Thirteen doors, thirteen hauntings.

News reporter Joe Baxter has a plan. His idea is simple – to use his newsroom contacts across England to find thirteen 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, Joe is prepared to spend long nights in the cold and dark, but has no idea what he is about to unleash.

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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.

And then there is Wilko, the imaginary friend who haunted his childhood. After decades of silence, Wilko has found his voice again…

A spine-tingling supernatural mystery entwined with chilling ghost stories, 13 Doors places the reader at the dark heart of the moment, from gut-wrenching action to eerie vigils.

My Review

My son has a friend who does this kind of thing. He’s even written a book about it and takes people on ghost tours. Luckily he’s never experienced the kind of stuff that Joe has.

I would just like to say here that I am in awe of the editors and proofreaders who must have worked so hard on this book. It’s perfect as far I can tell – and I read a lot that are full of typos and inconsistencies regardless of final editing.

But on to the review. I just love this book. It’s like a series of short stories, all joined together by Joe’s past and his current life. Having been made redundant from the newspaper where he has worked all his life, he decides to hold vigils in haunted locations (not just houses) and write a book about his experiences. Each vigil becomes more terrifying as he opens himself up to the spirits of the long departed. And for some reason, he is more open than most people.

His mother and his friends are worried about him, because following the tragic death of his father he went off the rails, earning him the nickname Mad Bax at school, and eventually putting him in a mental hospital for six months. He claimed to have experienced something terrible in the catacombs in a cemetery (I recognise the cemetery in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter), and they won’t let him out until he admits it was all in his imagination. But was it?

And then there are the voices, or at least one voice in particular, Wilko, his imaginary friend. Wilko disappeared for many years, but has now returned and he’s not very friendly, in fact he couldn’t be less so. He’s terrifying.

But my favourite character has to be Patience, who Joe meets at one of his first vigils. She is like his mentor, and she explains about the place between the living and the dead. “Where I come from, people used to say that some folks are between two places. That’s me.”

Self-styled medium Adam Zacharanda claims he can talk to the dead. “No one can speak to the dead,” she tells him, “because they’re dead.” Brilliant.

I could go on and on, because there is so much more I love. I always had a fascination with seances and ghosts as a teenager – didn’t we all – but this is is way beyond that. Do you believe in ghosts? I have always believed that ghosts are a time stamp, where something so traumatic happened that it has left its mark on a place. 13 Doors may question everything you ever believed. It’s one of my favourite books of the year.

Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the Author

G J Phelps is an award-winning journalist who spent thirty years in the news industry, working his way up from junior reporter to eventually edit nine newspapers. He lives in Birmingham, England, where he runs a successful PR consultancy. A devotee of horror fiction since childhood, 13 Doors is his debut novel.

Gary’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gary.phelps/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Midlands_editor

Book Links
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195066350-13-doors
Buy Links – https://mybook.to/13doors-zbt