Regular readers of this blog will likely remember the name of British author Alan Golbourn, as I’ve reviewed three of his previous books (after he was kind enough to send them to me): The 666 Murders, The Cult From Beyond, and The Last Breath Before Death. Recently, Alan contacted me again and offered an ARC of his latest novel From Under the Stairs (published May 3, 2026), a folk-horror-esque tale set in the fictional village of Mews Green.
Out of all the books of his that I’ve read, this is easily my favorite by quite a large margin, and though I still had a few of the small issues with dialogue that I described in my other reviews, this novel seems like a big leap forward, and the ending in particular was a great, action-packed finale with some real emotional heft.
At the beginning of the story, we meet a young woman named Kacey, whose beloved partner Andrew is killed in a freak accident, leaving her alone and bereft with an adorable seven-year-old son named Archie. She is understandably having a hard time dealing with the loss, and even though she’s going to therapy, has recurring thoughts of simply throwing in the towel. Her fierce love for her son, however, impels her to keep going, no matter how difficult her life has become.
We then jump ahead four months. With a view to starting over somewhat, Kacey and Archie have moved to a charming old cottage in the remote village of Mews Green, home to about three hundred people.
Almost immediately, the neighbors begin introducing themselves and being neighborly. An elderly woman named Rosemary is the first to turn up on the doorstep, armed with a chocolate cake. Kacey appreciates the gesture, but also feels as though the woman might be acting a little too friendly. Thinking she’s being uncharitable because of the grief and depression she’s going through, Kacey tries to tamp down her feelings, even though she finds the whole thing really awkward.
One day running errands in town, she gets an even bigger dose of the weirdly affable locals. The woman who gives her son a haircut is not only obnoxiously chatty and a little intrusive, she also insists that Kacey not pay for the service. A similar thing happens at the ice cream shop where Kacey takes her son afterward; the old man who runs the place is exceedingly nice, knows who she is even though he’s never seen her before, and also gives her ice cream for free. It’s really beginning to creep Kacey out.
There’s also the odd fact that many of the townsfolk are supposedly sick with the flu, leading to many of the shops downtown being closed. And if that wasn’t all, Kacey discovers that there’s a very tall, sort of sketchy dude named Harvey who is apparently responsible for the gardening and maintenance around her (rented) cottage, even though nobody told her about him beforehand. He acts very strangely when he sees Archie, which doesn’t do much to make Kacey feel any less unsettled about the village as a whole.
She tries to keep things as normal as possible for Archie’s sake, but bizarre little things keep popping up. Mysterious puddles of water appear in the cottage, for example, even though no source for the water can be found. The place is also always cold, even with the heat going full blast. And Kacey starts to hear eerie dripping or splashing sounds at night, even though it’s not clear where the noises are coming from.
To her relief, she soon gets a call from her father-in-law Jasper, who she has always been very close to. He offers to come visit for a few days to help her out, and she gratefully accepts.
More sinister phenomena asserts itself, however, including more unexplained water puddles, some dead birds on the doorstep, and a few brief glimpses of what appears to be a small figure who is never there when she turns to look fully. And one night, she thinks she sees a bunch of child’s handprints appearing all over the walls. At this point, she’s certain she’s either losing her mind or the medication she’s taking is causing her to hallucinate.
She asks Harvey if the people who lived in the house before ever experienced anything unusual, but he denies it, saying it was a family with a boy about the same age as Archie and they hadn’t stayed long. It’s pretty clear to her that he’s hiding something, though.
After one incident where she thinks she hears someone in her house and discovers her cups and plates rearranged into odd configurations in the kitchen, she calls the police, but of course they don’t find any evidence of forced entry. They seem understanding, however, and promise that they’ll question Harvey and anyone else they suspect might have played a prank on her. They even station an officer outside her house all night to watch it, but of course nothing happens while they’re there.
Shortly afterward, Jasper arrives for his visit, and both Kacey and Archie are overjoyed to see him. After this point, though, the creepy shit begins to ramp up big time, and even though I’m not going to spoil what exactly is going on in Mews Green, suffice it to say that the townsfolk aren’t exactly what they appear to be, and that Kacey, Archie, and Jasper are in terrible, mortal danger.
Unlike the previous Alan Golbourn books I’ve read, this one has less of an “investigative” angle and more a straightforward folk horror bent, along the lines of something like Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home. This time around, the protagonists are just a regular family thrust into a terrifying situation through absolutely no fault of their own, which makes them much easier to relate to and root for than the main characters in his previous books (one of whom was a gruff but likeable private investigator, the other of whom was sort of a selfish jerk of a comic book illustrator who slowly becomes a nicer person while searching for his missing, estranged brother). The buildup of From Under the Stairs is pretty great too, adding weird little incidents like the aggressively friendly locals in Mews Green, the unexplained “flu” that everyone seems to have, and the ostensibly paranormal phenomena occurring in the cottage to keep the reader intrigued. I also felt as though the reveal of the horror at the heart of the village was well-paced, giving you just enough detail to keep you on the hook without playing its hand too early. As I mentioned, the big confrontation at the end is also wonderfully violent and harrowing, with real stakes and some scary near-escapes.
While there’s still a lingering bit of the author’s habit of describing too much of the action through character dialogue, and having some of the villains talking too much during climactic scenes, this is lessened substantially from his earlier novels, and I thought the story was far stronger for it.
This was a solid, entertaining, and fast-paced folk horror with a good buildup of suspense, an intriguing mystery, and sympathetic characters to approach the story through. It’s Alan Golbourn’s best novel by far, and I’d like to thank him sincerely for sending me a copy, as I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 