Jenny Ashford is a horror, true crime, and paranormal writer, graphic designer, and podcaster. Her most recent books are a three-volume true crime compilation collectively known as The Faceless Villain: A Collection of the Eeriest Unsolved Murders of the Twentieth Century. Volume One was published in 2017, Volume Two in 2018, and Volume Three in 2019. Her other books include four paranormal nonfiction books: The Unseen Hand: A New Exploration of Poltergeist Phenomena, The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist (with Tom Ross), House of Fire and Whispers: Investigating the Seattle Demon House, and The Rochdale Poltergeist (both with Steve Mera); as well as three horror novels, Red Menace, Bellwether, and The Five Poisons; two short story collections, Hopeful Monsters and The Associated Villainies; and a graphic novel, The Tenebrist. A second edition of The Associated Villainies was published in 2019, featuring four new stories, an enhanced print layout, and an audio book version. A second edition of The Five Poisons was published in 2020. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including The Nightmare Collective, History Is Dead, 2012AD, ChimeraWorld #3, and ChimeraWorld #4. Her horror blog, Goddess of Hellfire, contains writing news, short stories and articles, and her reviews and opinions on horror films and books. She also co-hosts a podcast with Tom Ross called 13 O'Clock, on which they discuss true crime, unexplained mysteries, paranormal weirdness, horror movies and books, food, and other fun, creepy topics. They recently collaborated on a 13 O'Clock cookbook. Jenny's graphic design work can be seen on everything from books and business cards to posters and packaging. She runs an online store called Gravecake selling products with her designs, and also has a board-and-card game concern called Giallo Games, which produces games based around the beloved Italian horror/crime genre, among many other themes.
I thank the universe pretty much every day that I was born at the time I was. My formative years corresponded almost exactly with the explosion of punk and post-punk, the birth of MTV, the home video boom, and the expansion of cable television into more and more homes. Yes, despite my dewy youthfulness, I … More Movies: Time After Time (1979)
Released in France in 1907, The Red Spectre was directed by Segundo de Chomón and is one of the few surviving examples of early-twentieth-century “trick” films. It’s only ten minutes long and doesn’t have a “plot” per se, but I gotta admit, for 1907, this thing looks fucking amazing. How is it in color, Jenny? You may … More Silent Movie Watchalong: The Red Spectre (1907)
Jeremy Ray is an author I hadn’t encountered before; according to his bio, he’s found success as a playwright and with a few of his screenplays, but his first love is short prose. He’s not exclusively a horror writer, as he likes to hop genres, but his 2021 novella Petrified Women is undoubtedly a horror … More Books: Petrified Women by Jeremy Ray
I chose Brandon Massey’s Dark Corner completely at random out of my Kindle Unlimited recommendations, and as usual, I didn’t read the description of the book; I just dived right in. The book is actually older than I thought it was when I first started reading it, having come out in 2005. Now, I will … More Books: Dark Corner by Brandon Massey
Not long after my recent post where I revisited both seasons of the iconic 2006 & 2007 Showtime anthology series Masters of Horror, a friend of mine reminded me of something that I had, for some reason, completely forgotten about: that there was technically a third season of Masters of Horror, after a fashion. Following … More Revisiting Fear Itself (2008 TV Series)
The 1955 horror thriller Diabolique (known as Les Diaboliques outside the US, which translates as The Devils or The Fiends) is one of those movies that all horror fans should see at least once, and preferably twice, since the famous twist at the end of the story recontextualizes everything you’ve seen up until that point. … More Movies: Diabolique (1955)
Look on almost any substantial list of “best horror novels of the 2000s,” and the odds are fairly good that Scott Smith’s 2006 book The Ruins will be on it. It’s a grim, ever-escalating survival nightmare of cruel and heightened nature, and it’s pretty damn gross, to boot. It was made into a decent film … More Books: The Ruins by Scott Smith
Not too long ago, I chose Grady Hendrix’s 2016 novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism as one of my favorite horror novels of the 21st century so far, so it was with some measure of…trepidation? cautious excitement?…that I took the news that Amazon Studios was producing a film adaptation of it. I was pretty sure that … More Movies: My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022)
Children are often frightened by inexplicable things. When I was but a wee gothlet, for example, I was sent into paroxysms of terror by the bubbling cauldron sound effect at the beginning of the song “The Monster Mash,” and to this day I still have no idea why. Without fail, whenever the song came on … More Let’s Talk About the Weird 1974 Jack and the Beanstalk Anime
There’s kind of a funny story behind how I ended up reading and reviewing this book, a story that illustrates pretty clearly the fact that I have read so many books over the course of my life that I’ve forgotten which books I’ve read and which ones I haven’t. So a while back, I was … More Books: Mrs. God by Peter Straub
