I’m not a huge fan of Halloween, though I am looking forward to going to a kids’ Halloween party later on today. Nor do I particularly enjoy horror as an artistic genre. But I have many exceptions to this aversion: I have always loved Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Mervyn Peake, The Owl Service and The Wicker Man, for instance. I am also fascinated by hauntology and enjoy lots of recent music and literature influenced by folk horror.

By pure coincidene, however, I finished my second reading of Tim Cooke’s Dark Play in bed shortly before midnight last night, and this morning I started reading Ghost of an Idea by William Burns. Cooke’s short story collection is excellent, though decidedly unsettling. Burns’s study of hauntology, folk horror and nostalgia so far promises to be both comprehensive and fascinating. I will review both of these books in these pages very soon.