He introduced the psychic detective Francis St Clare and his assistant Frederica Masters in the collection The Elemental (1974), and the characters reappeared a number of times, notably in the novel The Psychic Detective (1993), which is under option by Hammer Films. In 1973, a takeover at Peerless Furniture led Chetwynd-Hayes to turn freelance, and a move to Fontana as his publishers led to even greater prolificacy. The latter bought him to the attention of Kevin Connor, who directed four of the best for the anthology horror movie From Beyond the Grave (1974). Looking For Something To Suck (1969), about an elemental force that feeds off human life energy, and The Gatecrasher (from his fine collection, The Unbidden, 1971), in which Jack the Ripper is summoned by a group performing a séance, show their author at his best. In the late 1960s, Chetwynd- Hayes began regularly selling collections of stories, some of which have become classics. The saga of the house down the ages eventually became the focus of three collections, Tales Of Darkness (1981), Tales From The Other Side (1983) and Tales From The Hidden World (1988), as well as two novels, The King's Ghost (1985) and The Haunted Grange (1988), and various other stories in other collections. Chetwynd-Hayes based protagonist Anthony Wentworth, a bachelor showroom manager living in a bedsit in Middlesex, on himself.
His next novel, The Dark Man (1964), was the first in a series about Clavering Grange, an ancient dwelling reputedly the most haunted house in England.
His first novel, The Man From The Bomb (1959), was sold to John Spencer for £25, all rights. He spent his evenings writing, selling a story to the Lady magazine in 1953. Demobbed in 1946, he became a salesman, firstly at Harrods, and then at the Army & Navy Stores and Bourne & Hollingsworth, before joining Peerless Build-In Furniture as a showroom and exhibition manager. With the outbreak of the second world war, he joined the Middlesex Regiment, and was evacuated from Dunkirk, later returning to France on D-Day in the Normandy landings. His father, Henry, was a movie theatre manager, and Ronald became an enthusiastic film fan, appearing as an extra in several prewar films, including A Yank At Oxford (1938) and Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939). Chetwynd-Hayes was born in Isleworth, Middlesex, and educated locally at Hanworth school.
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