"...These are the kinds of fun details that make the book really unique. 
Shadows Over New England is the sort of work you crack open for a 
quick peek and, two hours later, realize you’re still reading. One little 
tidbit leads to the next, and you keep thinking I’ll just read one more 
until your eyes begin to blur and you realize it’s 3 am. In  short, for 
any fan of horror it’s loads of fun."  Nate Kenyon, Horror World

Now available from BearManor Media,
Amazon.com,  Barnes & Noble
and other fine bookstores near you!


Shadows Over New England
David Goudsward & Scott T. Goudsward

"This is a very thorough, entertaining book and I had a hard time
putting it down."  Laura Wagner, Classic Images

"A must-have title for libraries and for anyone who is a fan of horror or who is looking for some unusual stops for their next trip to New England. I cannot recommend this book highly enough."
Bob Freeman, Monster Librarian

 "The Witch's Dungeon is proud to be included in this comprehensive
work, a must for any fan of the genre." Cortlandt Hull, Witch's Dungeon

"Shadows is not only a great resource to have upon one’s shelf,
but is a truly enjoyable romp..." Norm Rubenstein, Horror-Mall


Traditional New England was in decline after the Civil War. The war had decimated the male population. Farms were being abandoned in favor of the mills. This environment of change and instability gave birth to a new milieu of isolated villages, declining blue-bloods and hidden scandals that were ripe for inspiring horror and dark writers. Literary critic Van Wyck Brooks, in his 1940 study of New England literary trends, New England: Indian Summer 1865-1915, described it thusly:
"There were colonies of savages near Lenox, queer, degenerate clans that lived "on the mountain," the descendants of prosperous farmers. There were old poisoners in lonely houses. There were Lizzie Bordens in the village, heroines in reverse who served the devil. There were Draculas in the northern hills and witch-women who lived in sheds, lunatics in attics.”

This was the golden age of ghost and horror tales in New England, culminating in H.P. Lovecraft, whose influence carried over into modern writers such as Robert Bloch, Ramsay Campbell and Stephen King. Shadows Over New England is a guide to geographical locations, real and fictional, utilized in horror tales set in New England. It is hard to say which is more disquieting, terror amidst staid Yankees in a familiar setting or horror in obscure, forgotten corners of New England. Both have their uses as weapons in the battle to scare you out of your wits.

 And the line blurs. To a fan of horror, there are fictional towns that are as real as any found in an atlas: Castle Rock, Maine, Arkham, Massachusetts or Oxrun Station, Connecticut. Even those who don’t follow the genre have heard of the nonexistent Connecticut town that is home to the Stepford Wives or Collinsport, Maine with more Dark Shadows, witches, vampires and werewolves per capita than any colonial seaport really needs.

 

Shadows Over New England is a guide to geographical locations in New England made popular by historical and contemporary horror (print, television and movies). Additional material of peripheral interest to horror aficionados is included, such as burial sites of horror-related celebrities, filming locations and places of notoriety used as inspiration.  

                                   



Table of Contents
Foreword by Christopher Golden
Introduction
Connecticut
Maine
Massachusetts
Massachusetts, Arkham
Massachusetts, Boston
Massachusetts, Salem
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Rhode Island, Providence
Vermont

Publisher: BearManor Media
 (April 27, 2008)
Language: English

Paperback: 412 pages ($29.95)
ISBN: 1-59393-139-5 
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches

"Move over, Weird New England...there's a new gun in town and it's loaded for bear!  If you thought you knew a lot about spooky goings-on in the states that gave us maple syrup, Maine lobster, and the Boston Tea Party -- not to mention the minds of writers like Lovecraft and  Stephen King -- think again.  Packed with fun information that will have you revisiting your bookshelf again and again..."
--Jack Ketchum, author of The Girl Next Door and Off Season
 

"Shadows Over New England is an invaluable and engrossing resource for any reader or writer, whether horror or otherwise: there's a whole universe of facts-becoming-imagination here, so snuggle up with this book and hang on tight--you're in for a memorable ride."
--T.M. Wright, author of  Blue Canoe,  forthcoming from PS Publications
 

"What a fun book! I was born in Providence and as a young boy I was always fascinated with the genre. At Brown University I wrote and performed a 20 minute version of Poe's The Tell Tale Heart, and it was a great success. And then, of course, several years later along came The Fly!"
--David Hedison, star of The Fly and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea


"The darkness has been malingering over New England since the birth of American literature, but we've had to wait until the 21st Century and the Brothers Goudsward for the first map of the shadowlands. We've been blessed with two personable cartographers, thorough and meticulous in their labors, and this -- their first regional overview of the geographic lay of the land in dark fantasy and horror in all media -- is the finest imaginable roadmap."
--Stephen R. Bissette, Swamp Thing, Taboo, Tyrant
 

 

The authors filming an episode of Shilling Shockers at Mystery Hill with the TV hostess with the mostest ghostess, Penny Dreadful. The episode will air in November. Check Penny's website for a station near you!
 
Scott T. Goudsward is the author of numerous short stories, screen plays and novels. He's had an avid obsession in horror since first hearing his first Edgar Allan Poe story in the fifth grade and seeing the classic slasher flick Friday the 13th (the original) for the first time. It is by sheer coincidence he resides in the same odd little New England city that spawned Colonial axe murderess Hannah Dustin, beloved Abolitionist poet JG Whittier, TV host Tom Bergeron and heavy metal rocker/director/-writer Rob Zombie. Shadows Over New England marks his first venture into the non-fiction realm. He is currently editing the anthology Traps for DarkHart Press.

David Goudsward is the author of numerous articles on genealogy and New England megalithic sites as well as the books America’s Stonehenge: The Mystery Hill Story (2003), Ancient Stone Structures of New England (2006) and The Fly at Fifty (2008), a 50th anniversary retrospect on the classic movie The Fly In his copious free time, he also moderate a weekly horror-themed humor list.
Coming in June 2009:  Shadows Over Florida

For a brief time at the start of the 20th century, Florida was poised to be the film making Mecca. But racial tensions, religious concerns and epidemics drove the blossoming film industry into the open arms of Hollywood, California. Florida became the place you filmed if you needed jungles for Tarzan or a more accessible for an Amazonian Black Lagoon.

In the 1960s and into the 1970s, if you made films designed for general release, you filmed in Hollywood. If you made grindhouse films, nudie cuties or straight to drive-in obscurities, you filmed in Florida. Films shot in Florida range from Blood Feast, the film by Herschell Gordon Lewis that paved the visceral way for Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, to the less influential but memorable for the wrong reasons Blood Freak with its pro-Christian, anti-drug message starring a mutant turkey vampire motorcyclist. The low-budget cinematic carnage continues to this day.

The Floridian horror story reflects an intrinsic Floridian compulsion to bulldoze the past beneath a new shiny future. But beneath that overpriced façade of new construction is the Florida of old, the one the mouse-bound tourists conveniently overlook, a hellish landscape of swamps that range from brackish to fœtid, flora and fauna that range from deadly to carnivorous and locals that range from surly to anthropophagous.

Watch your back, hide your wallet and welcome to the Sunshine State