Hearth of Darkness Matt Blake
Event details
Hear the powerful true story of how journalist Matt Blake discovered his new house was once the lair of the E17 Nightstalker - a serial attacker who raped four women and murdered his final victim. The house was meant to be a refuge for him and his four-year-old daughter after a painful divorce. But unravelling the chilling secrets of the past threatened to suffocate the present.
Instinctively sceptical, Matt set out on a scientific quest to make sense of the paranormal and find peace at home. In his quest, he spoke to the Church of England’s Deliverance Ministry for advice on ‘place memories’, scientists on the theory of ‘emotional residue’, property lawyers about how they sell ‘cursed’ properties (and whether he could get his money back) and psychologists about the human brain’s ineptitude in processing the ocean of electromagnetic radiation that surrounds us – finding that the truth is much more complicated and conflicting than he’d anticipated.
Join Matt, author of Hearth of Darkness, to learn more about his quest.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
Image credit: Nick Blake
About the speaker
Matt Blake is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Grazia, Esquire, and Men’s Health, and is a former crime reporter for the Daily Mirror and Independent. During his journalism career, he has covered everything from gang murder and police corruption to terrorism and serial killing – reporting from crime scenes, doorsteps, and courtrooms on some of Britain’s most high-profile criminal cases. He once unknowingly interviewed a murderer in his own front room. His story ‘House of Horror’, which appeared in the Guardian and formed the basis of Hearth of Darkness, proved an international success, garnering more than half a million reads in its first week of publication alone. Hearth of Darkness: If your home had a dark past, would you want to know? (Elliott & Thompson, 2025) is his first book.
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