Monday, May 18, 2026

Igor the Collector and Skulls on a Shelf - Guest Blog by Barry Maher #SupernaturalThriller #BookTour



A character in the next dark humor supernatural thriller I’m working on was inspired by actual events. A man was arrested in Ephrata a while back simply for engaging in his hobby. He was apparently a collector, and I don’t know when that became a crime. The stuff he collected was just sitting around. Okay, he had some jewelry. But no one was using even a single piece of it. What’s more, no one had any intention of ever using it. Everything in his collection had been abandoned. Even the pacemaker.

Our friend, and I use the term in the loosest possible sense, stored his collection in private property, so no infraction there. The whole thing, a hundred human skulls along with assorted body parts—hands, feet, bones, a couple of torsos—was tucked away in his basement, in the backseat of his car and in a rented, and paid up, Ephrata storage unit. Delaware County D.A., Tanner Rouse, explained, “The skulls were in various states. Some of them were hanging, as it were. Some of them were pieced together, some were just skulls on a shelf,”

D.A. Rouse makes it sound Like this kind of thing might be routine around Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Now, I’m a tolerant guy. Not only do I write supernatural thrillers but I’m actually married to a full-blooded Pennsylvanian. Though not from Ephrata, she has her moments. And some people might remember—or may still be trying to forget—the column I did about my body being stuffed after death and placed standing in our living room, holding the TV remote. Of course, I was joking. (I know it’s hard to tell sometimes.) I wasn’t hoping to be the centerpiece of a collection, the male Mona Lisa of a morbid museum.

To assemble his collection, the man from Ephrata, let’s call him Igor, broke into at least twenty-six mausoleums and burial vaults in the nation’s largest abandoned cemetery. I have no idea who does that ranking, or how you can get your abandoned cemetery considered. But the one to beat has 150,000 gravesites. At least it did before Igor started doing whatever the hell he was doing.  Did I mention that Ephrata is a Hebrew name meaning “fruitful” or “place of abundance?” That certainly seems to be the way Igor was looking at it.

“We’re trying to figure it out,” the D.A. said calmly. With all due respect, sir. I doubt this is one of those figure-outable things. Okay, Igor might have sold the occasional piece, but mostly he was just collecting and hoarding. He’s being charged with 100 counts of abuse of a corpse as well as burglary, receiving stolen property, and generally being so weird that nobody wants him running around loose. His initial bail was set at a million dollars and I don’t think that’s nearly enough.

A couple of suggestions for D.A. Rouse. First, register “Skulls on s Shelf” since it’s a can’t miss name for a rock group. Then, tell Igor that as soon as he explains all this in a way that makes sense to anybody—anybody at all—you’ll drop the receiving stolen property charges. (Just who was he supposed to have received this stuff from anyway?)

I’d love to hear Igor’s reasoning. But the only thing less likely than someone doing this kind of collecting, is this bozo coming up with a rational explanation for it.

Though there is this. Doing my usual exhaustive research, I only got as far as typing “When did gr . . .” into Google, when it automatically suggested “When did grave robbing become a crime?” like a terrifyingly large amount of people have been asking that question.

So maybe having my body stored safely in the living room isn’t such a bad idea.



The Great Dick and the Dysfunctional Demon
Barry Maher

Genre: Supernatural Thriller
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Date of Publication: 09/2025
ISBN: 978-1968532130
ASIN: B0FKWK2K7C
Number of pages: 464
Word Count: 125,000

Tagline: A wickedly funny, dark humor. supernatural thriller, blending horror with a thrilling murder mystery.

Book Description:

It’s 1982. Steve Witowski was once a hero. Now he’s simply a failed songwriter, running from the law. Worse, he’s just killed a man—while almost accidentally saving a woman from what seemed to be the strongest, most blood-thirsty wino in California. 

He should keep moving. But the woman, Victoria, is beyond stunning. Steve stays. And Victoria becomes just a part of a mystery he can’t unravel. Even as the face of the man he just killed slowly, gradually appears on his arm. And what starts out as a gritty crime story spirals into what author David Moody called, “A chillingly funny, hot, sweaty, magic and murder infused rollercoaster.” Complete with open crypts, dark spells, sudden death, and forces more powerful and demonic than Steve understands. Where nothing is what it seems. And Steve may be the next victim.

