The best method for hearing the echoes of this huge celestial heart is to sit in your garden and night and push a cat as close to your ear as possible, holding it there despite its protestations, listening, listening, listening. The cat, unhearted and inert, acts as the perfect conduit for absorbing and amplifying sound, its whiskers perfect antennas that can pierce the walls between the worlds.

A dog will not suffice

This short and possibly unfinished article was found in the papers of Toby Vok that were bequeathed to the county of Essex upon his disappearance in 1990. As far as can be ascertained, it has never been previously published.

While even by itself this would usually have been the best moment of my day – Squirm is a true masterpiece of comic terror – this edition has been filled with copious notes by the mysterious “Toby”, all made for the benefit of his equally mysterious friend “Ted”. I can only surmise that these two figures are Toby Vok and Ted Vaaaak. Any other explanation is inconceivable.

I’ve added some of the highlights below, or you can download the entire annotated book here: The Complete Squirm.

“During a recent job interview I was briefly left unattended in the Chepstow Records Office Document Room. Unable to resist the charms of the filing cabinet marked “Forbidden” I opened it up and quickly flicked through the folders within. Most of the folders had incomprehensible names like “T.V. Relocate Requisition Order” and “Necro/Micro/Animate Res. – URGENT”, but one of the folders was called “Ladybird/Lovecraft – t/anom”.

“Inside was a single book and a handwritten note. The book was a pristine copy of a ladybird book from the 1950s. It was book number 15H in the Ladybird Key Words Reading Scheme Series, entitled Trouble At The Market. The author was credited as H.P. Lovecraft N.F.U and the artist as Terry Oakes. (I remember this as I have a photographic memory). The story inside, however, was so nauseating and disorientating I have involuntarily stricken it from my mind (except for the excerpt below, which is my sole proof that this chain of events ever happened). The full-colour illustrations were so vivid and inexplicable I was afriad I might begin to scream. Fortunately the photocopier in the corner of the room could only replicate them in blakc and white.

“I only had time to photocopy this single page before I could hear my interviewer scrabbling his way along the corridor. I hastily put the book back in the folder, and the folder back in the filing cabinet, and myself back on my seat. I don’t think the single bead of sweat on my cheek gave me away. In fact, I suspect he mistook it for a tear.

“Anyway, I know Wales is not in Essex, and although that is a shame I cannot expect you to excuse lightly, I thought you should be informed of this find as quickly as possible.

“Regards, Daniel.”

What kind of pipe has Edward chosen to accessorise with his creepy gothic outfit?

A) Lead Pipe

B) Indian Peace Pipe

C) A Pipe-Schontenheim

D) Smoking Pipe

Answers on the back of an email to: EssexTerror (at) gmail (dot) com

And good luck!

We’re delighted to report that despite only being on the web for a few months, letters recounting people’s fond remembrences of Essex Terror have been trickling in.  And inevitably, amidst genuine well-wishing from former subscribers, that grand bugbear of correspondence has finally chosen to rear its malformed forelimbs and twitch them at at us: The Chain Letter.  I am not going to reproduce it here — not because I refuse to take its warnings of supernatural calamity seriously, but because it has reminded me of a greater threat; and one I learned through none other than the hallowed  pages of the original Essex Terror…

The Tale of Gin Susan

In the late 1700s, under cover of darkness, a publican’s daughter by the name of Susan Tines is said to have snuck out of the Swan and Bender Inn, Colchester, clutching tightly to her person a letter she had written only that evening.  Her intent was to deliver it (the recipient unknown) before the nearby churchbells sounded in the new day; for if she did not, she would be condemned to die young and in agony. Where had she learned of this terrible fate? In another letter received that very day, demanding that if she was to live she must pass on its curse. It is quite possibly the earliest recorded example of the chain letter phenomenon, and an 1848 copy is on display at the Chelmsford Museum of Antiquities (attributed to Thomas Chatterton, given its pseudo-medieval stylings).

Sadly, so the story goes, fate was not on Susan’s side as barely a few yards from her home she ran into a friend of her father’s and was quickly apprehended, returned, and locked away in her room. The pressure of these events appears to have snapped Susan’s fragile, womanly mind, as on the following day she drank herself into a gin-induced stupor and fell down a drainage ditch; whereupon her still-warm body is supposed to have been devoured by blind, piglike creatures rumoured to live underneath Colchester.

