"Have You Always Written Horror?"

People ask me if I have always written horror – or dark fiction if you prefer. The simple answer is ‘no’. In fact, over the years, I have written stories for children (the still unpublished The Adventures of Henry the Toad and All His Friends springs to mind) and light romantic fiction (until I got so fed up with the wimpy heroine that I left her stuck in a lift/elevator from where she hasn’t emerged in thirty-six years. That’ll teach her!). I have written historical fiction and crime, poetry, a comedy-drama about Neolithic henge builders (ah yes, The Beaker Folk. I remember them well. An agent told me the play would be good for radio. I’m still waiting to hear back from the BBC. It’s been around thirty-five years. Do you think it’s too soon to chase them up?)

Years passed, life happened and, having no luck in enticing a publisher or agent to take me on, despite some really encouraging feedback, I stepped back to take a long hard look at what I was doing and what I most enjoyed writing and it came down to…

Horror.

I had always adored scary, ghostly stories, frequently set sometime back in history, in Gothic houses with creepy corridors where shadows moved and you were never ever truly alone…even though you were the only living thing for miles around.

Readers, I did it. I switched genres yet again and entered a competition with an American publisher of repute called Samhain. The prize was to be one of four authors whose novellas would be combined into an anthology of Gothic horror stories.

When I opened an email some weeks later from Samhain’s Horror editor in chief, Don D’Auria I expected the usual ‘thanks but no thanks’. I had to read it twice, then another twice to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood. Here’s the section that had me leaping around the room making rather odd ‘whooping’ noises:

‘Welcome to the Samhain family!

‘I've read through all the (many) submissions to the Samhain Gothic horror anthology, and I'm happy to say that Linden Manor was one of the very best. Congratulations! You beat out some pretty stiff competition. Linden Manor is a truly fine piece of work. And so I'm pleased to offer you a contract for the novella…’

Since then, I have never looked back. Linden Manor joined fabulously creepy stories, Blood Red Roses by Russell James, Castle by the Sea by J.G. Faherty and Bootleg Cove by Devin Govaere in an anthology (now, sadly out of print) called What Waits in the Shadows. Samhain became my publisher and, following their demise, the books I released with them were reprinted by Crossroad Publishing, including Linden Manor which is now available in ebook and audio versions here.

These days, I love writing Gothic, haunted house, historical horror stories and have also dabbled in a little folk horror. I am published by Flame Tree Press which means I am lucky enough to still be able to call the great Don D’Auria my editor.

As for my latest novel – Dark Observation is out in hardback, ebook and paperback.

“a dark, disturbing thrill ride” – Publishers’ Weekly

"An engaging, multigenerational tale of dark magic and occult" - Booklist

Here’s what you can expect to find:

Eligos is waiting…fulfil your destiny

1941. In the dark days of war-torn London, Violet works in Churchill's subterranean top secret Cabinet War Rooms, where key decisions that will dictate Britain’s conduct of the war are made. Above, the people of London go about their daily business as best they can, unaware of the life that teems beneath their feet.

Night after night the bombs rain down, yet Violet has far more to fear than air raids. A mysterious man, a room only she can see, memories she can no longer trust, and a best friend who denies their shared past... Something or someone - is targeting her.

Dark Observation is available here:

Flame Tree Press

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Waterstones

Bookshop.org (where you can support your favourite local bookshop)

and at good bookshops everywhere (on the shelf or to order)

Images:

Shutterstock

Crossroad Press

Nik Keevil and Flame Tree Press Studio

The Haunted Halls of Rolling Hill Asylum

 

If you needed to enter an asylum (or mental health facility), surely it would be because you had a mental health problem of some kind, right? Wrong. In the past, all you had to be was poor. Desperately poor, or old, disabled, or suffering from alcoholism. People afflicted with dementia, or with physical infirmities could find themselves behind the walls of places such as Rolling Hills Asylum in Bethany, New York. If they were indeed mentally ill, they could look forward to the very latest treatments, which read like a catalogue of methods of torture that might have been favoured by the Spanish Inquisition. Over the years these included – but were not restricted to – lobotomies, and electric shock therapy (without anaesthesia).

