Intervals of Darkness

by R.R. Newman

From the author of Municipal Gothic and The Grave Digger's Boy. The fourteen stories in Intervals of Darkness are all varying degrees of weird, from the subtle, foreboding strangeness of ‘Men Who Live in Caravans’ to the classically spooky atmosphere of ‘The Unbidden Guest’. They’re set in post-war churches and factories and tower blocks, and on desolate marshes and wintry farmland. There are formal experiments, too, such as an oral history of a local legend, and the off-air transcript of a long-lost children’s TV show.

“Impressively eerie and packed with shocks, Intervals of Darkness ushers the reader through 1970s grime and Gothic opulence, with moments of powerful poignancy and startling strangeness. You’ll want to linger over these stories.” – Verity Holloway

“Housing estates, factories, tower blocks and caravans, nowhere is safe from Ray Newman's dark imagination. Existing somewhere between Robert Aickman and JG Ballard, these blackly funny tales are sure to chill you, no matter how high you turn the central heating. It's every bit the equal of Municipal Gothic, and if anything it's darker and stranger.” – John Grindrod

“Newman returns to haunted Britain with fourteen more wonderful stories... Fans of folk horror and weird fiction will find a lot to love in this collection.” – Rowan Lee at The Harvest Maid's Revenge

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

161 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2024

About the author

Author also writes as Ray Newman

I grew up in Somerset and Devon, lived in London and Penzance, and am now based in Bristol. I'm fascinated by the dark side of West Country life – ditches, dark woods and declining towns where people go to disappear.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Newman’s Municipal Gothic so much that I bought and started reading this new collection immediately after finishing it. There’s definitely more of a folk horror flavour to Intervals of Darkness. Things rise up from the earth, or the sea: an ancient skull in ‘Poor Ned’s Head’, a pair of antlers in ‘The Horns in the Earth’. Echoes of history reverberate through ‘Second Homes’ and ‘Tales from the Levels: ‘Remembrance’’; rural communities reject and/or terrorise outsiders in ‘Night of the Fox’ and ‘Winter Wonderland’.

At the same time, the book continues and reinforces the political slant evident in Newman’s first collection. This is most apparent in two stories I can’t help but think of as a pair, ‘British Chemicals’ and ‘Industrial Byproducts’. In ‘Chemicals’, company directors discuss a factory worker’s mysterious death; though they acknowledge a strange presence on the factory floor, they ultimately decline to award his family compensation, adding a final indignity to a lifetime of exploitation. Strange elements notwithstanding, ‘Byproducts’ really feels like more of a realist, miserabilist story, in which a working-class couple struggle to maintain optimism in the face of the daily grind. The effects of decades of work manifest in unusual physical ways, but really the point is that these shining, beautiful people are ground down to nothing by the simple act of trying to survive.

I loved ‘The Horns in the Earth’, in which a cynical writer visits a series of council estates, hoping to find a topic for a book. He ends up being haunted (and somewhat oblivious about it) after digging a pair of antlers out of an old rubbish heap. ‘Winter Wonderland’, charting a doomed family outing to a Christmas theme park, is excellent, and so cinematic it feels like a ready-made basis for a film. I also enjoyed the Aickmanesque ‘Night of the Fox’, and ‘Competing Theories with Regards to the Origins of the Ghost of Totterdown Lock’ with its multitude of voices.

Overall, I didn’t fall as hard for this book as I did for Municipal Gothic – maybe it wasn’t the best idea to read the books back-to-back, but I was just so excited to discover a new writer to add to my collection of favourites. Although I’d recommend Municipal Gothic first, Intervals of Darkness is well worth a look if you’re interested in modern British horror.

[Alex Sarll]

There are certainly stories here which could huddle under the umbrella of the subgenre Ray self-defined with the title of his first collection, Municipal Gothic. The slipshod academics of MR James are updated into a John Harris-esque purveyor of half-baked think pieces about the left-behind, who really should have left behind something he finds while wandering council estates; instead of being told in the comfortable surroundings of a gentlemen's club, a ghost story is presented in the equally pale and male, and somehow even more stale, environment of a factory boardroom. And in the last and possibly most horrifying story, Industrial Byproducts, a glamorous young couple gradually get ground down into something not fully human, simply because they were born into the class where money is always too tight. The horror, of course, is that the genre elements here are only a slight exaggeration of something that really happens, so many millions of times.

