The Ghastling - Nathaniel Winter-Hebert

Book Four is, I warn, far more gruesome than the previous three – far more ‘Grimmsian’. I call this, with caution, ‘The Family’ issue. These stories cut close to the bone of life: our internal conflicts, our demons, our dark sides – that little bit of wickedness that most of us, thankfully, are able to keep a lid on. A good horror story will ensure you arrive at the end of it alone and in a place that leaves you slightly altered and probably too afraid to turn around. For that thing you fear, even on a warm sunny day, is never very far away… And we have a string of eleven little nightmares that are sure to delight your ghoulish minds:

Carly Holmes’ macabre, Dropped Stitches, resonates with Grimms’ and is the story of a girl born with an extra two fingers on each hand, born to a mother without four of hers…

Mordechai Lazarus’ Butcher’s Stump is a horrifying tale of religious piety, folkloric in narrative, the story of a Butcher and his son that uncovers the chilling consequences of rebelling against your parent’s wishes – and being caught out…

Subashini Navaratnam’s disturbing tale of motherhood, nods to far Eastern mythologies and folklore – beware of those assuming the female form, the shape shifters we must be careful of around these parts. Horror at its best.

Nigel Jarrett’s ghost story tells of ‘bringing back’ more than you find as strange occurrences unfold during an archaeological dig. Something else wanted to be found…

Kirstin Mackenzie Berge’s story, Susan, of a statue at the centre of a child’s game. Those stories that are passed down through generations – those dares we set with the things we are told to fear – by what, or whom, we don’t know, that’s just the way it’s always been and we’ve all been that child afraid to look, afraid to turn around…

Drew Buxton’s, Bat Boy, set on a remote farm in America will have you suspended in a state of tension to the very end. Beware of bats falling from the sky…

Matt Milone’s, The Bereaved, is a highly evocative and deeply moving tale of a future where the dead aren’t buried…

Louise Lloyd’s, Mortuus Sum, where a young boy playing alone near a mausoleum by his house, loses his ball. When he retrieves it, he finds more than just the ball, a spectre pursues…

A.S. Ford’s, Burking, explores the grubby world of Victorian graverobbers.

Chris Lambert’s peculiar and clever story, The Patient, where a husband believes his wife might actually be a ghost. Tip: paying attention has never been so important…

E.M. Edwards, House on Sea Street, tells the tale of an old sea captain’s haunting…

All of these stories will haunt you, and some will likely keep you awake at night so perhaps we might consider: there are far more horrors, far more to fear in the living, than the dead and there is much to be afraid of in those we call our ‘family’, it seems.