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Roger Luckhurst is Professor of Modern Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. He has written extensively on horror, science fiction and the gothic, but for the Verb we’ve asked him to stick to just two of his specialist subjects, cult author HP Lovecraft, inventor of the Cthulhu mythos and author of some ‘rubbish’ poetry, and the Zombie – a figure whose journey he traces from Haiti, via writers such as Lafcadio Hearn and William Seabrook to the zombie we know today, a mainstay of television, cinema and video games. Zombies: A Cultural History is published by Reaktion, and Roger has also edited HP Lovecraft: The Classic Horror Stories in the Oxford World Classics series.

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Johnny Mains is a writer and editor who has a lifelong obsession with the ‘Pan Books of Horror Stories’ series and he has collected some of the best tales in his anothology, ‘Back from the Dead’. The series often featured gory tales and was edited by the enigmatically named Herbert Van Thal. Johnny has also edited the ‘Dead Funny’ series of horror stories by comedians which is published by Salt. ‘Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories’ is published by BlackShuck books.

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The theatre company Kill the Beast! create shows which mix horror and science fiction with comedy. Their new show Don’t Wake the Damp! takes us into a crumbling tower block, where we meet former star of the ‘Crystal Continuum’ Juniper Berry – who isn’t about to let the rising damp threaten her home. They explain how they created the ‘show within the show’, the Crystal Continuum by studying hours of 80’s and 90’s cartoons.