A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Em Starr

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The House in Charlotte Street

I often wonder if writers are literary conduits for the other side, like an antenna that's tuned in to the whispers of those who came before. If the muse is found by lifting the veil, glimpsing life through another's eyes, piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of a semi-shared reality—that would make us the ultimate ghost writers, right?! 

It's a theory that I'm yet to dismiss for two main reasons. First, when the muse visits it feels absolutely other-worldly. Second, because I believe in ghosts. I've lived in various haunted houses throughout my life. My first home in Newport was riddled with paranormal activity – my mother still talks about our house in Charlotte Street, that was always cold and had a foul smell no matter how much incense she burned; how the manhole was always open no matter how many times my father closed it, how she woke to a presence so strong by my cradle, she was too scared to breathe. I wonder if those spirits followed us to the next house, where I vividly remember my imaginary friend, Schuey, telling me his mother Magda wouldn't let him play. Was it a coincidence they both had Old Teutonic names, which, as a four year old, I'd never heard before? I'm pretty sure I was experiencing something supernatural. Look into the eyes of this kid and tell me she's not hanging with a ghost or two! 

Since then, I've seen shadowed figures in empty halls, felt breath on my face cold as winter, and fingers on my shoulder as real as my own, but nothing feels more "cross-connected" than tapping into a solid writing sesh. Who knows—maybe my story, Red Dirt, is the afterlife account of a real housewife from rural Australia, who has been waiting for her story to be told.

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Leanbh Pearson

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The True Haunting Behind The Spreading Rot

The Spreading Rot is a tale with a darker reality behind it. Firstly, I wish to acknowledge the suspected victims and those still unidentified and to the continued higher rates of violence committed against the LGBTQI+ and other marginalised communities to which I identify. It is to these hidden and unheard voices that I wish to be heard.

Between 1978 and 1983, a grisly series of murders committed by Dennis Nilsen, a Scottish serial killer who murdered between twelve and fifteen young men at two addresses, disposing of the bodies inside the floorboards, cupboards, drains and gardens in North London. The most disturbing factor for me about these murders was not just the dismemberment and disposal of the bodies, but the calm and almost casual manner Nilsen conducted his life and work around these murders and his subsequent confessions which were upfront, clearly without remorse in making "death his new flatmate" as he is reported to have written. 

The Spreading Rot is a haunted house story of a different kind, where the human monster is hidden in plain sight and where, among suburban life, what we see is but a mask for the darker side of humanity. Here, in the liminal place between what is thought to be true and what is true, there is a potential for that darkness, the fear of the unknown to be a haunting all if its own.

For reference to the crimes and still-oblique motivations of Dennis Nielsen there is the biography Killing for Company by Brian Masters. A later extensive retrospective account and self-analysis, the autobiography History of a Drowning Boy by Dennis Nilsen which was prohibited from publication during his lifetime.

Image Credit: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/killing-for-company-9781787466258

Leanbh Pearson (Any) lives on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra, Australia. An award-winning LGBTQI and disability author of horror and dark fantasy inspired by folklore, fairytales, myth, history and climate. Leanbh’s judged numerous awards, an invited panelist and avid book reviewer. Leanbh has been awarded ASA, AHWA and HWA mentorships and 2023 HWA Diversity Grant. Leanbh’s alter-ego is an academic in archaeology, evolution and prehistory. A museum devotee, insomniac and photography enthusiast, Leanbh is always aided by canine assistants.
https://linktr.ee/leanbhpearson

Twenty Thrilling Titles

When The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts is published in October, we'll have twenty titles available to the reading public. For an independent publishing project, that's quite a milestone, and one we hope you'll celebrate with us. How? Well, that's up to you, but here are a handful of simple ways to get excited and spread that excitement. 

1. Read our books. They're very affordable.

2. Leave a rating and review on Amazon and Goodreads.

3. Download and share the promotional image below.

4. Join us (and invite others to join us) on social media.

Thank you. Let the party begin!    

 

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Robert Allen Lupton

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The Legend of La Llorona

My story takes place in the Sandia Mountains, which rise to 10,000 feet above Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rain and snowmelt rush down the western face of the mountains and across the metropolitan area in arroyos, what people call ditches in other parts of the United States. The arroyos are haunted by the ditch witch, La Llorona.

The story has it that once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl named Maria who was married to an older nobleman when she was just a teenager. When Maria heard that her husband was going to leave her for a younger woman from a better family, she went mad with jealousy and took her two kids down to the river to drown them. After she threw them into the rushing water, they cried out to her as they were drowning and she had second thoughts. She tried to reach out to save them, but it was too late. They were swept away by the current, never to be seen again.

