The Haunted Screen

Informed by the eerie paranoia of horror film, J. M. Tyree's uncanny novella follows a couple transplanted to Germany. While in the throes of writing a book on Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film scholar believes he’s being followed by a strange presence. Is this a supernatural force emanating from the prehistoric caves in the region, one captured in lost footage from horror movies filmed in the area in the 1920s? Or is he being stalked by his ex, a mentor, former lover, and brilliant but problematic critic who claims to have discovered the secret history of a supernatural camera used in films by Murnau and Hitchcock? When our scholar's wife disappears and the local police start investigating him, he attempts to unravel a mystery that takes him to Berlin, to Prague, and into the haunted heart of movies whose scenes appear to be recurring in the present. Moving between the double- life of professional networking and obsessive unease, The Haunted Screen blends the madness and obsession of academia with a dark, thrilling current of psychological mystery.

About the Author :
J. M. Tyree is the editor of Film Quarterly and the coauthor (with Michael McGriff) of Our Secret Life in the Movies, an NPR Best Books selection. A former Capote-Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford, he has published in American Short Fiction, Brick, McSweeney’s, New England Review, Sight & Sound, and in the BFI Film Classics series of books on film from Bloomsbury and the British Film Institute. He is an associate professor in the Cinema Program at VCUarts.

Review :
"Tyree knows his way around both film history and compelling fiction, and this should make for a thoroughly compelling combination here.” —Reactor "An excellent, sometimes scary, and also quite hilarious book.” —3 Quarks Daily "An impressive entry into the literary lineage.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Tyree’s accomplished prose and the narrator’s tormented consciousness provide pleasure even in the absence of anything otherworldly.” —Washington Independent Review of Books Praise for J. M. Tyree "Like the mystery, suspense and horror films it venerates, The Haunted Screen unspools in a darksome and dreamlike state. An unsettling and bewitching piece of weird fiction." —Michael Kelly, World Fantasy Award Winning editor "The Haunted Screen is chilling and hypnotic modern horror. On every page, through the dark magic of his prose, Tyree creates a deeply layered and unsettling atmosphere, a twilight forest haunted by the ghosts of Sebald and Hitchcock. A brilliant cinematic dream of a book.” —Jim Gavin, creator of Lodge 49 “This beautiful, devastating little book is quite unlike anything else I’ve ever encountered . . . it’s specifically engineered to break your heart.” —Washington Post