Dark Horse Books has announced the release of Séance in the Asylum, a historical horror series from horror master Clay McLeod Chapman (What Kind of Mother, Ghost Eaters) and artist Leonardo Marcello Grassi (Undiscovered Country) that will have you questioning what’s real and what’s not. Written by Chapman, illustrated by Grassi, colored by Mauro Gulman, and lettered by Frank Cvetkovic, this paperback collection gathers issues #1-4 of Séance in the Asylum and includes a cover gallery.
1865. The Civil War finally reaches its grueling end. Soldiers returning from the frontline come home broken, their minds shattered. An influx of patients overwhelms The Ashcroft Hospital, an asylum in upstate New York. Dr. John James Templeton is busy developing a radical new theory: spiritualism—the act of communicating with the dead—is its own form of therapy. What better way to draw out these mental maladies than with a little assistance from the other side? Templeton enlists Alicia Wilkinson, a medium who established herself as a sought-after conduit capable of contacting the dead as a young girl.
These séance sessions become a cutting-edge form of “spectral therapy,” where patients are permitted to converse with, perhaps expunge, their maladies. By reaching out beyond the veil of our world, these spirits aid in drawing out the illness of the patient. But something is changing in the patients. They are acting different…possessed, perhaps. Templeton’s experiment is a success. Too successful. It is up to Alicia to understand what is happening to the patients of Ashcroft…before it’s too late.
Séance in the Asylum (paperback, 96 pages, 6.625” x 10.1875”) will be available in bookstores on June 3, 2025 and in comic shops on June 4, 2025. It is now available to preorder from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Things From Another World, and your local comic shop and bookstore for $19.99.