Rolling Hills Asylum can date its history back to 1827 when it opened as the Gennessee County Poor House. A newspaper report from the time stated that it was open to: ‘“habitual drunkards, lunatics (one who by disease, grief, or accident lost the use of reason, or from old age, sickness, or weakness was so weak of mind as to be incapable of governing or managing their affairs), paupers (a person with no means of income), state paupers (one who is blind, lame, old, or disabled with no income source) or a vagrant.’

All inhabitants were referred to as ‘inmates’, implying that whatever their reason for being there, they were all the same and all, essentially, prisoners.

Rolling Hills has operated variously as poor house, orphanage, asylum, and tuberculosis hospital. Around 1700 bodies are believed to be buried in the grounds – all in unmarked graves. Its last function was as a nursing home, but it only lasted for ten years in that guise mostly because of official code violations. It was then closed permanently. Most of the dorms and old buildings were torn down at that point.

Now, it looks like Hollywood’s ideal of a haunted asylum and hospital. The four storey brick building needs little imagination to ‘see’ ghosts walking there. Its echoing walls and corridors wreak of stories of inhumane treatment, despair and pain. Set foot in this place and you know you are not alone. Walk – and the unquiet spirits walk with you

And there have been plenty of reported incidents. Shadows, footsteps, ghostly touching, disembodied voices. It’s a ghosthunter’s delight. Not that all the ghosts are hostile.

Night-time ghost events are run at the facility. One of the most frequently seen ghosts is believed to have been Roy Crouse, who died in 1942. He spent most of his life here, was around seven feet tall (it is believed as a result of gigantism) and his afterlife is spent wandering as a very tall shadow who follows visitors, weeping. He may have been captured on camera, as one female visitor on a tour said she heard footsteps coming up behind her. Flashlights revealed no one there but then she turned around and took a photo. Sure enough, if you look closely, there is a tall shadow.

On the first floor of the main building, is Hattie’s Room where an old woman has been recorded saying, “Hello”. Roy’s room is also in this vicinity and he seems to have a soft spot for ladies in distress. The current owner, Sharon Coyle, was terrified by a rat in the infirmary about two months after moving in. She ran from there, screaming, and the next day found the rat dead on the stairs with blood oozing from its mouth as if its neck had been broken. On the wall above it, the clear mark of a large, bloody handprint led her to believe Roy had done this for her. These days, Roy is a much-loved figure of Rolling Hills. What would have been his 130^th birthday was celebrated in true style in April 2020.

On the second floor of the East Wing, shadow people move silently about in shades varying from pale grey to pitch black. The shadows creep along the floor or walk as humans. They can be amorphous shapes or human-like. Sometimes they appear as an appendage – an arm or a single leg.

In the basement, the Pysch Ward and Solitary Confinement cells show evidence of shackles having been used to restrain those deemed to be unruly. The Morgue, as might be expected, is a particularly uncomfortable place to visit. An embalming table stands near two large walk-n refrigerators for the storage of corpses. Visitors have heard ghostly voices and seen things moved about by unseen forces. People have also been shoved and even knocked off their feet here.

Outside, the exact location of the cemetery is unknown. Nature has taken over and any gravestones have crumbled or become so heavily overgrown as to be indistinguishable. No site map exists or even a burial record.

For some, Rolling Hills will have been the only home they ever knew.

Sharon Coyle has developed a thriving business onsite – with ghost evenings, tours, shopping, dining and much more. Rolling Hills is frequently used for filming and has been featured on a number of television ghost hunting shows.

If you visit, don’t forget to say ‘Hi’, to Roy.

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.
Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Simon and Schuster

Flame Tree Press

Rolling Hills Asylum

Weird NJ

 Images: Pixabay

Flame Tree Studio

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The Ghosts of Newsham Park Hospital

Image: Tom Tom - Shutterstock.com

My latest novel – In Darkness, Shadows Breathe – spends a significant amount of time in the frighteningly haunted Royal and Waverley Hospital whose walls conceal many dark secrets. Although a fairly modern hospital, my creation is built on land formerly occupied by a hospital, asylum and workhouse and is fairly typical in this. Many of today’s hospitals had multiple functions in their past – or are built on the foundations of earlier institutions whose practices would not be considered appropriate in this day and age.

