Dark Southern History Returns to Haunt in This New Halloween Book

Memphis, TN, October 26, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Southern ghosts and desire are featured in this adult horror novel. HYPNOGOGUE the Fifth Cycle (King Tam Publishing) is about a Memphis ex-newspaperman, Sam Perkins, his young fiancé and 12 year old son that move to a dilapidated Mississippi plantation called The Hathaway. 

Perkins sets in motion yet another cycle of supernatural revenge deaths, which stem from a the killings of a plantation worker and his sister on Halloween 1923.

He, of course, resists accepting he has anything to do with a few seemingly unrelated passings in town. It becomes the mission of a beautiful black folklore professor from the university to make him understand he, his family and the other ancestral families in the bloodline of the original killers, are in trouble. 

The back story is set in the Jim Crow period when a love affair between a black worker, Joshua, and the white wife of a plantation owner, Virginia, burn out of control against the rigid social norms of the period. To show a black man could not get away with such open transgressions, the plantation owner, the county king, sets up a crowd of local men to lynch the worker. His unfaithful wife witnesses the heinous act on the property and commits suicide.

The consequences of this single act of evil stretches into the next century and feeds the frail but persistent human emotion of revenge. Along the way author Ben Harrison examines the nature of revenge with breezy dialogue and digressive references to history and surprising twists. He uses several devices to move the story along, including his own photography and lyrics and poetry ranging from Robert Mitchum’s “Thunder Road” from the movie of the same name to Edgar Allen Poe.

About the author:

Ben “BenQQ” Harrison grew up in Memphis with a family tied to Mississippi. His first job after studying journalism and history at Memphis State University was as the sole staffer of the community newspaper for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians in Philadelphia MS. There he researched the notorious deaths of the three civil rights workers and absorbed legends and folklore of the rural blacks and Indians. He worked in communications in Los Angeles and Washington, DC for 21 years and is now based in Memphis where he continues writing and photography. Recent work includes the Country Cat Family, a series of children’s photo read along books, also on Amazon.  His Web site: www.benjharrison.net.