Collected Ghost Stories

I often take Montague on holiday with me. He doesn't take up much room and he doesn't eat all the Baby Bells. I'm talking about Montague Rhodes James - my favourite writer of ghost stories. This time Montague is telling me the stories that didn't get printed in his four haunting anthologies. I prefer the individual publications to the doorstop collection here. It's pretty evident why these six stories didn't make it into the original publications.

1. The Uncommon Prayer-Book
2. A Neighbour's Landmark
3. Rats
4. The Experiment
5. The Malice of Inanimate Objects
6. A Vignette

They are a little rough around the edges, lacking the gloss of a story that an author has done tinkering with. There are still chilling moments to be had but there are no classics present unfortunately. Also included are several excerpts from prefaces by James that were published in his collections and other ghost story anthologies. They are very honest descriptions and opinions on the writing process and the qualities James valued in the creation of stories of this genre. He also talks about that drawer that all writers possess that houses the unfinished writings, or unused ideas. It's all invaluable stuff for writers interested in developing a style that might be influenced by James and others of his degree of adeptness.

Eagle & Child

A few miles outside Blackpool is a village called Weeton. It's an old village. So old it was mentioned in the Domesday Book, though back then it was known as Widetun, which derived from the Old English means willow settlement. If you were to visit the place now you would see that some fine willows grow there still. The rather unusual name of the village's pub The Eagle & Child is taken from the crest of a former local land owner Lord Derby. The pub itself is one of the oldest public house in Lancashire, dating back to 1585. It's got a lot of history. Oliver Cromwell is reputed to have stayed here and there are many stories of ghosts and strange happening, though quite a few of these were created over the years to add to the old place's mystique to drum up trade. Tales of ghosts are always popular and I must admit that I too was drawn to the place purely by its supernatural reputation. I'm not saying I believe in ghosts, though I'm always open minded about such things, but I'm more interested by how history generates folklore and mythology. And of course, I love a good ghost story. The story that has gained the most notoriety is that of Bleeding Ears Murph, a highwayman who can be heard muttering to himself in the quiet of the night. I visited the place in daylight so I didn't get a chance to find out what the unfortunate fellow mutters about but I did get a chance to sample the pub's excellent cuisine.

Famous Modern Ghost Stories

This collection of fifteen famous ghost stories edited by Dorothy Scarborough was first published in 1921. Only about half of the stories have survived the past century with any notoriety intact. Scarborough's selection process was quite wide and loose with the term ghost. Most of the stories are drawn from American publications of the time, the Harper brothers gaining the biggest slice of the publishing credits.
Gems for me are:

• The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, more a novella than a short story but one of the great horror stories of the 20th Century (see my previous review).
• The Beast With Five Fingers by W.F. Harvey - A very creepy story about a possessed severed hand. This story spawned two feature films.
• The Woman at Seven Brothers by Wilbur Daniel Steele - Very atmospheric ghost story set on a remote lighthouse. I admit I have a love of lighthouses and relish any story well told from its windy staircases, lamp-rooms and common rooms. This story is a little traditional but still well told.
• Ligeia by Edgar Alllan Poe - Poe shows off his sumptuous use of the English language, penning on the layers of creepiness with aplomb. Some of Poe's stories are worth reading just for the use of language alone: e.g. 'blacker than the raven wings of midnight'. Brilliant.

The rest of the stories range from quite good to quite trite. None of them are particularly bad but some seem to have been added to raise the story count. There are also a few oddities worth a read like Myla Jo Closser's At the Gate. The image of all the faithful dogs waiting patiently at the gates of Heaven for their owners to arrive is quite moving. None of the dogs will go through without their owners.

Phantoms: Sandsend

The mystery of the thing in the ceiling was answered by a flurry of arrival; bushy grey tail trailing, scampering hops, alert eyes, grasping paws and furiously sharp teeth. Otherwise know as The Grey Squirrel. He scrambled along the fencing to and from our cottage to take his seat on our bird table, whereupon he would lounge about stuffing his cheeks with our fat balls. When he got tired or too full he would retire to his little mezzanine apartment between floors of Home Farm. Perhaps the property description should be amended: sleeps eight plus one squirrel. Knowing it was a squirrel in the roof rather than a rat was a great improvement. And the scratching noise was never so frequent or annoying again.
Debbie decided that Home Farm wasn't very spooky. So I showed her some snaps I'd taken of the living room the evening before. I billed them as containing light anomalies. Debbie and Phil looked at them and said 'hmmm'. "Look at that pattern," I said, "in the centre of the room - see how it reoccurs in this other photograph taken from the other side of the room, looking back over the same spot.' Admittedly the spooky lights looked a lot more convincing on the camera's LCD than on these full sized shots. Though apparently Debbie later had some dreams about these 'light anomalies', and she would waste no time getting back to the living area after switching the upstairs lights off from then on.

I found some other blog entries about Sandsend from other folk.
Little Brown Job & Snow Babies.

More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

I don't need much excuse to start reading some ghost stories, so it's no surprise that my break to Sandsend, in that haunted month called October, would include a whole volume of spooktacular tales finding their way onto my reading list. This second collection of creepy tales doesn't quite match M.R. James' first Antiquarian collection. The first three stories are nicely told but not quite up to being part of the ghost story top of the pops that filled the first volume. The last four are much better, including the brilliant Casting the Runes, which has been adapted for television twice and was also made into the classic horror film Night of the Demon (must rewatch this one soon) from 1957. Like many of James stories it doesn't include a conventional ghost but in this case focuses mainly on the misuse of witchcraft. The Stalls of Barchester is also pretty good and was one of the BBC's Christmas ghost story adaptations from the 1970s. The strength of James work lies in bringing such stories into the everyday world, diminishing the reader's sense of distance or disconnection from the proceedings even now a century after their first publication.

