Historian · Novelist · Teller of old strange stories

Avian N.
Johnson

She writes historical fiction at the seam where rigorous archival research meets gothic, psychologically driven horror. Her debut novel is out now.

Based in: California Writes: Gothic Horror Researches: European History
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Out Now Disproving Kilvane book cover

The Debut Novel

Disproving Kilvane

They went to Kilvane House to disprove the haunting. None of them were seen again.

In November 1998, a team of academic researchers entered an old estate in rural Wexford, Ireland. They never returned. Years later, an anonymous editor surfaces with their recovered journals, transcripts, and tapes — and a story that has haunted the cold case files for nearly thirty years.

For readers of Shirley Jackson, Mark Z. Danielewski, and the Episode 13 podcast.

Enter the Archive Order the Book

Avian, somewhere with old paper

From the Desk of

An historian who took a wrong turn into fiction.

Avian spent years in the academy studying European history before she started telling its ghost stories instead.

Her work lives at the intersection of archival rigor and literary horror. The strange things in her novels are real — drawn from court records, newspaper clippings, parish registers, and the diaries of people who were not believed.

She writes about hauntings the way a historian writes about wars: with footnotes, primary sources, and a healthy respect for what was lost. Disproving Kilvane is her first novel.

Read the full bio
From the Field

Currently researching

Avian unpacks history's strangest, darkest, most poorly explained moments on TikTok. New videos weekly.

Investigation № 042

The 1649 priest hole that hides bodies in Disproving Kilvane.

Recent · 4 min

Investigation № 041

What the Sack of Wexford left behind — and what it didn't.

Recent · 3 min

Investigation № 040

Why Victorian spiritualism was the most terrifying thing of the 19th century.

Recent · 5 min

Investigation № 039

A 1734 servant girl's disappearance — and what her employer's wife knew.

Recent · 4 min

Find more — and more sinister — at her TikTok.

Follow @aveovershares
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