Issue 59 is now available in print-on-demand format

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 Anthology of Historical Horror. He can be found online at www.rexburrows.com.



Stephen Cashmore is a professional proofreader, editor and writer based in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. He has two novels published by Sparsile Books, and a third book As They Grow Older: Spooky Storiesto Read Aloud is coming out in October 2025. Go to
stephencashmore.com to find out more; go to cashmoreeditorial.com and click on 'errata' if you'd like to be amused by some typos Stephen has noticed in publications over the years. None, of course, emanate from Supernatural Tales.



Sam Dawson is a journalist. His collection, Pariah & Other Stories, is published by Supernatural Tales.



Victoria Day lives in North Yorkshire with her family, two border terriers and many books. Her short stories have appeared in Nebula Press, The Ghastling, Sarob Press, Vault of Evil, Supernatural Tales, Side Real Press, Ghosts and Scholars, Hypnogoria, The Silent Companion, and the They’re Out to Get You anthology edited by Johnny Mains. Her one act play ‘Take What You Want’ was performed at the 2022 Nidderdale Festival. She has written reviews of supernatural short story collections for the Grey Dog Tales blog. Her comedic poem ‘The Ballad of Brave Sir Louis’ about one of her dogs was published in ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’. Another, about her other dog, ‘A Dog’s Guide to Criminal Cats’ is to be found in ‘Flapping Doodles’. Both are published by Gibbon Moon Books and are edited by Rhys Hughes. Her novella Greven Hall: A Yorkshire Ghost Story published by Barnthorne Books is available on their website at https://www.barnthornpublishing.co.uk/product-page/greven-hall-by-victoria-day or via Amazon.



Sarah LeFanu is a biographer whose subjects include Rose Macaulay, novelist and occasional ghost story writer, and Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle, both masters of the uncanny. ‘Heron’ marks her first appearance in Supernatural Tales. Another story set on the watery moors of North Somerset was published in Swan River’s Uncertainties Vol 1, edited by Brian J Showers, and is reprinted in the British Library anthology Fear in the Blood: Tales from the Dark Lineages of the Weird, edited by Mike Ashley.



Roger Luckhurst is a writer and critic who lives in London. His most recent book is Graveyards: A History of Living with the Dead from Thames and Hudson.



James Machin is an editor, researcher, and writer who lives in Tring. Recent books include The Strange Stories of John Buchan (British Library Gilded Nightmares, 2025) and a new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Stark Munro Letters (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). His short fiction has been published in The Shadow Booth and Weirdbook, as well as previously in Supernatural Tales.



Charles Wilkinson’s stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990 (Heinemann), Best English Short Stories 2 (W.W. Norton, USA), Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), in genre magazines/ anthologies such as Black Static, Interzone, Supernatural Tales, Bourbon Penn (USA), Shadows & Tall Trees (Canada), Chthonic Matter (USA) and Best Weird Fiction 2015 (Undertow Books, Canada). His collections of strange tales and weird fiction A Twist in the Eye (2016), Splendid in Ash (2018), Mills of Silence (2021) and The Harmony of the Stares (2022), appeared from Egaeus Press. One of his stories was recently chosen for an Ellen Datlow Best Horror anthology, and his short novel, Every Place Unlike Home is forthcoming from Zagava (Germany). He lives in Wales.

 

New issue - coming soon!

 

New stories by:

James Machin

Rex Burrows

Stephen Cashmore

Roger Luckhurst

Sarah LeFanu

Victoria Day

Charles Wilkinson

Cover by Sam Dawson

GHOSTLY QUARTERS by C.E. Ward (Sarob Press 2025)

Clive Ward is one of the veteran contributors to Ghosts & Scholars who can always be relied upon to produce fiction in the M.R. Jamesian tradition. His stories usually offer slow-burn hauntings rather than gut-punch visceral horror - though he does sometimes deliver that punch very effectively. There is often that 'slight haze of distance' MRJ valued. This new collection from Sarob displays all Ward's virtues in four novellas (or 'Quarters'), longer tales in which there is sufficient elbow room to let the uncanny bubble slowly to the surface.

The first story, 'Promenade Walk', concerns a Norfolk seaside town which has seen better days. The narrator recalls a series of visits, each one punctuated by revelations about a notorious local family. Many of the ingredients will be familiar to fans of ghost stories. There's a Punch & Judy show, a tumbledown Martello Tower, and a lighthouse where a lone keeper went insane. At times, I could almost smell the tang of sea air. A dark family history is revealed as the narrator revisits the same run-down souvenir shop, oddly fascinated by its shabby mysteries. 

WHAT WAS IT? AND OTHERS by Fitz-James O'Brien

The final volume of Collected Speculative Works from Swan River Press covers the period 1858 to 1864. It was in the opening stages of the American Civil War that O'Brien joined that small but august company of authors who died in war or revolution. Some had already demonstrated their potential, others had yet reach it in full. O'Brien falls into the latter category, judging by the stories gathered here.

As always, the book begins with a masterly essay by John. P. Irish. 'Premonitions of Death' makes clear that O'Brien was strongly committed to the Northern cause early on, unlike many in his Bohemian circle. Combined with this, he was pugnacious and a bit of a scrapper. So it's not surprising that, not long after enlisting, he was shot in a skirmish with a rebel patrol and died of his wounds.

