The Confirmed Bachelors
by Stephen Volk
(novella, Black Shuck Books, 2025)
(novella, Black Shuck Books, 2025)
(cover design Steve J. Shaw)
Order direct from the publisher
"It should be stated at the outset, for those who expect a certain kind of thing from a certain kind of tale, that, when investigating Arilda House in his capacity as a member of the Society for Psychical Research, Flaxton found no evidence, let alone proof, of a haunting. Not that he especially sought a preternatural explanation, nor did he – God forbid – leap to grasp any tenuous thread that might be clung to in that regard. Such lack of discipline would entirely go against the grain of his essentially sceptical nature. However, it must be said, and he almost did say, the place certainly looked the part…"
In the decade after the Great War, two ghosthunters - unlikely friends and colleagues - converge on a house in rural Gloucestershire to investigate the case of a haunted bedroom...
But nothing is what it seems - and the story may not be a ghost story at all...
This chapbook also includes a reprint of "The Waiting Room", a superntural tale featuring Charles Dickens, and a specially-written Preface "Ghosthunters I Have Known", which describes the author's formative influences and his longstanding obsession with psychical research on the page or on the screen.
CONTENTS:
Preface: "Ghosthunters I Have Known"
The Waiting Room
The Confirmed Bachelors
Order direct from the publisher
"It should be stated at the outset, for those who expect a certain kind of thing from a certain kind of tale, that, when investigating Arilda House in his capacity as a member of the Society for Psychical Research, Flaxton found no evidence, let alone proof, of a haunting. Not that he especially sought a preternatural explanation, nor did he – God forbid – leap to grasp any tenuous thread that might be clung to in that regard. Such lack of discipline would entirely go against the grain of his essentially sceptical nature. However, it must be said, and he almost did say, the place certainly looked the part…"
In the decade after the Great War, two ghosthunters - unlikely friends and colleagues - converge on a house in rural Gloucestershire to investigate the case of a haunted bedroom...
But nothing is what it seems - and the story may not be a ghost story at all...
This chapbook also includes a reprint of "The Waiting Room", a superntural tale featuring Charles Dickens, and a specially-written Preface "Ghosthunters I Have Known", which describes the author's formative influences and his longstanding obsession with psychical research on the page or on the screen.
CONTENTS:
Preface: "Ghosthunters I Have Known"
The Waiting Room
The Confirmed Bachelors
Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes
