I’m delighted to share the news that paperback edition of my most recent medieval thriller, A Gathering of Ghosts, is published in the UK on 7th March 2019. It is set on Dartmoor, in 1316, but many of the places mention in the novel, have changed little since medieval times.

One of these, where I have set a key scene in the novel, is the mysterious Wistman’s Wood , It’s an ancient grove of twisted oaks growing in the steep-side river valley. The twisted branches of the trees are hung with shaggy lichen and their gnarled roots slither around huge moss-covered boulders. For centuries, this wood was a place of mystery and was once thought to been a sacred grove of the Druids. Although this is probably just a myth, the huge stone which stands like a spear at the heart of the wood was long known as ‘The Druid’s Stone’.

In daylight, Wistman’s Wood is an enchanted and beautiful place that looks as if it belongs more in Tolkien’s Middle Earth than 21st century England, but at night it takes on a sinister character and for centuries, locals refused to venture there after dark. Many legends are attached to this wood, not least that it said to where the spectral hounds known as the Wisht Hounds or hellhounds are kennelled. Wisht originally meant to bewitch or invoke evil. Wisht hounds were thought to be a pack of huge black dogs with red eyes and savage fangs that hunted across Dartmoor at night, preying on lost souls and unwary travellers, often lead by a dark rider who rode black or skeleton horse.

One of the other reasons, Wistman’s Wood has such a spooky reputation is that the ancient Lych Way or Corpse Path runs just along the northern edge of the wood, along which coffins were carried from the remote dwellings on the moor to be buried at Lydford. And over the years, there have many sightings of a ghostly procession of men in white robes walking the way of the dead.