Elsewhere, though, the canvas is wider, whether the deserted Cornish village of Second Homes, or the rural cunning man who gets a little too clever in Tales From The Levels: Remembrance. Once or twice I wondered if the stories might have spun out too far: The Night Of The Fox is far better than most deliberate attempts to run through the folk horror checklist, and The Unbidden Guest streets ahead of what modern pastiches of 19th century ghost stories usually achieve, but they do feel a little like exercises, stories someone else might have written. The best stories, on the other hand, are always distinctly, uniquely Ray's, instantly arresting just as pitches, and never mind that they're well told too; consider the opener, Poor Ned's Head, where a drowned man's ghost, sunk in his skull for centuries, watches aghast as it's used for an archaeological recreation project. Or how about Father Paul: what if The Exorcist, but C of E? Both have laugh-out-loud moments sitting side by side with genuinely chilling moments, which is already impressive when a novel manages it, let alone in a collection whose stories mostly hit my eeriness sweet spot of 10-20 pages. Excellent work, and I'm not just saying that because I've known Ray long enough that we're halfway to qualifying as an ancient conspiracy ourselves these days.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought 'Municipal Gothic' was one of the best British horror/weird collections I'd read in a long time, so I was very much looking forward to seeing what lurked in the follow-up. Although I've given it 4*, I was a little underwhelmed. 'Night of the Fox' is too long and meanders to a disappointing (and rushed) conclusion straight out of the folk horror playbook, while the ghost story told in the form of an 18th century diary is a kind of Vernon Lee-lite. It's quite good in itself, but we've been there too many times before ('Schalken the Painter', anyone?). 'Winter Wonderland' is fun but crude, like a lost episode of 'Hammer House of Horror'.
However, when Newman's on song, he is terrific. 'While You Were Out' is a brilliantly weird story of a delivery driver with an unfulfillable mission; 'Second Homes' is a ghost story with a strong political charge. The competing voices of 'Totterdown Lock' mesh together to produce a composite vignette that gives the weird events it documents impressive authenticity. Best of all are the stories where Newman documents working-class factory life. These horrors are a world away from Stephen King's 'The Mangler' - they are moving accounts of lives stunted and snuffed out by the irresistibly brutalizing processes that govern the characters' lives. 'Men who live in Caravans' is a mournful tale of rural life filled with authenticating detail and which lends itself to an allegorical reading. The fate of the beautiful young couple transformed by years of labour in another story brought a tear to my eye.
All in all then, a rich and diverse collection. I don't think it's quite as consistent or formally innovative as 'Municipal Gothic', but its best stories are damn good, nevertheless.

[Seán Padraic Birnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tremendous collection, hugely enjoyable, and essential, I think, for anyone interested in the English ghost story. If that tradition often concerns the landed gentry and antiquaries, the focus here is (mostly, if not entirely) on contemporary working and sometime lower middle-class life: themes of class, class injury, and place permeate the collection. Men Who Live in Caravans, first published in Minor Literature[s] and reprinted here, is one of my very favourite stories of recent years: a future classic of the English weird, full of an almost unbearable sadness, quite exquisitely told. Much of which also holds true for the rest of the collection. Other favourites of mine included While You Were Out, concerning the fate of a delivery driver who encounters certain difficulties on his round, and Father Paul, in which the eponymous CoE reverend finds himself drawn into the rather more Catholic business of an exorcism. Industrial Byproducts, which closes the collection, shifts into a kind of absurdist horror that reminded me of Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo: The Iron Man, even if it couldn't be more different in terms of mood and sensibility.

[Lizixer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Ray Newman’s work.

He taps so well into the weirdness of the everyday, recognises that deserted council estates, caravan parks or post industrial landscapes have as much preternatural menace about them as dark moors, ruined castles or abandoned monasteries. You could argue that the former are the late twentieth century’s legacy to the enduring tradition of the English ghost story.

For this reason, his stories are the most unsettling and original when the occult or supernatural happen in the urban or suburban settings of small town England. Or when they take our memories of childhood TV as in “Tales from the levels: Remembrance” and add extra disturbing programmes from regional studios that may or may not not have been broadcast in the early 1970s (the years of The Owl Service etc.).

It’s not all 20th century tales. ‘Winter Wonderland’ taps into the very modern trend for crap installations in the middle of fields in the school holidays that leave children crying, parents fuming and the nation gleefully sharing pictures of terrible stage sets, elves smoking and angry child hating Santas. (See also Dinosaur World or Willy Wonka’s Factory) Ray runs with this to a very creepy conclusion.

I even liked his stories that read like forgotten tales from out of print Victorian ghost stories but his strength really lies in taking English folklore, ghost stories and supernatural elements and placing them in modern contexts.

Can’t wait for his next instalment of municipal gothic…

[Oli Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of enthralling tales that evoke memories of M R James and 70s chillers. Stand outs include a Hollywood star’s ancestry search, and a writers jaunt that reminded me of A Warning to the Curious.

My only criticism would be that some stories feel like they are missing a final piece. While they are told brilliantly, there is a slight feeling that their denouement comes too soon. But that may be down to yours truly craving more of the good stuff.

Overall, a fine collection, and one that continues to showcase Newman’s style of the gothic and English concrete.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another smart and creepy collection of ghost stories, although for me not quite as strong as Municipal Gothic. But it ends well with the queasy body horror of Industrial Byproducts.

[jane.stejsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous