Daniel Easterman (1949–2022)

This was the second excellent and horrifically tense novel I have read by this author. Like the first one (The Silence of Ghosts), this was told through a framework narrative, in which a man in the present day (early 1990s when this was written) looks through the papers of his recently deceased doctor father, and finds an account written by one of his elderly patients, Charlotte Metcalfe, twenty years before, detailing what happened to her as a young girl at the turn of the century. Those show more chilling events, involving a dark secret in her family, largely centre on a remote country house, Barrass Hall in Northumberland, where she lived for a time with some of her relatives. The author is very good at slowly building up an atmosphere of creeping horror and the final ending of Charlotte's narrative and the exposure of the devilish family secret is truly horrifying. This is gothic horror writing at its very best, relying on atmosphere and suggestion, not blood and gore. At a different level of horror, Charlotte's bleak experiences in the workhouse in her childhood are also very sobering. A real corker of a novel. show less

Stay out of Naomi's room, better yet stay out of the whole house. Pretty good ghost-haunted house creeper that will keep you entertained to the very end. You're not going to find Casper here because those beyond the pall have their own fun and games for us that are left behind. As in all good ghost stories the revenants are bad news. This is no rattle the silverware and move the furniture around type of haunting, these are ghosties that can reach out and grab you and cut your arm off.

Our show more poor narrator doesn't have a chance and the whimperings about exorcisms go by the wayside as the body count gets out of hand and everyone forgets about that particular palliative. It wouldn't have worked anyway because things on the other side are not as easily dealt with as you may think. Leave it to say that the existence of an afterlife here is not a comforting thought. Better off dead. show less

During nearly every run up to Christmas over the last five or six years I have read one of the creepy modern Gothic horror novels by this author. In this one, it is early 1990s Britain, where Michael Feraru is the son and grandson of aristocratic Romanian emigres who fled that country after the Communist takeover in the late 1940s. Michael returns to his ancestral home with the aim of setting up an orphanage to cater to some of the poor Romanian children in the existing orphanages, whose show more plight was well publicised in the west after the collapse of Ceausescu's regime 30 years ago this month (I recall the haunting images of filthy and ragged children confined permanently to metal cots). When Michael gets to Romania and tries to find out more about his family history, he realises it centres on his ancestral home Castel Vlaicu, set deep in the Carpathian mountains. After some unsettling occurrences in Bucharest, he finally makes his way to the family pile, cut off from communication with his mother and girlfriend back in Britain, who continue to write to him in increasing desperation at his non-communication and the developing tragedies in his local community (this is an epistolary novel). He soon discovers dark and sinister secrets in the castle surrounding his ancestors and their influence over the local peasantry over several centuries. The ending is particularly shocking as the family secret takes over Michael's life and transforms him into a true son of his aristocratic Vlahuta ancestors. Great stuff, after a fairly slow build up, as is characteristic of this author. show less

In the run up to Christmas in six of the last seven years I have read one of Jonathan Aycliffe's brilliant modern Gothic horror novels. He has a way of conjuring up a thick atmosphere of dread through building up the tension through sounds and glimpses of evil, with sparing use of overt shock tactics. This one revolves around the discovery of an ancient Babylonian talisman and a statue that predates even the Babylonians, representing a primeval version of Satan (Shabbatil). It may sounds a show more little corny but this is a really tense and gripping novel (short as well at well under 200 pages, though it didn't feel short, in a good way). Academic Tom Alton 's life is affected with the most tragic of consequences for his family and some of his friends. The vanquishing of Shabbatil at the end was a little too sudden and easy to be wholly convincing in context, but the ending was studiedly ambiguous as some of his other novels. If you don't know this author, I recommend him - his books are most similar to Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, so if you like that, you should like Aycliffe's work. show less