First published in June of 2026, British author Mark Morris’ novel ‘Bad Things Happen Here’ offered up a slice chilling and oppressively dark supernatural horror.
DLS Synopsis:
DLS Review:
DLS Synopsis:
Ben had gone to university with all the usual hopes and ambitions of a keen young student. However, soon into his first year, something started to change within Ben. The small group of friends he’d formed within his first week living at Campbell Hall were getting increasingly concerned about Ben’s gradual withdrawal from everything.
However, there was a reason for Ben’s worrying change in behaviour. Ever since he moved into the student halls, he’d been experiencing something that was gradually smothering the life out of him. Within Room 516 of the halls, Ben had been sensing a formless entity that wouldn’t leave. Something that appeared all but formless. A deeper black within the darkness that surrounds this entity, and emanating from it is a sense of pure, undiluted evil.
It was an entity that Ben was convinced meant him nothing but harm. An entity that seemed to radiate a negative energy. A presence that felt utterly nihilistic and seemed to crush all sense of joy, of optimism, from him.
Ben’s waking life had started to feel tainted somehow, even poisoned. This escalated until at one point, Ben had seen someone standing behind him in their window’s reflection. More than just a darkness. More than just a feeling. An entity standing directly behind him.
Over the weeks, Ben’s friends saw him descend into an abyss of self-destruction, ending tragic suicide.
That was back then, almost twenty years ago. Since then, Ben’s five uni friends haven’t seen each other and instead fallen out of touch since his death. They’d each followed their own paths. Started families of their own.
But now something was happening to each one of them. They’d been experiencing strange and worrying visions. Nightmares during their waking lives.
It all started with the unprompted arrival of Michael Vance at Hannah’s home. He didn’t look anything like the good-looking, charismatic, happy-go-lucky hippy that Hannah Prentice remembered him as, from their time at university. Instead, what stood before her was a horrifically emaciated form, withered and broken from years of alcohol and drug abuse.
However, it was Michael’s final words which he utters before he dies that points to something more terrifying than any of those once good friends are able or ready to understand or accept.
“It’s been in me…but I can’t do it anymore. Warn the others…”
DLS Review:
Mark Morris is undisputedly a master of his trade. An author who is able to pen a powerfully evocative horror which wraps you in a cocoon of dread, that has you clawing at the pages to see this truly haunting thing through.
Here we have a chilling supernatural horror, in some ways somewhat akin to James Herbert’s ‘The Dark’ (1980), although given a modern backdrop along with a split timeline, which sees a re-emerging horror immerse you in a nihilistic descent. It’s also far more character-driven Herbert’s aforementioned horror classic – with the six university friends at the frontstage of the unfolding terror.
Essentially, we follow the lives of these six young students during the start of their first year at university, until the tragic suicide of one of them – Ben – after he seemingly follows a path of withdrawal from the world and eventual self-destruction.
That’s all set back in 2004. We’re then taken forward almost twenty years to the modern day, where we jump between the lives of the five uni friends who now have their own separate lives. Although they’re no longer in touch or connected in any way other than their time spent together at uni, they’re all suddenly experiencing some pretty fucking dark and crazy shit.
Their individual lives are each portrayed in a very realistic and honest way. They have their own troubles. Life isn’t perfect, and the story reflects this. Aside from Michael, who resigned his life to drug addiction and alcoholism, most of the remaining friends have problematic and dysfunctional relationships. It’s a gloomy, down beaten read insomuch as everything seems to have a stormy cloud of gloom hanging over it. For them things just don’t seem to be working out how you’d hope and envision life will.
Jess Maple is perhaps the happiest of them all. A professional artist who’s beginning to make a name for herself. She’s just launched an exhibition showcasing her latest artwork. A project involving paintings of portals. She’s never been so passionate, nor obsessive, about a project before, though she’s not entirely sure where the inspiration for the portal paintings came from. It’s as if the idea was implanted in her head or came to her in a dream.
So yeah, you’ve guessed it. This fucked up darkness which ultimately ended Ben’s life in 2004 has somehow returned. The sudden appearance of Michael was him warning them. Now these four remaining uni friends are being subjected to something that’s messing with their heads and their lives in a horrific way.
Perhaps the most terrifying of all is what’s happening to Max Bradshaw. At first the troubles all seem to stem from his fourteen-year-old son who’s fallen in with the wrong crowd and it’s getting him into all sorts of trouble. But as the story progresses, and we see the affect the malignant presence is having on Max’s perception of the world, where this tale gets truly terrifying. It’s like being behind the eyes of a madman. Creeping insanity that we’re able to see unfolding from within. Similar in a way to Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’ (1977). It’s pretty damn unsettling and unnerving.
There’s of course a reason why this negative and oppressive entity has suddenly come back after all this time. Morris gradually connects most of the dots for us, eventually laying out a picture that makes a chilling sense in a twisted supernatural way. That’s not to say everything is explained, and that everything is given explanatory justification. There are a few final pieces of the jigsaw left for the reader to try to put in place through your own imagination, which if you ask me, works in the novel’s favour.
The ending is suitable high-octane, with everything coming to a pinnacle of terrifying horror. That said, as much as I love Morris’ work, the ending does feel like there was potentially more in the author’s plans for it, but those ideas for some reason just didn’t come to fruition in the end. In fact, for this reviewer, I found the big final fight and concluding finale to be delivered in almost a comical, dare I say cringy way. Perhaps I was anticipating a modern-day reimagining of ‘The Exorcist’ (1971) being played out? What I found instead, was a grand finale that seemed a tad lacklustre.
That said, the novel is nevertheless one hell of a read. Thrilling from start to end, with Morris’ unrelenting delivery of nightmarish visions keeping you gripped to the unfolding narrative. It’s almost like you’re apprehensively making your way down a series of pathways that you know will get increasingly darker and more terrifying. Pathways that eventually converge, where the terrifying horror lurking behind it all, finally reveals itself. In ‘Bad Things Happen Here’ Morris delivers every part of this creepy and compelling journey, with blood chilling effect.
The novel runs for a total of 313 pages.
© DLS Reviews
