Description

A slow burn psychological horror novel, Josh White’s *Phantasmagoria* tells the story of Anna, Miguel, Corentine, and Stephen—four sufferers of terrifying sleeping disorders who find themselves at a remote wellness retreat. But Aeron Hall, a bloodcurdling mansion nestled in the mountains of old coal country, is an unusual location to gather the sleep deprived. From the stained glass windows that watch the patients like eyes to the harrowing wail erupting from the caverns underneath, the mansion is chiseled from the essence of nightmares. Then new, increasingly personal horrors begin. Thunderous knocks erupt from bedroom mirrors. A statue moves in the moonlight. Mattresses ooze blood. Threatening messages are scrawled on paintings. Shadowy figures beckon and unleash tormented screams in the night. Is a sinister presence demanding penance for the patients’ sins, or is the house playing tricks on their exhausted minds? Combining the surrealism of Jac Jemc’s *The Grip of It* with the tortured psychological horror of Daniel Kehlmann’s *You Should Have Left* , *Phantasmagoria* offers a haunting exploration of loss, grief, and atonement told through the alternating point-of-views of the novel’s four main characters. The novel questions the nature of hauntings and poses that houses—no matter how horrific their past—can never truly be as haunted as people.