Safe Return Doubtful

Published 1977 – Scottish Horror Fiction

If there’s such a thing as ‘cosy horror’ this is it; a honeymooning couple, a snow storm, a gothic mansion, the remote Scottish Highlands, and of course, strange goings-on.
It may be a well worn set of circumstances, but it’s one that still goes down well. It’s easy to read, and perversely comforting.

Paul and Carol Wilson are the said honeymooners in the Scottish Highlands. The blizzard causes them to lose their way and they seek shelter in the nearest house, like so many in such novels before. The old and crumbling mansion is currently occupied by a strange collection of characters, of course.. Indeed, the have stumbled across a paranormal experiment. Ardvreck House has always had a reputation for being haunted, and the occupants of the house are there to prove this through scientific means.

By trade, Archie Roy was one of Scotland’s most distinguished astronomers, and a world expert on celestial mechanics and the movements of heavenly bodies. He was made professor at Glasgow University in 1977, and died at the age of 88 in 2012. He has an asteroid, 5806 Archieroy, named after him.

In the last ten years of his life his focus was psychic research, which raised a few eyebrows amongst his academic peers.
Roy would never definitively state that he believed that there was life after death. On the other hand, he did claim that “if I die and I find out I have not survived, I will be very surprised.”

Though he wrote only ‘for a bit of fun’ this is remarkably well written, gradually increasing the sense of dread, without showing its hand, and building to a genuinely horrific revelation.

My GoodReads score 4 / 5