Revisiting the ‘Masters of Horror’

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from. Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
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Join me as I take a look back at Dreams In The Witch House

The original airing of this episode coincided with my discovery of the films of Stuart Gordon and, at the time, I was gleefully watching and re-watching ‘Re-Animator’ and ‘From Beyond’, relishing the joyful excess and manic energy of them. Oddly, I had yet to discover ‘Dagon’, also starring Ezra Godden who is also the lead in this episode, but the prospect of another H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from my new favourite director was a very exciting prospect and I look back on this episode as one of my favourites of the whole run.

Rewatching it now, I was struck by two things. Firstly, it is a lot more comedic than I remember it being and second, it takes its premise a lot further than I recalled from my initial viewing fifteen years ago. The premise is, after all, a pretty dark one.

Walter (Ezra Godden) is a student studying string theory at none other than Miskatonic University. Hoping to find somewhere quiet and, more importantly, cheap to live so he can do his research he finds a free room in a dilapidated and filthy boarding house which the surly building manager (Jay Brazeau) reluctantly agrees to rent to him. Walters room (and the whole house for that matter) is suitably creepy, with its filthy walls and haunted looking paintings, not to mention the weird layout of the walls which come into play later on.

Also living in the house is Frances (Chelah Horsdal) along with her infant son Danny, who we meet being chased around their room by a rat. Walters other neighbour is elderly recluse Mr Masurewicz (Campbell Lane) who, upon hearing the news of the rat, promptly asks Walter if it had a human face! Not creepy at all…

When Walter goes to sleep later that night we see the rat again as it scurries along his bed and sits on his chest, waking him up. I honestly can’t decide whether the rat with the mans face is hilarious, or the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen committed to film, but I suspect a healthy mix of the two and it is nothing if not memorable. I’d go so far as to say this summarises the vibe of the whole episode. It is incredibly over the top, with liberal amounts of blood, some gratuitous nudity and some uniquely surreal special effects. It is intentionally, blackly funny, as you’d expect from the director of ‘Re-Animator’ but that helps to balance the very grim plot that sneaks up on you while we’re having a great time with the talking rat and borderline slapstick performance from Ezra Godden.

Speaking of the cast, Ezra Godden is fantastic in ‘Dreams In The Witch House’ (as he was in ‘Dagon’). He has a great energy and goes for a pretty exaggerated performance that really suits the material, and which reminded me a lot of Bruce Campbell’s tour-de-force in ‘Evil Dead 2’. I couldn’t help but think what a shame it is that he didn’t go on to become a more well-known horror actor, much like Stuart Gordon’s other go to performers, such as Jeffrey Combs or Barbera Crampton. The other cast of the episode fare ok, but none come close to stealing Godden’s thunder.

By the midway point, Walter has become convinced that something evil is in the house and, thanks to his coincidentally super useful study of string theory, as well as a helpful peek at a certain forbidden book being held at Miskatonic U, he surmises that the being that is hounding him lives in the house with him, but on another plane of existence. Once he voices this realisation, things escalate pretty quickly from there and he is visited in person by the titular witch living in the house in what may or may not be a dream.

It’s at this point things take an unexpectedly bleak turn, as an increasingly agitated Mr Masurewicz confesses the murder of multiple children in the past (at the behest of the witch) in an effort to persuade Walter to leave before the same fate befalls him. Walters growing attachment to Frances and Danny convince him to stay and attempt to defeat the witch using the knowledge he has gained so far. A brave, heroic choice, but not one that works out well for him in the end.

After a bloody showdown with the witch, in which eyes are gouged with the maximum amount of blood possible and there is a symbolic strangling with a crucifix, Walter seemingly prevails. We’re just being set up for a far bleaker ending however as Walter returns to find the witch’s familiar gnawing on Danny’s neck and police are summoned just in time to break in and find Walter sat in a pool of blood, cradling Danny’s body. It is such a jarring scene after what has been a mostly fun and larger than life affair up to this point and it’s played straight and very effectively. I never for a second thought Danny would actually be sacrificed, and was genuinely shocked that they went through with it.

An equally downbeat epilogue tells us that not only did Walter not succeed in stopping the witch, but she has been more prolific that we first thought, as police find over seventy bodies of young children at the house dating back centuries. A last minute appearance from the man/rat who dispatches Walter in a particularly unpleasant and painful looking way wraps up the episode. Evil triumphs, everybody is dead. Damn Stuart, that got pretty dark!

