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The Ghoul
Two cars roar away into the darkness from the noisy brilliance of a party, on a race to Land's End. But a few hours later impenetrable fog brings them to a halt on a deserted moorland road, and brings the occupants to the brink of an unspeakable fate. For nearby is a house of horror and death, a house which harbours a terrible creature which feeds on human flesh... the ghoul!
- GenresHorror
128 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 21, 1976
55 people want to read
About the author
Guy N. Smith
176 books300 followersI was born on November 21, 1939, in the small village of Hopwas, near Tamworth, Staffordshire, England. My mother was a pre-war historical novelist (E. M. Weale) and she always encouraged me to write.
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
I was first published at the age of 12 in The Tettenhall Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Between 1952-57 I wrote 56 stories for them, many serialized. In 1990 I collated these into a book entitled Fifty Tales from the Fifties.
My father was a dedicated bank manager and I was destined for banking from birth. I accepted it but never found it very interesting. During the early years when I was working in Birmingham, I spent most of my lunch hours in the Birmingham gun quarter. I would have loved to have served an apprenticeship in the gun trade but my father would not hear of it.
Shooting (hunting) was my first love, and all my spare time was spent in this way. In 1961 I designed and made a 12-bore shotgun, intending to follow it up with six more, but I did not have the money to do this. I still use the Guy N. Smith short-barrelled magnum. During 1960-67 I operated a small shotgun cartridge loading business but this finished when my components suppliers closed down and I could no longer obtain components at competitive prices.
My writing in those days only concerned shooting. I wrote regularly for most of the sporting magazines, interspersed with fiction for such magazines as the legendary London Mystery Selection, a quarterly anthology for which I contributed 18 stories between 1972-82.
In 1972 I launched my second hand bookselling business which eventually became Black Hill Books. Originally my intention was to concentrate on this and maybe build it up to a full-time business which would enable me to leave banking. Although we still have this business, writing came along and this proved to be the vehicle which gave me my freedom.
I wrote a horror novel for the New English Library in 1974 entitled Werewolf by Moonlight. This was followed by a couple more, but it was Night of the Crabs in 1976 which really launched me as a writer. It was a bestseller, spawning five sequels, and was followed by another 60 or so horror novels through to the mid-1990's. Amicus bought the film rights to Crabs in 1976 and this gave me the chance to leave banking and by my own place, including my shoot, on the Black Hill.
The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1990 and still has an active membership. We hold a convention every year at my home which is always well attended.
Around this time I became Poland's best-selling author. Phantom Press published two GNS books each month, mostly with print runs of around 100,000.
I have written much, much more than just horror; crime and mystery (as Gavin Newman), and children's animal novels (as Jonathan Guy). I have written a dozen or so shooting and countryside books, a book on Writing Horror Fiction (A. & C. Black). In 1997 my first full length western novel, The Pony Riders was published by Pinnacle in the States.
With 100-plus books to my credit, I was looking for new challenges. In 1999 I formed my own publishing company and began to publish my own books. They did rather well and gave me a lot of satisfaction. We plan to publish one or two every year.
Still regretting that I had not served an apprenticeship in the gun trade, the best job of my life dropped into my lap in 1999 when I was offered the post of Gun Editor of The Countryman's Weekly, a weekly magazine which covers all field sports. This entails my writing five illustrated feature articles a week on guns, cartridges, deer stalking, big game hunting etc.
Alongside this we have expanded our mail order second hand crime fiction business, still publish a few books, and I find as much time as possible for shooting.
Jean, my wife, helps with the business. Our four children, Rowan, Tara, Gavin and Angus have all moved away from home but they visit on a regular basis.
I would not want to live anywhere other than m
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 28, 2021
Before indulging his excesses with his more famous Crabs and Sabat series and the like, Smith novelised this little-known Tyburn horror movie—one of my childhood favourites—rendering it an atmospheric and pacey yarn, making much of the subdued horror and remote setting, and any deficits in the plot (largely the repetitive nature of two separate couples encountering the house and meeting almost identical fates) stemming from the film itself.
May 1, 2022
A couple run out of petrol on an isolated road thick fog blankets the area, the woman is stalked by a man who enjoys watching, knowing he can capture this women at his own choosing. The women escapes to a mysterious, old mansion in the moors. The stalker pushes the man in the car off a cliff as he is sleeping inside. The stalker laughs and screams maniacally, the body mangled, not human anymore. As the lady sleeps in the house she is stabbed, flesh and blood spattering the white sheet, the killer hacking, mutilating, not stopping until she was just bloody joints, a mountain of meat a sickening mess. The human flesh will be fed to a creature, grotesque, insatiable appetite. The fog ridden moors setting is creepy and disturbing and Guys description is on.
September 12, 2009
First published back in 1976, Guy N Smith’s paperback novelisation of the Tyburn Film (a latter-day successor to Hammer and Amicus) production of ‘The Ghoul’ was one of this prolific writer’s earliest releases. The novelisation followed soon after the release of Freddie Francis’s film which starred Peter Cushing alongside the likes of John Hurt and Alexandra Bastedo. Smith’s paperback is now reasonably scarce and somewhat of a collectable rarity for Guy N Smith enthusiasts.
