THE HOUSE OF LOST SOULS

Ghouls slither into southern England, and two men fight the devil for a woman’s soul and sanity in this atmospheric gothic debut.

Although the main action takes place in 1995, the story’s roots lie in the 1930s, when a rich group of Satanists, including wealthy proto-Nazi Klaus Fischer and (real-life figures) novelist Dennis Wheatley and occultist Aleister Crowley, gathered to spawn the beast by offering a child in human sacrifice. This ugly tale is uncovered half a century later by unsuspecting Irish journalist Paul Seaton while trying to help his girlfriend with research for her dissertation. Seaton’s clandestine visit to the remote Fischer house and its resident horrors leaves him ruined, haunted and terrified. Ten years later, a foolish professor takes a group of students to the Fischer house, and Seaton is asked by mysterious Dr. Covey to help one of them, Sarah Mason, rendered crazed and suicidal by the experience. Seaton links up with Sarah’s army-trained brother Nick and, assisted by a wise old priest, the pair return to the Fischer house to exhume the bones of the sacrificial victim, pitting themselves against the best efforts of hellish opponents.

Energetically reviving a neglected genre, Cottam delivers convincing chills alongside engrossing and highly cinematic heroics. Surely the first in a series.