Excerpt 

Back in the 60s . . .

 

On Wednesday October 13th, 1968, a faculty panel recommended the dismissal of Professor John Harris—in absentia, as no one at Harvard had seen or heard from him in weeks. Harris later bragged about delivering his final lecture on “one shitload and a half of LSD.” According to the recording made available to the faculty panel, this was the sum total of that lecture:

 

“Good afternoon. Wow. American Literature, hunh? Let’s see. Moby Dick today. Right?”

 “Moby Dick?” asked a confused voice. “No. What happened to The Scarlet Letter?”

 “Right. Moby Dick,” Harris continued. “Great book. None of you have read it. None of you are going to read it. Nobody ever does. What you need to understand is that as far as I’m concerned—and I’m the fucking professor—Moby Dick is the same story as The Great Gatsby, which some of you may read. I call it, ‘the half-assed struggle of the individual to put their world to rights in the face of a failure that threatens to define their life.’ I think that’s from my thesis. Though maybe it’s not pretentious enough.”

Harris laughed. “Hey! How about this? Great Gatsby/Moby Dick: same story, different era, right? So, if someone someday tries to write that story for this generation, they should call it The Great Dick. That’d be perfect, wouldn’t it? The Great Dick. Alright, that’s got to be almost fifty minutes. See you next . . . whenever. Wow.”

 

 

SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1982
Two Women and One Corpse


“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to lie well.”
                                                                                        —Samuel Johnson

 

CHAPTER 1

  

            Okay, let me start out by admitting that I was an asshole. I know that. The ludicrous amount of fame and acclaim and money I’ve had dumped on me since that time only makes it more glaring. The fact that we lived in a different world back in 1982 is no excuse. It was the same world. It just wasn’t the world we thought it was.

            I remember it was a Sunday night. Sundays always feel different. Looking back now and Googling a 1982 calendar, I’d guess it was Sunday, March 21st. I remember waking up and within minutes making the decision to leave. Quickly, before I could change my mind, I eased myself out of the rickety hide‑a‑bed.

            Immediately, Maria rolled over into the spot I'd just vacated, breathing loudly through her nose and mouth, not quite snoring. I hate to say it, but she looked every minute of her thirty years. Her thick dark hair clung damply to her face; her heavy arms stretched outward. The cast on her left wrist looked like a giant manacle.

The grandfather clock beside the cigar store Indian read 1:37, though a few minutes before, it had chimed four times. That made as much sense as anything else in my life. I was thirty-five years old, a Harvard grad who’d spent the previous two years faking his way through a $13,500 a year job as an territory rep for the Richmond Tobacco company. That $13,500 was the most money I’d ever made. You’re probably thinking that when you adjust for inflation and translate that $13,500 into today’s dollars, it’s a lot more impressive.

No, it’s not.

I slipped on my jersey and my jeans and gathered the rest of my things in my old gym bag. Fortunately, enough moonlight crept in around the edges of the tattered drapes to give the room a dim glow. I wondered if it would be safe to hitchhike out of there, or if Indiana had already notified the California Highway Patrol that I was wanted.

My situation was bad. But not bad enough to, say, crawl into a grave with a rotting corpse.

That would come later.



About the Author:
 
Barry Maher may be the only horror novelist who’s ever appeared in the pages of Funeral Service Insider. In his misspent youth, his articles appeared in perhaps a hundred different publications and, in order to eat, he held nearly that many different jobs. Sometimes he lived on the beach. Not in a house on the beach. On the beach. With the sand and the seagulls. 

Then he started telling his stories to audiences. More important, he started telling his stories to audiences and charging. That took him all over the country and around the world: his client list a Who’s Who of leading corporations, associations and cruise lines. You may have seen Barry on The Today Show, CNN, CBS or CNBC, or read about him in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today or in his own, Slightly Off-Kilter syndicated column.

On the downside, he’s also been incarcerated twice. Once for not making a left hand turn out of a left hand turn lane, and once for aiding and abetting a loiterer. 

He’s deeply repentant. 

Newsletter: www.barrymaher.com
 



 






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