waning of the year’ Audible collection, THE DEAD TIME), and I’ll then close with select quotes from some of the excellent reviews that it’s received over the years.
SEASON OF MIST
Our last autumn of innocence. Star-spangled nights. Mist-wreathed woodland. A twisted shape watching coldly from the shadows ...
Industrial Lancashire 1974
The kids in the coal-mining town of Ashburn love the waning of the year. Fancy dress and scary stories for Halloween. Fireworks and treacle toffee on Guy Fawkes Night. And a month after that, snow and the approach of Christmas.
But this particular autumn will be memorable for entirely different reasons.
Because this year someone is killing the children of Ashburn.
Or should that be SOMETHING?
While police and parents search for a maniac, Stephen Carter and his schoolmates know better. They may be on the cusp of adulthood, but there’s still enough of the youngster left in each of them to recognise the work of an evil supernatural being unique to these deserts of slagheap and coal-tip.
“A masterfully told story of autumn and boyhood and fear and courage. It’s a crime story, a ghost story, a whodunnit. I usually avoid coming-of-age stories but this one is special …”
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“… the suspense and tension build to a memorable climax that works brilliantly, even though it wasn’t at all what I was expecting.”
“A great narrative and characters add to this absolutely nail-biting read …”
“I read this over two evenings and it took me back to my childhood in Lancashire around that time. I love a creepy story and it would make a great TV drama …”
And now ...
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED
What on earth is it that could make you want to be a writer?
Every one of us is different, I suppose. We all found our own unique ways into this profession, but I’d hazard a guess that majority of us have experienced ‘Damascene moments’ … in other words were at some point struck by an astonishing revelation or motivation that we never saw coming, and which, while it might not have jolted us into the world of authorship at that very moment, became a persuasive factor in later years ... was in fact the spur that ultimately drove us on towards a very different future.
In a previous post, I highlighted the role that the great neon sign for GRANADA TELEVISION, glimmering across the rain-swept Manchester rooftops one dark and terrible night, played in pushing me towards the writing game. Today, I’m zeroing in on another aspect of my early life, which proved equally instrumental, though it may be the last thing you expect.
SPUR #2 – THE PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES
The 1970s in Britain, or so we’re often told, was a sordid time to be alive, and while I’d argue that we’re mainly told this by people who weren’t there, there were undeniable drawbacks to living in that decade.
In a previous post, I highlighted the role that the great neon sign for GRANADA TELEVISION, glimmering across the rain-swept Manchester rooftops one dark and terrible night, played in pushing me towards the writing game. Today, I’m zeroing in on another aspect of my early life, which proved equally instrumental, though it may be the last thing you expect.
SPUR #2 – THE PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES
The 1970s in Britain, or so we’re often told, was a sordid time to be alive, and while I’d argue that we’re mainly told this by people who weren’t there, there were undeniable drawbacks to living in that decade.
We ate the wrong things, drank too much, smoked too much, we were racist and chauvinistic, and society as a whole was far too sexualised: there were no modesty boards on girlie mags back then, while our TV sitcoms were laced with blue humour. And of course, there was violence: the 1970s was an era of industrial decline and unemployment, but as some traditional structures remained in place – the Church, the family unit etc – this didn’t divert directionless young men into theft and drug dealing, the way it seems to today, as much as into heavy drinking and regular brawling in pubs and clubs.
Saturday night was definitely alright for fighting in those days. There was little in the way of organised security in town centre bars, so when it kicked off in the ’70s, those establishments would literally get wrecked. We all know that this was also the age of football hooliganism, not to mention skinheads, boot boys and Hell’s Angels.
So … Wow!, you must be thinking, this it the decade this guy is trying to sell to us?
Well, no, I’m not. But the 1970s, the decade in which I came of age, was an essential factor in my development as a writer. And a key aspect of that was the PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES.
Now, hold your horses. This isn’t as much of a right-hand turn on what I was just talking about as you may think. Because, horror, in terms of movies, TV and written fiction, was also a massive thing in the 1970s.
So … Wow!, you must be thinking, this it the decade this guy is trying to sell to us?
Well, no, I’m not. But the 1970s, the decade in which I came of age, was an essential factor in my development as a writer. And a key aspect of that was the PAN BOOK OF HORROR STORIES.
