Testimony

Product Information

Bill Rich was haunted by terrifying demons. Some that manifested in his isolated home, as I detailed in my non-fiction book Testimony. And some that were firmly embedded in his psyche, as he always admitted. Mark Chadbourn is an English fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and horror author with more than a dozen novels (and one non-fiction book) published around the world. A be-hatted spectral figure whose face can never be seen, always a few steps behind you – that’s a scary image. But as a symbol of addiction, that honestly makes the blood run cold. Depression, mental illness, family breakdown, childhood trauma, these are the ghosts that really haunt Hill House – and that is why the series is so affecting. Emotional – sad, uplifting – rather than just creepy.

Far more than a haunting, this story goes to some very dark places indeed. Some have called it the British Amityville, but it’s more than that. I decided to investigate because it wasn’t simply an account of the family at the heart of the disturbing events. Many other people, all of them unconnected, experienced disturbing, inexplicable events in that place. As a contract writer for the BBC Drama Doctors, he has written over fifty episodes of the popular medical series, and he has also developed original series ideas with BBC Drama Development. The Ones We Leave Behind (in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror vol 18, edited by Stephen Jones, Carroll & Graf) The Haunting of Hill House, which dropped on Netflix shortly before Halloween, is an amazing achievement, and not because of the scary elements (of which there are many). All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate.I also work extensively as a screenwriter – 26 hours of produced work for the BBC under my belt to date. I’m currently developing several new series for broadcasters around the world, and working on a film script. My near-future SF series, Shadow State, is in the hands of a US network. My book, Testimony, an investigation into a British Amityville, is being developed for UK and international TV. I have a political thriller and a crime series also in development. It’s a long road from here to any of these projects appearing on a screen near you, and they all might fall at any one of the numerous obstacles. But, you know: paid work.

The King of Rain (in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror vol 8, edited by Stephen Jones, Carroll & Graf) I am a writer of fiction. I am comfortable with creating the fantastic in my head. I am also, by trade, a journalist, steeped in that profession’s culture of cynicism, used to operating in that grey, mundane world where everything has a rational explanation. So when I first encountered the Rich family and Heol Fanog, their picturesque house deep in the Welsh countryside, I approached their tale with a healthy scepticism. Yes, strange, inexplicable things did happen in the world. But their story was too unbelievable – too terrifying – to be true. The truly horrifying, on a spiritual level, only happens in novels. Strange faces appear on the floor of a house in a remote village in southern Spain. A ghost plane rises from the depths of Ladybower Reservoir on the Derbyshire Moors. The mummified hand of an English martyr is used to raise a Benedictine monk from a coma on the edge of death.Should you read this book? If you have an interest in the supernatural, or are a Mark Chadbourn fan, then I would heartily recommend Testimony. When Bill and Liz Rich moved into an isolated farmhouse, it already had a reputation locally for being haunted. What they found there was far, far worse than their wildest imaginings…and it threatened their sanity and ultimately their lives. Farewell to the 21st Century Girl (in The British Invasion, edited by Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon & James A moore, Cemetery Dance) Six of his novels have been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society's August Derleth Award for Best Novel, and he has won the British Fantasy Award twice, for his novella The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (2003), and for his short story "Whisper Lane" (2007). [5] This wasn’t a simple haunting. This was human lives pushed to the limit by a malignant force which exhibited a terrifying sentience. A battle not only for the sanity of Heol Fanog’s bewildered, incresingly distressed residents, but ultimately for their very souls.