The Elementals

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they were boys and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may be responsible for several terrible and unexplained deaths years earlier — and is now ready to kill again . . . 


A haunted house story unlike any other, Michael McDowell’s The Elementals (1981) was one of the finest novels to come out of the horror publishing explosion of the 1970s and ’80s. Though best known for his screenplays for Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, McDowell is now being rediscovered as one of the best modern horror writers and a master of Southern Gothic literature. This edition of McDowell’s masterpiece of terror features a new introduction by award-winning horror author Michael Rowe. McDowell’s first novel, the grisly and darkly comic The Amulet (1979), is also available from Valancourt Books.


“The finest writer of paperback originals in America.” — Stephen King


“Surely one of the most terrifying novels ever written.” — Poppy Z. Brite


“Beyond any trace of doubt, one of the best writers of horror in this or any other country.” — Peter Straub


“Readers of weak constitution should beware!” — Publishers Weekly 


“McDowell has a flair for the gruesome.” — Washington Post


“The Elementals is a fantastic haunted-house tale loaded with dread, eerie moments and good characters. Plain white sand has never been this scary or malevolent. It's the perfect book to read this October.” – Teri Harman, KSL.com