Dog-walker and magazine-finder Terrance Scurf explains what happened: “I was trying to escape from a bear or something. I think it was a bear. I could hear it crashing through the birch trees. It might have been a badger I suppose, but who has ever heard of a badger crashing through the wooded bits at the edge of a farmer’s field. No one, that’s who. Anyway I tripped and fell trying to climb over a stile, and tumbled down the side of the hill into a stream filled with a kind of ectoplasmic liquid that left me soaked and filthed. I pulled myself up and out, and suddenly everything was quite, and through the trees I could see the most beautifulwoman in the world. I took off my clothes and hung them from the branches of a nearby tree so that they could dry. It was while I was in this state that I glanced to my side and saw the magazine in the leaves by my feet. By the time I had picked it up the woman had gone. She must have been a ghost. Perhaps the owner of that bear. Anyway, later I got dressed and went home and thought of you.

Love

x

Terrance”

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that I have never met Terrance, and from a quick perusal of my survaillance records, I can find no reason to believ he exists. This whole event has been disconcerting to say the least, but at least I have procurred another copy of the original Essex Terror (see below)

You will need a copy of WINUAE to run this disk image.

Click here to download the coverdisk image.

Screenshots

Adventure Mini Game

Swizpig also informs us that there had been plans to create an Essex Terror/Dylan Dog adventure game tie-in, and has kindly provided these screenshots of the project:

Unfortunately the game did not get much beyond the planning stages, but certainly looked promising.  If anyone has more information on this, we at Essex Terror! would be delighted to know.

Exclusive! Five original Essex Terror issue covers have been found! Many thanks to Martha Bunes for sending these in to us. Martha writes,

Dear Essex Terror!,

My grandson recently found these in our loft in our house in Halstead and was able to computerise them for me.  I am sorry about the poor quality, but I read on your web site that copies of this old magazine are now quite rare.  I wonder if they could be worth anything!  The inside pages are all mysteriously missing but I will see if we can locate them. Though it may take me a while as I am currently tending my sick cat Peter, and my grandson is away at ‘uni’ until Christmas. He is studying Geography.

We at Essex Terror! extend our deepest thanks to Martha, and wish her cat a swift recovery.

(thanks to Tanya Gold for sending us this scan)

I went to the library recently. I’d gone to pick up a copy of Project Maldon, a frightening book of Essex-based science fiction. I’d had this book on order for the last three years, but the library’s only copy had been kept out overdue by the previous borrower since 1999. I’d almost given up hope, but I’m a stubborn man and I refused to let the library cancel my place in the hold queue, and finally I was rewarded.

Project Maldon was basically as exceptional as I had hoped, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. For inside this tome, left inside by whoever it was who had been so reluctant to return it, was a single page, ripped from a magazine, and folded neatly into quarters for use as a book mark. Unfolding it,  I slowly realised that in my trembling hand I was holding a genuine page from an original copy of Essex Terror. What issue it had originated in I do not know, but at this moment in time, I am unworried by my ignorance. Linked to below are scans of this slightly mutilated page. Please click on the images to see the full size pages.

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).