When the sun slips below the horizon and shadows uncoil from their daytime shapes (always more fluid and dramatic when you’re not looking), the world drifts into its most unreliable hour. Twilight. For lovers of horror and the supernatural, dusk is more than a time of day. It’s an atmospheric threshold. And thresholds have always … Continue reading Why Twilight Breeds Fear…
Johanna Van Veen’s engaging, creepy tale is written in such poetic prose that reading it feels like snuggling up to read an old ghost story beside a roaring fire in a centuries-old manor – blanket wrapped around you and a hot chocolate in hand – when suddenly you feel a delicious, ghostly chill at your … Continue reading My Darling Dreadful Thing…
Wow, it’s been a long while since I last wrote here. Life, work and family have a way of sweeping us along, don’t they? But the stories never go quiet, not really. Even when I’m away from my writing desk, the voices of my characters (and the echoes of all those haunted places, imagined and … Continue reading Stories That Linger Like Ghosts…
The cundy has always been there. A concrete water conduit running beneath the coast road, hidden in the dene. Surrounded by trees, wildlife and shadows. As a child, I used to play inside it, daring myself further into the dark, scaring myself silly. Its interior is absolute. Sound dies quickly. Light doesn’t travel far at … Continue reading The Cundy…
It was March 2015.Before diagnosis, but not before symptoms. I was staying with my parents, sleeping in my old bedroom. The steroids had left me wired. I couldn’t rest. I lay awake with my feet pressed against the adjoining wall. Terraced houses carry sound. I knew that. I’d grown up listening to life on the … Continue reading The Night the Wall had a Heartbeat…
I’ve never been certain how many ravens belong in a story, yet it’s their collective noun. One is an omen. Two imply witness. Three begin to feel deliberate. Anything more and the counting really starts to matter. Ravens carry weight because they observe. They remember. They gather at the edges of things and wait to … Continue reading How Many Ravens Are in a Storytelling..?
I came across an old photograph of Little Thorpe Hospital near Easington, County Durham. By the time I knew it, it was a maternity hospital. Before the wards were repurposed for expectant mothers, it was an infectious diseases hospital. Locally, it was known simply as Fever Hospital. I used to attend a writing group in … Continue reading Fever Hospital…
I went back to Horden while planning Emergence. It’s John Gimmerick’s hometown. It’s also mine. I wanted the places in the book to feel seen rather than remembered. My parents still live there, but there were corners I hadn’t visited in years. The beach. The dene. The cundy. I knew that returning to them physically … Continue reading Returning to Horden…
If you’ve just arrived, take a moment. Shake the cold from your coat. Let your eyes adjust to the half-light. This is a quiet place, a place for stories with teeth, folklore with long memories, and the kinds of hauntings that linger at the edge of ordinary life. Here, I write about winter ghosts, old … Continue reading Welcome to the Threshold…
R. H. DIXON 