Now, hold your horses. This isn’t as much of a right-hand turn on what I was just talking about as you may think. Because, horror, in terms of movies, TV and written fiction, was also a massive thing in the 1970s.
In terms of reading material, the bookshops of the UK were also awash with horror, both novels and anthologies. All these things considered, it was a perfect era for the Pan Horrors to thrive in. Now, don’t get me wrong, that series was not confined solely to the 1970s. The creation of legendary publisher and anthologist, Herbert van Thal, there were 30 volumes in total, and they ran from 1959 until 1989, but most enthusiasts would probably agree that in the late 1960s moving through into the 1970s they were really ratcheting up the sleaze factor.
And even by the standards of the conte cruel horror story, when I say ‘sleaze’, I’m talking about its most extreme incarnation: sexual violence, perversion, sadism and so forth.
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No wonder there was a ‘lure of the forbidden’ thing going on for youngsters like me where the Pan Book of Horror Stories was concerned. It’s certainly the case that it wasn’t easy getting hold of these books if you were a young teen. Mums and dads were a lot stricter back then than today. Hell, my dad once made me take a copy of Monster Mag back to the shop because it featured a pull-out poster of Peter Cushing gloating over a severed head. So, they’d almost never consent to letting you buy one of the Pan Horrors yourself, and that was assuming you could find a shop lady who’d sell it to you. The only option therefore was usually to borrow one from some friend’s older brother, or maybe dip into that ‘behind the bike sheds’ black-market at school, wherein copies would inevitably come ragged and dog-eared, and much pawed over on the pages where rude things happened.
Looking back on it now, it’s actually amazing that some of the stories in the Pan Horror anthologies were ever allowed to make it into the public realm. But people of today need to understand that British society really was very different back then. In ’70s comedy, what might today be deemed blatant misogyny was then dismissed as saucy banter. Likewise, what in horror might now be decried as obscenity was then belittled as trashy yuk for immature minds but tolerated regardless.
No doubt, reams of sociological discourse have been produced on this matter. But for me, it’s a simple case that this was Britain at the end of the industrial age, and it was a messy time. Unemployment was booming, there was financial and political chaos, we had strikes, three-day weeks, power cuts, while the very fabric of the country seemed to be decaying around us, particularly in places like my hometown, Wigan, where so many factories, mills and mines were just standing derelict, canals were bogging up and railways lying overgrown and disused.
But it wasn’t just the working class who were affected, it was the country at large.
Pride in our Word War Two effort was fading, especially as so many things in the present seemed to be going wrong.
But it wasn’t just the working class who were affected, it was the country at large.
Pride in our Word War Two effort was fading, especially as so many things in the present seemed to be going wrong.
It’s a simple case that Postwar Britain was a tired. grimy place, and yet it clung to the façade of respectability. Hipness was still regarded with suspicion. Most middle-aged people dressed as their parents and grandparents had done. Effing and blinding in public was taboo. An open homosexual lifestyle was illegal, and while we had rigid laws against hardcore porn (for which reason the backstreet sex shop trade flourished), those who worked with children or other vulnerable groups were appointed without even being vetted because the default assumption was that, to do that work, they simply MUST be nice and trustworthy.
And this, I think, is where the Pan Book of Horror Stories earned its place in history, because it really did – either by accident or design – capture the essence of a superficially polite society in which some truly vile things were going on behind neatly drawn chintz curtains.
The seeds of my own crime thrillers were definitely sown around that time, though I suspect I didn’t realise it then. This applies particularly to my HECK books, which follow cases of the Serial Crimes Unit, a bunch of specialised detectives attached to the National Crime Group, charged with investigating spree murders, torture murders, rape murders, killings perpetrated by cults or the creators of snuff movies or red rooms, and all those other sorts of other heinous individuals we like to imagine are purely fictional but actually aren’t, and yet so many of whom are concealed among the rank and file of ordinary respectable society.
That latter was a particular theme in my crime novels: namely, that there are all kinds of deviants and psychopaths out there, despite appearances. Warped individuals who manage to keep a lid on their true selves during daytime hours, but once darkness falls give full vent to their very worst desires.
I saw much of this during my police career. Trust me, the most dangerous lunatics don’t look the part; mass murderers don’t wander the streets advertising their services.
