Runalong The Short Shelves - Cloisterfox Vol 2 edited by Verity Holloway

Publisher - Cloisterfox.com

Published - Out Now

Price - paperback £9 ebook £6 via CloisterFox - Etsy UK

Cloisterfox is a bi-annual strange fiction magazine and the second edition has brilliant watery themed tales to chill and beguile you which I heartily recommend especially if you enjoy folk horror

Forty Three Brief Observations Regarding Geoff the Spoon by Malcolm Devlin - a smashing start with this strange almost magazine style factoids about a mythical person who visits people for The Census. Every one of the observations manages to be unsettling but also tells a linked set of tales which get more worrying the further in we get. A gorgeous piece of writing to savour.

In Which Our Lovers Surely Drown by Elou Carroll - a journalist and her coastguard father find a listing yacht off the coast. This is in many ways a classic ghost story but what makes it stand in the memory is both the feeling of dread this story creates and the open-endedness of what exactly happened to the passengers and as we don’t see it all our minds go to the worst place. Very atmospheric.

The Hinwick Effigy by Ashley Stokes - we move into folk horror territory with two paranormal investigators going to the origin of a strange recent mystery that led to unexplained deaths and disappearances. I really liked the way a very hum drum english tourist spot becomes a horror story so quickly and even declining hotels and underfunded museums become places that can turn eerie very quickly.

Terrible Things and Dear by CB Blanchard - A lvillager meets a tourist and tells them everything about the village much more than they probably ever wanted to know. A fantastic piece of storytelling that mixes old ghost legends, rural poverty, commentary on the way tourists exploit villages and makes everything seem creepy. The narration and tone of voice is marvellous.

Host by Laura Elliott - a piece of smart body horror as a luckless man finds himself infected by a sea creature but mysterious people in suits care very little about him and more what may be living inside him. Beautifully disturbing, tense and tragic.

Poor Ned’s Head by Ray Newman - the tale of a haunted skull rescued from the remains of a shipwreck and who is very dissatisfied with the incorrect facsimile of his face that the scientists have created. A tale that treads the borders of both being funny and poignant to make it a memorable finale.

Another fantastic magazine issue and I hope we have more Cloisterfoxes to look forward to in the future