I asked Microsoft's Copilot AI an obvious question...

 What are the tell tale signs of AI writing?

There are definitely some fingerprints that AI tends to leave behind—especially when it's not trying to hide. Here are a few of the most common tells researchers and editors have spotted:

• Overuse of formal or Latinate vocabulary: Words like “utilize,” “commence,” or “ameliorate” pop up more often than they would in natural human writing, especially when simpler words would do.

• Repetitive phrasing or tautologies: AI sometimes says the same thing twice in slightly different ways—e.g., “Let’s come together to unite” or “a true fact.”

• Paragraphs that start with discourse markers: Words like “However,” “Moreover,” or “Overall,” followed by a comma, are a common AI tic.

• Frequent use of the Oxford comma: That’s the comma before “and” in a list—AI tends to use it consistently.

• Numbered lists with colons: AI loves structure, and it often defaults to tidy, formulaic formats.

• Bland or journalistic tone: The writing can feel polished but emotionally flat—like it’s trying to sound neutral or encyclopedic.

• Overuse of em dashes: AI often leans on these to create rhythm or insert asides—sometimes excessively.

• Lack of deep analysis or personal insight: Even when the content is informative, it may lack the nuance, contradiction, or vulnerability that marks human thought.

That said, these signs aren’t foolproof. A skilled human can mimic AI, and a well-tuned AI can mimic a human. But when you start seeing several of these traits together, it’s a strong clue.

Would you like to test a passage and see if it raises any red flags? Or maybe explore how to blend your own voice with AI tools without losing that human spark?

THE DIAMOND LENS AND OTHERS by Fitz-James O'Brien

I received a review copy of this book. This is the second volume of three in the impressive Swan River Press collection of O'Brien's speculative works. It covers the years 1855-58 and shows the flowering of the Irish-American author's talent. As with the first volume (see review above) the book begins with a masterly essay by John P. Irish. In 'Bohemian Horrors', Irish gives an overview of the fashionable literary world of mid-19th century New York. O'Brien threw himself into the Bohemian lifestyle, which of course retained its glamour well into the 20th century.

The first story in the volume is aptly entitled 'The Bohemian' and is an interesting twist on a familiar theme - the treasure hunt. The narrator, impoverished and obsessed with wealth, encounters the eponymous character, a louche Englishman called Brann, who promises him riches via startling and questionable methods. Brann is a powerful mesmerist, while the narrator's fiancée has clairvoyant powers. Brann proposes putting her in a trance and ordering her to locate a pirate horde on a small island. This works, but the vast wealth the narrator acquires proves worthless. It's a moral tale, presumably influenced by Poe's 'The Gold Bug', but with a very different tone. Brann makes an interesting anti-hero. All in all, an assured piece of work.

Very different in tone and showing the influence of Poe is 'The Comet and I'. This takes a jokey approach to one of the very frequent comet scares, in which it was assumed by many that a cosmic fireball was going to incinerate the earth - or something along those lines. O'Brien's approach is to offer various suggestions to the comet as which particular areas of New York deserve to be devastated. A nice bit of dark humour and a hint of the way the author would exploit the Victorian fascination with science in future stories.

'The Hasheesh Eater' is even darker and foreshadows a similar theme in O'Brien's most famous story. It's the tale of an American who becomes addicted to the drug in Iraq and then manages to kick the habit. However, in a twist that genuinely left me gobsmacked, he is urged by his future father-in-law to try the drug again as part of an experiment. This story is one of several that showcase O'Brien's skill as a weaver of visionary images - a writer of reveries. 

Il gatto e la luna (2019) Dir. Roberto Lippolis

I watched this Italian mystery on Prime and got a bit confused from about the tenth minute in. It was recommended by an algorithm when I asked for genre movies from the continent. So it came along with a bunch of Euro-cinema devoted to horror, sci-fi, the paranormal etc. And yet at first it seems to be nothing of the sort. Here's the synopsis from IMDb.

A man is found dead in an office. Sonya, a charming 55-year-old woman, has abandoned her family for a love affair with a younger man. The two stories end up intertwining but nothing is as it seems.

First things first, this is a short, beautiful film. We see Italy at its loveliest, the weather perfect, the people stylish and attractive. Even though a brutal murder is at the centre of the mystery, the pace is languid, punctuated by some sex and intrigue. But what's it actually about? 

One reviewer described it simply as a confusing mess, which is fair enough. To me it was an intriguing mess, as if an episode of Inspector Montalbano had been helmed by the guys who brought us Last Year in Marienbad. A lot of people talk, dress well, and inhabit wonderful buildings. The leading lady models a bikini and high heels for a photoshoot. There is some malarkey about a company fraud. A former call girl infiltrates the family. Various people have sex. Sonya encounters her old professor, and he gives her advice that does not enlighten the viewer. The cops close in. Slowly. 

The central character, played by Maria Grazia Cucinotta, is stunning. But why has she left her loving husband and adult children? And how does this somehow connect to the murder of a sleazy businessman? Eventually, all is revealed. There is - more or less - a satisfactory ending that does indeed put it in the genre slot. Some may find the denouement disappointing. But there's a lot to be said for a movie that looks this good in every scene. And I did find myself caring about Sonya and her husband (Enrico Lo Verso). 

Oh, and there is an actual cat, but it only gets a brief cameo and is totally fine.