paranormal detectives

A Chance of a Ghost Review

I’m offering you a vacation. To beautiful Magnolia Bluff, Texas. In the heart of the Texas Hill Country. Beautiful scenery. Wineries. A quaint little town. With murder and ghosts.

My fellow Underground Authors, Rob and Joan Carter, have their book, A Chance of a Ghost, on pre-order for only 99¢.

It’s Book 23 in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series and it’s a spooktacularly thrilling mystery.

I just finished reading an ARC. And it didn’t disappoint. What’s especially fun about A Chance of a Ghost is that we get to see how ghost “busters” actually work.

Rob and Joan are members of the Tampa Bay Spirits, a group that investigates paranormal activity. And they bring their experience to the newest murder mystery in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles.

Mike and Maureen Donovan, (fictional) members of Tampa Bay Spirits, depart Tampa and find themselves in Magnolia Bluff to help Mike’s cousins rid their newly renovated home of whatever it is that is making doors slam and things move.

But they no sooner arrive than Mike has a premonition that someone in town is going to die. And that’s something they hadn’t counted on.

Mike and Maureen meet Harry Thurgood, the owner of the Really Good Wood-Fired Coffee and Ice Cream Emporium (known as the Really Good to the locals), and Mike begins to suspect that Harry is the man who is to be murdered: burned to death in his own coffee shop. And probably not while roasting coffee beans.

Then the Donovans meet Bertram and George, the ghosts who have been causing all the ruckus trying to get someone’s attention to help Bertram solve a century old mystery.

The Carters take us on a twisty-turny rollercoaster of a ride as Mike and Maureen try to help the ghosts move on and prevent Harry from becoming living barbecue.

In addition, we learn how paranormal investigators actually work. How they try to contact the dead and discover what they need in order to stop haunting a house. We also discover that not all spirits are friendly Caspers.

There is plenty of suspense, action, and thrills in A Chance of a Ghost. It’s an entertaining page turner that I found regretting having to put down. You know, like to eat or sleep.

So grab your copy today! It’s on pre-order for only 99¢ on Amazon.

Then put on your deerstalker and get your infrared cameras ready.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with two bestselling novels. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

Justinia Wright Private Investigator Mysteries on Amazon!

Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles on Amazon!

Share This!

Weird Fiction and the Occult Detective

The occult detective can be found in all the various categories of horror. Although, I think he is most prominent in ghost stories, creature features, and weird fiction.

We know what ghost stories are, and creature features are pretty much self-explanatory. The story features a monster that must be disposed of.

But what exactly is weird fiction? Recently, I received a story bundle email in which Robert Jeschonek provided an excellent description of weird fiction. He wrote:

Something doesn’t feel quite right. The world around you seems a little…off. Things turn strange and fluid, as if you’re trapped inside a dream…but you aren’t. Something about you might have changed in a fundamental way that you sense but can’t understand.

This is what weird fiction at its best feels like. It’s more about unsettling dread than outright terror. It’s more about the mysterious influence than the in-your-face threat. It’s more about questioning the nature of reality than wondering what’s about to jump out of the shadows at you.

Two occult detectives come to mind who primarily investigate the weird: Flaxman Low and Aylmer Vance.

Flaxman Low was the pseudonym for one of the leading psychologists of the Victorian era, so the story goes, and became the chief occult psychologist of his day. Writing as H. Heron and E. Heron, Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard and his mother, Kate O’Brien Ryall Prichard, chronicled a dozen of Flaxman Low’s occult investigations.

The stories are filled with unsettling dread. Things are a little off. Nothing is as it should be. There’s no out and out terror. There’s no gruesome gore splattering your face. You just feel uncomfortable as you follow Low. And when he uncovers the cause of our discomfort, we feel immense relief.

I very much enjoy the Flaxman Low stories. And even though they date from 1898 and 1899, they read well and will definitely make you feel uncomfortable.

The first 6 stories you can get for free from Project Gutenberg Australia. If you want all 12, you can pick them up from Amazon for $1.39, as of this writing. IMO, they are definitely worth reading. And the price is right.