 

Image: Shelly Jensen - Shutterstock.com

Liverpool’s Newsham Park Hospital shares this murky heritage. Situated not far from the city centre, this crumbling and derelict building once housed an orphanage, hospital wards, a Bell Tower, an attic lined with 18 punishment cupboards where children who misbehaved would be incarcerated alone in the pitch dark, a schoolhouse, mortuary, nurses’ accommodation and chapel. Built in 1869, it variously served as an Orphanage, Psychiatric Hospital and finally an Old People’s Home before closing and being finally abandoned in 1992 when it quickly fell into disrepair. Plans to redevelop it into flats fell through, owing to local opposition, but, since then, stories began to circulate. Strange ghostly phenomena were reported. It wasn’t long before word got around and numerous haunted event companies began organising night time vigils and trips around its desolate corridors which are still littered with broken beds, commodes, wheelchairs, peeling walls and tons of rubbish and detritus – a kind of decrepit Marie Celeste of the medical world.

Image: Artfully Photographer - Shutterstock.com

One of these event companies is Haunted Happenings. Newsham Park is a regular venue for them, and Philip Barron is one of their most experienced ghost hunters and guides. In more than twenty trips around the former hospital, he had witnessed his fair share of the unusual and unexplained and become accustomed to the many individual different experiences members of the same party might report But, on one fateful night, something happened that he had no way of explaining. It all started when, at the beginning of the all-night vigil, the group posed for the obligatory photograph.

The vigil passed off spookily as usual. Everyone had a great time and went home satisfied.

The next morning, Philip uploaded the photograph – again, as usual. What happened next wasn’t usual. The photograph quickly went viral. There were all the smiling, happy faces. The problem was there was one too many smiling faces. No one – and I mean no one – remembered the additional member of the group, a smiling girl. She wasn’t on the tour, well, not officially anyway. Maybe she had somehow sneaked in, and gained entry for free. Except...the simple fact was, she lacked substance somehow. The team tried to find a logical explanation and failed. Equally no one else has come up with one either. It remains one of the many mysteries of the stubbornly haunted Newsham Park Hospital.

Maybe she’s one of the former orphans, or a nurse from its psychiatric hospital days – maybe a patient. Whoever she is, she doesn’t seem too upset by being there.

The mystery ghost joins an ever-expanding collection of phenomena that includes: mischievous poltergeist activity such as workmen’s tools being moved and objects being disturbed when essential work was being carried out on the premises, the sighting of a small child in the attic along with voices heard coming from there, shadowy figures seen in one of the former wards, dragging noises coming from the former dining room, eerie screams and crying coming from the basement and other parts of the building. Then, there’s the overall heavy feeling of dread experienced by many visitors from the minute they cross the threshold. Only to be expected, I would have thought!

Want to see more? Here’s a clip to whet your appetite:

https://youtu.be/mC30MpVymkM

You’re next…

Carol and Nessa are strangers but not for much longer.

In a luxury apartment and in the walls of a modern hospital, the evil that was done continues to thrive. They are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions – bending and twisting time itself – and where danger waits in every shadow. The battle is on for their bodies and souls and the line between reality and nightmare is hard to define.

Through it all, the words of Lydia Warren Carmody haunt them. But who was she? And why have Carol and Nessa been chosen?

The answer lies deep in the darkness…

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Flame Tree Press

The Red Lady of Newark Castle

Tom Tom/Shutterstock.com

In 2004 a young couple, Wendy and Iain McGinnes, chose the 15^th century fortified Newark Castle in Port Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland as the perfect venue for their wedding. The day was everything they could have wished for but, when they got the wedding photographs back, they found an extra guest had turned up. One who was not on their invitation list. In fact, one who wasn’t even alive.

A blonde woman dressed in red, stared out of a castle window, apparently watching the photographs being taken outside. Wendy returned to the castle to try and find out more about the identity of the shadowy figure and discovered she was not alone in having encountered her.

In fact there are frequent reports of a blonde haired lady in red haunting a room called the Steward’s Chamber and she has been photographed on more than one occasion. Staff at the castle told Wendy McGinnes that they close off that part of the castle during weddings and special events so it would be most unlikely that the figure at the window was of this world.

On further investigation, Wendy discovered that it was indeed the Steward’s Chamber from where the ghost had peered out at them. But who was she?

