¨As a linguist and historian, I’ve always been fascinated by words and phrases. I am particularly interested in how certain idioms and expressions come to be picked up, where they originated and what, if any, history lies behind their origins. It was this interest that led me in 2018 to consider writing a paper on the dialect, idioms, and aphorisms used by people in my hometown. It was also what led the kid known as Skit to spend a night ‘Alone with The Devil’.In the small rural tow...

Sometimes, when you hear that a place has been “abandoned,” it is important to ask, “abandoned by whom?” Of course, “abandoned” is already a very loaded word to use. It suggests a place that isn't just empty, desolate or lonely, but a place that for some reason has deliberately been made that way. A place intentionally cut off, knowingly and purposely shunned in an attempt to erase that place from memory.It is important then, to ask not only ‘who’ abandoned such a place, but also ‘w...

¨He was a Cambridge man and, having no other living relatives and few friends outside of those whom he could also count as colleagues, he spent much of the ink from his pen not expended upon notes and essays, corresponding with his ever loving and miraculously ever patient sibling.A sibling, who, for her part, had become somewhat accustomed to her brother’s habit of sharing his thoughts and musings in these interminable scrawlings. She, to her credit, maintained the habit of reading...

For a young subway cop, a jumper is always a traumatic thing. This time however it is the fact that the jumper survived, that will make things so much worse. For his survival leads Lucy Hanlon to review the CCTV footage and see, clear as day, that this jumper didn't jump at all. He was pushed. Pushed by someone or something, that wasn't there.That push and the evidence of it, pushes Lucy herself toward similar cases, to the unofficial files kept by Detective Madden and to his evide...

Until the day she walked, or rather dragged herself into the centre of town, most people thought that Amy Schiller was a myth.Certainly, she had been a story, circulated amongst the kids of the town since long before I joined the police service, so far back in fact, that I had heard it when I was a child myself. In the story I heard, Amy was supposed to be a ghost. In other versions, she was something more like a monster or witch, but we’ll get to that. In the end though, in reality...

Edgar Allan Poe's peerless narrative poem about a forlorn lover who is visited by a mysterious raven.First published in 1845. Narrated by Robin Reads.

The very first adventure of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.In March 1881, having retired from army life to London, Dr John Watson moves into lodgings at 221B Baker Street with an eccentric genius called Sherlock Holmes. Through his new companion Watson is drawn into a murder mystery that baffles Scotland Yard's Inspector Lestrade.First published in 1887.Narrated by Robin Reads.

Story 1: Feeding TimeStory 2: Of Shadows and SaintsStory 3: Death and SareenStory 4: Dracula’s ServantStory 5: Shades of AutumnStory 6: Tapping On GlassStory 7: The Birthday GirlStory 8: The Bogey Hole

4 Short Horror StoriesStory 1: Dracula's ServantStory 2: Death and SareenStory 3: Howling in the NorthStory 4: Seeing Lucifer's Smile

Sometimes even love stories, have dark undercurrents. Sometimes it is the humans and their hideous wishes that are the real monsters. But that doesn't mean that the other monsters aren't watching.Relics is a modern fairy tale that mixes the struggle of PTSD, obsessive compulsion and body horror with the grimmer corners of European folklore, to make a potent mix that will leave your skin crawling.

Despite being so called 'Holy ground' churches retain a deeply gothic element. Especially in lent, when the singing stops, the flowers are removed and the statues stand covered from head to toe in a long purple robe of mourning. Then, during the quiet of a winter's eve, the flickering shadows show more than they should and sometimes sounds far darker than prayers float up from between the pews...

Sometimes monsters do not live in the dark places, like under the bed or at the edge of the forest. Sometimes they live in normal houses and look just like us. Sometimes those monsters act like us too. Until someone chooses to cross them.Grandma El is a story of witchcraft, loyalty, and urban folklore that will make the reader wonder just how close to home the dark things really are.