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Apartment 239

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The Sixth Sense with equal parts creepiness and charm - Elford Alley has the stuff to make you smile while you squirm in this ghost-infested, serial-killing whirlwind set around one very unlucky young man’s overcrowded apartment.” — Daniel Barnett, author of Nightmareland Chronicles

"Apartment 239 is Alley's best work yet. This compelling genre-mash-up is a page-turner of the cinematic sort - a splendid mixture of lovable and despicable characters, horrific and heartfelt scenes, and humorous and witty dialogue. Highly recommended!" Jeremy Hepler, Bram Stoker-nominated author of Sunray Alice.

Seamlessly blends the comic nihilism of Douglas Adams with the heart, pain, and goofball creepiness of The Frighteners. You will never forget your trip to Marble Springs. Just watch out for gators. — Brandon Applegate, author of Those We Left Behind and Other Sacrifices

Elford Alley is a rare horror writer who can encompass humor, tenderness, and the creepy lurking of our haunted spaces. APARTMENT 239 is book that combines the horrific melancholy of communicating with the dead while also celebrating the absurdity of it. Definitely a spiritual successor to works like THE FRIGHTENERS or IDLE HANDS. — Kyle Winkler, author of Boris Says the Words

Monsters. Mayhem. Minimum Wage.

Marble Springs is a town with a hundred missing persons cases, a lake harboring a blood-thirsty monster, and a second-generation serial killer on the loose. When undervalued city employee Abe Barret begins to see the dead, he discovers the loss of his family is linked to these unsolved disappearances, and he only has days to solve it before his time is up. There are a lot of ways you can go in Marble Springs, and none of them are pleasant.

Welcome to the City of the Dead!

238 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2022

33 people are currently reading
334 people want to read

About the author

Elford Alley

20 books84 followers
Elford Alley is a horror author and disgraced paranormal investigator. His novels include Apartment 239 and In Search of the Nobility, TX Wildman. He has two short story collections, Ash and Bone and The Last Night in the Damned House.

His short stories have appeared in multiple anthologies, including Paranormal Contact, Beneath, Cosmos, and Campfire Macabre. His work has also been featured in Huffington Post, Cracked, and DoomRocket.

He enjoys folklore, exploring strange places, and spending time with his family. You can also check out his website for updates: elfordalley.com.

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5 stars
72 (40%)
4 stars
68 (37%)
3 stars
28 (15%)
2 stars
8 (4%)
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3 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews
Profile Image for Stitching Ghost.
1,497 reviews390 followers
January 29, 2024
This one was a particular brand of weird which is just off enough from the world we live in to not let you forget it but not so far off that it veers into dreamlike territory. It offers an abundance of funny lines and it stayed engaging all the way through. It was also a very quick read that packed a surprising amount of stories in a limited number of pages without ever coming across as rushed.

More of a 4.25 than an actual 4.
Profile Image for Jeremy Hepler.
Author 16 books165 followers
November 8, 2022
Apartment 239 is Alley's best work yet. This compelling genre-mash-up is a page-turner of the cinematic sort - a splendid mixture of lovable and despicable characters, horrific and heartfelt scenes, and humorous and witty dialogue. Highly recommended!
Profile Image for Shauna Eleney.
Author 3 books54 followers
September 27, 2023
Loved the plot for this one, and it was a perfect mix of humour and horror. First thing I've read from Alley, but I really enjoyed his voice. Would recommend.
Profile Image for Ronald McGillvray.
Author 8 books106 followers
September 21, 2024
A great read.

“Apartment 239” by Elford Alley has it all. Ghosts, killers, a man eating creature and secrets galore. With so many twists and turns, Apartment 239 will keep you guessing right up until the end. Elford uses a perfect blend of horror and humour in this book. It was a real page turner and one you soon won’t forget.
Profile Image for Sarah McKnight.
Author 16 books55 followers
December 19, 2022
Such a fun, witty read! A small town teeming with mystery, and one man somehow caught in the middle. This book has ghosts, corruption, serial killers, and more. There were instances that had me genuinely laughing out loud, and other parts that got dark and disturbing pretty fast. I really enjoyed this book, and the author certainly has a talent for weaving humor effortlessly into the story. Definitely recommend this one.
Profile Image for Brian Bowyer.
Author 62 books274 followers
December 27, 2022
Brilliant!