However, I don’t want the tone of this post to get too grim. The Pan Book of Horror Stories was not exclusively an exercise in imaginative grue. Even the great anthologist, Mike Ashley, who was highly critical of the gore count in the series, admitted that most volumes contained some high-quality horror as well. So many writers I know who’ve made their career in dark fiction, or have even just dabbled in it, were avid readers of these books in their early days, which surely indicates there were many good and influential stories in there.
For example, Unburied Bane by N Dennett (or it could have been the prolific Eleanor Scott, working under a pseudonym) which appeared in Vol 3, was a traditional and terrifying story, in which a holidaying couple guest in a decrepit rural cottage, where one of those infamous ‘screaming skulls’ resides in the care of the semi-deranged and possible practising witch, Ann Skegg. In the same volume, we had Neville Kilvington’s Meshes of Doom, which sees a member of the Royal Botanical Society bury his murdered wife in the conservatory, only for a recently acquired exotic plant already resident there to start demonstrating amazing growth spurts and unnatural appetites.
There were original classics in there too. Eddy C Bertin’s The Whispering Horror, which first appeared in Vol 9, presented us with a conventional but wonderfully horrific vampire story, while David Case’s The Hunter, in Vol 12, unleashed big game hunters onto Dartmoor in pursuit of a murderous assailant who might well be a werewolf.
No, the Pan Book of Horror Stories was not just about the conte cruel. Though, as I’ve already said, those ultra grim tales of dastardly doings behind closed doors were an inspiration in their own right – an odd one, I’ll admit – but so was the high-quality writing of those many other less offensive but probably more frightening horrors the series also offered.
Therefore, all hail the Pan Book of Horror. Always controversial, often disturbing, but never less than entertaining, and an incalculable inspiration to generations of horror and thriller writers growing up in that era, myself included.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime, thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
edited by Tom English
In a recent interview, Nightmare Abbey editor, Tom English (of Black Infinity fame), explained how the inspiration behind his new horror magazine lay in the kinds of ‘dime store’ horror mags he loved to read in his youth, or at least would have loved to read had he found sufficient of them on the newsagent racks of the 1970s. By this, I gauge that Tom meant he was looking for some kind of reading material that covered the whole scope of horror, not just fiction but non-fiction too. He was seeking a periodical, if you like, an intelligent epistle carrying a range of well-informed articles as well as a bunch of spooky stories – and in that, he appears to have succeeded, because at just one glance, there is definitely something of the golden age about this relatively new kid on the block.
As you may have realised, Nightmare Abbey, from Dead Letter Press, is still in its infancy – only three volumes have come out to date, with Volume 4 due to drop around Halloween – though I only really became aware of it when Volume 2, or the Winter Solstice edition for 2022, hit the shelves. But it took me by surprise straight away. It calls itself a magazine, but it’s a hefty, chunky brute, running to 146 pages, and as it promises on the cover, it is packed with fascinating features relating to the genre we all love so much.
It also contains a wealth of fiction, both original stories and a few reprinted classics (in all cases, with detailed information attached concerning the author and so on). But, personally speaking, I found the non-fictional items most eye-catching given how rarely you get this sort of thing.
For example, and most interestingly of all for me, was film historian Gary Gerani’s scholarly essay on Thriller, the early 1960s horror anthology series from NBC, as presented by Boris Karloff, which gave early breaks to such wannabe actors at the time as William Shatner, Elizabeth Montgomery, Mary Tyler Moore, John Carradine and Bruce Dern.
In fictional terms, as always with anthology material, it’s something of a mixed bag, but that’s inevitable given how subjective literature can be. What I will say is that, from the outset, all of these tales are tightly and effectively penned, Tom English clearly exerting strong quality control from his editor’s chair, and nearly all of them exquisitely illustrated by fantasy artist extraordinaire, Allen Koszowski. For the most part, the tales are supernatural thrillers rather than conte cruels, though there’s a certain level of nastiness baked in to every one. We’re talking a ‘horror’ mag here, not a collection of ghost stories.
The contributions that most caught my eye were as follows:
First up, It by Theodore Sturgeon, in which the bones of a dead man are reclaimed by the earth and transformed into a shambling ‘mud doll’ horror, which goes on to terrorise a small rural community. It’s a much-anthologised classic, dating back to 1940, which served as a chilling prototype for later comic-book characters like the Heap, Solomon Grundy and Swamp Thing.
