The Ghastling

In this fully illustrated issue we’ve got haunted dolls, incantations, doppelgängers, unsettling children, murderous mermaids and plenty of ghost stories. In Vincent Endwell’s ’The Doll-Eater’ a little girl is given a Raggedy Ann doll by her grandmother - a toy her mother dislikes. Soon it becomes apparent that the doll is more than just a cheering child’s toy. Hannah Mariska’s ’Mother Earth’ tells of a mother’s grief through the eyes of a nosey upstairs neighbour who witnesses something they shouldn’t. Mathew Gostelow’s ’Do Not Read’ is a brilliant take on the popular horror trope of incantations. One night, Jenny, a little girl, requests her father read her a book, The Tallyman, from the library. Chloe Gambell’s ghost story ’Mine’ tells of family trauma. A young woman travels to her maternal homeland to visit her grandparents in Normandy, France, where they live in a former sanatorium. ’Dawn’ by Amanda Moussa is an unsettling story exploring the self and the body at the edge of death. Damien B. Raphael’s story ’Don’t Be A Stranger’ is a weird and compelling tale of a couple’s demise after a fancy dress party. Mari Ellis Dunning’s beautifully told folk horror ’Rumours’ explores the arrival of mermaids in a small seaside community which, the rumours say, drowned two boys by the rock pools. William Nuth’s story ’Forty Foot Drain’ is set in The Fens, ravaged by human destruction, it seems the land is getting its own back when a boatman fishes a half-dead boy out of a fen. David Hartley’s story ’Rorrim’ is a strange story of doubles and alternate versions of the self. Nine tales of hauntings, hearsay, warped children’s games, horror and weirdness fill this book.