Scratch Moss

'An agile and compelling storyteller' Nick Cutter 1865. Coal lies beneath Scratch Moss Manor and Sir Henry Brody is determined to get to it. But something else lurks below, something dark and evil.

1905. Reverend George Ackman has never known such godless people as those of Scratch Moss. But if not God, what do they believe in?

1945. Arthur works for the Coal Commission, visiting privately-owned pits ahead of their nationalisation. On his visit to Scratch Moss, he finds only misery and death.

1985. The miners have lost. Thatcher reigns supreme. And in the shattered community of Scratch Moss, rumours resurface about Red Clogs, a terrible presence in the land below.

2025. Divorced, fifty-something writer Joe returns to his hometown of Scratch Moss for the funeral of his father. Soon the memories of Joe’s teenage years, and the horror that blighted the community, come flooding back…

A devastating, five-timeline tale centred on a community first invigorated, then devastated by the coal mining industry in the most original folk horror novel of the year.

© 2026 W. F. Howes Ltd (Audiobook): 9781004242818

Release date

Audiobook: March 5, 2026