A new morning has arrived. On a bare, rundown ward at a London hospice, Nurse Kim Watson is waiting for one of her oldest patients to die.

Edna Vincent just keeps hanging on and hanging on. Horrified by the woman's plight, Kim tries to look after her, but the ward is on the verge of shutting down and there's no-one else to help. Until, that is, the double doors are flung open and two very unusual strangers arrive.

As the bemused Kim tries to get rid of her visitors, Doctor Crowman Mancrow sets about examining Edna. Convinced that he's about to solve the mystery of a lifetime, Mancrow tells sets out his equipment and starts to wait, while his assistant – the mysterious Jenny – desperately attempts to reassure Kim that there's nothing to worry about.

There's just one problem. Mancrow's experiment looks doomed to failure, and even Edna's sudden death appears unable to fix things. Will the beleaguered scientist accept that his theory was wrong all along, or is he prepared to go to any lengths in order to uncover the truth?

1am is the sixth book in the Haunting of London series, a collection of stand-alone but loosely linked horror stories set over the course of one ghostly twenty-four-hour period in the city.

First published: November 2025
Genre: Ghost / Horror
Series or Standalone: Series of standalone stories