Tales Accursed

Richard Wells is an illustrator and graphic designer. Primarily working in the television industry, he has provided graphic props for the likes of Sherlock, Doctor Who, and the 2020 BBC adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He also created the titular haunted print in Mark Gatiss’ 2021 ‘Ghost Story for Christmas’ adaptation of M.R. James’s The Mezzotint. Outside of his television work, he makes and sells his own darkly folkloric artwork, often lino cut and hand-printed. He is the curator and illustrator of Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology. He lives in the West Midlands.

'With folk horror, we tread uncertainly, for fear of whispering forests or liminal spaces that could wash the reader away with other ghosts of the sea. We can’t turn away, but can find a delicious crackle of fear in turning these pages, in engaging with old fears anew' Sinéad Gleeson, author of Hagstone and Constellations'A new volume of delightfully unsettling tales by some of the masters of the genre. Richard Wells’ woodcut-style illustrations playfully conjure the ancient terrors depicted in dusty seventeenth-century tomes, and their apparent simplicity allows the reader to fill the dark spaces with their own fears' Maria J. Pérez Cuervo, founder and editor of Hellebore