Reece Shearsmith has written a memoir about his fascination with macabre and spooky artefacts.

The Inside No 9 co-creator has also provided illustrations for Things I Took From The Dark: The Museum Of Me.

It is based on the memorabilia from film and television sets as well as ‘terrible and unexpected exhibits from our world and beyond’ that he has collected over the years.

Announcing the book on Instagram, he said: ‘I've got a very exciting announcement because I've written a book. 

‘All these many months that I've been away from you I've been writing this book. It’s called Things I Took From The Dark and it's a collection of my favourite strange and horrible and scary and devilish and ghostly tales from around the world.

‘I've always had people saying to me why can't we see inside your magic room, your museum, and here I am from within the very bowels of it. I'm going to open the doors and let you see all these exhibits and in doing so we get a little trot through my life and the things that have stayed with me and affected me and shaped who I am today. 

‘So that's the premise of the book. The other exciting part is I've done the illustrations for the books. I've written it, drawn nearly 50 drawings to illustrate all these spooky exhibits.’

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Reece Shearsmith (@reeceshearsmith_)

The book will be published by Quercus on October 8,  and Shearsmith said he would be touring with readings  ‘near Halloween time’.

Items he writes about include the screaming skull of Glamis Castle, the Highgate vampire, sea devils, the Krampus and a talking mongoose called Gef – whose myth formed the basis of the   2023 comedy-thriller Nandor Fodor And The Talking Mongoose, starring Simon Pegg.

Quercus says: ‘Through the lens of these items, Reece tells his own story, from a terrifying nighttime visitation on a council estate in Hull, via haunted inns and uncanny creatures that hovered around the edges of the League of Gentlemen, to the benevolent teaspoon poltergeist of the Inside No. 9 tour. 

‘Beautifully illustrated throughout by the author, Things I Took from the Dark is a memoir like no other.’

It is his first book outside of the release of the Inside No. 9 scripts he wrote with Steve Pemberton and  The League Of Gentlemen books, while he also provided a story for the 2014 anthology Dead Funny: Horror Stories By Comedians.

Things I Took from the Dark: The Museum of Me is available from Amazon priced £22 in hardback – or from uk.bookshop.org, below, which supports independent bookstores.