Aylmer Vance was the creation of Alice and Claude Askew. He appeared in 8 spooky occult investigations back in 1914. The tales ooze that feeling of uneasiness, and subtle dread that give a story the spooky creepiness we readers of weird fiction so desire.

I very much like the Aylmer Vance stories, and regret that the Askews only wrote 8 of them. They ended up dying in the war to end all wars, as did so many writers.

The stories are not thrillers. No monsters jump out at you. Their pacing is gentle: the epitome of slowburn storytelling. They are, however, told so well you may find yourself binge reading them.

You can get all the stories in the Black Heath edition on Amazon for only 99¢. Truly a deal.

Weird fiction and the occult detective. A very spooky and unsettling combination indeed.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

The Occult Detective

Fear is one of our oldest emotions — if not the oldest. And fear of the unknown is one of our greatest fears.

I don’t know what I don’t know, and that lack of knowing scares us. It is primal, that fear of the unknown.

Fear, and playing on our fears, is the stock in trade of the writer of the macabre. Those spinners of stories that parade our fears before us and scare us to death — and we love it.

For all of our façade of sophistication, biologically speaking we are no different than our ancestors from 300,000 years ago. We may no longer be afraid of thunder and lightning, and we may have outgrown our fear of what’s under our beds — we are, however, still controlled by our fears.

Just look at the nightly news. Listen to David Muir’s tone of voice. He’s playing into our fears. And how often do we say, “I’m afraid…” — no matter the context?

Is it any wonder that the tale of terror, the horror story, has never lost its appeal with readers?

Of late, I’ve been reading in the Weird West and Occult Detective genres.

I grew up watching Westerns on TV, although I didn’t read any until recently. I suggest any writers reading this to pick up a few old Westerns and read them. You will quickly see how most genre fiction today is really a Western in disguise.

The Weird West, as the name suggests, infuses the old West with something weird. It could be ghosts, demons, mad scientists, monsters of one sort or another, just as long as it falls into the category of weird fiction.

The Weird West is a somewhat recent category. The earliest examples I’ve found date from the 1950s.

The Occult Detective, on the other hand, had its beginnings in mid-1800s, and picked up steam in the wake of the success of Sherlock Holmes.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been impressed with the Weird West stories I’ve been reading. They are either too weird, or they come off too campy.

On the other hand, the Occult Detective stories I’ve read have been quite good, on the whole.

For contemporary stories featuring occult detectives, I turn to the pages of Occult Detective Magazine. You can find their website here. They are the only publication totally devoted to the Occult Detective genre. It’s one super magazine, and I heartily recommend it.

Then there are the classics. Those occult detectives that began appearing in the 1890s and perhaps reached their peak in the 1940s and 1950s.

Flaxman Low probably started the subgenre, at least in the form that we know it today. He was the creation of E and H Heron. The stories are pretty good, although some readers might find them somewhat slow going. Ghosts: Being the Experiences of Flaxman Low is the only current edition I’ve found (both free and for purchase) that contains all of the stories. It is priced at present for less than $2, and that is a steal.

Thomas Carnacki, the creation of William Hope Hodgson, is perhaps the most famous of all occult detectives, and Carnacki pastiches abound. You can find the original stories at Carnacki the Ghost-Finder for free. Marcus L Rowland also provides a publishing history.

If you want the stories in book form, you can find them all in The House On Borderland And Other Mysterious Places, which is volume 2 of The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson.

Thus far, my favorite among our Fighters of Fear is Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin.

Quinn wrote some 500 stories for the pulp fiction magazines. He was Weird Tales’ most popular writer and was paid at a higher rate than any other writer published by the magazine.

Today, Quinn is little known. Which is a shame. He was an engaging, entertaining, and talented writer.

However, a large selection of his work is available for free on the Internet. And publishers are finally starting to reprint his stories. All I can say is that it’s about time.

All of the Jules de Grandin stories have been collected in 5 volumes by Night Shade Books. You can find the books on Amazon.

Flaxman Low, Thomas Carnacki, Jules de Grandin, and Occult Detective Magazine. That should be enough to get you started enjoying the spooky and sometimes terrifying weird world of the occult detective.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!