In the wood the grey stone rose from the grass, and she cried out and ran back in panicked terror. ‘What a silly little girl,’ the nurse had said. ‘It’s only the... stone.’ Standing stones, stone circles, tumps, barrows and ancient clearings still remain across the British Isles, and though their specific significance may be obscured by the passing of time, their strange allure and mysterious energy persist in our collective consciousness. Assembled here in tribute to these relics of a lost age are accounts of terrifying spirits haunting Stonehenge itself, stories of awful fates for those who impose modernity on the sacred sites and grim tales in which unwitting trespassers into the eternal rites of pagan worship find themselves part of an enduring legacy of blood. To represent the breadth of the sub-genre, authors include Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood and Rosalie Muspratt alongside lesser-known writers from the periodicals and journals of the British Library collections.

This book adds to the scant academic literature investigating how comics transmit knowledge of the past and how this refraction of the past shapes our understanding of society and politics in sometimes damaging ways. The volume comes at these questions from a specifically archaeological perspective, foregrounding the representation and narrative use of material cultures. It fulfils its objectives through three reception studies in the first part of the volume and three chapters by comic creators in the second part. All six chapters aim to grapple with a set of central questions about the power inherent in drawn images of various kinds.

Handheld Press presents a new classic short story anthology, combining the supernatural and archaeology. Never before have so many relics from the past caused such delicious and intriguing shivers down the spine. Archaeological historian Amara Thornton of the University of London, and Classical archaeologist Katy Soar from the University of Winchester have curated a selection of twelve outstanding short stories encompassing horror, ghosts, hauntings, and possession, all from archaeological excavation. From a Neolithic rite to Egyptian religion to Roman remains to medieval masonry to some uncanny ceramic tiles in a perfectly ordinary American sun lounge, the relics in these stories are, frankly, horrible. Stories include: 'The Ape', by E F Benson 'Roman Remains', by Algernon Blackwood 'Ho! The Merry Masons', by John Buchan 'Through the Veil', by Arthur Conan Doyle 'View From A Hill', M R James 'Curse of the Stillborn', by Margery Lawrence 'Whitewash', by Rose Macaulay 'The Shining Pyramid', by Arthur Machen 'Cracks of Time', by Dorothy Quick 'The Cure', by Eleanor Scott