That is not the end of the story, however. For it is said that if any who know this tale choose to propagate any sort of chain letter, Gin Susan’s bloodied, half-eaten specter will appear by their bed and drag them off to the Colchester tunnels.

The tale of the tale does not end there either. In the late 1960s, an Essex medium operating under the name of Madame Cravatsky (real name Enid May Beake) claimed to have contacted the spirit of Gin Susan, and offered to give a public demonstration of her talents to a small audience at the recently opened Civic Theatre. The ensuing spectacle involved much wailing and over-consumption of gin, after which Blavatsky manifested a pool of ectoplasm before passing out completely.

Whatever the truth behind Gin Susan’s tragic tale, this writer at least shall be held in check by it whenever a chain letter should happen to arrive in the post. Perhaps you will now, too.

The Beginning

The initial run of the Essex Terror fanzine ran from July 1989 through to June 1990. It was printed on A4 paper, with a cardstock cover.  The layout was quite sophisticated for its time, realised on a Zandy 5000 running what was probably a port of Professional Page, a popular WYSIWYG DTP client of the day. So much for the technology. Concerning the logistics and funding, things begin to get a little murky.  We do know that Guy received an inheritance in 1987 after the death of his aunt, and what was not immediately taxed away or used to fend off angry creditors must have been used to launch the fanzine.  The initial circulation was tiny, but by the final issue it counted subscribers living as far away as Braintree and Chelmsford.  It’s difficult to put a precise number (since the accounting side of Essex Terror is possibly more Occult than the forbidden lore in which it traded) but subscribers must have numbered in the mid hundreds — an incredible achievement for a one-man outfit whose primary means of transport was a Raleigh Grifter.  Incredible, that is, until one learns that the publication had become the property of the East Grinstead outlet for the Church of Scientology (there are no records of the sale, but it is listed as an asset in a December 1989 copy of Freedom Magazine).  Quite what the Church’s interest in a simple horror fanzine might be has remained a mystery, and more-so, a fact which has dogged those who would remain true to Guy’s original vision.

Today

I was first approached with the idea of relaunching Essex Terror in March of 2007 by a former associate at Fleetway Publications, but unfortunately had commitments to Home and Garden magazine which required I postpone the project.  By late in the year however, I was more in a position to take the matter seriously.  Arrangements were made and writers hired, mostly through a string of informal, Christmas card correspondences (looking back, things very much took on a life of their own in those early days).  Our team was largely made up of former subscribers and word-of-mouth admirers of the original. We were greatly excited, and it’s probably not gilding the lily too much to say that issue one came into being almost overnight.  Then came the letters.  In no uncertain terms, the Church of Scientology (hereafter referred to as CoS) threatened us with legal action should we go ahead with our publication.  We thought we had taken suitable precaution, Essex Terror! being more a spiritual successor to Guy’s Meisterwerke, but in the eyes of the CoS’s lawyers we were in clear danger of gross infringement of intellectual property rights.  Naturally Fleetway required we back off, and when the firm passed into receivership a few months later (due by all accounts to matters unrelated to the CoS dispute), it all appeared to be over.

This brings us to the present, with EssexTerror.com.  As our planned relaunch was begun primarly as a labour of love, we have decided to continue our project via the Internet as a purely non-profit undertaking.  It is to the original voice of Essex Terror that we remain true, and it comes to us in a tone shrill and swollen, as of a birdcall echoing down a chimney.

Disclaimer

We assert that Essex Terror! is in no way directly related to Essex Terror, is not a derivative work, and further believe we are in no way infringing on the intellectual properties of the CoS, in that our publication firmly comes under the notion of fair use regarding Guy’s original vision.  Whilst we may, from time to time, reference content from the original fanzine, our project is purely an historical and elucidatory one.  We are seeking charity status in this endeavor (further updates on request).

