The haunting work of an author who died in Merionethshire in the 1940s has been republished in time for Christmas.

‘The Inn Closes For Christmas & other dark tales’ by Cledwyn Hughes is described by printing company Baskerville as “a deliciously dark and haunting tale of one man’s nightmarish obsession and how far he’ll go to escape it”.

Born at Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain in Montgomeryshire, Hughes died in Arthog in Merionethshire. He had lived there with his wife Alyna from 1947.

The National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth holds an archive of his papers.

Fans of Shirley Jackson, MR James, and Andrew Michael Hurley, are urged to rediscover this forgotten classic.

An extract from the book reads: “The Bank manager, as he had done for so many Christmases now, opened the file... And as always, as he opened it he wondered why he must do this each year… For the man had asked him that he should do this every Christmas for as long as he should live. Why he, of all men?”

In the file, the bank manager sifts through some papers - local newspaper cuttings, a pathologist report, a statement from the town's dentist William Sterrill, and a death notice for his wife, Mrs Doreen Sterrill. But it is the last paper that stops him in his tracks. It is the confession of William Sterrill.

In William's confession we learn about the terrible accident that caused his wife to have her leg amputated, the prosthetic leg she had to wear, how this leg slowly drives William to murder, and the descent into madness as we walk through William's nightmares, visions, and thoughts.

The Inn Closes for Christmas is also accompanied by a selection of short stories, full of the uncanny and creepy where Hughes points us towards the darkest places in the human psyche with the lightest of touches.