Monsters, Bureaucrats and Other Familiar Faces: A Chronicle of Human Horror

By Lu Dragonian

There are monsters in this book. Real ones. The kind that don't growl in the night but nod politely in committee meetings. Some wore uniforms. Others wore suits. A few wore nothing at all. But what they all had in common was an astonishing ability to ruin lives before breakfast — with a clipboard in one hand and moral certainty in the other.

Monsters, Bureaucrats, and Other Familiar Faces is not a history book, though it contains history. It's not a crime anthology, though the crimes will turn your stomach and possibly ruin your sleep. And it's not a psychology manual, though you'll leave knowing more about the human mind than you probably wanted to. It's a literary guided tour through the darkest hallways of human behaviour — a series of true stories told with wit, venom, and an unshakable refusal to look away.

From Soviet serial killers who slipped through ideological blind spots, to colonial regimes that harvested hands like fruit, to cannibals who found soulmates online — each chapter confronts one brutal question: How does horror survive in broad daylight, politely dressed and socially acceptable?

Lu Dragonian writes with a scalpel, not a spoon. No sanctimony. No sugar-coating. Just the raw, rancid meat of truth — carved with precision, grilled with rage, and occasionally seasoned with sarcasm. Because when evil hides in offices, thrives on paperwork, and smiles in photographs, sometimes the only honest response is to laugh — bitterly.

This book is not for the faint of heart, the nostalgically inclined, or anyone who thinks history was just a little misunderstanding. It is for those who want to understand how ordinary people build extraordinary horrors — and how quickly we forget.

Brace yourself. The mirror's not cracked. That's just your reflection blinking back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Autor Independente
• Release date: Jul 4, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231798209

Lu Dragonian

Independent writer with a fascination for the eerie, the unexplained, and the downright criminal. I dig into haunted histories, real-life mysteries, and chilling crimes to bring readers stories that keep them up at night — for all the right (or wrong) reasons. When I'm not chasing ghosts or facts, I'm probably arguing with my coffee mug or suspecting my cat of knowing too much.

Book preview

​Introduction

​The Mirror Has Teeth

There’s a particular kind of horror that doesn’t come howling out of the shadows or crawling from beneath the bed. It doesn’t wear a hockey mask, carry a chainsaw, or announce its presence with ominous Latin chanting. No. The most disturbing kind of horror walks on two legs, pays taxes, and smiles in photographs. It writes memos, holds press conferences, sometimes even hands out candy to children.

This book is about that kind of horror.

It’s a guided tour through humanity’s attic — the one we keep padlocked and pretend doesn’t exist when company comes over. You’ll find no comfort here, no redemption arc, no candlelit vigils or inspirational quotes about healing. What you’ll find are stories. Real ones. The kind that stick under your fingernails. Stories about men who wore medals and murdered children. Women who lured innocents with lullabies and buried them with practiced hands. Nations that turned starvation into policy and suffering into spreadsheets.

You’ll meet monsters — but don’t expect horns or scales. These ones shave. They read poetry. They might be your neighbour, your teacher, your government official. Some even believed they were doing good. Others didn’t care. All of them are real.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted or the comfort-seekers. If you’re looking for moral clarity or tidy conclusions, I recommend a self-help aisle or a Disney+ subscription. What I offer instead is a collection of truths — grotesque, maddening, absurd truths — wrapped in the uneasy skin of creative nonfiction. A genre that allows me, mercifully, to swing between essay and theatre, history and hysteria, fact and fury.

Because rage, I find, is a necessary ingredient when writing about the machinery of cruelty.

These stories come from across time and place — from Soviet forests and African rubber plantations, from English moorlands and Ukrainian wheat fields. Some are infamous. Others, criminally forgotten. All share a common thread: the ease with which we, as a species, cross the line from civilisation to savagery. And worse — the excuses we make for it afterwards.

Why write this book? Because I’m tired of silence. Because I believe memory is an act of resistance. Because true horror is not supernatural — it’s systematic. It has uniforms and payrolls and filing cabinets. Because if we don’t look back, honestly and unflinchingly, we’re destined to walk blindly into the same brick wall of history again and again — headfirst, with a stupid grin and a national anthem on our lips.

You won’t agree with everything in these pages. That’s fine. You’re not meant to. But I do ask one thing of you: don’t look away. Not when it gets uncomfortable. Not when it gets ugly. Especially not then.

Because behind every one of these stories is a whisper — sometimes faint, sometimes furious — that says: this happened. And if we’re not careful, it can happen again.

So, buckle up. Pack a strong stomach, a critical mind, and maybe a shot of something stiff. We’re going to places where the map runs out. Places where history pretends not to look. Places where the mirror doesn’t just reflect, but bites.

And remember: the scariest thing in this book isn’t the murderer or the madman.

It’s how normal they looked.

​In the Shadow of Saddleworth: The Ghosts of the Moors Murders

​A Journey Through Britain's Darkest Crime, Its Lasting Scars, and the Monsters That Wore Human Skin

There are landscapes that haunt you—not because of their physical features, but because of what they’ve seen. Drive out to Saddleworth Moor on a grey morning, let the drizzle soak your collar, and you’ll know exactly what I mean. The wind seems to whisper names. The land is beautiful in that melancholy, rugged English way, but there’s something else there too—something that sticks to your boots like bog mud and won’t wash off. It’s history, sure. But not the kind you brag about on tourist leaflets. This is the history we shove under the floorboards, behind tabloid headlines and in prison cells. This is the story of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley—the Moors Murderers.

Now, if you’re looking for a pleasant jaunt into the English countryside, turn around. This isn’t Countryfile. This is true crime with no neat resolution, no glossy Netflix sheen, no heroic detective who cracks the case in 59 minutes flat. This is the messier kind—the kind that leaves you wondering how people who looked so ordinary could be capable of things so monstrous. And worse: how they convinced themselves it was all perfectly reasonable.

It was the early 1960s. Britain was just shaking off the soot of the Second World War. The Beatles were still mop-topped lads in Liverpool. People queued patiently for things, believed in the monarchy, and smoked like chimneys. Children