1: Maldon Mer-Man

In the spring of 1780, local eccentric and prestidigitator, Alan Mulvane, claimed to have caught a bizarre sea creature whilst out fishing on the Essex salt flats, ‘Thee lykes of wiche fulle horribele it wass and no mistayke’. It was immediately put on show in what was to become one of England’s most famous freak shows, drawing crowds of up to twenty people at a time. Some claimed it was just an old boot that Mulvane had stuffed full of sandwiches, but still others noted an uncanny resemblance betwixt it and the sea trout of the nearby tidal estuary…

2: Essex Throttler

Years before London’s Jack the Ripper would stalk the streets of Whitechapel in search of victims, a far more vile and mysterious entity began a reign of terror throughout Essex that would last well into the next century. It became known simply as ‘The Essex Throttler’, for that is what it did: its prey were seldom granted the sweet release of death, as in Jack’s case; but instead were throttled to within an inch of their sanity and left as pallid, idiot revenants, white haired and wild eyed, to wander the streets of Essex townships, babbling incoherently about their experiences. It is said the rise of the British ‘Chav’ population has its genetic roots in these poor and damaged souls.

3: Beast of Beacon Hill

Doubtless the reader has heard of the Bodmin Moor Beast, and Norfolk’s ‘Black Shuck’, but Maldon’s Beacon Hill plays host to its own, peculiar specimen of crypto-zoological obscurity. ‘Dangly Ubb’, as the locals have christened it, is neither lupine nor feline, but is reportedly a giant, hairy, breastlike monstrosity that has often been seen flopping around the hilltop. Originally thought to be a joke amongst the local milkmen (it is said to be most active in the early hours of the morning), the legend was lent significantly more credence when in 1992, councillor Donald Spavins claimed to have seen it lactating atop a streetlamp. Spavins later saw that the streetlamp was replaced in accord with health and safety town ordinances.

4: The Butcher of Beeleigh Road

John Compton’s trade was no secret: he ran the local butcher’s shop on Maldon High Street from 1955 to 1978, and was known by all to be a large and ruddy-cheeked fellow who took great pride in his work, and always spoke the best of people. Yet what of the other John Compton? The one who hid away from prying eyes, long into the evening each night in his home on Beeleigh Road? Could he have been laughing maniacally to himself as he sharpened his butcher’s blades, eyeing the children of the local comprehensive and imagining their blood washing through the streets and into the gutters? Could he really? He had to be hiding something, did ‘Jolly’ John Compton.

5: Crabbus Man

‘As any fool know, to walk after dark through Promenade Park is to walk in the shadow of death; for there the Crabbus Man lurks and scuttles, with his clacking claws and twitching eye stalks, ready to leap upon the unwary and clack at them, they whose souls shall know no peace for all their remaining days upon the Earth…’ Or so wrote the Reverend Joseph Arkwright in his diary for the year 1863. Arkwright never saw the creature himself, though his borderline obsessive documentation of the Crabbus Man, including many incidents of its manifestations as sundry simulacra throughout Maldon (be it a cloud that ‘rather resembled a crab’s claw’ or a shadow upon a grass verge that ‘seemed to scuttle most unwholesomely’) has become the go-to source for Crabbus lore.

6: 151 Church Street

God it’s terrifying here.

7: Viking Road

The hideous deeds committed by the Northmen are well documented, most notably by the Venerable Bede of Lindisfarne, where in the Year of Our Lord 793 they did slaughter the innocent monks and didst desecrate their most holy altar with pagan blasphemy to make even the most ignorant of modern heathens shudder with disgust. Their raids into Essex are less well-documented, but you can be sure they did some pretty terrible stuff here as well.

8: Downs Road

The writer, in his youth, has actually walked down Downs Road on a dark Autumn evening, in the late 1980s. He cannot be certain the shadow that fell across the path in front of him was anything but a trick of the light, but he fears it was something worse. How did Downs Road get its name? Could an actual Downs have lived there, and if it did, was it left to wander unsupervised, to harass the good Maldon townsfolk?

9: White Horse Lane

Our English countryside is famous for its prehistoric hill figures: the Cerne Abbas giant, the Long Man of Wilmington, and a veritable herd of white horses; the Uffington White Horse being perhaps the most famous. But White Horse Lane does not derive its name from these pagan relics. Instead, so the story goes, a coaching inn was once located here, attended by the Tally-Ho line which plied between Birmingham and London. It was pulled by three bay stallions, and one notably ghost-white mare. The filthy, superstitious peasants of Maldon had never seen such a beast, and would cross themselves every time they saw it.