The Bloody Bucket

Nat's dream job comes calling when a college needs someone to take charge of an annual haunt. One year before, Nat's predecessor went inside the haunt-but he never came out. Soon, Nat finds herself confronting the ghosts of her own past as well as curses bubbling forth from the land itself.

Douglas Ford's The Bloody Bucket is a potent blend of history, hauntings, twisted horns, and ancient evil in a dark academia tale that is steeped in Florida unease and stained with blood. Full of stories inside stories, of goats and crows, possession and poetry, sacrifices and open wounds, The Bloody Bucket is a masterpiece of the occult and deeply, deeply disturbing. Expect to see this one on all the award lists.-Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Award(R)-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

Where do you find inspiration for a deeply terrifying haunt? Sometimes it's there in the history of the land right under your feet, in the tangled web of stories passed down for generations. Steeped in the lush and sometimes dangerous landscape of Florida, The Bloody Bucket is a chilling reminder that while we may try to forget the past, it's never all that far away. Ford skillfully weaves history, folklore, and just the right bit of the terrifying occult into a mesmerizing tale that will resonate long after you close the cover.-Jennifer McMahon, author of My Darling Girl

Douglas Ford is a Floridian witch doctor, the anti-Carl Hiassen, a swampland shaman capable of imbuing every page with the humidity and kudzu and blood of the Alligator State and exposing its scaly underbelly. The Bloody Bucket overflows with the brackish beauty of a writer besotted by an unplumbed region and regaling the rest of us with its exquisite literary spillover. - Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

Ford has concocted the perfect cocktail: mixing one part Gothic, one part slasher, and one part Florida folklore. The Bloody Bucket will intoxicate you but it will not leave you hungover. Instead, you will want to return to its pages to imbibe again and again.-Elaine Pascale, author of The Solstice

Ford delicately weaves a web of myth, folklore, and the supernatural, expertly exploring both personal and collective trauma. I've not read a better story about Florida. This book is truly special.-Robbie Dorman, author of Words of Christ in Red and Underneath

Reading The Bloody Bucket is like sleepwalking into the dark and tangled cypress swamps of Old Florida and succumbing to a fever dream, where the bloody heart of a long-dead beast echoes like a war drum, stirring up spirits, monsters, and devils, whose dark histories and terrible secrets are woven into a rich tapestry of folklore. This is Douglas Ford at his absolute best, a tangled web of haunted history steeped in blood, grief, guilt, and terror. Destined to be one of the year's best horror novels.-Derik Cavignano, award-winning author of The Art of Dying and The Burying Point

A delicious dark blend of fiction: Dark Academia, dark history, dark folklore, a touch of Hell House LLC, a dash of Sinners. This is the kind of horror novel a student of horror writes for those us who love horror. -Mark Matthews, author of To Those Willing to Drown