ray newman
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Siân Ellis-Martin
Biography: Ray Newman writes weird fiction, crime fiction, and sometimes things that sit between the two. He grew up in a working class family, mostly on a council estate in Somerset, and that experience continues to define much of his writing. He studied English and American literature at Cambridge and has spent the past 25 years working in various communications, marketing, editorial and design roles, often in and around the UK public sector.
Ray has written several non-fiction books about pubs and beer under the name ‘Ray Bailey’. His first published novel, THE GRAVE DIGGER’S BOY, came out in 2019. Since then, he has self-published several acclaimed collections of ghost stories and weird fiction. He lives in Bristol.
Visit Ray’s website.
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THIN PLACES IN HARD CONCRETE
Short stories, 163 pages, Independently published, April 2026
A collection of 10 brand new weird stories in the tradition of Robert Aickman and Ghostwatch.
The son of a dictator living in exile visited by vengeful spirits from his country’s past.
The ghost of a music hall singer trapped forever in the tape loops of a haunted Mellotron.
An official report into the exit from a motorway interchange that should not be there.
And seven more stories set in cemeteries, super basements, alleyways, apartment blocks, holiday flats, high streets and town centre temples that didn’t exist yesterday.
INTERVALS OF DARKNESS
Short stories, 232 pages, Independently published, September 2024
The fourteen stories in INTERVALS OF DARKNESS are all varying degrees of weird, from the subtle, foreboding strangeness of ‘Men Who Live in Caravans’ to the classically spooky atmosphere of ‘The Unbidden Guest’. They’re set in post-war churches and factories and tower blocks, and on desolate marshes and wintry farmland. There are formal experiments, too, such as an oral history of a local legend, and the off-air transcript of a long-lost children’s TV show.
MUNICIPAL GOTHIC
Short stories, 176 pages, Independently published, January 2022
Council estates, motorway underpasses, bypass hotels, concrete cathedrals and run-down pubs. Places we all know, that we see where we live in suburbs and towns. Why shouldn’t they be haunted? In these thirteen stories you’ll meet a demonic black dog tasked with administering a lineal curse in the age of sperm donation, a witch’s familiar forced to live off fried chicken bones, an architect whose buildings can drive you mad, headless villains and more. It includes the acclaimed ‘Modern Buildings in Wessex’ and ‘An Oral History of the Greater London Exorcism Authority’, both of which put the ghost story into new forms.
THE GRAVE DIGGER’S BOY
Crime, 262 pages, Bloodhound Books, August 2019
As a boy, Ben was a witness in the disappearance and suspected murder of a beautiful young woman, Esther Garrett, which led to an intense adolescent obsession.
Twenty years later, the conviction of her murderer is overturned due to a police corruption scandal. Ben’s obsession is reawakened when Esther’s sister asks for his help in investigating the crime.
As Ben is drawn deeper into the case, he will be forced to face the truth about his own life and soon finds himself questioning everything he ever believed.
Was Esther really murdered?
And if so, could the killer be closer to home than anyone ever imagined?