Firstly a little background. Newark Castle stands impressively on the shores of the mighty River Clyde and most of what we see today is down to the work of one man – Sir Patrick Maxwell who lived in the 16^th century although the castle was originally constructed a century earlier by an ancestor of his. Maxwell added greatly to the majesty of the building but, apart from his grand building schemes, he was not the sort of man anyone would want their daughter to marry. He was a murderer and a serial wife beater. He murdered neighbours including two members of the Montgomery family of Skelmoorlie, and even some of his own relatives – including another Patrick Maxwell, this one of Stanely.

But his own wife bore the brunt of his cruelty – for 44 years during which time she bore him 16 children.  The former Lady Margaret Crawford alleged he attacked her with a sword and kept her locked in her bedchamber for six months with only bread and water for sustenance. When one of her sons and his wife attempted to care for her as she lay recovering from the sword attack, Maxwell had them thrown out of the house.

Things were so bad that even her mother in law attempted to intervene, lodging a complaint about her son’s behaviour with the Privy Council. It did no good. Added to the beatings and other violence she suffered, it is hardly surprising that one day, when she managed to escape, she fled across the Clyde to Dumbarton. It was here she died in poverty. Her husband was never made to face any charges. Some were pending, but he died before he could be called to account.

It is believed that it is the ghost of the tragic Lady Margaret that haunts the castle. She, it seems, is the Red Lady. This poor, mistreated soul cannot find rest and remains trapped in the place which during her life must have felt like a prison.

Newark Castle has been in the care of the state since 1909 and is today administered by Historic Environment Scotland . You can visit between April and October and wander its tower, rooms and corridors – and maybe say a little prayer for the repose of the soul of the Red Lady of Newark.

The Green Lady of Crathes

Lario Tus/Shutterstock.com

One thing you could never accuse this ghost of is being shy. She has been seen by a whole host of people, including Queen Victoria when she came to stay at Crathes Castle. She may even have been captured on camera as recently as two years ago.

The building itself is a picturesque Jacobean edifice standing in glorious countryside on the banks of Loch Leys in Aberdeenshire. Building was started here by Alexander Burnett of Leys in 1550, and not completed until 1590 but its most famous inhabitant – known simply as the Green Lady of Crathes – seems to have been haunting the area long before the castle was constructed. According to some traditions, she may have lived in an earlier castle which stood on the same spot and whose stones were incorporated into the present structure. 

Another – and more widely held – legend states that she was either a servant girl or a ward of the Laird of the present castle, during the late 1500s. Sadly, we have no name for her and she is alleged to have disappeared shortly after giving birth. Givent he cited circumstances, we can hazard a guess as to the identity of the baby's father.

 Whatever the truth of her identity may be, this ghost manifests herself in a particular room which, for obvious reasons is known as the Green Lady’s Room, where – dressed in the green robe that gives her its name - she glides serenely across the floor until she stops by the fireplace and lifts up a baby, apparently out of thin air. She then cradles the infant in her arms. In a sinister turn of events, when renovations were carried out on the room during the 1800s, skeletal remains of a young woman and a baby were discovered under the hearthstone. 

The Green Lady never threatens or harms anyone although her sudden appearance is signalled by temperature fluctuations and some visitors have reported feeling a palpable sense of dread on entering her room. However, she has been known to appear to members of the Burnett family, and to them she represents a warning of impending death or other disaster.

In November of 2016 a photograph, taken by Bill Andrew of his family outside the castle, shows a ghostly figure in the doorway behind. Apparently, there has been something of an upsurge in paranormal activity at the castle of late.

The castle does seem to be something of a hive of supernatural activity and the Green Lady isn’t the only spectral presence. Archives record the frightening appearance of a luminous block of ice, moving as if it were a human walking. Not surprisingly these appearances go hand in hand with a sharp and dramatic drop in temperature.

A further ghost – known as the White Lady – turns up from time to time. She is thought to be Alexander Burnett’s young lover, Bertha. Burnett’s mother – Lady Agnes - deemed her unworthy of becoming her son’s wife and poisoned her.

Lady Agnes also haunts the castle and returns on the anniversary of her death.

The castle is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, having been given to them by the Burnett family in 1951, and is a popular tourist destination. It is famed for its incredible, ornate painted ceilings and magnificent furniture, as well as possessing extensive, beautiful grounds and gardens. Certainly one to put on your list of places to visit this summer.

May all your ghostly encounters be friendly ones...