Would I still count ‘Dreams In The Witch House’ as one of my favourite episodes? It’s certainly no ‘From Beyond’, but it is very clearly a Stuart Gordon production and you can’t help but get swept along in the insanity of any of his work, so there is a lot of fun to be had. Ezra Godden is a big reason why this episode works as well as it did, and the human/rat hybrid is not something you are ever going to forget and you can take from that what you will.
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Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode three of the first season, Tobe Hooper’s ‘Dance of the Dead’. See you then!

Based on a short story written by horror icon Joe R Lansdale and directed by cult director of the ‘Phantasm’ series, ‘Incident on and Off a Mountain Road’ is a strong opening episode and effectively sets out what to expect from ‘Masters of Horror’ in general. You have a big-name horror director, with a story from an equally big-name horror writer, with a star of the horror big screen front and centre (in this case, Angus Scrimm, aka ‘Phantasm’s’ The Tall Man). This episode even features an early horror role for ‘Vacancy’ and ‘The Devil’s Candy’ actor, Ethan Embry. It also boasts fantastic effects work from Greg Nicotero (of ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Creepshow’ fame) which was a staple of the show’s two-year run.

The story is quick to get into the action as, within the first few minutes, Ellen (Bree Turner) has crashed into a seemingly abandoned car on a rural stretch of mountain road in the middle of the night. Being a considerate citizen, she gets out of the car to check on the other driver, only to find they have been taken by a horrifying giant of a man who signals his ill intentions straight away by chasing her off the road and into the woods, throwing knives at her as she flees.

If you’re expecting a lot of running and screaming, then those expectations are soon subverted as Ellen wastes no time in fighting back. Quickly setting a series of traps as she flees, she takes the fight to the killer almost straight away. We learn more about Ellen and how she has come about this survivalist knowhow through flashbacks to her time with first date, then boyfriend, then husband, Bruce (Ethan Embry). These flashbacks begin with an initially sweet meeting of the pair, Ellen obviously taken with Bruce’s easy charm and winning smile. Hints are given that he may not be as pleasant as he first appears, but back in the present, Ellen has bigger problems when a trap backfires and she is caught.

This brings us to one of the things I remember most vividly about this series in general, and that is the violence. Memories of watching relatively tame, comic book inspired TV horror in the 80s and 90s perhaps help set the expectation that Masters of Horror would be, if not family friendly, certainly nothing too explicit. This is TV after all. ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ dispels that notion pretty damn quickly as we get a lingering close up of a victims thigh impaled by a large, painfully sharp looking wooden stake. From there, Ellen and his other captive are taken back to the killer’s lair, which is tastefully decorated with decomposing corpses displayed proudly across the front yard, set up as scarecrows, moonlight shining through the holes where their eyes used to be.

Returning to the flashbacks, we see a slightly more militant, unhinged side to Bruce, as it’s quickly made clear he and Ellen have moved off-grid and Bruce is seemingly obsessed with teaching her how to shoot, handle knives, and do lots of other training in preparation for… whatever pending global catastrophe it is Bruce is worried about. The training has served Ellen well in the present, but you can’t help but think that their relationship isn’t going to end well.

Meanwhile, things have taken a turn for the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ as the killer has Ellen chained up in what can only be described as an industrial era torture dungeon in desperate need of a good wipe down. Here we meet Buddy (Angus Scrimm), a delightfully unhinged victim of the killer who has inexplicably survived, only to lose his mind. His interactions with Ellen are equal parts unsettling and hilarious and it really helps add to the overall sense of dread and unease, just in time for the episode’s big set-piece.

The eye drilling scene is definitely one I remember from my initial viewing. It stops short of actually showing the drill penetrating the  eyeball, but barely, and it is pretty graphic and very well shot. These hyper violent moments become a bit of a staple of the show, as it becomes clear that there may be a bit of friendly rivalry going on with the Masters of Horror in regards to the gooey red stuff. This was a great opening gambit (albeit one that is easily topped. Where, however, is a story for another article).

If things have gotten grim for Ellen in the present, then it comes as a bit of a shock when things take an equally dark turn in the flashbacks. I can honestly say I blocked the whole penultimate scene with Bruce out, and re-watching now I can see why. Bruce’s actions that signal the final deterioration of their relationship are harrowing to watch and explain how Ellen got to where she is in present day. I won’t spoil the ending, but I enjoyed how it flipped the final girl trope on its head and some of Ellen’s actions in the closing minutes are an uncomfortable mix of understandable, justified, questionable, and downright evil.