It is said that to this day Maria still roams the arroyos and riverbeds, as an old witch, looking for her children and crying out for them, and will snatch up any children who are alone or careless. People have claimed to have actually seen La Llorona, which continues to reinforce the legend.

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: C. M. Saunders

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

The Locked Cabinet - C. M. Saunders

People often ask me why this is. Of all the things I could write about, why choose to write about zombies, ghouls, mysteries, and things that go bump in the night? I think a lot of horror writers struggle to give a satisfactory answer, but for me it’s very simple. It’s because I grew up with a poltergeist.

I was born in a small ex-mining village in the south Wales coalfields called New Tredegar. It is perhaps most famous for being the site of a pit disaster in 1875 that killed 22 people, and after the pit closed a century or so later, fell into a state of decline. We lived in the same terraced house all my life and I was lucky enough to have a reasonably happy and normal childhood. My mother collected little china figurines, and by the time I was nine or ten years, she had amassed hundreds of them, which she kept in glass-fronted cabinets. One day, she asked my sister and me which one of us had been playing with them, patiently explaining that some of the figurines were very old and delicate and were not to be treated like toys. This confused my sister and me, because she was in her mid-teens by then and more into boys and rock music, while I had never been one for playing with dolls. We brushed it off, and each blamed the other was responsible. This happened regularly, until eventually our mother put locks on some of the cabinets.

That should’ve been the end of the matter, but it wasn’t. Because the figures kept moving. Even with the cabinet doors locked.

One of them completely disappeared, only to turn up on the floor later.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. Things would go missing and turn up somewhere else, or household items would be moved around. The kitchen cupboards would often be found hanging open, and several times taps would be found left on. I clearly remember coming home from a family shopping trip to find an ornamental horse and cart which we kept on the mantelpiece lying on its side. There is no way this could have happened naturally because it was a big, heavy, chunky object that would need to be physically tipped over while we were out.

After we’d been living with what I now know to be poltergeist activity for a couple of years, it suddenly stopped.

But the story isn’t quite over.

My aunt lived next door with her son who was then seven or eight years old. One day, I saw her in the garden, and she looked awful—tired, drawn, haggard. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me about some of the weird things that had been happening in her house, and they sounded a lot like some of the things that had been happening in ours.

https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com/

https://twitter.com/CMSaunders01

https://www.facebook.com/CMSaunders01

First Mystery Acceptances for 2025

Black Beacon Books is proud to announce the following acceptances from the first round of submissions for The Third Black Beacon Book of Mystery. The table of contents will be finalised in October.

Mystery writers should get their submissions in by the end of September after reading the full guidelines on our submissions page.

 

A Glimpse of the Ghostly: Michael Picco

The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!

I was living in Lakewood, Colorado when I had my first encounter with the paranormal. Not a ghost, per se, but ghost adjacent, I suppose. 

I had just turned thirty when I encountered one of the “shadow people” (albeit, referring to them as “people” seems a bit of a stretch). They are better characterized as “specters” — dark, shadow-ridden creatures, grotesquely deformed with only vaguely human characteristics.

The years have done little to scour the memory away. The overwhelming and paralyzing fear still seems uncomfortably close-at-hand — even now, some twenty-five years later. This particular “visitation” occurred on a frigid and stormy February night, when the sleet-coated aspens pawed and scratched ceaselessly at my bedroom window. 

I recall being stirred from a restless sleep by an odd sort of static discharge — some kind of peculiar crackling sound. Half asleep, my mind registered it vaguely, but what woke me completely was the odd odor that accompanied it. The scent is difficult to describe. The room stank of burnt ozone, and something not unlike rusted metal, left to scorch and radiate in the summer sun. It’s had a strange, almost palpable pall to it, like the air itself was corroding. Not wanting to disturb my wife, I peeled open one eye to survey the room. There, hovering at the foot of our bed was a specter — a shadow person — an entity I would later refer to in Scenes From The Carnival Lounge as "The Sceadu.” 

The apparition was at least eight feet tall and impossibly thin, possessing a vaguely humanoid shape, but completely bereft of any discernible features — that is, beyond two amorphous and ever-shifting reddish-purple orbs where its eyes should have been. These peered malevolently from beneath the brim of an oddly-shaped hat (like a belled top hat, but oddly disproportionate). The apparition was blacker than black — a shadow of darkness so deep and that the light around it seemed to bend and dim. A sickly purple glow outlined it against the darkness of our bedroom. I watched, utterly paralyzed, as a sickly elongated limb protracted out from its body — a dreadful and stilted sort of gesture, reminiscent of the stutter of a film spool gone off track. 

A misty skeletal hand reached out for me… and I found out then that even a hardened horror writer can know terror.

www.michaelpicco.com

www.amazon.com/author/michaelpicco

https://denverhorror.com/michael-picco/