Former West Midlands journalist pens debut horror novel

GJ Phelps, who began his journalistic career with the Walsall Advertiser newspaper, has written 13 Doors.

The story focuses on news reporter Joe Baxter, who has a plan to to use his newsroom contacts across England to find 13 haunted places to stay, and then record his experiences in a book.

From an abandoned cinema to a dank pub cellar, from a World War Two airfield to a lonely, landlocked cruise liner, he is is prepared to spend long nights in the cold and dark, but has no idea what he is about to unleash.

For, as he endures increasingly dangerous vigils, meeting a succession of gruesome, tragic and terrifying spectres, a terrible truth begins to emerge. Something – or someone – is reaching out to Joe, awakening long-buried memories of his father’s death, a dark family secret and his teenage brush with madness.

The spine-tingling supernatural mystery entwined with chilling ghost stories, includes some stories based on real legends from the West Midlands.

The Black Country Living Museum inspired the setting of one of the stories while the Victorian graveyards in the Jewellery Quarter – and the Birmingham Catacombs – play a key role in the story.

Mr Phelps, who now runs a successful PR Consultancy and was a former editor of the Tamworth Herald, said: “I have always been a devotee of horror and supernatural fiction and, as an Eighties kid, grew up watching classic movies of the time.

"I wanted to write a book that paid homage to those influences, while adding something new and different to the genre.

"Most of all, I wanted to write a horror novel that was rooted in my journalistic background – that featured the kind of odd, real-life stories that occasionally come into all newsrooms. So, while 13 Doors is fiction, there are a handful of stories and anecdotes in it that are based on real stories – stories that journalists couldn’t explain.”

The book is available to order on Amazon.