Venturing Into The World’s Most Haunted Forest...with J.H. Moncrieff

 I love a great ghost story and J.H. Moncrieff writes them. The latest in her Ghostwriters series has just been published and it's an edge-of-seat feast of surprise. Come with us as we take a trip into the very place that inspired her latest spooky tale - and watch out for the trees, you'll meet them again in Forest of Ghosts...

Romania is a beautiful country, a photographer’s paradise: rolling hills, gingerbread architecture, and some of the prettiest cities I’ve ever seen in my life. Visiting Bran, Brasov, or Sighişoara is like stepping into a fairytale.

Hoia Baciu, however, was another story.

The legends about the world’s most haunted forest are well known. Hoia Baciu was named for a shepherd who vanished in the forest, along with his flock of two hundred sheep. 

Those brave enough to venture within have suffered strange rashes, headaches, burns, scratches, and nausea, among other ailments. People have reportedly experienced a high level of anxiety while in the forest, along with the sensation of being watched. Electronics often malfunction in the area as well.

The day I was to visit Hoia Baciu began in disaster. An argument with the hotel clerk over a billing issue resulted in me being late to meet my guide, and then I couldn’t find my credit cards. Sweating and anxious, I set off for the forest with a driver appropriately named Vlad.

 At first, Hoia Baciu appears quite peaceful, with plenty of birdsong and happy frogs. But soon you begin to notice the strangeness of it.

All the trees are either oddly shaped (one looked exactly like a harp), or are bent and otherwise deformed, with large growths erupting from them. There was a clearing where a clearing had no business being. An eerie, greenish fog lurked around a single tree. As my guide showed me around, he tucked his electromagnetic meter back in his pocket and admitted the ghost stories are used to entertain tourists. But he did add that it was extremely easy to get lost in the forest, even if you’re an experienced guide. It had happened to him not long before we met.

 Out of nowhere, a bolt of pain shot across my forehead. I’m used to migraines, so this wasn’t completely foreign to me, but I’ve never had one come on so quickly, before or since. Between the blistering agony in my brain, and the fact that my stomach was acting up, I was terrified something truly awful was going to happen in Hoia Baciu, and it would have nothing to do with the supernatural.

Maybe it was altitude sickness? No, my guide said, explaining we were only two hundred feet above sea level. Metals in the soil? No, Hoia Baciu had been tested and retested, with nothing abnormal ever found.

Due to our late start, we didn’t get as much time in the forest as I’d been promised. My guide was apologetic. I was relieved. While I never felt I was being watched, the forest had become suffocating, and my health grew increasingly worse.

           As soon as we broke through the trees, my headache vanished. My stomach was slower to recover, but by the time I caught my flight home a couple of hours later, I was back to normal.

Is Hoia Baciu really haunted? I couldn’t say. I didn’t see balls of light or an apparition, as many people have. All I know is that I was desperate to get the hell out of there.

And that’s good enough for me.


 J.H. Moncrieff’s new release, Forest of Ghosts, was inspired by her real-life experiences in Romania, including Hoia Baciu, the world’s most haunted forest.

Jackson Stone is sick of ghosts. With his love life in shambles, he heads to Romania for a horror writers’ retreat, hoping it will be a break from the supernatural and breathing space from his relationship with medium Kate Carlsson.

But as his fellow writers begin disappearing or losing their minds, he realizes he needs Kate’s help. 

When Jackson loses his own memory, Kate’s love is the only thing that can bring him back. But she’s falling for the man responsible for the evil in Romania. A man who claims to be her soul mate. Will this master of wraiths forever break Kate’s bond with Jackson?

Mysterious Galaxy  Barnes and Noble  Chapters  Amazon
 

J.H. Moncrieff's City of Ghosts won the 2018 Kindle Book Review Award for best Horror/Suspense.

Reviewers have described her work as early Gillian Flynn with a little Ray Bradbury and Stephen King thrown in for good measure.

She won Harlequin's search for “the next Gillian Flynn” in 2016. Her first published novella, The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave, was featured in Samhain’s Childhood Fears collection and stayed on its horror bestsellers list for over a year.

When not writing, she loves exploring the world's most haunted places, advocating for animal rights, and summoning her inner ninja in muay thai class.

J.H. loves to hear from readers. To get free ebooks and a new spooky story every week, check out her Hidden Library.

  

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