It’s the birthday of “Britain’s Prince of Chill” Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (1919-2001), famous for horror stories and novels that were often both humorous and chilling and many of which focused on a fictional haunted house called Clavering Grange.

Chetwynd-Hayes was born in Isleworth, Middlesex; his father managed a movie theatre, and Chetwynd-Hayes grew up loving the movies, even appearing in a couple as extras before the war. As a soldier in WWII, Chetwynd-Hayes was evacuated at Dunkirk and later took part in the landings at Normandy. After the war he went into sales, eventually working as a showroom manager for a furniture store.

Chetwynd-Hayes wrote in the evenings at first, selling his first story in 1953 and his first novel, The Man from the Bomb, in 1959. Chetwynd-Hayes would go on to publish a dozen novels and many collections of short stories. A couple of his stories now considered classics include “Looking for Something to Suck,” about a force that feeds off human energy, and “The Gatecrasher” (1971, from The Unbidden), in which Jack the Ripper is summoned at a séance, and I’m just going to say this, that seems like one poorly thought-out idea.

In 1973, Chetwynd-Hayes began writing full time, creating the detective Francis St. Clare and his psychic assistant, Frederica Masters; these characters reappeared in many stories and in the novel The Psychic Detective (1993). One of Chetwynd-Hayes’ best-known works, The Monster Club (1976), a series of linked stories about—wait for it—monsters, was made into a movie starring Vincent Price, John Carradine, and Anthony Steel in 1981.

Chetwynd-Hayes received the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1988 and the British Fantasy Society Special Award in 1989. Fun fact: the year the Bram Stoker award was given to Chetwynd-Hayes, it was also given to Ray Bradbury. And Joyce Carol Oates won it in 1993. Who knew?

Have a sparkling, sunny Thursday, for goodness’ sake think twice before visiting the powers of evil on all humankind, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.