Prologue: Sandsend

This week we took a short break to Sandsend near Whitby, staying in a cottage on the Raithwaite estate. We've stayed in the area several times before though never in this location and never so late in the year. Previously our chosen haunt was an old converted schoolhouse, also in Sandsend but, sadly for us, recently renovated into a new hotel style complex painted so white any self respecting ghost would most likely pack up his chains and flit. This new location, stuffed to the rafters with mod cons, surely couldn't compete with the olde worlde, spook packed vibe of our schoolhouse could it? Stay tuned as things really are going to go bump in the night as we discover we aren't alone in our temporary new home. The mist will rise among sailors' graves, owls will hoot, bats will flutter, spectral lights will bedevil us, black cats will be shadows in the night and ghostly travelers will cross our paths in moonlight.

Phantasms of the Living

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters is one of those novels that might be better enjoyed if the reader comes to it without the knowledge that this is a ghost story. Although it does have strange goings on at the big house, it has a lot more going for it than just a few ghostly chills. The story is told to the reader by a country doctor, who documents a year in his life, slowly becoming embroiled in the struggles of the last three members of the local landed gentry. A glamour of nostalgia draws him to their manor house even though its best days are long past. The old and the new collide again again throughout the story; from the doctor's country practice to the proposed NHS; superstitions and science; traditional remedies and the doctor's new treatments; the old manor encroached by new cheap housing; even poetry gets a mention - "What's wrong with nice long lines and a jaunty rhythm?" asks the old lady of the house, comparing Tennyson to Emily Dickinson. An air of melancholy slowly builds into foreboding before the first terrible event rips into the family. It's all very well written with lots of little undertones that keep the narrative interesting. The old matriarch lost in her memories and clinging to a world that has largely been washed away. The young son, scarred inside and out by the horrors of war, driven too far by the responsibility expected of a male heir. The doctor falling in love, but with the young daughter, or the house, or an ideal and too quick to fit everything into what is rational or reasonable. I lived in Warwickshire when I was away at college back in the early 1980s and I felt that the place depicted here could just as easily have been any rural area in an English county. The book doesn't really work as a ghost story. It's too long and not paced right but I don't think that matters, because I don't think the book was ever even trying to fit into that genre.

Smithills Hall

Mark and I have visited Smithills Hall near Bolton. We took the tour and a guide told us all the history and legends. It's a fine old place that has been around since the early 14th century. Well some of it has. It started out much smaller and bits kept being added or converted over the centuries even to this day. More recently in the 20th century it was bought by Bolton Council who converted the upstairs into a nursing home for a time. All the downstairs rooms have wildly different design and architecture, which sort of gives the illusion of time travel as you move from room to room. My favourite rooms were the chapel and the great hall. There is a steep step leading into the great hall but there are some portable metal tracks that the guide drops down to get a wheelchair through. There is no disabled access to the upstairs but all the good stuff is downstairs anyhow. The chapel has some very beautiful Victorian & Tudor stained glass windows. The great hall is a mass of solidity - you can almost feel all the history living in the stone. The place has a multitude of ghost stories, though the guide mostly stuck to the history of the major families that have owned it and to the details of the architecture. My folklore antennae did perk up when she showed us George Marsh's footprint. It sort of looks like a footprint on one of the paving stones at the bottom of a staircase. The story goes that George was a local Protestant curate who was arrested for heresy under the reign of Queen Mary in 1554. He was questioned and held at Smithills and folklore tells that he stamped his foot so hard on the stone to declare his steadfast faith that it left an imprint before he was led away. He was burnt at the stake for heresy a year later. All sorts of colourful ghostly stories have sprung up around the footprint over the centuries. The hall was featured on Most Haunted a few years ago, though my guess is they did not get full access to the best parts of the hall as the show seemed to mainly feature Stuart pretending to be petrified in the empty stripped rooms upstairs. I believe the Hall now does Ghost Hunts of their own. I suppose it all helps with the upkeep of the building. The guide tossed in the usual speculation that the Bard might have visited here during his youth. It's possible but most halls in the North West claim something similar, even though hardly any of them have any physical proof. We skipped the gift shop and wandered off into the gardens to take some pictures.

Ghost stories

I love a good ghost story. M.R.James is one of the best at the short form of the genre. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is packed with some of his best. All the stories here were written between 1894 and 1904 and were originally read to the author's friends at Christmas at Kings College, Cambridge, where James was a noted British medieval scholar. I'd guess the best way to experience these chilling little stories would be to have them read to you on a dark night, in the depths of winter, perhaps on Christmas Eve itself. It is probably easier to imagine, listening to the words, that the story is being told to you by someone who has heard the story from another, and that such a tale might be true - just for a short time anyway. James usually cleverly distances the storyteller from the actual protagonists who are often of a scholarly type, quite sanguine (at least at first) in their rejection of the supernatural.
More recently in the 60s and 70s the BBC started a tradition of filming a special ghost story ever year for Christmas and they often turned to the stories of M.R.James to supply the source. Lost Hearts, The Ash Tree, The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Number 13 were all used. My favourite story from the collection is Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad which was also adapted by the BBC and features the brilliant Michael Horden in the lead role demonstrating what a wonderful character actor the man was. All five of these stories are from this collection.
BBC4 has revived the tradition over the last few years. A new adaptation of a classic ghost story is usually part of a season of ghost stories, shown over the Christmas fortnight along with most of the vintage M.R.James being included with other classic stories like The Signalman by Charles Dickens.