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.
Janet Kennedy Smith was a young Scottish woman who had been working as a nursemaid for the Baker family since January of 1923. Frederick and Doreen Baker, wealthy owners of an import-export business, were apparently happy with Janet’s care of their newborn daughter Rosemary, for they asked the nursemaid to accompany them when they moved … More Janet Kennedy Smith
It was late afternoon on Saturday, February 26th, 1921, among the numerous farms that occupied the land outside the village of North Motton in Tasmania, Australia. Ena May Dawes gave her daughter Chrissie Venn a basket and some money, and asked the fourteen-year-old if she would walk the three miles into town to buy some … More Chrissie Venn
Vera Page was ten years old, an avid swimmer who lived in the Notting Hill district of London. At around four-thirty on the afternoon of December 14th, 1931, she asked her mother if she could walk the fifty yards to her aunt Minnie’s house; she wanted to stop by and show her aunt some swimming … More Vera Page
On July 20th, 1932, in East Sussex, England, twenty-three-year-old Arthur Edward Harman rose at five-twenty a.m., fixed himself and his wife Queenie a cup of cocoa, fed the couple’s one-year-old child, then caught the bus to the hauling company in Baldslow where he worked as a truck driver. As soon as he got to work, … More Queenie Winifred Harman
It was January 14th, 1953, in Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia. A park employee, Albert Tong, was walking near Beaver Lake when he stepped on a patch of ground that didn’t feel quite right. He knelt down in the underbrush and dug around a bit, almost immediately discovering a woman’s rain coat buried beneath the … More Babes in the Wood Murders: Derek and David D’Alton
It was a little past nine p.m. on the night of November 1st, 1980, when a truck driver making his way past the Sam Houston National Forest near Huntsville, Texas saw the nude body of a young girl lying about six yards off the shoulder of Interstate Highway 45. The victim was a white female … More Sherri Ann Jarvis
Autumn of 1980 began to fall, and out in the American West, two brothers were driving along a dirt road in Henderson, Nevada. It was about nine-thirty p.m. on the evening of Sunday, October 5th. Suddenly, one of the brothers, off-duty police officer John Williams, spotted something strange lying in the scrub off State Road … More Tammy Terrell
Twenty-three-year-old Melanie Carpenter lived in her native Vancouver with her boyfriend, and managed a tanning salon called Island Tan in the suburb of Surrey. On the afternoon of January 6th, 1995, in fact, she was working at the salon alone, and had received several phone calls, purportedly from a man representing a Japanese investment firm … More Melanie Carpenter
Thirty-seven-year-old Ricky Espinoza was a fun-loving individual, always ready for a party and well-liked by pretty much everyone. He had been working as a server at various hotel banquets in the Denver, Colorado area, but at the end of June 2001 was unemployed. He was staying with his mother in Colorado Springs, and apparently, on … More Ricky Espinoza
On the afternoon of June 1st, 1948, a woman and her daughter rushed to a train station in Texarkana. Secretly, the woman, Hazel Carpenter, hoped the train had already left so that she could drive her daughter to her destination, but unfortunately, the train was still on the platform. The younger woman kissed her mother … More Virginia Carpenter
Crime Immemorial 