👻 Ghost hunting for beginners 👻
'Most Haunted', Hell Tor vampire festival & the return of Zombina 💀
Summer in England seems to have ended abruptly, ditching the balmy September that I’d wanted and skipping ahead to a late-October bite that I’m unprepared for.
On balance I feel like I’ve had a pretty great summer, judged solely by how much of it was spent in or on the sea. This was the first August that I can remember when my time off work coincided with a brief heatwave, giving me an opportunity to finally get the hang of paddleboarding and circumnavigate Burgh Island (famed for inspiring several novels by Agatha Christie).
We ended the season with two weeks in Toronto, staying with a family member who I last visited when I was 12 years old. The city was everything that we hoped it would be, though the highlight of our trip was staying in a cottage on an island in the Muskoka lakes. As soon as I set forth in a canoe on the lake, I knew that I’d found my true calling in life and that everything else I attempt will be a poor substitute for listening to loons, cicadas, and crickets while canoeing and forgetting that the rest of the world exists.
My only real regret about Canada was that we ran out of time to visit Dracula’s Haunted Castle while we were in Niagara Falls. I have fond memories of my family accidentally taking me to my first horror experience last time we were there, and the shrieks and weeping as we ran through dark corridors, pursued by unseen creatures and hands reaching out the walls to grab us. I dearly wish I’d been able to revisit the scene of the crime!
Both of our children are teenagers now and for a long time we couldn’t afford anything resembling a holiday with them. This was the same period that every opportunity I had to break into the mainstream comics industry would have necessitated finding thousands of pounds to pay artists up-front for the privilege of signing our rights away to a recognised publisher, because the advances were so small and the pay was usually back-end… It was reaching the point where I feared the kids would leave home and we’d never have had the chance to travel outside the country with them, so I’m incredibly happy to have managed to take them to Canada before they were too old to tolerate my company.
Safely back home in Devon in the UK, the end of the summer signals that Halloween is approaching and we’re finally entering that part of the year when scare mazes and haunts pop up across the country. First though, I’m looking forward to the return of Hell Tor Festival, a celebration of Devon’s heritage and legacy of horrors with a focus this year on vampires, which takes place at the Exeter Phoenix from Friday 20 to Sunday 22 September.
In anticipation of the festival I’ve interviewed Ashley Thorpe, a ghoulish animator and screenwriter who organises Hell Tor alongside his wife, Festival Director Sue Thorpe. I met Ashley several years ago when I wrote about a screening of his animated feature Borley Rectory, bringing to life a story that so many British horror-lovers first discovered in books about the supernatural when we were growing up.
Also in this newsletter, read on to hear more about my most recent trip to Bodmin Jail, where I met one of the paranormal historians from Most Haunted, plus my take on Alien: Romulus, and news of the return of the UK’s most exciting horror-punk band.
Animator, Writer and Director Ashley Thorpe worked for BBC Manchester for a number of years and then in London and Athens doing illustration, before returning to his Devon roots in 2005 and focusing his energies on creating a series of animated short films inspired by English mythology - SCAYRECROW 2008 (winner of the Media Innovation Award 2009), THE SCREAMING SKULL 2008 (nominated Best UK Short film at Raindance 2009) and THE HAIRY HANDS 2010 (A SWS / UK Film Council project featuring VO by Doug Bradley).
His first feature, BORLEY RECTORY, which was a Carrion Film / Glass Eye Pix co-venture with Reece Shearsmith and Julian Sands, was completed late 2017 and premiered at GRIMMFEST, Manchester. In November 2017 it won 'Best Animated Feature' at Buffalo Dreams Festival New York and a ‘Special Achievement in Cinema’ accolade. After being released on Blu-Ray in 2019 the film is now streaming on Netflix, Prime and Talking Pictures.
As a freelance animator Ashley has provided animated titles / sequences for such varied projects as the multi award winning WOODLANDS DARK & DAYS BEWITCHED, Saturn award winning TALES OF HALLOWEEN, Dominic Brunt's WOLF MANOR and titles and various graphics for Danny Robins’ hit BBC show UNCANNY.
Can you give me a short history of Hell Tor and your hopes for the horror festival?
