Nocturnal Revelries, my blog where I post about the creepy books that I have been reading, has been online since February 2015. Most of the books covered here are horror fiction or non-fiction about the occult/paranormal. (You can take a look through the 500+ titles I have already covered here.) This is not really a “review” site. I’m not interested in promotion. I just like having a space to collect my ravings. Some of the posts here take huge amounts of research, but lots are dismissive and mean-hearted. If you are an upcoming author looking for a reviewer, I’m probably not your guy. Please take a look through my site before you send me your manuscript that I probably won’t read.
I’ve always loved horror. I grew up on Ghostbusters and Goosebumps. I spent my teenage years watching horror movies, and ever since my early 20s I have spent most of my free time reading weirdo books. I’ve read most of the classics of the genre at this point, but no matter how many books I read, I always seem to find more. I generally get through 2 a week at this point.
I’m not a huge believer in the paranormal. I’m yet to see any convincing evidence of aliens, bigfoot, or psychic powers, but I try to approach topics such as these with an open mind. I put curses on people who annoy me every now and then, but I’m not convinced they really work.
I occasionally post my own attempts at fiction, and some of my posts are more general rants about book-related topics.
There’s facebook and twitter pages for anyone who is interested in keeping up to date with the posts on this blog. You can also add me on Goodreads.
I love hearing from people who find this blog. If you have any recommendations or questions or comments, please leave a comment or email me. My email is dukederichleau666@gmail.com
Just in case you haven’t got the idea, I’ll include a few links to some of the better posts that have appeared here over the years.
Nocturnal Revelries 
Love this quote. Brilliant page, too.
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I have to say, I can already tell I’ll be spending countless lunch hours devouring everything I can find in your archives. This is an awesome blog, dude; keep up the good work!
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Thank you so much. Delighted to hear from you. I’ve been going through a bit of a dry spell on account of school, but things should pick up in the next few months. Please let me know if you have any recommendations!
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Thanks for the follow. Checked out your blog posts, too. Great stuff.
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Thanks my friend!
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Fascinating and interesting stuff. I enjoy your detailed account and investigations into a subterranean dark culture and the “oddities of mankind”. If you keep writing, I’ll keep reading.
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Thanks for the support!
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Interesting site. One wonders if you have watched The Devil Rides Out… I suspect I know the answer 777
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It’s a favourite of mine!
https://nocturnalrevelries.com/2016/06/06/who-is-the-duke-de-richleau/
Actually, I’m currently reading William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghostfinder series, and I’m delighted to have discovered what was clearly the source of much of Wheatley’s inspiration for that book and others!
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Did you find a real magick book?a talmud maybe?did you try to contact Carl Nagel?do you know the website galleryofmagick.com ?
They are considered being the best on the internet by many.
Can you see the i-carly girls naked in america?on cable tv maybe?
Bye!
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I’ve found lots of books of magic. I have not contacted Mr. Nagel. I don’t know the website. I don’t know about the naked girls. Isn’t i-carly a kids show? Not my thing.
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I love your website about Montague Summers. Do you happen to have his book of poems: “Antinous”? It’s impossible to find anywhere! Thank you SO much.
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I don’t! I just finished the new collection of his incomplete fiction that Snuggly Press put out, but I have nothing of his poems. Sorry!
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I wonder how we could get hold of his “Antinous” poems. As a serious collector of all things Montague Summers, would you not be intrigued? 🙂 Also, is there any audio of Summers’ voice? I heard someone talk on youtube about him saying he had quite a high pitch voice, apparently. Maybe the Society for Psychic Research in London may have some audio. I might contact them next week. I just got hold of an interesting book from U.S. (i live in UK): “Montague Summers: A Bibliographical Portrait” edited by Frederick Franck. Looking forward to it. Have you read it?
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If you are still looking for Antinous by Montague Summers, my good friends Edwin Pouncey and Timothy d’arch Smith did a reissue many years ago and it’s still findable if you do a bit of Googling. The 1907 original is near impossible to find. Tim is Summers’s bibliographer and myself and Edwin erected a stone on Montie’s hitherto unmarked grave in the 1980s.
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Very impressive library of occult books! Reminds me of my own. See you in hell my friend.
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Question: are you seriously worried that demon worshipers would track you down & torment you if you identified yourself as an author of book reviews &c.? I’m baffled by the extreme anonymity–is this just some weird generational issue with privacy?
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Some of the people I’ve written about on this site are seriously dodgy. Some of the people who have commented on posts are absolute scum of the Earth criminals. It might seem overly cautious to assume one might get really mad with my comments and try to get me, but stranger things happen.
Also, I have a job, and my employer might not be impressed with all the porn I review.
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Hi, I’m Francisco from Spain, your horror reviews are great but ehem..
. occultism and magic are not my cup of tea… can you suggest me some book to break the ice with?
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you want a recommendation for occult books? what kind of occultism are you interested in?
