Preston author to release novel on Halloween inspired by his own ghostly experience
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A Preston writer has turned a real-life ghostly encounter into a chilling book trilogy...
A Preston author is preparing to release a rather spooky novel this Halloween (Saturday, October 31).
Fittingly, Ian Stagg Andrew’s ‘Secrets of the Forgotten Bones’ is part two of a trilogy which is inspired by his own encounter with the supernatural.
Ian, who’s lived in Preston with his husband since 2013 , says the ‘The Forgotten Bones Trilogy’ is based on something that happened to him twenty years ago.
The 46-year-old said: “I was the owner of a pub in Rugby, Warwickshire, and when we took over the pub, all the locals were saying ‘Oh, it's haunted’, ‘there’s ghosts’ and things like that. I was a bit of a skeptic at the time, but there were definitely some supernatural goings on that occurred when we were there. It culminated in us, stupidly, one night deciding to do an Ouija board, and a few nights later, the whole building caught fire and burned down. The only thing that was undamaged and untouched was the Ouija board that we'd stored in the bar area.
“The fire officer said it was an electrical fault with the glass washer but in between the glass washer and the bar there was a gap, and that's where we put the Ouija board when we’d finished using it. So the fire started in the glass washer apparently but the only thing that was untouched and unburnt in the bar was the Ouija board sat on top of the glass washer so it was a very strange story.
“It was also always a story that I wanted to write. I tried probably two or three times over the years to write it, but I could never kind of see it through. But this time around, I really felt that it was my time to do it, my time to get the story out there and tell people everything that happened.”
Ian, who only started writing in August 2025, released his debut novel and the first in the trilogy, ‘Whispers of the Forgotten Bones’, in June this year.
Rather than just being a straight retelling of his own supernatural experience, Blackpool born Ian says the trilogy has evolved into more of a psychological mystery.
The first novel introduces the premise and ends on a cliffhanger; the second begins to unravel the mystery; and the third book, currently in writing, deals with the repercussions of when the secrets explode.
Ian intentionally tied in the release of ‘Secrets’ with Halloween due to its ghost story elements but he’s hoping its release brings more treats than tricks, unlike the last novel.
Whilst ‘Whispers’ has performed well- it's nearly at 12,000 page reads on Kindle Plus and sales have grown steadily since June- his promotional campaign was cut short as he was rushed to hospital for major surgery.
Ian said: “I’d been experiencing quite severe abdominal troubles for a while and was told it was heartburn but it got to the point where I was crippling in agony one day. I took myself to A&E and as it transpired, I had what was called diverticulitis, and one of the diverticulitis pouches had burst into my bloodstream, causing sepsis. When I was triaged at hospital, I was actually in septic shock so I was very, very poorly. I was rushed into surgery and they had to remove part of my intestine and fit me with a stoma. It was a very challenging time and it just came at completely the wrong time when I'm trying to release book one, but hey ho, I'm on the mend. I'm not fully recovered, but I'm on the road to recovery.”
Back to feeling himself, Cottam based Ian now juggles writing with his day job as store manager for Toolstation in Bamber Bridge which he says is surprisingly inspirational.
“A lot of my team have fantastic personalities so I’ve taken some of their personality traits and things they have said and incorporated them in the book as well. One of my team has even published a book as well so it’s been great exchanging our stories and helping each other”, he said
Promoting the work of local authors - such as his colleague Ahad Abbas’s novel Sandalwood and Jasmine- is a passion of Ian’s and he hopes his fellow Prestonians can help support him in that too.
Encouraging people to get behind ‘Secrets’, Ian said: “I just think it's good to support local talent. It puts Preston on the map and it helps local people to fulfill their dreams and their ambitions.
“It's also a very good book. I've had a lot of great feedback from people who've read it so far. On Amazon, my first book, Whispers, has got a 4.9 star rating, and a lot of the reviews say that it’s a great mystery, with fantastic twists and turns. Book two has now been read by quite a few beta readers, and the feedback I got from them has been incredible. They've said that about the twists, the turns and the mystery. They kind of had an idea of where the story was going to go, and then it completely changed. So yeah, they said they were very enthralled with it and very very excited by it.”