Then, in David Surface’s These Things That Walk Behind Me, we meet a mental patient, who, thanks to having suffered a severe nervous breakdown, is now incarcerated in a psyche ward, where he slowly starts to glimpse the terrible but invisible things that are driving humanity mad. A definite thought-provoker, this one, and far from comfortable reading.
Meanwhile, in two exceptionally well-written but tonally very different stories, James Dorr’s The Calm takes us back to 1755, where a combined colonial force of Brits and Americans makes a military expedition to an isolated settlement, wherein a native legend tells of the ‘wind that presages death’, while Gary Fry’s much more mundane in setting, but no less eerie Voices of the Dark introduces us to a formerly successful comedian, now battling the booze, who attempts his comeback on stage in a drab seaside town, only to find the old flat where he’s staying deep in grim secrets.
Another blast from the glorious past comes in the shape of Edward Lucas White’s House of the Nightmare, which, though it dates back to 1906, must surely remain in the running for ‘scariest haunted house story ever written’. It concerns a motorist who, when he finds himself stranded at a lonely and abandoned mansion, has no choice but to stay overnight and is soon beset by a series of increasingly more terrifying nightmares.
In That Which Overcomes, the always reliable John Llewellyn Probert sticks his own welcome oar into the mix, sending a pair of middle-aged doctors down into a mysterious underground labyrinth, which one of them is convinced claimed the life of his father. Apparently, the maze of unlit tunnels comes and goes, but whatever lurks down there is constant. JLP has ventured more and more into the supernatural as he himself has grown older, but you can always guarantee that he’ll have truly something horrible in store.
In three other strong and particularly mysterious entries, we have Dead Hands Clapping by Matt Cowan, in which the son of a former film star who died in a theatre explosion acquires an old sound tape supposedly containing a recording of the fatal incident, only to discover that it’s a past that shouldn’t be delved into, The Wynd by Helen Grant, in which a thief takes a narrow passage to an ornate church, intending to burgle it, but finds the entire district weirdly deserted, while the church itself seems … odd (to say the least), and Geoffrey L Norris’s Tableau for Two, in which a duo of brothers are called to clear out their deceased mother’s apartment, but uncover artefacts that remind them of the worst Halloween night of their lives.
Perhaps the strongest contribution in the whole volume comes, unsurprisingly to me, from Steve Duffy, whose La Nina Atardecer sees an American drug dealer crossing the Mexican desert to a vital meeting, and en route picking up a beautiful hitchhiker, whom he soon learns – the hard way – is much more than she appears. I don’t want to say too much more about this one, but put it this way, it’s nail-chewingly frightening and could easily be the premise behind a full-length horror movie.
So, there we go. That was my first dip into Nightmare Abbey, and it was a couple of hours very well spent. I hope it runs for years because it gets my highest recommendation. It seems to be setting itself up as a one-stop-shop for all things horror – both fictional and factual – which in itself is one of the most worthwhile endeavours I’ve seen for quite some time.
Grab a copy whenever you can. You won’t regret it.
In a recent interview, Nightmare Abbey editor, Tom English (of Black Infinity fame), explained how the inspiration behind his new horror magazine lay in the kinds of ‘dime store’ horror mags he loved to read in his youth, or at least would have loved to read had he found sufficient of them on the newsagent racks of the 1970s. By this, I gauge that Tom meant he was looking for some kind of reading material that covered the whole scope of horror, not just fiction but non-fiction too. He was seeking a periodical, if you like, an intelligent epistle carrying a range of well-informed articles as well as a bunch of spooky stories – and in that, he appears to have succeeded, because at just one glance, there is definitely something of the golden age about this relatively new kid on the block.
As you may have realised, Nightmare Abbey, from Dead Letter Press, is still in its infancy – only three volumes have come out to date, with Volume 4 due to drop around Halloween – though I only really became aware of it when Volume 2, or the Winter Solstice edition for 2022, hit the shelves. But it took me by surprise straight away. It calls itself a magazine, but it’s a hefty, chunky brute, running to 146 pages, and as it promises on the cover, it is packed with fascinating features relating to the genre we all love so much.
It also contains a wealth of fiction, both original stories and a few reprinted classics (in all cases, with detailed information attached concerning the author and so on). But, personally speaking, I found the non-fictional items most eye-catching given how rarely you get this sort of thing.
