THIS HOUSE ISN'T HAUNTED BUT WE ARE (paperback)

Formats: Paperback, Ebook | ISBN (paperback): 9781739458065 | Pages: tk | Published: 3 April 2025

About the Book

PART OF THE NORTHERN WEIRD PROJECT

Simon and Priya’s young daughter has died in a tragic accident. Determined to heal their fracturing marriage, the couple move to the North Yorkshire Moors to renovate a dilapidated rural cottage. However, they just can't process their grief as increasingly eerie events unfold. A child’s ghostly figure appears on the moors, doors lock themselves, and a mysterious stain grows from the loft. Is it their daughter haunting them or something else?

Starve Acre meets Linghun in this story of grief, marriage and haunting.

Advance Praise:

“Short, sharp and tender beneath its skin, Stephen Howard's deeply creepy Gothic novella will keep you up long into the night.”
- Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

“THIS HOUSE ISN’T HAUNTED BUT WE ARE explores how grief makes us forget about the present, rendering us aimless, half alive wanderers through parents who have lost a child, and a house who doesn’t want to be alone as it nears the end of its life. A heartfelt supernatural and cosmic story about three broken individuals struggling to heal and finding comfort in each other.”
- Ai Jiang, Bram Stoker and Nebula Award-winning author of Linghun

"This House Isn't Haunted But We Are is a novella sized bite of grief horror which offers a fresh take on the haunted house trope. Does the battered old house on the moors have what it takes to save Priya and Simon from spiralling into a pit of loss, guilt and self-destruction? Read it and find out."
- Catherine McCarthy, author of Mosaic and The House at the End of Lacelean Street

About the Author

Stephen Howard (he/him) is an English novelist and short story writer from Manchester, now living in Cheshire with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Flo. An English Literature and Creative Writing graduate from the Open University, his work has been published by Lost Boys Press, The No Sleep Podcast, Metastellar, and others. He's also published one novel, a comic fantasy titled Beyond Misty Mountain, and the collections Condemned To Be, Little Book of Horrors, & Ophelia in the Underworld and Other Melancholy Tales (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).

Cover design by Luísa Dias