About Shudderwick
Pull the blanket up. We are just getting started.
Hello. Come in. Sit down. Pull the blanket up.
This is Shudderwick. It is a collection of ghost stories, and every single one of them is real. Well. "Real" in the way that ghost stories are real, which is to say: someone, somewhere, believed this happened. And then they told someone else. And that person told someone else. And now here we are.
The stories come from all over. Folklore passed down through centuries. Newspaper reports from the 1800s, written by journalists who were clearly shaken. Legends attached to actual places you can still visit today, if you want, though you might want to go during the day.
The illustrations
Every story on Shudderwick is illustrated in a different style. Ink wash for one. Woodcut for another. Watercolor, charcoal, gouache, paper cutout. The idea is simple: every ghost story already has a mood. The illustrations should feel like they grew out of that mood, not like they were assigned from a menu.
We did not make any of these stories up. We did retell them, because the originals are sometimes in Old English or Danish or filed away in a county records office in Yorkshire. But the bones of every story are exactly where we found them.
Now then. Pick one. Get comfortable. The candle is lit. We have all night.
The format
Each story is told in chapters, the way a bedtime book is told in pages. Read one chapter and close the tab. Or read them all. Each story page includes a "True History" section with the real facts behind the tale, because these are real stories and the truth is as interesting as the telling.
Bedtime stories. Mostly harmless. Probably.
Sources and attribution
All stories on Shudderwick are adapted from public domain sources: folklore, oral tradition, and published works with expired copyright. Each story page includes a "True History" section with notes on the original source material.
We approach every culture's stories with respect. If a story originates from a specific tradition, we name that tradition and its context. Ghost stories belong to the people who first told them. We are just reading them aloud.