Ron Weighell (1950 - 2020) was a British writer of fiction in the supernatural, fantasy and horror genre, whose work was published in the U.K., the U.S.A., Canada, Germany, Ireland, Romania, Finland, Belgium and Mexico. His stories were included in over fifty anthologies and published in six volumes containing his own work exclusively. Weighell is listed as an author in the online Bibliothèque Nationale de France, with a selected bibliography.[1] A short biography and limited bibliography are available in the goodreads.com website.[2] A more extensive bibliography of his published work is available in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.[3] Weighell died on 24 December 2020, some weeks after suffering a stroke. Obituaries have been published by the Fortean Times magazine, the newsletter of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and Locus Magazine.[4][5][6]
Two of Weighell’s stories, Carven of Onyx and China Rose were chosen to appear in the 1992 and 1993 volumes, respectively, of the annual U.S. publication The Year's Best Horror Stories.[7] Three further stories, The Four Strengths of Shadow, The Chapel of Infernal Devotion, and Under the Frenzy of the Fourteenth Moon appeared in the annual British publication Best New Horror, volumes 26 (2015), 27 (2016), and 31 (2021) respectively.[8]
Weighell's fiction is characterized by his knowledge of incunabula, architecture, art and art symbolism, mysticism, and the occult, and pays homage to his two primary influences, M. R. James and Arthur Machen. While his protagonists are typically scholars, archaeologists, and bibliophiles, much of his fiction moves beyond traditional antiquarian ghost stories to explore both wonder and terror in the presence of supernatural forces.
Weighell's first published short story, Bishop Asgarth's Chantry, was in the small press Ghosts and Scholars magazine,[9] devoted to the M. R. James tradition. From that point on, his work was published in those magazines and others such as AKLO[10], All Hallows[11], and in book anthologies with other writers initially. In 1986, Haunted Library Publications published Weighell’s first short story collection, entitled An Empty House and Other Stories.
In 1992, the Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society invited Weighell to produce a story for their ‘Aspects of Holmes’ weekend. The positive reception of The Shadow of the Wolf,[12] read out at the society's annual dinner, led Weighell to write more Sherlock Holmes stories. His collection The Irregular Casebook of Sherlock Holmes,[13] published in 2000, proved a popular work and was re-printed in 2018 by Zagava Press.
Weighell’s second collection of short stories, entitled The White Road,[14] was published in 1997 by Ghost Story Press.[15] The collection sold out and became a rarity, and today only an occasional copy crops up online to be purchased by collectors of his work.
During his writing career, Weighell was invited to submit articles to journals such as Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M. R. James, edited by S. T. Joshi and Rosemary Pardoe (2007).
Two further Weighell collections, Tarshishim (a box set), and Summonings, were published in 2011 and 2014 respectively. In 2017, a new edition of The White Road was published by Sarob Press, with a few stories removed and new stories added. Both editions of The White Road were illustrated by Weighell’s lifelong friend Nick Maloret. Further stories of Weighell's were published up to and including 2022.
Before he was taken ill, Weighell had been putting the finishing touches to a new novel titled King Satyr. In October 2021, small press publisher Sarob Press announced that a limited edition of the novel would be published in late November/early December 2021.[16] The announcement was covered by the Portsmouth area UK newspaper The News in its online[17] and paper editions, by The Isle of Wight County Press[18], and by the Isle of Wight online news site On the Wight.[19]
Weighell had supplied quotes to writer Sandy Robertson for an introduction Robertson was writing for James Blish's The Day After Judgment, as part of a set of Blish's After Such Knowledge quartet of books to be reissued by Centipede Press. This was published in 2022 with a note on Weighell's passing and a mention of the posthumous publication of his novel King Satyr.
Two of Weighell's stories, Now Feel That Pulse No More and The Stryx are listed in Literary Hauntings: A Gazetteer of Literary Ghost Stories from Britain and Ireland published by Tartarus Press in 2022.[20]