Now Published!
The Gamekeeper's House
Kevin was born to paint, but to study art meant abandoning the wild moors surrounding the mining village where he grew up, and leaving his family behind. His dream job as a graphic artist in London became a trap in a city where he did not belong, doing a job he hated.
Desperate to escape the city, he found a small advertisement in a newspaper, for a keeper to live in an isolated cottage in the very north of Scotland. His duties for just one year would be to monitor water levels on an isolated marsh, miles from the nearest house.
Nobody local would take the job. They feared it was a bad house following the disappearance of the gamekeeper’s wife twenty years ago, then the keeper himself went mad. Kevin did not believe in such superstitious talk. This was his opportunity to escape the city and begin a new life as a painter of wild and lonely landscapes, and he would not be put off by foolish beliefs.
The house undoubtedly had its strange ways, but at first he was not afraid. By the time he learned the secret of the ruined church and the abandoned village by the marsh, and that the gamekeeper’s wife was not the first to disappear, it was too late for him to leave. He had become part of the house.
Was the house haunted, or was Kevin simply losing his mind? A classic ghost story that will have you questioning your own beliefs, of what is real and what remains unknown, and not wanting to venture onto the moors alone.
Read the story of writing The Gamekeeper's House HERE.
Introducing the David Hammond Collection.
Everybody likes a good ghost story, the sort of thing that could happen to you, could happen to me. Perhaps you already have your own suspicions, no matter how sceptical you are. A house with a bad feel about it for no reason? Maybe just part of a room makes you feel uneasy, so you avoid going there? It is more common than you might think. Is there a place where you feel you are not alone?
The David Hammond books are a bit different to other ghost stories, based on my perspectives as a parapsychologist. Whether you believe ghosts (or at least something that might explain ghosts), might exist or not, they might open your mind to ideas about the unseen world that undoubtedly exists around us.
The books follow David's unusual career researching what we call the paranormal from 2008 to the present day. For an introduction to David's world and how he ended up in this line of work, you can read my free ebook, a collection of short stories, just by subscribing to my newsletter.
David Hammond
Book 1
Oliver's Voice
Ghosts cannot exist. Everybody knows that.
So what Alex is imagining must be dreams, except dreams could not tell him so much about a boy who lived in their house more than a hundred years ago.
A boy called Oliver.
Whatever Alex is seeing, hearing, they are not dreams. Dreams cannot tell you about the past. Dreams do not make you ill.
Worried about what is happening to their son, Alex’s parents contact David. What he expects to be just another imagined poltergeist turns into a race to find out what is really happening to Alex. David finds out he is not the first. There have been other boys like Alex.
Other boys like Oliver.
Author's note.
A gentle introduction to David's strange career, and at 459 pages, it will keep you reading for quite a while. This is still my favourite David Hammond book. Like Alex, I could live in Oliver's world, and be happy there.
.jpg)
David Hammond
Book 2
Gate in the Shadows
Scottish Highlands and Islands, September 2009
Does the past ever leave us in peace?
David is hired by a disgraced former government minister, now a writer, to visit the remote islands of St Kilda. He is not told why.
He is overworked, stressed, and only takes on the job because he remembers visiting the Scottish Highlands as a boy. Some of those memories are disturbing, frightening, and he must never think of them. Perhaps by going back, he can find out why.
What he finds on that remote island is clearly not why he is taken there. Then the former politician disappears, stories of buried bodies and dark rituals appear in the newspapers, and the police want to talk to David.
A modern ghost story that might just change your mind about what is known, and what is not yet understood.
Author's note.
For those who enjoy a mystery or a detective novel, but with a supernatural twist.
David Hammond
Book 3
Destruction of Faith
Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, May 1944
George hated the hospital smells, the hours of silence, the loneliness. Visitors came, sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid, he could tell they were just doing their duty, eager to get away. He couldn’t stay here. There was work to do, important work.
Summertown, Oxfordshire, July 2010
The dental surgery that David went to was nothing like this. Sleek interior design, a calming environment, luxuriously furnished. Expensive.
He could feel the presence that some patients disliked, even as he entered the reception area. The old house that was buried behind the modern décor may have been tidied away, hidden, but it was not entirely gone. This feeling came from the kitchen, but not the consulting room that filled that space now, from the house as it once was. A sensation of despair, of failure, of things left undone.
Downing Street, London, July 2010
Errington waited next to the gently ticking clock. He had been served tea and oatcakes in a small office where he could pass the time unseen. When the cabinet meeting was concluded, only the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary would stay behind to be briefed about the forgotten secrets of Operation Nightingale.
