The Devil in Detail — Brian Stableford

At last, the true story can finally be told of my participation in the investigation of a haunted bookshop in Barry, South Wales, organized by my good friend and fellow science fiction writer Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe. As a result of the haunting in question, or perhaps the abundant coal dust that accompanied it, I was enabled to meet the Devil and make a mutually rewarding pact with him. The story also relates my subsequent close encounter with the Devil's opposite number while participating as a volunteer in a psychology experiment at the University of Glamorgan, intended to open up a more effective conduit between the conscious and the unconscious mind. That one did not go as well, perhaps understandably given the inevitable conflict of interests, but was, and remains, no less intriguing.