Terror Tales Of The Home Counties edited by Paul Finch (book review)
It’s a while since I’ve read an anthology of horror and ghost stories. So when I heard about ‘Terror Tales Of The Home Counties’, I was keen to review it, not least because I live in Buckinghamshire. This is one in a series of 14 ‘Terror Tales’ volumes to date, each of which concentrates on a particular part of the UK and all of which are edited by British crime writer Paul Finch. This particular volume was published in late 2020, so it’s no surprise to find that the Covid-19 pandemic rears its ugly head in several of the stories. One interesting point to note about the anthology is that it interleaves 14 short factual essays about the supernatural stories, myths and legends of the Home Counties between the 15 pieces of fiction.
Before jumping into a discussion of the stories, I should pay due credit to the excellent wraparound cover art by Neil Williams, which shows Herne the Hunter in a misty forest, facing towards the reader and nocking his bow as if he’s about to shoot you. It sets a suitably dark tone for the stories inside, two of which make reference to this particular mythical being.
Of the 15 stories included here, two were absolute standouts for me. The first of these was the piece which opens the anthology. Steve Duffy’s ‘In The English Rain’ is set in Surrey in 1980 and tells of two A-level students, the unnamed narrator and his classmate Sally, who decide to explore the abandoned mansion round the corner from the narrator’s house. There’s a rumour that it was briefly owned by the Beatle John Lennon, while other stories tell of earlier owners, now thankfully deceased, who were much less interested in peace and love, particularly where teenagers were concerned. Suffice it to say, visiting the house turns out not to have been the most sensible decision either Sally or her friend has ever made. Duffy does an excellent job here of portraying two young people who both obviously fancy each other and who see the trip to the spooky old house as a way of impressing each other. The tension builds gradually and the climax, when it arrives, is genuinely shocking.
Equally impressive was ‘Between’ by Sam Dawson. Also set in Surrey, this story starts in the 1960s, when David and Shelley Smith decide to opt out of the rat race, moving from Thames Ditton to a ramshackle bungalow, formerly a forester’s cottage, in the middle of some woods. While they are doing it up, Shelley gets to know some of the locals in the nearby villages, from whom she hears some odd stories about the history of the woods. These stories chime with the feelings that David has been getting whenever he’s gone out exploring, feelings which remind him of his time in the jungles of the Far East at the end of World War 2. Is there something out there? If so, is it a threat? Dawson brings the wildness of the deep woods of Surrey to life here, creating a real air of tension and threat. Even better, the story appears to end in an entirely satisfactory way, only for an extended epilogue to take the same premise in a new and shocking direction. I doubt I’ll ever feel entirely comfortable going for a walk on my own in an ancient woodland at night again.
Eight further stories were almost as impressive as these two. Gail-Nina Anderson’s ‘The Old, Cold Clay’ is set in a market town near Milton Keynes and revolves around the disappearance of a local child called Timothy. The piece proceeds as if it’s a conventional realist tale until the very end, which then provides a deeply unsettling conclusion.
‘Where Are They Now?’ by Tina Rath is told in the form of a monologue by an unnamed elderly actor, who is telling his interviewers about the circumstances leading up to the sudden disappearance somewhere near Barnes of his close friend, Chloe, also an elderly actor, who was doing some filming there at the time. Strange things always seemed to happen to Chloe, things that those who don’t know her well might be tempted to think she had made up. Her friend, however, is convinced that her disappearance is far from ordinary and is connected to the strangeness of the area around Barnes Common. Can he convince anyone else though? What I loved about this piece was the use of the monologue format to provide us with a wonderfully detailed character portrait of Chloe’s friend and, through him, of Chloe herself. By the end, I almost wanted to go and search for Chloe myself!
