The sinister return of IF YOU GO AWAY
Ossuaries, wild boar, scare mazes & literary pretensions
Where did the summer go? Here in the UK the kids have gone back to school after the summer holidays, term is starting in schools and universities again, and the wheel keeps turning.
A lot of 2025 for me was spent planning a family holiday to Sardinia and researching the best spots for snorkelling. For many reasons I haven't travelled much in my life and want to make up for it now that we have some flexibility to see more of the world. We loved our trip to Italy a couple of years ago and wanted next to spend lots of time swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and relaxing on beaches. When I discovered that a lot of Italians fly to Sardinia for their summer holidays, that helped to clinch the decision.
Dolphins, Ichnusa & my first ossuary
We flew out at the back end of July and spent ten days in Sardinia, followed by four in Rome before heading home. It feels like a long time ago now, but they were two of the best weeks of my life. We swam in crystal clear waters, snorkelled, kayaked, went dolphin spotting, photographed octopuses underwater, ate fantastic food, drank cocktails and Ichnusa Sardinian beer, my son was chased by a wild boar (like an Asterix strip, he left a cloud of dust in his wake and ran faster than the wind while I cried with laughter), and generally had the best time.
In Rome I finally managed a pilgrimage to John Keats' grave and also the Keats-Shelley House at the Spanish Steps, both of which were humbling experiences. Looking out at the grandeur and liveliness of Rome from the room where Keats died, far from home, was a sobering reminder that death is the great equaliser. In keeping with the theme, I also dragged the family with me to visit my first ossuary, the Capuchin Crypt at Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. It's a coin flip which was cooler, seeing the insane spectacles of art made from the bodies of dead monks or reading the wild speculation from the Catholic Church that tried to explain why holy men would do such a thing in their free time.
Dark tourism is always enough to motivate me to leave the house, but there was a lot of Catholic pomp, shushing and covering of shoulders in Rome, even when we were checking out the crazy corpse art. There’s no small irony that the Catholic Church makes money from a visitor attraction where people pay to see furniture made from desiccated body parts, but when Ed Gein did the same he was roundly ostracised by polite society.
I enjoyed my sojourn into the madness of monks, but seeing those old bones made my heart long for someone to don a mask and chase me through a maze.
Summer’s end
As the season turns, my mind inevitably moves to Halloween, as if I haven't been fixating all year on waiting for the UK haunts to announce their opening weekends and new scare mazes. If I had my way, we'd move the spooky season to November, because the sea here in Devon and Cornwall is at its warmest in September and still plenty tolerable in October, making these the last months when I can comfortably get in the sea. Instead I spend most weekends in October travelling around the UK paying people to scare me, missing the last good waves of the year before putting my beach gear into hibernation.
I'm still making bookings and planning logistics, but for 2025 I'm hoping to visit:
Halloween Haunt Fest in Hertfordshire, a new set of mazes that include the UK's first Texas Chainsaw Massacre themed maze and one based on Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey.
Xtreme Scream Park in Melton Mowbray, which is supposed to have some of the longest scare mazes in the UK, won awards last year for their maze based on a 1995 German nightclub filled with vampires, and this year launches a very Last of Us-esque Spores maze.
Screamfest in Burton, which I last visited two years ago and featured more convincing narratives and performances than anywhere else I've been in the UK. Screamfest was home to Love Hurts, the rock pub speed-dating-gone-wrong scare maze that now occupies a permanent place in my heart, but Love Hurts has been retired so I'll have to make do with their new award-winning Hellraiser-esque Hellcatraz.
I'm planning a road trip with friends from Plymouth also and can fit in either a return visit to FEAR Scream Park at Avon Valley, which has a new pumpkin-field themed Halloween extravaganza maze this year, and which I missed last year, or a return trip to Salvation-Z in Gloucester Prison, which we investigated last year and found the most terrifying experience of our lives. I'm leaning towards the sheer terror of Salvation-Z, but that would necessitate persuading a car full of people to pay extra for the VIP experience that involves being separated, zipped in body bags, force fed disgusting mush and sprayed with any number of substitutes for bodily fluids. Sounds like a no brainer to me, but some people don't know what's good for them.
