The Ghastling is a biannual short-story magazine that oozes eeriness and dark things. Styled as a modern-day Penny Dreadful, the first issue was published in 2014: the ghoulish brainchild of editor Rebecca Parfitt.
The magazine has gone on to feature writers and artists from across the world, and we published its landmark tenth edition on Hallowe’en 2019.
Meet the Team
Editor & Founder
Rebecca Parfitt has worked in publishing for fifteen years. She began her career in London, working predominantly in magazines, and now lives and works in south Wales. She was editor of the anthology of Gothic fiction A Flock of Shadows, published by Parthian in February 2015. She was also nominated editor of the month by Parthian in February 2015.
Rebecca is also a writer and has published poetry and short stories. Her first poetry collection The Days After was published by Listen Softly London in April 2017. She is a recipient of the Hay Festival Writers at Work residency. In 2019 she was awarded funding to complete her collection of dark and uncanny stories, Sometimes they arrive late and other macabres. Two of the stories from the collection have appeared in New Gothic Review Vols 1 & 2 in 2020. In August 2020 her first film (based on one of her short stories) Feeding Grief to Animals was commissioned by the BBC and FfilmCymru Wales. She loves ghost stories, quiet horror, the strange, the uneasy and the macabre; as well as hats, Berlin and the sea. In her free time she can be found at the circus, usually hanging upside down on the ropes…
Graphic Designer
Wallace McBride is a graphic designer from South Carolina, USA. His work has been featured in Fangoria, The Sleepy Hollow International Film Festival, The Boston Comedy Festival, the Associated Press and dozens of newspapers in the United States, and also used on official merchandise for The Prisoner and Star Trek.
Wallace is the creator of The Collinsport Historical Society, a website dedicated to the cult television series Dark Shadows. Since its launch in 2012, The Collinsport Historical Society has been recognised numerous times by The Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, and received The Silver Bolo Award in 2020 from Shudder’s The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. Wallace sometimes uses the handle ‘Unlovely Frankenstein’, which is either a pseudonym or just the name of his Etsy store. He isn’t sure yet.
Editorial Assistant
Tracey Rees is an aspiring writer of short stories and poetry and works as an editor for an online medical education provider. Tracey joined The Ghastling team as an editorial assistant in 2022. She lives with her husband and two feline friends near the whispering woods in South Wales, where she can often be found seeking out nocturnal animals for morbid conversations during her bouts of insomnia. When not busy doing those things Tracey is passionate about classic horror movies, spooky tales, travelling, drinking tea, and re-arranging the furniture.
The Ghastling 
[…] asked if I could go first, while my nerves held out. Rebecca Parfitt, editor of The Ghastling, (a new literary magazine devoted to ghost stories, the macabre and the oh-so peculiar) introduced […]