Hell Tor was born after two years of touring Borley Rectory around festivals both here and abroad. It dawned on both myself and my wife - Festival director Sue Thorpe - that not only were some festivals better than others (certainly in the way that they treated their guests) but it also highlighted the fact that there was very little in terms of horror festivals in the South West of England, so we decided to rectify that.
Carrion Films always had that DIY punk ethic of don't wait for popular culture to satisfy you, just do it yourself, so we did it. The first festival went well, had some amazing guests but it was hard work breaking through that all pervading indifference out there and actually reaching people, so this time we've really pushed with it. I hear so many people moaning that nothing interesting happens in the South West, but if you are not going to get off your asses and support these local things what do you expect?
We have some amazing guests, including Caroline Munro, Madeline Smith, Reece Shearsmith, and Jonathan Rigby… So many great guests and we are hoping that the event will be a success and lead to not just a regular annual event but also open up the opportunity to put on one-off special screenings. It's all up to the punters now.
What are some highlights to look out for at this year’s Hell Tor?
With so much on over the weekend it's hard to know where to start! Jonathan Rigby's interview with Caroline Munro and Madeline Smith is an obvious highlight. I never would have dreamed that these two actors, whose films I grew up on, whether that's Hammer, Bond or Ray Harryhausen, would actually grace the building where I teach.
The three-way vampire discussion with Reece Shearsmith, Jonathan and James Swanton is another obvious highlight. But I'm also excited by things like Rachel Knightley's writing workshop and our short film panel. Our aim has always been trying to not only bring great guests, but also to encourage and develop local filmmakers.
Can you tell me what you’ve worked on recently and what your plans are for the future?
I seem to have spent the past five years solidly animating for other people's films. I’m not complaining, obviously. My hope when Borley Rectory came out was that it would lead to regular interesting and creative animation work. Which it has.
I'm currently working on a stylistically interesting title sequence for a forthcoming Shudder TV series, among a few other horror films that are due for release over the next few months.
I've also had the itch to get back to making something of my own again. I wrote two features during lockdown, a dark comedy horror based on a previous radio script I produced with Glass Eye Pix, and a feature length version of my short The Screaming Skull, which is utterly devoid of humour! Very bleak gothic stuff, but a take on haunted houses that I don't think has ever been done before.Â
What is it about horror that inspires you?
I always loved monsters as a kid. Not so much horror, as I suffered from awful night terrors, trances I could not be woken from, so even the slightest veering towards something sinister, like the titles of 'Armchair Thriller, would set these things off and I'd get the swollen hand blues and feverish nights. But then I saw Alien, which apart from utterly traumatising me, really gripped my imagination. The beauty of Giger's world started something, I think. It was something like some evolutionary trespass.
As a result of my Alien obsession I started reading Fangoria magazine and by submerging myself in the world of creators of this sort of material, the night terrors slowly went away. As much as horror is another strain of fantasy, especially the Hammer films, there's something about horror that has always felt like truth to me. The skin between the worlds is a thin one. Horror gives us a glimpse of what is on the other side.
Before our holiday in Canada, I spent a night in Bodmin Jail, which is often called one of the UK’s most haunted historical sites. It wouldn’t take much to convince me to join one of their ghost hunting sessions because I try never to pass up an opportunity to be terrified, but this night also featured a talk from former ‘Most Haunted’ star Richard Felix, who joined us for a night of paranormal investigations afterwards.
You can read my full report on Cornwall Live, but keep in mind that I’d been underground in the jail for at least seven hours in total and was up well past my bedtime when the photo of me and Richard Felix was taken. You can just about make out that my pin-prick eyes are open, but it was touch and go.
I hunted for ghosts in Bodmin Jail with ‘Most Haunted’ star Richard Felix.
It was my birthday this week and I dragged my son to the cinema with me to watch Alien: Romulus. I’ve always had a soft spot for the franchise (like Ashley said , it’s hard to see Giger’s designs as an impressionable youth and not become fixated on their otherworldly monstrosity), not least because Alien and Aliens stand up as two of the greatest horror sci-fi films ever made, plus there’s so much crossover in cast between Aliens and vampire classic Near Dark. I even watched Alien: Covenant in the cinema alone when it came out and despite the end result being a hot mess of half-baked plotlines and conflicting visions, I still enjoyed the ambition behind it and the thrill of seeing a new chapter on the big screen.