Paul Finch is the editor of this anthology and his story, ‘The Doom’, is the only one not original to it, having previously been published in another anthology in 2010. Nonetheless, it fully deserves its second outing here. It tells the tale of Lewis Bilks, the rather complacent vicar of an ancient priory church in Surrey which has recently been found to have a wonderfully well-preserved fresco of The Last Judgement on one wall, hidden behind the whitewash! When a well-dressed visitor confesses his sins to Bilks right in front of the fresco, the vicar’s wish to avoid any unpleasantness leads to a dramatic outcome. This is a wonderful example of a modern parable, even if Bilks is forced to learn his lesson at great personal cost.
In ‘Summer Holiday’, John Llewellyn Probert gives us the wonderfully unhinged narrator Edward Valentine, a horror film fan who decides to bring his immediate family together for the weekend at a hotel previously used as a location in many British horror films of the 1970s. However, his intention is not so much to share his film buff knowledge with them as to use it to determine how each relative should meet their end, so that he can inherit the family’s wealth when he’s the only one left standing! Edward’s narration of his exploits is a thing of beauty and the entire story is a wonderfully over-the-top homage to so many home-grown schlock-horror films of yesteryear.
Helen Grant’s ‘Chesham’ tells the story of Kay, who is clearing out her dead parents’ house in the titular Buckinghamshire town on behalf of herself and her two siblings, both of whom are too busy to be able to help. It’s the same house they all grew up in and is full of old memories. When Kay finds hundreds of loose photographs in a cupboard, some appear to show aspects of their family life that she doesn’t remember. This brings to mind several odd incidents from her childhood. Is she imagining things or is there something weird about Chesham? I loved the way Grant portrays the tedious and yet emotionally-fraught nature of Kay’s task, one that I imagine many of us will have had to undertake, which makes the strangeness of what she finds that much more difficult for her to come to terms with. On top of all that, the last line of the story is utterly brilliant.
In ‘Love Leaves Last’, writer Mick Simms portrays a stately home in Hertfordshire which has its own house rules and doesn’t take at all kindly to them being broken. This is a supernatural tale par excellence, with a dramatic conclusion that leaves little to the imagination.
Tom Johnstone’s story, ‘The Topsy-Turvy Ones’, is told through a narrative split between 1999 and 1649, the latter period focused on the months immediately after Charles I had been beheaded and Oliver Cromwell had declared Britain to be a Commonwealth. Cruel and unusual things that were done by the landowner Sir Francis Hearn to his local peasants in Iver, Buckinghamshire, back in that period of great uncertainty have fed down the centuries to modern times. When would-be film-maker Richard and his girlfriend Marisa scout the area for a location for Richard’s next film, they find that the woods contain horrors he’s not going to want to put on camera. What I really enjoyed about this story was that the harsh brutality of the 1649 narrative still didn’t prepare you fully for the horrific strangeness of the modern-day conclusion.
‘Moses’ by David J Howe is set just outside Kingston-upon-Thames and tells of the horrors experienced by 11-year old Toby when he and his classmate Simon decide to sleep in their outdoor den one night. After Simon makes a run for it, Toby is left on his own. Can he also escape the creature that seems to be hunting him? Howe does a great job of hinting at the horrors confronting Toby’s young imagination, while the unexpected conclusion left me feeling remarkably upbeat for days afterwards.
On top of the ten stories I’ve discussed above, the anthology also includes good work by Reggie Oliver, Andrew Hook, Steven J Dines, Allen Ashley and Jason Gould.
Finally, I should make specific mention of the 14 non-fiction pieces that are interspersed between the stories. These provide many fascinating examples of the myths and legends to be found throughout the Home Counties. I’m now rather keen to visit several of the places mentioned for myself, to find out more about their supernatural pasts.
‘Terror Tales Of The Home Counties’ is an excellent anthology, bringing together 15 stories of supernatural woe with 14 short articles about the mythology of the Home Counties that has inspired such storytelling. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. If you live in or visit on holiday, a part of the UK that has been covered by another in the ‘Terror Tales’ series, I’d warmly encourage you to have a look.
Patrick Mahon
July 2023
(pub: Telos. 299 page small enlarged paperback. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-84583-159-2)
check out websites: www.telos.co.uk and https://paulfinch-writer.blogspot.com/