I had a blast with this one. APARTMENT 239 is a fast-paced mixture of horror, humor, and great characters. You can't go wrong with anything by Alley. Highly recommended!
Profile Image for Damien Casey.
Author 26 books88 followers
August 31, 2022
TITO LIVES. Elford Alley is so good it pisses me off. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Somehow he manages to make this weirdo mashup of The Frighteners, Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, and Silence of the Lambs work like it was just meant to be. Apartment 239 is filled with humor and biting social commentary, if you don’t fall in love with Clay and Carl while reading this then you probably own a jet ski and I am extremely jealous of you. I also may hate you. Elford’s keen eye for character is just as strong here in the humorous as it is in his more serious horror shorts. Speaking of which, it would be hella easy for an author to stumble and fumble with so many moving pieces, not Elford. He’s using that glue that NFL players used to use, he’s holding it all together with some otherworldly skill. Cryptids, ghosts, murder, conspiracy, and the struggles of the working class; this book is special. K thx.
Profile Image for Jennifer Bernardini.
Author 21 books26 followers
September 6, 2022
Fast-paced and fun, Apartment 239 will have you on the edge of your seat! Horror and humor combined to make this book such an enjoyable read. Apartment 239 is horror at its core, but there’s so much fun, so much wit that I caught myself laughing out loud quite a few times.

Take a trip through Marble Springs and catch glimpses of killers and monsters and ghosts, all the while trying to figure out who the actual bad guy is.

Elford has such an entertaining way of writing that before you know it, you’re halfway through the book.



If you have read nothing by Elford, you need to fix that.
Profile Image for R.D. weber.
Author 2 books13 followers
November 6, 2022
I absolutely loved this book! The twists and turns it takes you on. The characters are so unique and real it really pulls you in. I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone!
Author 5 books48 followers
January 17, 2025
I hope Clay and Carl banged afterwards, because I definitely shipped them.
Profile Image for William Sterling.
Author 29 books33 followers
June 10, 2024
Elford Alley has a fantastic gift for blending horror comedy, and comedy horror, without either getting in the way of the other. Apartment 239 reads like if the sitcom Ghosts was written by the team behind Welcome to Nightvale after they'd been all locked in a room with David Fincher sitting ominously in a corner, whispering plot details for Mindhunter's potential third season.

It sounds batty, but Alley pulls it off.

Apartment 239 is fun. It's dark. It's a morbidly good time.
Profile Image for Kyndra Lemke.
377 reviews
March 23, 2023
Hilarious. And probably a little on the crude side. Parks & Rec + ghosts. I highlighted so many passages, very witty.

“The two men approached the car, guns drawn, screaming conflicting orders, each cop forgetting his training and relying on a different episode of Law & Order.”

“Born and raised in Texas and you don’t own a — gun. Son, are you trying to lose this job?”

Just a little heads up if certain topics are a trigger! This book contains violence, child death, homophobia, religious trauma, and animal cruelty.
Profile Image for Kevin Brown.
Author 1 book20 followers
October 16, 2024
Marble Springs, the fictional Texas town of Elford Alley’s excellent comedy of horrors, Apartment 239, is probably not a place you’d find in any travel brochures. There’s no marble there, and no springs. Instead, tourists to Marble Springs can ooh and aah at the corruption and pollution. Maybe join the local religious cult. Or run for their lives from the serial killer at work there, or whatever terrifying monster is stalking the town’s waterways.

Killers and creatures aside, Marble Springs has the lived-in feel of many real towns across the USA, where things have been so bad for so long, no one gives a shit anymore; where work sucks, where hope goes to die, and your hometown is really just a free range prison.

Our unlikely hero is Abe Barrett, a perpetually disgusted parks department employee still grieving for his wife and four year old son, who died in a gas leak in their home. Abe has since moved out, and into the Camelot Apartments, #239. Life is going about as well as you’d expect. His co-worker is a UFO abductee. His other co-worker is a loudmouth prick. The closest thing Abe has to a pet is the toxic cat from their job site, stained green and blue by noxious chemicals. His only friends are the three ghosts who also “live” in Apartment 239, Michael, Diane, and Kaitlin.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that some folks in Marble Springs are haunted by more than just their memories. As one observer puts it, Marble Springs has long been soaking in a “paranormal marinade”, a condition that Alley explores to both hauntingly funny and heartbreaking ends.

Abe worries that his ability to see Michael, Diane, and Kaitlin must mean he’s not long for this earth, and his three spectral roommates do little to discourage him of that notion. Instead they demand he add more streaming services, because they’re bored. Abe is also tormented over the fact that he can see these ghosts, but not the people he really wants to connect with: his wife and son.

In the meantime, there’s a bigger plot involving a string of unsolved murders and a thoroughly corrupt city government and police force, which eventually bumbles its way into thinking Abe might be connected to the crimes.

They’re partially correct, but only because some of the unsolved murders are of the previous tenants of Apartment 239—Michael, Diane, and Kaitlin—the same ghosts who now gorge themselves on Abe’s Netflix subscription.

Abe and his ghost friends have an agreement not to help each other; Abe doesn’t solve their murders and provide closure to their loved ones, and the ghosts don’t help Abe reach his dead family. But this agreement is tested as the story progresses. There’s a particularly touching scene where Abe and the ghosts visit the house where Abe's wife and son died to see if he can find them, and as he shuffles through its rooms, the house helps him remember them, and it’s devastating.