For example, and most interestingly of all for me, was film historian Gary Gerani’s scholarly essay on Thriller, the early 1960s horror anthology series from NBC, as presented by Boris Karloff, which gave early breaks to such wannabe actors at the time as William Shatner, Elizabeth Montgomery, Mary Tyler Moore, John Carradine and Bruce Dern.
In fictional terms, as always with anthology material, it’s something of a mixed bag, but that’s inevitable given how subjective literature can be. What I will say is that, from the outset, all of these tales are tightly and effectively penned, Tom English clearly exerting strong quality control from his editor’s chair, and nearly all of them exquisitely illustrated by fantasy artist extraordinaire, Allen Koszowski. For the most part, the tales are supernatural thrillers rather than conte cruels, though there’s a certain level of nastiness baked in to every one. We’re talking a ‘horror’ mag here, not a collection of ghost stories.
The contributions that most caught my eye were as follows:
First up, It by Theodore Sturgeon, in which the bones of a dead man are reclaimed by the earth and transformed into a shambling ‘mud doll’ horror, which goes on to terrorise a small rural community. It’s a much-anthologised classic, dating back to 1940, which served as a chilling prototype for later comic-book characters like the Heap, Solomon Grundy and Swamp Thing.
Then, in David Surface’s These Things That Walk Behind Me, we meet a mental patient, who, thanks to having suffered a severe nervous breakdown, is now incarcerated in a psyche ward, where he slowly starts to glimpse the terrible but invisible things that are driving humanity mad. A definite thought-provoker, this one, and far from comfortable reading.
Meanwhile, in two exceptionally well-written but tonally very different stories, James Dorr’s The Calm takes us back to 1755, where a combined colonial force of Brits and Americans makes a military expedition to an isolated settlement, wherein a native legend tells of the ‘wind that presages death’, while Gary Fry’s much more mundane in setting, but no less eerie Voices of the Dark introduces us to a formerly successful comedian, now battling the booze, who attempts his comeback on stage in a drab seaside town, only to find the old flat where he’s staying deep in grim secrets.
Another blast from the glorious past comes in the shape of Edward Lucas White’s House of the Nightmare, which, though it dates back to 1906, must surely remain in the running for ‘scariest haunted house story ever written’. It concerns a motorist who, when he finds himself stranded at a lonely and abandoned mansion, has no choice but to stay overnight and is soon beset by a series of increasingly more terrifying nightmares.
In That Which Overcomes, the always reliable John Llewellyn Probert sticks his own welcome oar into the mix, sending a pair of middle-aged doctors down into a mysterious underground labyrinth, which one of them is convinced claimed the life of his father. Apparently, the maze of unlit tunnels comes and goes, but whatever lurks down there is constant. JLP has ventured more and more into the supernatural as he himself has grown older, but you can always guarantee that he’ll have truly something horrible in store.
In three other strong and particularly mysterious entries, we have Dead Hands Clapping by Matt Cowan, in which the son of a former film star who died in a theatre explosion acquires an old sound tape supposedly containing a recording of the fatal incident, only to discover that it’s a past that shouldn’t be delved into, The Wynd by Helen Grant, in which a thief takes a narrow passage to an ornate church, intending to burgle it, but finds the entire district weirdly deserted, while the church itself seems … odd (to say the least), and Geoffrey L Norris’s Tableau for Two, in which a duo of brothers are called to clear out their deceased mother’s apartment, but uncover artefacts that remind them of the worst Halloween night of their lives.
Perhaps the strongest contribution in the whole volume comes, unsurprisingly to me, from Steve Duffy, whose La Nina Atardecer sees an American drug dealer crossing the Mexican desert to a vital meeting, and en route picking up a beautiful hitchhiker, whom he soon learns – the hard way – is much more than she appears. I don’t want to say too much more about this one, but put it this way, it’s nail-chewingly frightening and could easily be the premise behind a full-length horror movie.
So, there we go. That was my first dip into Nightmare Abbey, and it was a couple of hours very well spent. I hope it runs for years because it gets my highest recommendation. It seems to be setting itself up as a one-stop-shop for all things horror – both fictional and factual – which in itself is one of the most worthwhile endeavours I’ve seen for quite some time.
Grab a copy whenever you can. You won’t regret it.
(Efforts have been made to identify and credit all the creators of the imagery used in today's post, without success. If anyone recognises a piece of their own work, just drop me a line, and I will either provide the necessary info, or if it is required, delete the image entirely).
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