Devil's Creek

By: Todd Keisling

Narrated by: Danny Campbell

About 15 miles west of Stauford, Kentucky, lies Devil's Creek. According to local legend, there used to be a church out there, home to the Lord's Church of Holy Voices - a death cult where Jacob Masters preached the gospel of a nameless god.

And like most legends, there's truth buried among the roots and bones.

In 1983, the church burned to the ground following a mass suicide. Among the survivors were Jacob's six children and their grandparents, who banded together to defy their former minister. Dubbed the "Stauford Six," these children grew up amid scrutiny and ridicule, but their infamy has faded over the last 30 years.

Now their ordeal is all but forgotten, and Jacob Masters is nothing more than a scary story told around campfires.

For Jack Tremly, one of the Six, memories of that fateful night have fueled a successful art career - and a lifetime of nightmares. When his grandmother Imogene dies, Jack returns to Stauford to settle her estate. What he finds waiting for him are secrets Imogene kept in his youth, secrets about his father and the church. Secrets that can no longer stay buried.

Contains mature themes.

©2020 Todd Keisling (P)2021 Tantor

Small Town life meets Big Time Horror

This book was wonderfully told. I hope this is taken as a compliment, but I felt like I was reading a classical Stephen King book. You had the small town with a lot of POVs from different characters, an unearthly creature haunting the town, and a group of people coming together to stop it.
This book deserves a whole lot of praise, and I will be reading more by Todd Keisling.

Great job!

Excellent piece of folk horror paired with cosmic horro

If you like weird cults devoted to nameless gods, creepy folk horror monsters with black worms pouring from their bodies, and mind rending cosmic horror devouring reality around you, you will love this book.

That Old Time Religion

After reading Scanlines by Todd Keisling, the bar was set quite high. Devil’s Creek absolutely did not disappoint.

Old-time religion never seems quite as horrific and awful as it does in stories of small, backwoods towns, and Keisling captures that magnificently with this story. Decades ago, a twisted minister, Jacob Masters, preached an unholy gospel of sacrifice and cruelty, turning members of families against one another as he sewed his seeds within the flock. Six children he fathered were rescued by their disillusioned grandparents, who were far too late to save their own children…just before the church went up in flames and its congregation went to a mass grave.

In the present day, we revisit the town of Stauford, Kentucky as Jack reluctantly returns home to handle the estate of the grandmother who saved him from the cult Masters had built. But old wounds aren’t as healed as they might have seemed, and something troubling seems to be stirring at Devil’s Creek.

What Jack finds instead of closure, are secrets that threaten to shatter not only his sanity but the world around him. As Jack’s nightmares become a reality, he and his half-siblings are forced to take sides and take a stand against a nameless horror that waits beneath the unhallowed ground where the old church once stood.

The story Keisling weaves is a compelling one, and he further displays his knack for crafting something that gets under the skin and sticks with the reader long after the end.

Danny Campbell provided excellent narration for the audiobook edition of the novel and made it easy to follow the cast of characters as they descend into the pits of a nightmarish hell on earth.

I used to hang out on Devils Creek!

I’ll admit, I’m A LOT bias when it comes to this book! Devils Creek and Corbin was where I grew up. Corbin is the actual name where this was set, as well as where the writer is from.

Devils Creek was a right of passage as a teen for a lot of people! Go to the cemetery at the old church site and see if you could stay all night, or go over to the arches at the head of Dog Slaughter and party!

I haven’t been home in over 15 years or so, so it was good to here about the old home town. Even if it was over run! LoL! I loved the story, but it got a bit out of hand there with sex and things, felt a little rough listening to teenager kids and sex. The incest stuff didn’t bother me, because if you’re from Corbin… there was a lot of that goin around!

The small things like calling the characters, mamaw and papaw, really hit it dead on. Just small things that the characters would say, were right on the money for how we all talk from there!

Only complaint or dislike really. The narrator wasn’t the greatest! NOT TERRIBLE! Just wasn’t my favorite of all times! I will listen to this again at some point I’m sure!

My only complaint, was the narrator. Wasn’t terrible, and

Just ok...

I really do believe that if the narrator would have been different, the story would have resonated way more than it did. Please don't mistake me, the narrator was good... just not for this book.

The story read like a lazy movie script. obviously a movie adaptation was in mind during the writing

I felt like this story lacked imagination. The social commentary was annoying and heavy handed at times. at one point the main character asks if his evil father ever loved him only moments after his father told him they were breed as cattle. like what? mostly completely boring. I liked when things got graphic but they were pretty weak also

"Will You Suffer for Your Lord?"

In the same spirit of Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" you learn early on that the cult underpinning the story is both evil and old. The pieces gradually fall into place until the battle for the soul of the small Kentucky town. But is the town even worth saving? The phrased question, "Will you suffer for your Lord?" was annoying at first in the raspy voice of Danny Campbell, but it does linger to a degree not unlike the black worms that corrupt the brains of those that "suffer." It had a creepy vibe to it. Good story, maybe a little bit drawn out. Let's see what Todd Keisling will follow up with next.

Spine Tingling

The story was really good especially after I increased the voice. This narrator reads well however the tone of his voice hmm did not fit for my ears.

The story itself was very good. it's so creepy. It reminded me of Harvest Home and other stories like that. I Recommend this 4 star 🌟 book

Listened All Through but Too Explicitly Graphic

narrator's performance wasn't bad but the explicit descriptions of certain scenes is too much...

Cults, Monsters, Small-town Weirdoes and their Persecutors... it's Perfect

If you've ever felt like an outcast, lived in a place where everyone thought the same, judgemental thoughts that you found insane, this book is for you. If you like character-driven Southern Gothics, this book is for you. if you're fascinated by Lovecraftian Great Old Ones but could do without Lovecraft's Vicrorian prose or Neolithic racial attitudes, this book is for you. If you are fascinated by Cults and the zealots who belong to them, this book is for you. if you love the occult but hate it when authors explain away the mechanics of the supernatural, this book is for you. Personally, I felt like this was almost written for me.

However, I'm not sure I've ever heard a narrator so at odds with what they were narrating. I almost couldn't listen to this because the narrator, who I kept referring to as Cartoon Vaudevile Grandpa, is so utterly mismatched to the material. I can now imagine him being very good at narrating Westerns told from the perspective of someone long past their prime, but this book wasn't a good pairing in my ears. That said, it's worth the aural dissonance for the evocative, heartbreaking, gory, terrifying and utterly captivating story of the Stauford Six. Bravo, Todd Keisling. I cannot wait to go wherever you take me next time.