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.
Nineteen-year-old newlyweds Johnny and Joyce Swindle had just gotten married on January 18th, 1964 in their hometown of Jasper, Alabama, and had come to San Diego, California for their honeymoon. Johnny was on leave from the Navy, and he and his new wife had been spending a relaxing few days staying in a pleasant cottage … More Johnny and Joyce Swindle
On the day before Valentine’s Day of 1983, a body was found alongside a West Virginia highway, and although law enforcement weren’t aware of it yet, the dead woman may have been the first discovered victim of a possible serial killer who seemed to target red-haired females. An elderly couple was traveling along Route 250 … More The Redhead Murders
Eliška “Elsie” Paroubek was a pretty, slightly-built, five-year-old girl with long, curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and prominent dimples. She was the seventh child of Bohemian (now Czech) immigrants, František and Karolína Vojáčková, who had come to the United States in the waning years of the nineteenth century. Her family lived on Albany Avenue in … More Elsie Paroubek
Joseph B. Elwell was an exceedingly wealthy and well-connected man, best known as a champion bridge player who had penned several popular books on the game. He was something of a gambler, had made most of his money on the stock market, and owned several cars and a yacht, a mansion in Palm Beach, as … More Joseph B. Elwell: The Locked Room Murder
In the early years of the twentieth century, in the racially-charged atmosphere of Atlanta, Georgia, bodies began to stack up in the black community, and though law enforcement and the press were initially slow to embrace the idea that a single perpetrator might be responsible for the majority of the crimes, eventually so many unsolved … More America’s Forgotten Serial Killer: The Atlanta Ripper
The 1960s was obviously an extremely turbulent decade, and during the course of the struggle for civil rights in the United States in particular, violence was a fairly common occurrence. The death of Paul Guihard, however, is notable for being the only known case of a journalist murdered during the resistance to the civil rights … More Paul Guihard
Nearly two decades removed from the notoriously ghastly prostitute slayings perpetrated by Jack the Ripper, the year of 1907 would see the murder of a working girl in eerily similar circumstances. In more recent times, a few Ripper researchers have attempted to link the infamous Whitechapel killings with the much later case widely known in … More Emily Dimmock: The Camden Town Murder
Thirty-six-year-old Glenna Sharp, more commonly known as Sue, was originally from Connecticut, but in late 1980, she left her husband James, and subsequently moved with their five children—fifteen-year-old Johnny, fourteen-year-old Sheila, twelve-year-old Tina, ten-year-old Rick, and five-year-old Greg—to cabin twenty-eight at the Keddie Resort in northern California. Sue chose this location in particular because it … More The Keddie Murders
Most everyone with an interest in true crime has no doubt heard of the notorious Villisca axe murders, in which eight people were brutally dispatched by an unknown assailant sometime during the night and early morning of June 9th and 10th of 1912. Though many suspects have been put forth and investigated over the decades, … More The Villisca Axe Murders and Beyond
It was somewhat late on the night of Friday, August 26th, 1960 when thirty-eight-year-old single mother and office clerk Dorothy Coon set out on an unknown errand from the home in Des Moines, Iowa that she shared with her two teenaged children. Nancy, nineteen, and Dennis, seventeen, had both already gone to bed when their … More Dorothy Coon
