The Haunting of Alan Mais by Peter Saxon

‘After I had explained to Kim that the book would be themed along a loosely assembled chronology, we came up with the concept (probably over glasses of wine and beer) that it would be fun to have one serial-like case which would be investigated across the centuries by many of the characters he had created in his earlier novels and stories. I’ll let him describe what happened next. Steve asked me to contribute to the book. Also in the magnifying-glass-and-wooden-stake business are Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, Anthony Boucher’s Fergus O’Breen, Bram Stoker’s (and Chris Roberson’s – but not Stephen Sommers’s) Van Helsing, The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully, Jeff Rice’s (and Dan Curtis’s, Richard Matheson’s, Darren McGavin’s and David Case’s) Carl Kolchak and a run of comic book or strip characters famous (Dr Strange, Batman in a certain mood), middling cult (the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna) or obscure (Cursitor Doom, anyone? Dr Thirteen?). The book represented William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Manly Wade Wellman’s John Thunstone, Clive Barker’s Harry D’Amour and Jay Russell’s Marty Burns.

In the 1990s, Stephen Jones edited an anthology called Dark Detectives: Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths, dedicated to the sub-category of weird tale in which detectives, in the traditions of Sherlock Holmes or Philip Marlowe, tackle cases which involve the supernatural or the strange. Richard Jeperson as envisioned by Paul McCaffrey

The Haunting of Alan Mais by Peter Saxon