It's not that I had high hopes for Alien: Romulus, but based on the early trailers I felt like I knew what to expect – a tense, tight retread of the original film, which has a claustrophobic dread that none of the sequels seems to recapture. I feel like that would have been something I could have enjoyed. What Alien: Romulus plays out like, however, is a young adult, greatest hits of the franchise, bouncing from one borrowed set piece to another, with any originality front-loaded in the first 20 minutes.
Alien: Romulus was mildly entertaining and adequate, I guess, but I feel done with sequels that show no ambition beyond picking flesh from the bones of the originals in a rollercoaster greatest hits sequence that’s all nostalgia and no substance. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the hit that seemed to establish this method as a way to rejuvenate franchises for new audiences, and it was fun for five minutes, but quickly fell victim to the law of diminishing returns. I paid to watch Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes earlier this year and that suffered from the exact same shortcomings, acting as a greatest hits repackaged for teenagers with a young adult (ape) cast. It’s probably time to accept that I’m a man in his forties now and I have to stop paying money to support these tired, stale sequels. Should have gone to see Long Legs instead.
Ending on a more positive note, Zombina and the Skeletones, the UK’s finest horror-punk band, have recorded a new album that’s due out from 9x9 records on 11 October 2024!
Formed in Liverpool in 1998 and heavily influenced by Misfits and The Cramps, Zombina and the Skeletones are probably the most fun and underrated band in the UK, led by core members Zombina and Doc Horror. If you’ve never heard them before, they play bouncy horror-tinged punk and rock-and-roll that’s infectiously catchy. You could imagine discovering them late night at a dive bar in Hell, wearing 3D glasses and playing a covers set that consists solely of Monster Mash, the Time Warp, and vintage Halloween classics like Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood. I discovered Zombina through Rue Morgue magazine and Rue Morgue Radio and never looked back, falling in love with their wild saxophones and lyrics about Springheeled Jack, Vincent Price and nobody loving you when you’re dead.
Around 2010, before I had any real experience of self-publishing comics, I had an idea to put together an anthology of comics created by horror-punk and horror loving bands from around the world, which would have been named VOICES OF THE DEAD and featured strips created by members of bands including Calabrese, Ghoultown, Schoolyard Heroes, and Zombina and the Skeletones. Through that project I attended a Zombina and the Skeletones gig in Manchester and meet Doc Horror, which was an amazing experience, but overall I wouldn’t recommend persuading your heroes to contribute to a project that you don’t have the experience to see to fruition. Not if you value your self esteem.
The Call of Zombina will be the band’s first release since 2017 and I can’t wait for it. If there were any justice, every horror fan and punk in the UK would be clamouring for the return of Zombina and the Skeletones, but it seems like the only way for a band of undead miscreants to hit the mainstream would be for somebody to include them on the soundtrack of a smash hit horror movie. Go and make it happen!
That’s it for me today. If you enjoyed IF YOU GO AWAY, please forward this email to a friend and encourage them to sign up to receive free emails from me in future. There’s no fear of me turning this into a thrice-weekly extravaganza and putting it behind a paywall for subscribers anytime soon, I pretty much joined Substack on day one as a way to keep people up-to-date about my work and maintain contact with anybody who enjoyed my writing.
Much as I’d love to send these newsletters out more frequently, who has time to juggle a full-time job, raising a neurodivergent family, spending enough time in nature to not go crazy, writing stories, AND sending out a weekly Substack? I could do it, but I suspect that would mean no stories from me anytime soon, and writing creatively is better for my sanity than building a personal brand.
I’m on the hunt at the moment for an agent to represent the novel that I’ve spent the past couple of years writing, but also beginning to prepare for what comes next. There’s a long gestating unfinished project that I would love to complete before I’m 100, a friend I’ve been threatening to collaborate with for enough years that it’s time to get serious, and an idea that’s percolated long enough that the details are beginning to take shape. In theory this is the most fun part of the process, when an idea is all possibility and before running into the logistical problems of tying your narrative in knots, but it’s hard to know whether I’m really ready to start writing until I put pen to paper and find out whether there are enough details yet to join the dots.
If you’re in the UK, be sure to get outdoors and enjoy the dying throes of summer, just in case the leaves all fall from the trees overnight and we’re stuck with six months of winter. And if you’re in travelling distance of Devon, consider heading down to support Hell Tor and help to keep the fire burning for horror in the South West.
Best wishes,