'A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.'
– Adam Nevill, author of Cunning Folk

‘Joel Lane understood and expertly exploited the connection between exterior and interior landscapes like no other. The Witnesses Are Gone is a masterwork of paranoid, destabilizing weird fiction and it will leave you unmoored for days.’
– Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club

‘In The Witnesses are Gone, Joel Lane's skill at writing the short novel is showcased at its absolute best. His strong emotional and personal commitment to writing set in Birmingham is only equaled by his particular diligence afforded to the rising horror of loss that can only be described as “Lanean”.’
– Kerry Hadley-Pryce, author of The Black Country

‘Stark and thrumming with a forbidden, eldritch energy; The Witnesses are Gone slides under your skin. Not a single word is wasted in this sublime volume.’
– Matt Wesolowski, author of Demon

Moving into an old and decaying house, Martin Swann discovers a box of video cassettes in the garden shed. One of them is a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by obscure French director, Jean Rien.

The discovery leads Martin on a search for the director's other films, and for a way to understand Rien's filmography, drawing him away from his home and his lover into a shadowy realm of secrets, rituals and creeping decay. An encounter with a crazed film journalist in Gravesend leads to drug-fuelled visions in Paris - and finally to the Mexican desert where a grim revelation awaits.

The Witnesses Are Gone is a first-hand account of a journey into the darkest parts of the underworld - a look behind the screen on which our collective nightmares play.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY M. JOHN HARRISON