There are a few UK notable exceptions to my Halloween plans this year. I desperately wanted to see Horror at Hinchingbrooke House for myself, notorious for having some of the most hands-on scare actors in the country, but it doesn't open until the weekend after I'm anywhere near that area and takes about a hundred hours to drive to from Plymouth, so I'll have to defer until next year.
I'd love to visit Psycho Path in the north east, which is supposed to be massive in scale, and Scare Kingdom Scream Park in Lancashire, known for particularly adult and extreme horror experiences, but there are only so many weekend days that I can justify abandoning my family and spending all of our money to travel across the UK. I wouldn't mind visiting Shocktober at Tulleys again on a quieter night to experience their mazes as something other than a conga line, but next year is their 30th anniversary, so probably worth waiting for.
Dark art deserves better
As much as my pilgrimage to these scare mazes is a way to have fun and let off steam, it irks me that these events are still seen by journalists as poor cousins to more acceptable forms of interactive theatre. The same critics who rave about dressing in Baz Luhrmann tribute costumes to watch Romeo & Juliet on the big screen together seem pretty keen to dismiss the vast amounts of effort that go into the set design, costumes, actors, sound and everything else that brings Halloween haunts to life.
If you happen to know any editors who'd commission somebody to write about and review Halloween events across the UK, put them in touch with me! All the main events hold press nights for influencers, which as far as I can tell consists of glamorous goths in their 20s who like to pout at the camera at the entrance to scare mazes, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of meaningful criticism that’s likely to elevate the form. Between the theme park influencer circuit and the dedicated review websites that are usually linked to for-profit annual awards ceremonies, there’s definitely a gap in the market for a more traditional journalistic approach.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2025
IF YOU GO AWAY has been quiet in recent months but long time subscribers might be used to that by now. I'm thoroughly indoctrinated by the school calendar, to the extent that my writing falls off the map as soon as British schools break for summer.
June, July and August are my months for getting out of my head, getting in the sea and being outdoors as much as possible. Autumn, however, is when some of my favourite events tend to happen, so you can expect more regular newsletters until winter when my fingers become too cold to type.
This weekend I’m catching a performance of Emma in Bath as one of the final events of the Jane Austen Festival. You’d think it was a big anniversary for Austen this year, because a few weeks later I’m booked to go and see Austentatious, an improvised Jane Austen novel in a night with period costume and live music.
If you’re in the South West of England, next weekend marks the annual Hell Tor film festival in Exeter, with guests including legendary horror illustrator Graham Humphreys. Fun fact - the one and only time my name was on the cover of Rue Morgue magazine, it was over an original illustration of his!
In the weeks ahead, look out for interviews with horror filmmakers Chris Baker and Matt Fitch talking about their horror shorts Backmask and The Trick, art director Amrit Birdi, discussing his collaboration with Universal Studios and Fanta to create their 2025 limited edition range of Halloween drinks packaging, and author Oisín Fagan, who took the time to delve into the creative process behind his recent novel, Eden’s Shore.
In and around those interviews I’ll likely be attending some Halloween launch events around the country, reviewing scare mazes and dark novels, plus gearing up to finally see a live performance of Woman in Black at the start of November. I’m also debating going to see Lovett, an origin story of Sweeney Todd’s notorious enabler, billed as containing unpleasant themes, violent language and Victorian swearing, which sounds pretty great to me. What have you got planned for the autumn?
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An interview with Ashley Thorpe
An interview with ghoulish animator and screenwriter Ashley Thorpe, who organises Hell Tor alongside his wife, Festival Director Sue Thorpe. Originally published 14 September 2024.