I took it inside and unpacked the contents hurriedly onto my living room floor. All wires attached, and all plugs inserted, I switched it on, caressing the swollen monitor’s screen as it powered up to remove the static from its glassen face to stop it exploding and through my fingers transfer its wayward energies to my broken heart.

Within minutes the desktop screen appeared, bright red, yet otherwise blank, except for a lone folder, name: geocitiesterroredition001. And inside that, treasures I had never before dreamed of. A whole new chapter, unmentioned in the annals, from somewhere between the old and the now, a grasp at technologies at the time unknown, Ted Vaaak’s restless mind wrestling with the future and trying hard to tame it.

For here is Essex Terror online, for the first time, before I had even seen the internet, or even dreamt of it, and yet Ted, old Ted, often considered dead Ted, had already mastered its capricious whims.

To see the full beauty of my find, please click this link and be transported.

All that remains of the original run of Essex Terror magazine is a black and white photocopy of Issue 12 (the final issue), and despite an exhaustive search, no other copies of any of the other issues have ever been found. There have long been rumours of an attempt to supress any official evidence of the existence of these magazines, but we doubt the veracity of these reports. Nevertheless, the complete disappearance of possibly up to a hundred original copies is quite strange, and possibly sinister.

This final issue is reprinted in its entirety below.

This issue was discovered and supplied to us by Thomas Morton, author of “Vok: Unbound”, a collection of sheets of paper detailing aspects of the life and times of Toby Vok, a scientist.

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“me and my brother were just driving to southend so my brother could pick up a bed that he bought from ebay and we had just got to the darkest loneliest road in the whole of britain, or at least essex, or at least in the part of essex between maldon and southend, and my brother said “do the headlights look a bit dim to you” and i looked at the lights shining on the road and i said “yes” and then instantly the engine failed and the car slowly rolled to a halt and it was like we were in one the rubbishest episode of the x-files ever. we had to push it almost completely into a ditch to get it off the road so no one would crash into us and then we called the RAC and then they towed us home but before they towed us home we stood by the side of the field in the dark for a while and caught on one of the barbs on the barb wire fence was this piece of paper flapping in the wind i thought you would like to see it i think it is yours”

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.