Author's note.
For readers who enjoy a faster-paced book. Political intrigue with a ghostly twist.
David Hammond
Book 4
Editing.
Due for publication.
2026/27
Author's note.
I would advise that you read Destruction of Faith before any of the following books.
Darkness in the Forest
Kielder Forest, Northumberland, June 1964
Michael knew he was going to die here. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after. The passage of time no longer mattered. He would join the others who had followed the same path, to become part of the dust in this cave.
Wark, Northumberland, June 2012
No longer able to work as they used to, David and Janet escape the city to start a new life in a remote farmhouse in Northumberland. They had always wanted children, and were getting no younger, so took this opportunity to adopt a boy who had a troubled start in life, and no family.
A boy who was perhaps a little too perfect.
Their suspicions that he was not all that he seemed began in the local village shop, where he and David attracted the attentions of an old woman who could not see.
She had always known that David would come one day. She had waited for forty-seven years, but at last he was here. He would be the one who would find Michael.
David Hammond
Book 5
Editing.
Due for publication.
2027
The Walls of Camus Rhea
Camus Rhea, Highland, July 1951
She was only fourteen, and afraid, and now he was dead. They were all too young to know what to do. Donald ran to fetch his father, the only person they could trust with their secret. The policeman’s body must never be found.
Camus Rhea, Highland, October 2016
Juliet stared through the rain and the blackness of the night towards what had been their dream home for three years. She could stay in there no longer, amongst the broken souvenirs of their happy life.
Isle of Skye, October 2016
David had not been expecting a visitor. This was only their second stay at their new holiday home, a place to get away from visitors. The man looked troubled, as if he had not slept for some time. He brought a story of things broken, a house disturbed by incidents he could not explain. David would normally have dismissed such ideas as fantasy, except that Paul did not even seem to know what David did for a living, and when questioned, he seemed too tired for falsehoods. As he made him talk, David realised a connection that Paul clearly did not. Every one of these incidents had been intended to hurt Juliet.
David Hammond
Book 6
Editing
Due for publication
2027
Underwood Park
Friston, East Sussex, August 1845
Isaac felt fear for the first time as he heard the sounds of the sea. He had been questioned about Mistress Ingram before the men led him away. With his head covered, he did not know where they were taking him. Until now.
Friston, East Sussex, March 2017
It was the start of filming for the fifth series of Ghostwriting. Underwood Park was reputed to have one of the most easily-seen grey ladies in England. They were here to find out if there was any truth to these sightings, and to find the story behind them.
The grey lady would turn out to be real enough, and her story the very stuff that had made Ghostwriting such a success, but David found a more recent drama unfolding as he tried to focus on the mansion’s Victorian past.
He wished he had never mentioned it, but he had been recorded on camera, describing something disturbing that had happened at the other end of this vast house.
They would have to take a look into Room Three.
David Hammond
Book 7
Draft
Fully Written
The Dragon Stone
Moscow, Russia, April 1848
Pavel took the stone to his window, to see better in the light. It should have been perfect, a beautiful and clear diamond. What he saw was a vision from the Devil himself. He wrapped it back in its piece of cloth with shaking hands.
Isle of Skye, March 2023
David had not worked for five years. The virus that shut down the world had been the final death knell for the programme that he himself had created. He ended the call, having reluctantly agreed to one more series, but deep-down, he knew it was no more than life-support for something already dead.
London, June 2023
It would be a complete waste of time. They were busy, with a schedule to keep to that could not be moved, so how the hell were they supposed to find time to look around a ship in Southampton? Keith had agreed however, so they were stuck with it. David suggested they should take one camera, one microphone, one presenter, and only for one day. A token effort and no more.
Then more details arrived from the Azeira, due to arrive the day after tomorrow. The suite had been occupied by Lord Hazelcroft and his wife when she had gone missing. She was believed to have been lost overboard on the Atlantic voyage to New York six weeks earlier, but her body had never been found. Lady Hazelcroft was said to have been wearing the famous diamond.
David changed his mind. They would take the whole crew. Other work could wait. There was more to this than just a dark feeling in one room.
Other Books.
First Draft Completed.
Something Disturbed
When Derek Sinckler digs up a skull in the garden of Number Thirteen, tragedy begins to follow his nine-year-old daughter. It makes a good story at first, the unlucky house, but it then becomes much more than just a story.
Was it really a witch who had been buried in their garden three hundred years ago, or was that just another story?
Who has Eve been talking to?
Some things are best left undisturbed.