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I don’t know a lot about it and even these issues couldn’t be exactly occultism but I have always been interested in Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. UFOS and haunted houses and ghosts are appealiing and interesting for me too… by the way, excuse my poor English!!!
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I don’t know a lot about it and even these issues couldn’t be exactly occultism but I have always been interested in Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. UFOS and haunted houses and ghosts are appealiing and interesting for me too… by the way, excuse my poor English!!!
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I don’t pay much attention to that stuff anymore. It’s all a pile of shit
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ok… thing is satanism, magick, witchcraft… are not my cup of tea… in any case your posts about horror fiction, classic and modern are very interesting and informative. I’m enjoying specially your texts about HPL and his circle and T.E.D. Klein are one of my favourite horror writer
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I ended up at your site via a link in your GoodReads review of Varney the Vampire. What I read made me laugh, a lot. It’s been years now and I’ve never sent a comment. For I’ve bugger all of interest to say, and am more than fine with that.
Recently I wondered whether you might enjoy Robert Irwin’s Satan Wants Me.
Irwin’s a proper serious heavyweight academic and writer, and has no
business writing a book about drugs, Satanism, music, drugs, sex, the 60s, and drugs that is as funny as this.
Irwin’s The Arabian Nightmare is probably better known, and is also pretty fun and strange. Less easy than Satan Wants Me – Irwin knows an alarming amount about near eastern history and culture. Like most people, I’m more familiar with drugs, music and sex.
Yesterday I read one of your end of year pieces..can’t recall which, but I think the year in which you read House on the Borderlands. I believe it was in the same year’s review you refer to a particular author’s ideas or themes of occult elements in architecture or city design.
This caused me to wonder if you’ve read Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor. It might be a bit mainstream, but then you read Stephen King. Ackroyd readily admitted that he nicked a
central idea from Iain Sinclair’s long poem Lud Heat.
Sinclair, if you’re unfamiliar with him, is a keen but amused proponent of
psychogeography. With Hawksmoor’s London churches, he took it in
a diabolical direction and Ackroyd runs with this.
Come to think of it, it was Sinclair who put me on to House on the Bonderland. He kept mentioning it in Lights Out for the Territory. A book I loved, but isn’t your stated sector. A book easy to love if one’s spent a long time being poor in London (hint: graduate with an arts degree), so have no entertainment apart from walking and reading.
I also wondered if you had come across The Magnus Archives.
One can listen to the episodes from many internet sites.
I did via YouTube. Started when the Covid lockdown began –
my daughter and I had to spend months pretty much locked in a room together. /with libraries and book stores shut, it helped us stay semi sane. It also seemed not so outlandish given what was happening in the world.
It might also be too well known for you, but one can see the influence (acknowledged)
of many great horror writers – MR James, Le Fanu, Lovecraft, Blackwood et al. – but used originally and not slavishly. The writing is very good, especially given the rate of output and work required to create the episodes.
The episodes only last between 15 to 25 minutes, so are easy to fit in to odd spots of time.
Thank you for your years of reading and writing. Please don’t stop. It would be too much of a loss.
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Hi Martha. I’m delighted you commented! I had planned to read Irwin’s book years ago, but somehow forgot about it. I will definitely check it out soon. I also added Hawksmoor to my to-read list a while back. I will try to read both over the summer! I’ve kinda ignored the whole podcast phenomenon so far. I have so many audiobooks to get through. I looked up the Magnus Archives and it seems pretty cool though, so maybe!
Thanks for the recommendations! I really appreciate them!
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Hello, thanks for polite reply.
You’d get through Satan Wants Me in a blink. It’s quick, easy and fun. And good. Irwin’s not an idiot.
“Hawksmoor”‘s style is more, er, opaque perhaps, I’m trying to avoid saying obscure as that’s got a more pejorative connotation than I want. (Though compared with some of the things to which you’ve subjected yourself it’ll probably be a piece of piss.)
A smattering of background helps. Wikipedia level – especially as Ackroyd wiggles history about a bit. As is his wont. And a look at photos of Hawksmoor’s London churches and their grounds is very useful – explains the frisson induced in Ackroyd. He’d decided he was cut out to be a poet, so of course worked for the local council, cutting graveyard grass and collecting the empties of the homeless – today’s parishioners of London’s churches.
He didn’t even make money from Lud Heat. Ackroyd made the cash. And why not. It also helped stop the churches from being “redeveloped”.
I hope you like the books – I’ve read such a number of things from your list. More the literary ends of the your favoured genres, but not always. If you don’t, I’ll be (slightly) crippled with guilt.
re podcasts, I enjoyed and was impressed by the Magnus Archives and relieved/pleased to find that podcasts aren’t all soul destroying suppurating pits of shite. But I’m a reader. Division of labour puts my daughter in charge of podcasts in our house.
Thank you again for a nice reply. Now I’ll go back to being silent reader.
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MAY GO HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL YOU WICKED SORCERER!
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