Hi, I’m David Castleton. At my blog The Serpent’s Pen I write about all things gothic, quirky, dark and strange, dipping into the realms of folklore, ‘fakelore’ and psychogeography as well as the darker aspects of literature and the arts.
My posts have explored such topics as suburban and inner-city ‘vampires’, a stuffed raven credited with inspiring Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe, England’s tradition of pyramid tombs, witches’ cauldrons in churches in the Surrey commuter belt, and an upper-class Manchester lady who managed to get herself transformed into an Egyptian-style mummy.
I’m also an award-winning author of gothic/literary/magical-realist fiction. I won the Go Gothic Short Fiction Prize in 2019 and my novel The Standing Water has garnered favourable reviews on the likes of Goodreads and Amazon and from book bloggers.
My style of fiction blends psychological darkness and gritty real-life issues with the folkloric, mythic and surreal. It’s been described as resembling ‘Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ken Loach having an argument under a glowering northern sky.’
My debut non-fiction book – Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury) – investigates weird artefacts in British churches and churchyards and the spooky folklore and odd customs linked to them. Published on March 18 2021, the book’s already hit the number one best-seller spot in three categories on Amazon. If you’d like to join me for a tour taking in giants’ tombs, Devil’s footprints, the graves of beloved church cats, the ribs of monstrous cows, 1,000-year-old reindeer antlers, and holy wells whose waters fizz and turn blue, check the book out here.
I’ve had poems and short stories published in American literary magazines and I’ve contributed to websites like Folklore Thursday and Mainly Museums, in addition to writing for regional newspapers here in the north of England. My account of a road trip I made to the ex-Soviet nation of Georgia – involving shampoo smugglers, Stalin’s armchair, irate monks and lashings of good vodka – appeared in the intercultural anthology Purple Jacaranda, put out by the German publisher Waxmann.
A bit about my background: I grew up in rural North Yorkshire – some of my happiest childhood memories consist of me poking around the creepy churchyards and ruined castles and abbeys in which this part of Britain abounds. I studied history and cultural history at university down in London and I’ve taught English at the University of Manchester and the University of Miskolc, Hungary.
I still live in the north of England, where you might spot me outside a pub downing a pint of the excellent local ale while engrossed unsociably in a book. And I’ve never quite managed to lose the embarrassingly gothic habit of sneaking around ruins and graveyards.