Scratch Moss

LoveReading Says

Spanning centuries, this ambitious five-timeline novel radiates Straw Dogs and The Wicker Man vibes as it shares the story of a community’s complex, disturbing connection to a mine. 

In 2025, fifty-something writer Joe returns to his Scratch Moss mining hometown for the funeral of his father, a former miner. “Your problem is, you go away and you think everything stays the same”, he’s told as more tragedy strikes, and memories surface from the shadows of his mind: “The Little Woods had always felt like it was covering something up… The Little Woods always felt like a sick place”, Joe recalls and then he’s “assaulted” by a memory of Red Clogs, “a spirit that haunted the pit”, and folks are saying Red Clogs is back.

Slipping to 1985, we meet Joe as a youngster, when an effigy of Thatcher is burned after the closure of Scratch Moss pit. There’s fear of Red Clogs back then too, and of Johnny Crowe, “a loner and a weirdo, and dressed in blackened rags that flapped in the wind like the wings of his namesake”, who’s rumoured to have killed a local girl. 

The narrative shifts further into the past, delving ever deeper into the dark secrets of Scratch Moss, first when Joe’s grandfather comes to Scratch Moss representing the National Coal Board and witnesses much death, and then back to 1905 and 1865, And all the while, a creeping sense of the area’s ancient “godlessness” escalates. Suspenseful, addictive and unexpected, Scratch Moss is an inventive work of horror that pushes the boundaries of the genre.

Joanne Owen

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