Daniel Codd

Daniel Codd was born in Lincoln, UK, in 1972, and at an early age was shown a book by his grandfather entitled Reader's Digest's Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. This book (filled with its legends of the Mary Celeste, Jack the Ripper, Spring Heeled Jack and the Loch Ness Monster) so fascinated Dan that it led him to begin collecting local ghost stories - first-hand and archive - from the people of his home county, Lincolnshire, which were subsequently published in his ground-breaking book Mysterious Lincolnshire. Other books followed, Daniel being a voracious and endlessly-intrigued compiler of the ghost stories he was told by the British public as well as their snippets of folklore, urban legends and strange tales. These tales created the template for Derby Publishing's highly-successful Mysterious Counties series, although Daniel has also contributed to Amberley's highly-regarded Paranormal series as well.

Daniel Codd's interest in the supernatural has taken him all over England, and his research has led him to seek out some of the most fascinating places these islands have to offer: from the supposed burial site of King Arthur at Glastonbury and the castle remains in Northamptonshire that witnessed the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, to Childe's Tomb, a man-sized stone cross in the middle of a Dartmoor mire miles from any kind of habitation. His obsession with seeking out the most inaccessible and hidden treasures in our land has meant he has come into close contact with a screaming skull in a cupboard in Somerset, the site of the Tyburn gallows in London and locations connected with Robin Hood in Cambridgeshire. Apart from his numerous published works on folklore, he has also contributed to Paranormal Magazine, as well as appearing on numerous BBC Radio programmes; and other writers are now found drawing upon his books for their own works.

Daniel is a firm believer in the opinion that one only gets out of life what one puts in, but he also likes to find the time to visit as many places as possible in this world and enjoy a beer or two while there. He currently resides in Skellingthorpe (a Lincolnshire village), where he juggles his family life, work life and writing life, and has lately produced an e-book which chronicles the history of sensational murder cases throughout the 18th century: the age of gibbets, pirates, smugglers, duellists and highwaymen. This work - the most thorough of its kind, entitled Tales From the Gibbet Post - was born from a realization that many traditional ghost stories stemmed from a real-life 18th century murder case; and thus Dan's latest work is a study of the reality of the era and its most notorious murders.

Dan spends a lot of time wondering if there is more to life than we are led to believe or can even understand; but also a lot of time looking for his car keys and wondering why he doesn't know what's in the hit parade anymore.