But while grief and loss are at the heart of Apartment 239, the skin and bones around them is pitch black humor. Alley fills every scene with some funny line of dialogue or absurd moment to remind us that we live in a ridiculous world, constantly squeezed by corporate greed and dominated by the worst impulses of humanity.

For example, Abe watches a reality show where couples have thirty-six hours to renovate their house or the show’s producers burn it down in front of them. I laughed from the sheer helplessness of it all, which is always the best reason to laugh.

Equal parts The Frighteners, Seven, Office Space, and any movie from the 70s or 80s featuring crazed, carnivorous animals, Apartment 239 takes all of these influences and makes something wholly original and unique, a story full of funny asides, strange background characters, and enough left turns in the plot to make a city planner have a stroke. Abe’s journey also reminds us that no matter how hard the world tries to make us miserable—ghosts, serial killers, forced overtime at work—hope is always constant too, whether we like it or not.
Profile Image for Derek Hutchins.
Author 11 books25 followers
October 4, 2023
My first Elford Alley — and it won’t be my last! If I had to describe this in one word it would be: fun. This had me chuckling all the way through. Elford knows comedy, the dialogue and banter between the characters is great. All characters are drawn out with their own motivations and backstories. There are a lot of subplots and at first it was a lot to keep track of but they all blend together neatly and Elford does such a good job of keeping their voices different so it’s easy to tell them apart. Each zany character has their purpose. Aside from being a fun story there is also horror here. I loved the main villain, who is a serial killer whose motivation is that he’s just crazy. His mind is living a totally different reality which is terrifying because you can’t reason with him. There is also social commentary here, as the story takes place in a Texas small town that is ripe with corruption leaving all our main characters victims of absurd inflation and poor pay checks. This reality hits home because it’s only one step removed from our own.
Profile Image for Wayne Fenlon.
Author 6 books80 followers
October 21, 2022
Apartment 239 by Elford Alley has a bit of a retro horror feel about it, and it's a super quick, fun read that gets better and better as it goes along.
Elford crams in a hell of a lot of ideas in here by mixing genres, but it never once feels bogged down. It stays really well focused.
I'm pretty certain you'll have as good a time as I did in Marble Springs. Much better than the folk who live there, anyway.
Pick it up.

A solid 4 stars.

Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Dave.
217 reviews6 followers
May 24, 2023
4.5 stars

I've read(and loved) Alley's short story collections he's put out up to this point and am ashamed that this one sat on my kindle for SO long before I jumped in.

It's a fast paced, twisty, humorous horror full of ghosts, serial killers and a town that feels ripe for future stories! At times light and fun(I know, weird to say in a horror book but trust me), at times dark, at times emotional - and Marble Springs feels like a town full of weirdness that could give Twin Peaks a run for its money.

Once again, Alley delivers a super fun horror story, even better this time for being a short novel vs collection of short stories! I look forward to what comes next!
Profile Image for AnxiousCloud.
163 reviews8 followers
May 1, 2023
Wow, what a fun read! I was hooked on the first page got attached to the characters in no time.
The humour and wit was fantastic, the storyline was amazing and kept me hooked and I couldn’t put it down.
But Mr Alley I didn’t expect to cry!! 😄
This is up there with one of the best books I’ve read for 2023. And I want more!
Profile Image for Richard Fulco.
Author 2 books28 followers
December 6, 2022
With great aplomb, Elford Alley weaves Apartment 239’s undulating narrative in and out of its disparate genres (horror and comedy) as he welcomes the reader into the dreary town of Marble Springs where a lake monster and a serial killer are wreaking havoc and a hundred of its downtrodden citizens have gone missing. Alley’s comic sensibilities and sharp-witted dialogue, combined with his penchant for the gruesome and absurd, make Apartment 239 a delightfully engrossing book.
Profile Image for Steve L Clark.
Author 6 books12 followers
January 7, 2023
Fun horror comedy mystery with just the right amount of each to keep you turning the pages.
Profile Image for Tara.
23 reviews3 followers
March 1, 2023
Now I'm gonna laugh my ass off anytime I see a Law & Order commercial, and I have this insane urge to purchase a snow globe - just in case!
Profile Image for Morgan.
113 reviews7 followers
May 18, 2023
Rated Up. My rating 3.5/5
A friend sent me the link to this book off Twitter and I love a good horror story.

I think it has a really good, strong start. I was hooked after reading just the sample, which was the first two chapters. We are introduced to two different characters at this time in different points in time. The pacing is pretty steady and really ramps up in the third act (as it should). I found myself a bit confused at times. The main story follows the main character, Abe, but you get little excerpts here and there from supporting characters. I did find it hard to keep track of who was who at times. Great work at weaving in the comedy and making it disturbingly dark at times.

