Why do some of us find more comfort in a bleak ghost story than in relentless positivity? In this piece of a sprawling, good-humoured defence, we wander through the shadowy territory of Weird Fiction. From Lovecraft and Machen to Robert Aickman’s quietly surreal strangeness.

We tackle four prickly questions:

1. Isn’t weird fiction very morbid, violent, and depressing? (Spoiler: Radiohead and real ale may hold the answer.)

2. Who actually reads this stuff? (A friendly pushback against Houellebecq’s “people who love life do not read.”)

3. Do you have to believe in the supernatural to enjoy it? (Why the physicists are secretly laughing at their own models.)

4. Is it even real literature? (Angry librarians, evangelical nay-sayers, and why England’s metaphysical thinkers chose ghost stories over philosophy.)

Expect dry humour, library anecdotes, a woman nicknamed “Mrs Rhyme-With-Witches,” and a man walking through the woods holding a dryad’s still-attached breas.

Weird Fiction is rarely as gory as you fear, and far stranger than you imagine.

Come join us. Let us know what you think.

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