Jenny Ashford is a horror, true crime, and paranormal writer, graphic designer, and podcaster. Her most recent books are a three-volume true crime compilation collectively known as The Faceless Villain: A Collection of the Eeriest Unsolved Murders of the Twentieth Century. Volume One was published in 2017, Volume Two in 2018, and Volume Three in 2019. Her other books include four paranormal nonfiction books: The Unseen Hand: A New Exploration of Poltergeist Phenomena, The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist (with Tom Ross), House of Fire and Whispers: Investigating the Seattle Demon House, and The Rochdale Poltergeist (both with Steve Mera); as well as three horror novels, Red Menace, Bellwether, and The Five Poisons; two short story collections, Hopeful Monsters and The Associated Villainies; and a graphic novel, The Tenebrist. A second edition of The Associated Villainies was published in 2019, featuring four new stories, an enhanced print layout, and an audio book version. A second edition of The Five Poisons was published in 2020. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including The Nightmare Collective, History Is Dead, 2012AD, ChimeraWorld #3, and ChimeraWorld #4. Her horror blog, Goddess of Hellfire, contains writing news, short stories and articles, and her reviews and opinions on horror films and books. She also co-hosts a podcast with Tom Ross called 13 O'Clock, on which they discuss true crime, unexplained mysteries, paranormal weirdness, horror movies and books, food, and other fun, creepy topics. They recently collaborated on a 13 O'Clock cookbook. Jenny's graphic design work can be seen on everything from books and business cards to posters and packaging. She runs an online store called Gravecake selling products with her designs, and also has a board-and-card game concern called Giallo Games, which produces games based around the beloved Italian horror/crime genre, among many other themes.
At approximately one-thirty a.m. on the morning of October 6th, 1966, someone peered out of his apartment window in Paterson, New Jersey and witnessed three thugs slitting the throat of a fourth man on the porch of the apartment next door. The victim, forty-two-year-old Gabriel “Johnny the Walk” DeFranco, was dead at the scene. He … More Gabriel DeFranco
On March 13th, 1966 in Clifton, New Jersey, a man out walking his dog came across the remains of a partially nude woman in a gully off the Garden State Parkway. The victim had been strangled and shot twice in the head, and though she was left naked from the waist down, it was later … More Judith Kavanaugh
The Bricca family—twenty-eight-year-old Jerry, his twenty-three-year-old wife Linda, and the couple’s four-year-old daughter Debbie—had moved to the pleasant, middle-class enclave of Green Township near Cincinnati in 1963. Jerry was a chemical engineer for Monsanto, and had been transferred from their Seattle plant. Linda had worked as a flight attendant prior to the move, and once … More The Bricca Family
In 2009, thirty-seven-year-old Paula Hounslea was having something of a rough time. She was suffering from poor health in general and bipolar disorder in particular, and though she had worked as a seamstress and a bartender in the past, she was unemployed at this juncture in her life. She lived in West Derby, Liverpool, England, … More Paula Hounslea
On the afternoon of November 15th, 2013, several gardeners were clearing weeds at a house on Audley Drive in the village of Warlingham, in Surrey, England. One of the workers noticed that the padlock on the cover of the seven-foot well in the garden had been broken; curious, the gardener lifted the cover and peered … More Damian Chlywka
On the evening of April 30th, 2012, ninety-two-year-old Emma Winnell was put to bed by her home-care nurse. Emma was in her own house, located in the suburb of Moseley, in Birmingham, England. The nurse left shortly after her duties had been accomplished, locking the front door behind her as she always did. But when … More Emma Winnell
Nineteen-year-old Ashley Dighton was spotted on CCTV cameras on the afternoon of June 11th, 2007 entering a Sainsbury’s supermarket on Simone Weil Avenue in Ashford, Kent, England. At some point after this sighting, he mysteriously vanished. A month later, his horribly decomposed remains, minus his head and sections of his arms, were discovered dumped in … More Ashley Dighton
Thirty-year-old banker Alistair Wilson lived with his wife Veronica and their two children in the town of Nairn, Scotland, about seventeen miles east of Inverness. Alistair seemed by all accounts to have a completely normal existence until 2004, when he unwittingly became the victim of one of the country’s most mysterious and infamous unsolved murders. … More Alistair Wilson
In England, and more specifically in the sleepy town of Norwich, a teenaged sex worker was allegedly seen getting into a car on Rouen Road at approximately one-fifteen a.m. on the morning of November 20th, 1992. A little more than two hours later, she would be dead. A truck driver passing through the area at … More Natalie Pearman
At around six-thirty a.m. on the morning of September 11th, 1991, passersby strolling through Green Meadows Park in Los Angeles stumbled across the dead body of a young white or Hispanic woman. The victim—eventually dubbed Los Angeles County Jane Doe—was between fifteen and twenty years old, stood approximately five-foot-two, and weighed around one-hundred-seventy pounds. She … More Los Angeles County Jane Doe