Overall, decent quick read.
Profile Image for Ashley Mohler.
10 reviews1 follower
February 9, 2024
This was my first Elford Alley book, and I really enjoyed it! The mix of horror and humor was giving "Tales from the Gas Station" vibes (which I love). I would've appreciated for the story to dive a little deeper into Rick's relationship with his father and how it came to what it was, but it was overall a fun read.
Profile Image for Kirsty Mills.
547 reviews6 followers
March 11, 2024
A story of ghosts but not a ghost story! Clever writing weaves together the various characters and their link to the unusually high number of missing people. Apartment 239 and its occupant Abe are at the centre of this story as we slowly discover the secrets of this town and its inhabitants. Interesting characters in their own right and the secrets unfold nicely providing a few surprises along the way. A great 4* read.
Profile Image for Ben Young.
Author 13 books114 followers
March 6, 2024
This read like a more-digestible version of John Dies at The End. At turns it was spooky, emotional, and absurd, all without being over the top. That’s not easy to do, but when you ground it in prose as refined and calculated as Elford Alley’s, it’s works and is magnificent.
Profile Image for Chiara Cooper.
499 reviews29 followers
January 24, 2023
The misfortunes of Abe and Marble Springs were an interesting read! Filled with humour, ghosts, serial killers and philosophical passages at times, this novel had kept me entertained throughout. The characters are relatable and I got attached to Abe, Michael, Diane and Kaitlin and felt sorry when the story ended. There's also an unexpected twist which surprised me!
Only drawback is it felt a bit long in parts and rushed in others but I did like it and will read the sequel for sure.
If you like serial killers, the paranormal and some funny weirdness, then you might enjoy this story.
Profile Image for Taylor.
430 reviews3 followers
October 12, 2023
⭐️ 3.5 - short, enjoyable and funny. I did feel like certain parts were written in a slightly confusing way and I’m not sure if the author was doing that on purpose or if the writing just wasn’t quite up to par on those parts. Overall interesting, doesn’t take long to get through and worth reading. 👻💀🐊
Profile Image for Deven VanKirk.
Author 2 books8 followers
December 17, 2023
Abe is a city maintenance worker in a small Texas town, where odd things have been happening for years. There have been a ton of unsolved disappearances. Are the rumors about a wild animal true? Is that what's causing the disappearances? Maybe there's a serial killer or two. Rumors are abundant, whioe answers are not.

Abe lost his wife and son about a year ago when there was a gas leak in his house. He relocated to an apartment in town and has taken up residence in apartment 239. He isn't the only one who has taken up residence there.

When Abe and a couple of his co-workers are sent to hunt down the wild animal that people keep claiming to see, his life takes a wild turn. He finds himself trying to solve the towns mysteries and also to find out the truth about his families death.

This is the first book I've read by this author. I had a very hard time putting this story down.

If Elford Alley isn't already on your radar, he should be.
Profile Image for Adam Hulse.
225 reviews14 followers
December 8, 2022
What a fantastic read. This really would make for an excellent movie. I loved the offbeat humour throughout, and the dialogue is as sharp as a blade. There are a lot of moving parts to this tale, and Alley deals with them so efficiently that the book truly does feel alive. Marble Springs is mapped out so well that you feel you're moving through it with every turn of a page. The quirkiness of its residents and its history marks the writer as somewhat of a comedic genius. What I found most appealing was the heart that this book displayed. The impact of what is essentially a horror comedy suddenly hitting you in the feels is very powerful. I actually found it to be really emotional in parts, and it just worked really, really well. Elford Alley is one hell of a writer and certainly one to keep an eye on.
Profile Image for Micah Castle.
Author 42 books118 followers
September 5, 2022
Apartment 239 is a story about Abe, a man who has lost his family, and dealing with it with the help of his three friends, who happen to be ghosts. Around the small town of Moon Springs, people are being chopped up into pieces, and the powers that be don't seem to care. Unfortunately for Abe, he's thrown into the mix and through the course of the story, he learns what happened to his family and how to accept what his life has become...

This books reminds of Jeff Strand's work, horror and humor in sync and done very well.
Profile Image for Heather Horror Hellion .
224 reviews64 followers
October 9, 2022
Elford why must you do these things to me? I was just vibing along #Titolives and BAM you do that with the ending. Why?! You wanted me to feel things?!

The book was great, it really has everything you need. Friends who make weird business choices, friends who love aliens, maybe there is a lake monster, there are so many killers, a ton of ghosts, and one poor sad man with sleep apnea who has to put up with it all.

The characters are well written they are flawed and you love them for it!

It comes out on 11/1 so pick yourself up one! Unless you are a copy?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 75 reviews

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