While obviously any time of the year is suitable for eerie stories and ghostly inventions, there’s little doubt that as the skies grow shadowy, and the nights a little frostier, there’s an extra special space to inhabit in the world of expert authors and storytelling of the more creepy kind. Unquiet Guests, from Dead Ink Books, edited by Dan Coxon, is a blend of 10 authors who consist of Chuck Palahniuk, Grady Hendrix, Kirsty Logan, Irenosen Okojie, Ally Wilkes, Clay McLeod Chapman, Matthew Holness, Claire Fuller, Alison Moore, and Will Maclean.

This is a veritable eerie indulgence of stories which take us to the chair we believe to be most comfortable, in a home we think we know, and then it twists the shadows, or adjusts the flat of the floor to a crunch of bones, all the while offering a double-take in the corner of our eye – towards something we think we saw move – and then it pulls the darkness in around us, like an unforeseen cloak that slowly fades out the edges of our wider vision.

The overall idea of Unquiet Guests is to push the context of the house towards a living, breathing entity, whether that’s literal or a metaphor, the characters of the story will drag you to their meaning in 10 different and inventive ways. When your home should be the one place of safety and refuge, what happens when those foundations are rebuilt and rearranged, are the empty halls of a creaking mansion simply the outcome of time, or is there something lurking in the locked room you walk by? What happens if the house itself is alive, and knows only of itself, and if it only knows of what it is, what happens when it gets bored of those inside of it?

As well as being a fantastic way to discover a new author you may not have read yet, it’s a fun way to get into the clock-changing season and envelope in the darkness with a keen eye on the room around you. It starts with an absolute killer, as I Am The House by Grady Hendrix, is a seemingly simple but eventually brutal home-horror-story, where the words and the house narrator make you comfortable, yet it’s not long before you’re looking around you from your own sofa.

Another Land Beneath from Claire Fuller takes us into the life of twins and their visit to their late Father’s house, resonating the writers’ other work but creepy nevertheless, bringing forth the question of the emptiness of an estranged loss, and the psychological that surrounds it. Will Maclean’s The Toll leans on some money-tropes but has a lot of fun with a dark turnaround of events, from a world where the people think they’re immune.

The duo of Deep Clean (Clay McLeod Chapman) and Lapse (Kirsty Logan) sit almost effortlessly together, with the first a twisting, box-within-a-box narrative that visually offers you a world from an everyday worked, with a very strange set of outcomes. And then Logan’s Lapse is an epic short story, an authentic journey from a time not too far from our own that you can feel. If it were a TV episode, you’d be enthralled by the scope and characterisation, like Sissy Spacek’s episode of Castle Rock called The Queen, or The Last of Us lifetime story Long, Long Time.

Tearaways, from Matthew Holness, taps into childhood school trauma but balances on a strange line between American and UK circumstances (although I assume its set in the latter) but is nevertheless a destructive, dark account. And Ally Wilkes’ (a name that sends me to Misery in the best way) The Collector’s House is a deliciously troubled tale of the ever-preset British class system, of history unspoken in the backdrop of lockdown, which adds an extra edge in an intelligent way.

And then there’s the vivid brilliance of Irenosen Okojie’s Rosheen, as it plays with history and growing up somewhere but wanting to escape, of psychological misplacement, of mythical mind-wandering, alongside dark stories of anguish and loss, in a setting where tough, bitter people do what they need to survive. It’s such a terrific and chilling tale that the visceral nature of the Rosheen herself captivates you, even if she doesn’t know the full journey she’s about to discover, as we learn of her spiritual travels. It’s a compelling, insistent circle of intrigue.

Alison Moore’s It’s Dinnertime flips us back into a saddening, exploitive reality but the story doesn’t sit in cliché, it plays with the nature of its main character, and whether she’s escaped her abuser not just for the sake of self-worth and strength, but almost as if the journey was led by a greater force with troubles of their own, which in turn might just help her power grow and take it back to take its revenge, where the vengeance is due.

And, finally, Chuck Palahniuk’s Custodian is a wonderfully tight and macabre remodelling of what has the surface level of an upbeat family tale. The way the story progresses feels light on its feet and yet, the outcome of our lead character being Mr Family Man increasingly fails in ways that are equally clever and quick, but with a definite twist of the chilling. It’s a great, snappy, and entertaining way to close a book full of surprises, where every author adds their individual touch of insight, and every story invites into the original world and – of course – where everything isn’t quite what it seems, in the weirdest and creepiest ways. This is a hughly enjoyable compendium!

Unquiet Guests can be purchased from your local book store, or direct from Dead Ink Books: https://deadinkbooks.com/unquiet-guests