I remember ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ being a strong entry in the series and my recent re-watch did nothing to displace that notion. Bree Turner does great work in this episode, especially impressive when she’s onscreen with such well known horror talent, and this is important because so much of this episode’s success relies on Ellen, who goes through massive shifts in personality and demeanour in the 50-minute runtime. The effects hold up surprisingly well for what is effectively a fifteen-year-old made for TV movie and the story does go in some genuinely surprising directions.

Next time, I’ll be looking at episode two of the first season, Stuart Gordon’s ‘H.P Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch-House’. See you then!

Everyone loves a great supernatural war story, well I sure as hell do, and authors Benedict J Jones and Anthony Watson are no strangers to this fantastic sub-genre of horror fiction, with Benedict's brutal Slaughter Beach, and Anthony's thought provoking Witnesses, they have now formed an Entente Cordiale to bring you an explosive historical horror novel of mystics, soldiers and spies.

Today on The Ginger Nuts of Horror Website we bring you an exclusive cover reveal for The Damocles Files: Ragnarok Rising 

The World is at War; as nations clash across continents in a titanic struggle for global domination another parallel conflict is being fought in the shadows by academics, mystics, soldiers and spies. The spoils for which they fight are the worlds occult treasures and the keys that will awaken an ancient sleeping evil.

The Damocles Files: Volume One is a new novel from the pens of authors Benedict J Jones (Slaughter Beach, Hell Ship) and Anthony Watson (Witnesses, The Fallen). Set across the entirety of the Second World War, it tells the epic story of the secret government organisation, Damocles, and its battles to combat the occult machinations of the Axis powers.

The novel is a mixture of military action and supernatural horror and is set in a variety of locations including Iceland, Turkey, Egypt and Denmark. The narrative is presented in fractured form, made up of a series of short stories with an overarching storyline and recurring characters, culminating in a novella-length final story set in numerous locations on the night of the fall of Berlin.

The amazing cover art and design comes courtesy of Peter Frain at 77studios and brilliantly captures the feel of the book and its combination of action and horror whilst referencing the military comics of yesteryear.
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The Damocles Files will be available in both paperback and ebook formats this summer. A novella, Wings in the Darkness, will be released on May 21st. This story is an expansion of one of those featured in the novel and is the perfect introduction to the world of Damocles and the characters who populate it. The novella is available for pre-order now.

Written in 1919 and derived almost verbatim from a dream Lovecraft had, this short story is told by the titular first-person narrator who goes on to feature in several of Lovecraft’s other weird tales. Here, Carter accompanies an occult researcher named Warren on a trip to an ancient graveyard in a Florida swamp. Warren's studies of a forbidden book have convinced him that there are portals between our world and a demonic underworld and that a certain tomb he has identified is one such passage. Warren descends the steps into the tomb with a lantern and “portable telephone outfit.” Carter, nervously monitoring the handset at the other end of the wire, listens in horror as the other man struggles to convey a monstrous, unspeakable discovery. When contact between the two men is lost, something else delivers the news of Warren's fate.
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Laced with black humor and cutting insight into our modern digital obsessions, this 2019 novel lands closest to the territory I’ve recently been exploring with a focus on the dark side of social media. When Kate is ghosted by the man she’s supposed to be moving in with, she finds the apartment empty except for his phone. Her reluctance to invade his privacy is the first line crossed. What ensues is a plunge into paranoia as a series of weird voice calls and messages escalates through unnerving supernatural dread to an ending you won’t see coming.

In 2016 an occult cabal activates a psychic trigger in a popular video game and a countdown to chaos begins.

While her husband is deployed in Afghanistan, Jessica Ritter finds herself navigating the pitfalls of parenting on her own. That includes moderating her ten-year-old son's screen time—an obsession that hits a fever pitch when YouTube sensation Rainbow Dave releases an addictive new iPad game. Gavin knows he isn’t supposed to keep secrets from his parents, but when his achievements in the game unlock personal messages from Dave instructing him to embark on real world mini-quests, he can’t resist.

In the aftermath of an ambush that leaves her husband missing in action, Jessica grapples with fear and sorrow while clues to a threat closer to home evade her detection. Rainbow Dave, the charismatic host of Scream Time, is America’s cool big brother—a gamer who built a video empire on the strength of his personality. He is also the focus of a shadowy conspiracy hell-bent on sowing chaos with vast technological resources. Dave’s anonymous benefactors have granted him a glimpse of paradise between the pixels, and the real world hasn’t looked the same since. Now, wired with a head full of unholy revelations and a crate full of dangerous devices, he’s on a mission to help his fans “level up” at a live event. Scream Time is coming to town, and it may be too late to stop a deadly game.

