¨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...

¨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...

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...

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.

It is late in the Nineteenth Century and monsters stalk the narrow cobbled backstreets of a gaslit Victorian London.On the heath strange stories about the Bloofer Lady, whom Stoker's novel would reveal as Lucy Westenra, tempts the children with sweet delights, behind which lie the sharper points of fangs.Blood in the Milk is a gothic tale that explores the relationship between mothers and monsters, vampires and those other creatures who feed on the young in the dark.

Dear Mother,I should begin by saying that I’m sorry.I know that Marie’s death hit you hard in the days after the funeral. All you needed in the world was the shoulder of your son to cry upon. I know I wasn’t there. I know that I should have been, and for that I am truly sorry.Moreso, however, I am sorry for the circumstances that led to my absence, the reason I couldn’t be there and the reason I can never let you weep for your child on any shoulder of mine.I kno...

Haunted Stories: 4 Short Horror StoriesStory 1: Erasmus Crane and The Cthulhu MurdersStory 2: Grandma ElStory 3: RelicsStory 4: Arnold's LetterGet your copy today!

When Erasmus Crane, the famous occult detective is called to investigate the murder and mutilation of a young woman he is instantly both repulsed and terrified. Not only by the gruesome nature of the killing and the strange squid like formations the murderer has made of the entrails but also by what those strange symbols mean. Erasmus, has seen them before.The Cthulhu Murders drag Erasmus and his faithful companion into a dark and secretive world of esoteric books, ritual sacrifice ...

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.

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...