Accursed Ground

by Brian G. Berry

Blackwood Orphanage1970Father Malcolm hears voices. An unholy rite conjures an ancient evil.Inhabited, he stalks the halls, butchering the flesh of the young. Dozensof young bodies lay chopped in piles of limbs and blood.Police respond and confront the atrocity he has become.Graduation Night1985Fifteen years later, Blackwood slumbers in a state of disrepair, abandoned to the worm. The graduating class of '85 hosts the party of the year. But unknown to the celebrants, an evil sentience endures. And before the nightis over, blood will once again spill.Will Samantha and her friends survive the night?

Genres: Horror

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 13, 2021

About the author

a.k.a Brian Berry

Brian G Berry is new to the world of writing. He writes everything from 1980s inspired horror, SCIFI/Action-horror, to the strange. His biggest influences are the writers of the weird including Lovecraft, Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, to the pulp horror authors of the golden age 70s/80s- and a splattering of others. Author of The Pail, A Bloody Christmas, Splatter Fiend Series, Slasherback Series, Campfire Tales Beneath a Pallid Moon, Accursed Ground, Blood Lanes, The Night Mutilator, Thanksgiving Day Massacre, and his newest: SNOW SHARK.

Reviews

[Amanda McGehee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved how it never stopped the gore. Creepy story. The story as a whole was very entertaining. I really enjoyed the elements from Night of the Demons, including the sour balls. Highly recommend. Gave it 4 stars just because of small editing mistakes, easy to push through and understand.

[Nick Watters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary, dark fun

Brian Berry does it again with Accursed Ground. A building with a very dark past, a senior class looking for an epic party and an evil entity all come together in this story to form an excellent fast paced rush.

Accursed ground gives us characters that are very relatable . easy to love, hate and doubt. Berry brings all of these different personalities together in an impressive way.

I recommend Accursed ground for anyone that enjoys small town horror, creature features, or evil entity reads.

[Coy Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

From start to finish, this novel is nothing but fun. Set in 1985 (I was right there with the characters when Hall & Oates' "Out of Touch" starts blasting in one scene), this homage to 80s horror is infused with touches of HP Lovecraft and Clive Barker, and it reads like a Zebra paperback. The story is fantastic and well paced. Berry's prose moves from poetic to pragmatic, and hits places in between, but all the while he maintains the spirit of films like The Prowler, My Bloody Valentine, Demons, Night of the Demons, and Demon Wind. That's what he promises and that's what he delivers.

Laced with gore, filled with interesting characters, Berry struck a chord with his first in what is to be a "Slasherback" series of novels. Blood Lanes, book two in the series, will be a definite read for me.

[Brandon vigil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this guy!

The way he rights really draws you into the story.Fast pace with amazing detail. I don't really don't right reviews this is the exact kind of store telling I've been looking for for a years . If you like splatter horror That is incredibly descriptive and is well paced B B
is your guy! Highly recommend

[David Irons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Accursed Ground by Brian Berry is like finding a lost movie that you ever knew you needed in your life. All the elements are here that appeal to me: the old dark house, a supernatural entity and kids having a graduation party! I’m not going to lay out any spoilers, but I couldn't put the book down! Berry writes the kind of books I like to read: fun, fast-paced, tense, and with plenty of the red stuff. Grab a copy now! Now, time for Blood Lanes...

[Damien Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, like… this book rules ass. When I opened to a quote from the movie “Demon Wind” I knew I was going to love this. I just wasn’t prepared for how much I was going to love it. I just finished and I feel like I went to some demented version of that Nickelodeon show, Double Dare. They use blood, gore, and other manner of Ooey-gooey instead of slime. Brian G. Berry has taken everything that made movies from the 80’s with “Demon” in the title and thrown it into a blender with some of the more insane splatterpunk books out there. There were times when I genuinely paused and looked at my cluppy(cute lil’ puppy) and asked her why this book was so bad ass? She didn’t really answer, but she didn’t need to. Monsters, great dialogue, waves of gross, a nod to a police chief in a movie about Kill Klowns, and even a tribute to the great Linnea Quigley(sour balls?!?!). If you’re a fan of bat shit crazy and fun monster media, Accursed Ground is something you can’t miss.

[Kate Victoria RescueandReading · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cults, Cursed Orphanage, Massacres…

I enjoy this author’s ideas and stories, but this one fell a bit flat for me. There was certainly gore and some chilling scenes, but nothing that really shocked or horrified me.

There were a few grammatical errors & spelling mistakes. Sometimes the Orphanage is called a School instead. I felt these took away from being fully immersed in the story and the characters.

Definitely give this one a go, as the concept and plot are great, just wasn’t for me.

New word alert: Well now I know a new adjective, caliginous!

[Thomas Or Felicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloody fun.

Gorehounds will enjoy this mixture of old gods, demons, and splatter punk. It wastes no time descending into madness and mayhem.

[Horrorlover86 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the setting and the history of the events at the orphanage and how deep it really goes.

[Thomas Hobbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great fun gory story about a evil orphanage set between 2 time periods 1970 and 1985. I think the author needs to write a prequel to this story. I would like to know the origins of this orphanage.

[Charlotte Taylforth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book and the cover is also very cool! This book takes you into your darkest fears of what you don't want to bump into in the night.

[BRANDON · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is solid. Priest goes crazy and slaughters a bunch of orphans, the orphanage is cursed in perpetuity, stupid teenagers decide to party down in abandoned orphanage, it's a classic tale. I have notes. My first impression was that the author was flexing his vocabulary or thoroughly abusing a thesaurus. I kept waiting for him to sprinkle 'stygian' in there somewhere. Having a big vocabulary isn't a bad thing, sprinkling tasty words throughout your story is not a bad thing, but using only SAT words in your writing can be distracting and off-putting. I honestly almost DNFed during the first chapter because it was just getting awkward. The author chose not to pull any punches, he opened the book with a scene of small children getting gunned down by a naked priest. I kind of cringe at that sort of hyper violence, especially when it's aimed at children, but people have different writing styles and different tastes in horror. Finally, Berry tended to push heavily for this to be a cosmic horror, and I don't know if it really was. To be fair, I nodded off a couple of times (more to do with a blood sugar issue than it does the writing) so I may have missed some cosmic exposition, but from what I caught there just wasn't enough elements there. I'm still giving the book four stars because while the vocabulary made it come off as stilted and self-conscious, it still wasn't so agonizing that I had to DNF to protect myself from cringe death.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just recently got into reading Brian Berry’s works and was impressed with some of his slashers but this novel fell flat for me.

There was way too much detail and the main cast with Samantha wasn’t even fully introduced until 100 pages into the story. Reading this book felt like a never ending prologue.

However, I’m still looking forward to reading some other novels by Berry. I know he can write great slashers so we will see!

[Kiki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great horror story! Beautifully written with great characters and a stimulating plot. Intense horror from start to finish. I love the detailed history given in the book making Blackwood orphanage twice as scary. This was a great treat. Highly recommend to any horror fan looking for a good story.