SPAWN: WEIRD HORROR TALES ABOUT PREGNANCY, BIRTH AND BABIES, edited by award-winning author and anthology editor Deborah Sheldon, will be released worldwide by IFWG Publishing Australia on 3 May 2021. Spawn is a selection of the darkest Australian fiction penned by established authors and fresh new voices. The stories range from the gothic and phantasmagorical, through the demonic and supernatural, to the dystopian and sci-fi.
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In this four-part series exclusive to Ginger Nuts of Horror, most of the contributors have agreed to pull aside the curtain and reveal the inspiration behind their nightmarish tales.
“Part Four” includes insights from writers J.M. Merryt, H.K. Stubbs, Kaaron Warren, David Kuraria, and Renee De Visser.

J.M. Merryt on “Gravid”

Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been fascinated by faeries. Not the nice Disney ones or the flower fairies that populated half the books I had as a child. No, I mean the nasty ones, the sort you see in Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries. The sort you see in The Hallow and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. I fell in love with folklore as a child, but I was bloodthirsty (as most small children are). I loved the cannibalistic Black Annis and the Erl-King, stories of faerie lords who put out the eyes of women who can see past the fae’s glamour. This is possibly because one of the first books I read by myself was Enchanted Worlds: Night Creatures. There are monsters in that book. Draugrs and trolls, and a version of Little Red Riding Hood where her life ends in a larder, not in victory over a wolf. Most of all, I loved faeries, contrary and malicious thieves of children that they are.

I’ve always found it curious that faeries are so often characterized as chubby cupids living in flowers, or friendly women you can summon with crystals. This makes little sense to me, having read so much about the Baobhan Sith (faerie vampire women), or the Nuckelnavee (murderous two-headed centaur). I find it impossible to reconcile Tinkerbelle with a creature like the Nuckelnavee. This is especially true when you consider that “Sidhe”, a term often used as a synonym for faerie, refers to their habitat in burial mounds—inexorably linking them to the dead. I firmly believe that there is not enough fiction capitalising on the eldritch horror aspect of these creatures.

When I wrote my contribution to this anthology, I set out to exploit my own fears of pregnancy, faerie horror tropes, and to explore the wire-thin distinction between the living and dead that is the fae’s lot. Most of all, I wanted to discuss fairy tale tropes, and how fairy tales were not always so chipper cheerful. I’m a fan a Neil Gaiman’s Snow, Blood, Apples, and that fairly well sums it up. “Gravid” was one of those rare stories that did not twist itself into an expected direction. I’m rather proud of it, and I hope you like it, too.

https://twitter.com/JMMerryt


H.K. Stubbs on “Motherdoll”

When I came across the submission call for Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies, I was delighted to explore parenthood through a weird and eerie lens. Throughout my pregnancy and the early years of my children’s lives—and even now they’re teens—I find parenthood awash with creepiness and darkness. I sometimes think longingly of Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun in which children are raised entirely by robots.

And that’s because social structures and norms make child rearing so hard, and I experience isolation and exhaustion. On top of that comes the unrealistic expectations and blame, and the way children change relationships. It makes me wonder how the Hallmark version of motherhood can dominate the discourse. Motherhood isn’t all lovey-happy-wonderful. There’s a real dark vein, deep and sinister despite the mainstream messaging, but it seems like a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes: few are game to admit it. It’s as though if the secret got out it might mean the end of the human race.

Motherhood demands such a range of skills, and mothers are truly amazing. Perhaps this is why transforming into that role is so painful. That pain is something “Motherdoll” explores.
As a writer I feel a great responsibility when working with such a major theme of women’s lives. Writing is important creative research when it explores topics like the loss of control and loss of self that women experience as new mothers.

I really enjoyed writing about the conflicts a baby creates and the strain it puts on a relationship; the tiny but important rituals lost as a baby replaces both partners as the most important person in the relationship. I drew on my experience and my friends’ experiences to sketch Kelly and Blake’s relationship trajectory. Blake has that kind but most terrible quality of trying to help, but not listening [OH MY GOD!] to Kelly.

I’m terribly excited to have “Motherdoll” included in Spawn. Is it a warning tale? I don’t think so. It’s more a tale of wistfulness gone wrong. How much of it is autobiography, though? Did what happen to Kelly happen to me? Maybe it did. What do you think? Tweet me twitter.com@superleni and let me know.


Kaaron Warren on “The Red Shrine (Fingerless and Double-mouthed)”

Years ago, I wrote a flash fiction story called “A Father’s 21st Birthday Speech”, a sweet title for a story that described a horrendous act: a man who rapes his comatose wife while she’s in hospital because he wants children and she doesn’t.
He got his way, clearly.

I never did anything with that story, because it wasn’t much beyond an awful act. An act which has been in the news since, with a comatose patient giving birth. There’s nothing a horror writer can invent that is worse than reality. So, when Deb Sheldon invited me to sub a story for Spawn, that was where my mind went to—that old story and the inspiration for it.

It’s this idea that women must have children, and that once a woman is pregnant her body is no longer under own control but somehow becomes public property.

Seeking inspiration, I read an amazing book I bought at a garage sale, called Eternal Eve, the History of Midwifery (Harvey Graham, 1950). In many ways it is a product of its time, but in others it feels ahead of it, in the way it explores women’s role in childbirth. He centres women, saying “the story began a million years ago and concerns a million women and a handful of men.”

The book is full of fascinating stories, histories, characters, but I was looking for the stuff that creeped me out, upset me, disturbed me. I wanted to inflict all of these things on Deb as editor and, hopefully, on readers.

Every page has another story, fear and suffering. Stories of women in childbirth being shaken by strongmen to make their babies move, and of the vivisection of criminals by Herophilus to “understand the abdomen”. There were awful cures for infertility, such as drinking water that had been used to wash a dead person. And there were those women who faked pregnancy, from Mary Tudor to Mary Toft, who, it was said, gave birth to a rabbit.

In all of these, one thing kept popping out at me: a number of stories about women giving birth to hundreds of babies at once.

There was Sostrata, pregnant for over a year until “her belly was opened and out of it were taken a multitude of…” (last words defaced).

There was Margaret, wife to Count Virboflaus, who gave birth to 35 live children in 1296, and Dorothie, an Italian, who gave birth to 30, and the Countess of Haguenau, who was delivered of 365 children in one birth. Pepys says he saw the basin in which these children were baptised.

I wondered where these stories began. They felt mostly like they were an attack on the woman, evidence of bad behaviour, of multiple lovers and lack of loyalty to their husbands. I wondered about a modern version of this.

I also heard, via a friend who received a successful transplant, of the “daisy-chain system”, where you might help a stranger by donating an organ, and their loved one would help a stranger, and on and on until a stranger donated an organ to YOUR loved one. It made me think of people who are desperate to have children, and how they might help each other.

All of this cooked for a while until the voice of the story came through, and I sat down to write it.

https://kaaronwarren.wordpress.com/


David Kuraria on “The Phobia Clinic”

My last four tales including two novellas and a short novel were all set in rural or remote locations, such as Australia’s Northern Territory and on several outlying islands within Melanesia and Micronesia. These are what could be termed ‘Jungle Tales’, where geography and setting is as an important as the human protagonist(s).

For some time, I had been wanting to set a story in an urban environment. During 2014, I visited New York City and several eastern US states. That trip left a lasting impression on me. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had my eyes opened to the wonders of the huge city I’d heard and read so much about throughout my life.

During 2017 and 2018, I made several starts to a story (which was already entitled “The Phobia Clinic”). Each beginning turned into a false start. I had a sequence of events up to what I though was a midway point—I even included a sinister shadowy organisation. Creating characters was no problem. In NYC I was surrounded by people ideal for the tale, including an ex-pat Australian conman I met working a corner on Eighth Avenue. It was an eye-opener to see him work. It was clear I had to have something awful happen but I simply could not find a ‘why’ nor could I concoct a decent plot nor a way forward with the work.

Then something fortuitous happened. I was scrolling through Facebook one night and happened upon a call for submissions for a forthcoming Australian anthology entitled Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy Birth and Babies. I read the guidelines and knew I had found that way forward.

I went back over my notes and realised I needed a horrific scene on a train. Everything fell into place. I have to say I was excited. From there I was able to have a complete first draft within a week. I put the story aside for a few months to work on other things. When I went back to complete another draft. I knew I had cracked it. There was a decent story in there that needed another edit. I did my best to fine-tune the piece before sending it off to editor Deborah Sheldon. In all honesty, I gave myself a 50/50 chance of acceptance. When the acceptance came it was a relief. I did have several beers that night.

It must be said here that if I had not seen that call for submissions for Spawn, “The Phobia Clinic” would probably not have been written, and would now be in a forgotten pile in a box at the back of a wardrobe.


