There is a hidden agenda to paranormal researcher Richard Nakata's investigations into these houses. They were given something else in THE TEMPLE OF RELIEF AND EASE. Something white, screaming and screaming.' Homes fit for heroes, they were promised after the Great War. A life force that transcends - and brings death. Art that celebrates the triumph of the natural world over the man-made. 'The great delight in being part of the Save Our Shit crew was that sometimes they could persuade those designers of the present and the future to save or incorporate the past into their designs.' There is no need in THE OCEAN GRAND, NW COAST, because the original artists created a living work of art for the hotel. 'Go beyond the graves, and they will come to you.' An invitation to a clifftop graveyard leads to a harrowing chase by burrowing things that remain unseen, their hunger unknown and never satisfied, BEYOND ST PATRICK'S CHAPEL. An entity that fishes for children is in THE MERRY HOUSE, SCALE HALL. 'I wish I had been right I wish that it had been a man, or death alone, that had found her.' An unearthly light in an abandoned bungalow resolves the mystery of a missing child, but no human force has taken her. Human despair has a power of its own after death, and it is contagious.

'No-one could be that unhappy and be alive.' A chambermaid's seemingly innocent request is granted, an act of kindness that has dire consequences for the guest at THE ELMS, MORECAMBE.

Quiet Houses by Simon Kurt Unsworth