Set back in 1926, the tale begins at a party in the London area, where Daphne Hunter and her friend Billy, challenge two other fellow party goers (Geoffrey and Billy’s sister – Angela) to a midnight car race, all of the way to Lands End and back. The race is quickly underway and soon enough Daphne and Billy are in the lead when they suddenly run out of petrol in the middle of a great moor fog deep within a desolate region of Dartmoor. Billy goes off in search of a petrol station leaving Daphne to wait in the car. However, not far away from where their car is parked lies the rather grande gothic estate belonging to a now rather ageing Lawrence. The estates groundskeeper, Tom Rawlings, stumbles upon Daphne stranded and alone in the car and after knocking her unconscious, takes her away and locks her in his shed with him. When Daphne awakens, she manages to escape from Tom fleeing to the house where she encounters Lawrence and his Hindu maid ‘the Ayah’ (the nurse).
However, behind closed doors and away from Lawrence’s watchful eyes, the Ayah is performing some dark and evil rituals. After Daphne is escorted to a room in which to rest for a while, the Ayah releases the terrible secret that lays waiting in the house, sacrificing Daphne to its insatiable bloodlust.
With Billy, Geoffrey and Angela all now in the area, it’s just a question of how long Tom Rawlings and the Ayah can keep this evil secret hidden behind closed doors. More sacrifices will follow, with Tom stopping at nothing in order to keep this a secret.
Guy N Smith’s novelisation of the Tyburn Film is an eerie and atmospheric piece of fiction that keeps up an underlying tension throughout the entirety of the book. Smith encapsulates perfectly the creepy interior of Lawrence’s gothic home, setting the developing storyline on edge from the very moment that Daphne meets Lawrence and the Ayah.
The mood continues to project a constant air of foreboding when Geoffrey and Angela separately arrive at the house. From here on in, Smith cranks up the pace of the novel delivering an edge-of-the-seat read until the very end. Lawrence’s disturbing secret isn’t exactly a huge surprise for the reader, but the actual un-curtaining still remains haunting in its own way. The sheer intensity of Smith’s writing has successfully created a truly terrifying ‘ghoul’, with an abundance of vivid descriptions of the grotesque being.
All in all, the tale is somewhat of a slow starter, but once it is underway, Smith delivers a chilling story that is pure edge-of-the-seat material until the very end. The novel concludes in a dramatic and utterly downbeat fashion, to keep even the most morbid of horror readers happy.
The novel runs for a total of 128 pages and was first published through Sphere Books.
Set back in 1926, the tale begins at a party in the London area, where Daphne Hunter and her friend Billy, challenge two other fellow party goers (Geoffrey and Billy’s sister – Angela) to a midnight car race, all of the way to Lands End and back. The race is quickly underway and soon enough Daphne and Billy are in the lead when they suddenly run out of petrol in the middle of a great moor fog deep within a desolate region of Dartmoor. Billy goes off in search of a petrol station leaving Daphne to wait in the car. However, not far away from where their car is parked lies the rather grande gothic estate belonging to a now rather ageing Lawrence. The estates groundskeeper, Tom Rawlings, stumbles upon Daphne stranded and alone in the car and after knocking her unconscious, takes her away and locks her in his shed with him. When Daphne awakens, she manages to escape from Tom fleeing to the house where she encounters Lawrence and his Hindu maid ‘the Ayah’ (the nurse).
However, behind closed doors and away from Lawrence’s watchful eyes, the Ayah is performing some dark and evil rituals. After Daphne is escorted to a room in which to rest for a while, the Ayah releases the terrible secret that lays waiting in the house, sacrificing Daphne to its insatiable bloodlust.
With Billy, Geoffrey and Angela all now in the area, it’s just a question of how long Tom Rawlings and the Ayah can keep this evil secret hidden behind closed doors. More sacrifices will follow, with Tom stopping at nothing in order to keep this a secret.
Guy N Smith’s novelisation of the Tyburn Film is an eerie and atmospheric piece of fiction that keeps up an underlying tension throughout the entirety of the book. Smith encapsulates perfectly the creepy interior of Lawrence’s gothic home, setting the developing storyline on edge from the very moment that Daphne meets Lawrence and the Ayah.
The mood continues to project a constant air of foreboding when Geoffrey and Angela separately arrive at the house. From here on in, Smith cranks up the pace of the novel delivering an edge-of-the-seat read until the very end. Lawrence’s disturbing secret isn’t exactly a huge surprise for the reader, but the actual un-curtaining still remains haunting in its own way. The sheer intensity of Smith’s writing has successfully created a truly terrifying ‘ghoul’, with an abundance of vivid descriptions of the grotesque being.
All in all, the tale is somewhat of a slow starter, but once it is underway, Smith delivers a chilling story that is pure edge-of-the-seat material until the very end. The novel concludes in a dramatic and utterly downbeat fashion, to keep even the most morbid of horror readers happy.
The novel runs for a total of 128 pages and was first published through Sphere Books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews