So here we have it! Book Thirteen! I’m delighted to introduce the following stories for your ghoulish delight:

Have you ever wondered what visits us when we sleep? What is it in the doorway that your dog growls at? What do your cat’s eyes follow across the room? What is it that comes for you? A disturbing ‘truth’ is revealed in Emily Ruth Verona’s tale ‘The Dog Lives in This One’. In William Burton McCormick’s uncanny story ‘The Bell Keep’s Tale’, we travel to old Rīga and hear the grand old cathedral’s bell keeper recount a dark and disturbing story of a curse and the night some strange visitors arrive at the cathedral. Tip: you’ll need to read this in a quiet place so you can listen for the echo…  Megan Stannard’s ‘Slack Water’ is a grotesque, tragic and darkly-comic story of two dead junkies that haunt the riverside waiting for their bodies to be found. This story explores the very real horrors of drug abuse, addiction and the lives that get swept away in its tide.  Kaitlynn McShea retells the story of Pinnochio in ‘Mojigangas’. It is the 17th century in San Miguel El Grande, Mexico. An artist and giant-maker, Alonso, is given the much-longed-for news that his wife is expecting their first child. But their lives take a tragic and macabre turn as they exhibit their ‘Mojigangas’ at the annual city festival. Damien B. Raphael’s ‘Grubble’ is a disturbing folk horror about a girl who finds a ‘boggleboe’ – an animate doll that feeds on cloth and garments. She brings it home, feeds it, cares for it as if it were her very own child. But she is deemed mad, possessed and is locked away in an attempt to ‘starve’ her of the boggleboe (and it from her), until the day her father returns and marries her off…In Lena Ng’s story ‘King of the Rats’, a young doctor receives a letter one day from a long-lost uncle, wishing to put his ‘affairs’ in order. Dr William Hughes makes the journey to visit the ailing uncle only to find his ‘inheritance’ is little more than a crumbling mansion. This story escalates deliciously into a pure horror that will delight those with a strong stomach and a penchant for the charming, clever and magnificent creature that is the rat…In Beanie Aurora White’s story ‘1000 Rabbits’, Father Yakob sets a peculiar and gory goal to skin a thousand rabbits. His village community watches with awe, believing the thousandth will bring them luck and good fortune. But there is a price to pay for taking and killing for sport, and something is watching them…Charles, a bingo caller working in, what was, a Victorian theatre, is not having much luck these days. Alone and with redundancy imminent, he’s missing the good old days when the bingo hall was packed and his partner, David, was still by his side. Things appear to be moving on and yet, the ghosts of his past seem to be missing him too, in Nick Ryle Wright’s eerie tale ‘Unlucky for Some’. And finally, in Ann Wuehler’s story ‘Jimmy’s Jar Collection’, a bored kid, Park, joins their older cousin in his strange pastime of catching ghosts in a local cemetery. All it takes is a little patience and a jar…

Our new designer Wallace McBride has taken The Ghastling right back to its roots in the Victorian penny dreadful, brimming with vintage design and typography. These stories are also accompanied by beautiful illustrations by Esther Stephenson, Andrew Robinson, Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier & Reid Britt.

Copies are available to buy HERE

Enjoy, and all the best from all of us at Ghastling Towers!