Renee De Visser on “The Surrogate”

Like all good stories, “The Surrogate” has elements of truth. In fact, lots of truth.

The mother’s narrative was something drawn from first-hand experience. My own experience of pregnancy and childbirth was not an overly pleasant one. It certainly didn’t live up to my rather aspirational goals of it being free from medical intervention and drugs. If it had, I wouldn’t be writing this now, as there is no way I would’ve survived without modern medicine.

Becoming a mother also grants you access to the privileged and brutally honest collective experiences of other mothers, and so I also drew on stories from my family, from my mothers’ group, from friends and colleagues. The sensations, the emotions, the view from the hospital bed—all true renditions of those collective experiences, although arguably biased ones told from a position of vulnerability, pain and, sometimes, fear.

I also tapped into the things my partner said to me after my daughter was born—his fears about losing me, losing our baby, and the pressures of the decisions he had to make. The husband’s voice is that of a man in a situation that no prenatal class prepared him for.

I was deliberately vague with the medical information. I’m no doctor or nurse, so my medical understanding is very much from a patient’s viewpoint, and I tried to keep the story from that perspective. Having said that, it’s quite hard to write about childbirth in a western social setting without a hospital location, so I did need to dedicate some of the story to the medical team. Looking back, I do see some minor sequencing issues, but overall, I don’t think anyone is going to ping me on my portrayal of the hospital and the events that took place within it.

Finally, the animals featured in the story are very much true. Is it possible for them to do what they did? Let’s just say—and I’m no doctor remember—based on the tribal tales about these little beasties, you probably don’t want to find out what they are capable of. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds is on sale for just .99 Cents at Amazon US and .99£ at Amazon UK . It’s a Bookbub promotion that ends on Monday when the first Super Moon of the year rises, which is only fitting, since the novel’s conclusion is during the night of a Super Moon
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The Hobgoblin of Little Minds features my own version of Werewolves, who are at their most powerful when the Super Moon appears in the sky.

The Werewolves in the novel are the result of a psychiatrist who manipulates patient’s bipolar disorder through medications and then breeds them for genetic loading. They are not your traditional monsters—in fact, they are not necessarily monsters at all, but certainly powerful beasts. They do not grow hair when they transition, but they do grow stronger and have explosive rage. They speak as much as howl. They love. They have hopes and dreams. They visit their churches and their childhood homes, mimicking much of their human behavior. They are propelled by boundless energy and amazing powers of perception.

This this is what happens, in a sense, in bipolar mania, and the novel’s aim is to show empathy and raise awareness for the condition, and the trials and tribulations of living with a diagnosis. Inside the novel you’ll find the complications and failings of mental health treatment and its impact upon family.

The word Werewolf is never used in the novel, much in the way the word Zombies is never mentioned in The Walking Dead. In a sense, I did this because there is no such thing as Werewolves, but there is such a thing as mental illness, and I want this story to ring true. It even occurs in a real setting, the abandoned Northville Psychiatric Hospital near metro Detroit.

The trigger for the transition to beastly form is the full moon. The Moon shifts the tides, why not our hearts?  Emergency rooms and crisis hotlines cite increased traffic when the moon is full, and there is some science behind this explained in the novel.

“Humans were meant to hunt by the light of the moon. Multivariate lunar-associated pathways change electromagnetic fields, they augment the Earth’s magnetosphere, signaling it’s time to wake and hunt. The reflected sun off the celestial rock lights up your prey, stops them from hiding, and during this illumination those who did not sleep, those with the most acute senses, were the ones who flourished. That is why bipolar mania survives to this day.”

    Not your ordinary lycanthropy inside. As one advanced reviewer noted: “I'm not sure if this is a werewolf tale with psychological aspects, or a psychological horror tale with a werewolf aspect” or as another stated: "As a new take on the werewolf story, it is a fascinating read, but as a deep dive into the realities of mental illness, the book is an absolute triumph."

There will be one other super moon in 2021, but you won’t see these prices again until sometime in 2022. Check out The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, at Amazon UK or  Amazon US.

​Mark Matthews is a graduate of the University of Michigan and a licensed professional counselor who has worked in behavioral health for over 20 years. He is the author of On the Lips of Children, All Smoke Rises, and Milk-Blood, as well as the editor of Lullabies for Suffering and Garden of Fiends. His newest work, The Hobgoblin of Little Minds, was published in January, 2021.  Reach him at WickedRunPress@gmail.com