May 12, 2024 — Gareth Rees

Take a trip through modern folklore, strange experiences and the legends and myths of advanced ancient civilizations with special guest Gareth Rees. Speaking with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz, you’ll discover how modern myths and folklore of place have always driven Gareth’s writing and he has contributed weird fiction and horror stories to numerous anthologies. His new book is “Sunken Lands: a Journey Through Lost Kingdoms and Flooded Worlds,” published by Elliott & Thompson. It’s an exploration of lost worlds, starting in the UK, then going out to the Bay of Naples and the Louisiana wetlands. It is about how folklore and mythology cling to places and carry messages from the deep past in a time of climate change. Gareth’s first book was “Marshland,” about a deep map of a semi-rural former industrial edgeland in the middle of London, blending factual writing with weird fiction. His second book, “The Stone Tide,” is an autobiographical work about Hastings on the East Sussex coast, where he wrote about the mavericks who have gravitated there: Aleister Crowley, John Logie Baird, Alex Sanders, Teilhard De Chardin. “Car Park Life,” his third book, is about parking lots, where he explores the boring spaces around chain stores, superstores, retail parks. Even though there’s nothing really paranormal in it, the process of extracting meaning from the mundane could be described as magical.