'The Sundial' by R.H. Malden - A Hallowe'en Reading

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'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion'

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  This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . My opinion on the penultimate story in this collection has not changed since I first came across it 2015 in a collection of works inspired by Arthur Machen. So... Ron Weighell's 'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion' is not just an erudite horror story but an extended essay on Machen's cultural significance. It follows a book collector who fails to secure a particular illustration at an auction. His researches reveal a link between the mysterious artist, who used the name Adam Midnight, and Machen. Midnight, whose real name was Philip Youlden, seems to have had a more than purely aesthetic interest in the occult. Our hero is inspired to try and find out more. Thus begins an odyssey that takes the protagonist from the relatively comfortable world of book dealers to the strange house of Plas Gwyllion, where an elderly musician guards Youlden's bizarre and dangerous legacy. Along the way we e...
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A MYSTERY OF REMNANT & OTHER ABSENCES by B. Catling (Swan River Press 2025)

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  'B. Catling, R.A. (1948-2022) was born in London. He was a poet, sculptor, filmmaker, performance artist, painter, and writer. He held solo exhibitions and performances in the United Kingdom, Spain, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Holland, Norway, Germany, Greenland, USA, and Australia. His Vorrh trilogy and novels Earwig and Munky have drawn much critical acclaim. He was also Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.' I had never heard of B(rian) Catling when I received a review copy of this book , which comes with three intriguing postcards  'featuring photographs by Iain Sinclair and text by Alan Moore' . I was a little puzzled. So I did some Googling and YouTubing and discovered that Catling was a very significant figure in the UK arts scene. I feel slightly ashamed that his work passed me by, but I have tried to dispel some of my ignorance. This book certainly offers a good overview of some of the man's ideas and personal visio...
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Issue 59 is now available in print-on-demand format

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The 59th issue of the long-running magazine offers a wide range of stories by British and American authors. From an anecdote told in a Yorkshire hair salon to a worried academic wandering an East Anglian beach... from an art class in a US school to a place of the dead that may be nowhere... these stories take you to strange places where you will encounter weird phenomena. Ghosts? Yes, but things other than ghosts can be even more terrifying. People, for instance. Contents: 'The Ingress' by James Machin 'The Eternal Woman' by Stephen Cashmore 'Pastepot' by Rex Burrows '…and the traces of his memory fade' by Victoria Day 'Fire and Stick' by Charles Wilkinson 'Heron' by Sarah LeFanu 'On Dunwich Beach' by Roger Luckhurst Author Notes Rex Burrows writes dark speculative fiction. His stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Weird Horror Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Tenebrous Antiquities: An A...
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