Masquerade Podcast: Unexplained Mysteries With Author Steph Young

Readers of my earlier books may recall the strange story of Netta Fornario, and it was one of the first stories of unexplained mystery that I came across, and it has beguiled me ever since. Did the spirit of a dead woman come back to kill Netta? Or, was she killed by the Immortal race of the Fairies? It’s a gothic, Victorian tale of magic and mystery, murder and madness, and the yearning for immortality.  It is ripe for a chapter in a Penny Dreadful; but this is a true story. It is a tale that grips as it horrifies; fascinates yet simultaneously strikes at the fear inside of us all, that if we were to delve into the supernatural, it may show us where its allegiances lie, and destroy us entirely. The location of this tale is the tiny ancient island of Iona, an Island in the Outer Hebredies off the Coast of Scotland. It is 1929, and a young woman has gone missing. When she is found, she is naked and dead and lying on a cross cut into the earth on top of a ‘faerie mound.’ There is a knife in her hand and a look