Classic Ghost Stories

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The Outcast by E F Benson Sep 16, 2022

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The Outcast by E F Benson

First we are introduced to Mrs Bertha Acres through the eyes of Tony and his wife Madge. The initial incident is her husband shooting himself due to detesting her. That is the first sign we have that this lady is to be the subject of the story and it is enough to make us prick up our ears and raise questions about her.

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We next have the description of the domestic scene in the little home and little village and here we see the wit of the humorist of upper middle-class social situations that came to the fore in the famous Mapp and Lucia series that made his name.

The theme of reincarnation is set by the brother-in-law Sir Charles Alington, particularly that a reincarnated spirit can inhabit a male or female body.

Then we are told the evil history of the Gate House and that one brother betrayed his brother for being a Catholic and then repented. Remember the end takes place around Easter, Judas Iscariot is mentioned. Benson’s father was a vicar and his brother a priest. Are these hearkenings to the Easter story: betrayal, sin and reincarnation an intentional inversion? The body is in the water three days (note three, surely not a coincidence?) and no corruption has come to it. It’s like an antichrist or Judas figure.

The end, the purging by fire may represent the expiation of the sin of betrayal by this spirit who was forced to live again and again and wander without rest. The Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew.

In terms of style, it seemed to me that the story is made up of two. There is the witty social commentary (that we also find in The Pallinghurst Barrow by Grant Allen) poking fun at the haut bourgeois, and then a masterfully creepy horror story. Benson is unequalled I think it writing these scenes. First the body in the sack that tumbles over and follows Made (though that was reminiscent of Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You)

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Pallinghurst Barrow by Grant Allen Sep 08, 2022

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Pallinghurst Barrow by Grant Allen

A horror story about spirits who linger in old places in the English countryisde. Published 1892. Suggested by Susan Tudor-Coulson
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Grant Allen

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen was born in 1848 on Wolfe Island in Ontario in Ca nada and died in Haselmere in Surrey aged 51. His father was from Dublin and he was a protestant minister. He was educated at home and then when he was 13, his family moved to the USA, then to France then to Britain. He was educated at King Edward’s School in Birmingham (where Tolkien later went amongst other famous alumni) and then at Merton College in Oxford. He went to teach in Brighton and in Jamaica. He returned to Britain from Jamaica and began to write professionally. He was most famous for his scientific essays. But he also wrote science fiction.

He was an atheist and socialist. He was married twice. He died of liver cancer in 1899. He was a friend and neighbour of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Chanctonbury Ring, Old Weird Albion

The Old Weird Albion | Justin Hopper || Landscape, Memory & Myth
I mention how much I enjoy the work of Justin Hopper. Chanctonbury Rings – a spoke word and music album made with folk artist Sharron Kraus and Ghost Box Records co-founder The Belbury Poly (Ghost Box).

Long Barrows were the product of a late Stone Age civilisation with additions from Bronze Age folk. They are particularly to be found in Wessex and the south and west of England. But of course megalithic structures of similar types can be found all over Atlantic Europe. Nobody would suggest that the so-called Picts created them.

Theosophists & Madam Blavatsky

The Theosophical Society was created mainly by Madame Helena Blavatsky who had a background in Spiritualism. This was a time of religious change with a huge upsurge in Spiritualism. The first lodge was in Scotland. There were influences from western Occultism, but also Hinduism and Buddhism and they talked about the ascended masters. These ascended masters included Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Jesus but also the Buddha, Confucious and Lao Tzu but also Mesmer, Bohme and Cagliostro. Theosophy has evolved into the New Age.

Mrs Bruce (the esoteric Buddhist) seems to be one of these.

Ghosts

The story reports that we only see the ghosts from periods within our knowledge. But of course this is not true. Many ghosts are not really identifiable at all.

Flint and iron

This is an old piece of folklore

Cannabis Indica

Indeed. No wonder he saw visions.

Fiddlers Green, Clint Marsh

Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine

I love this 'zine. As the Clint Marsh says,
*Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine was born of a languid afternoon of conversation on a sunny tavern lawn. Taking its name from the pleasant afterlife dreamed into being by sailors, cavalrymen, and other adventu

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The Doll by Daphne du Maurier Sep 02, 2022

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The Doll by Daphne du Maurier

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning was born in 1907 in London in 1931 and died in 1989 in Cornwall. She is a famous novelist with such best-sellers as Rebecca, Frenchman’s Creek, The Birds and the novella Don’t Look Now. This story is taken from a collection of short stories written before her famous novels. She was clearly fond of the name Rebecca for the dark-spirited anima-like femme fatale.

I did a recording of Don’t Look Now, which has proved to be my most popular recording on Youtube.
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Her father was an actor and theatre manager who was knighted for her services to the arts. Her mother Muriel Beaumont was also an actress. Daphne’s sister Angela was also an author and an actress and her other sister Jeanne who was part of the painter colony in St Ives Cornwall. Daphne and her sister Jeanne look very like their mother in the photographs on the internet. Their cousins were the inspiration for the children in J M Barrie’s Peter Pan. Her great-great-grandmother was mistress of Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany.

She was born when the family were living in a rather grand house on Cumberland Terrace on the eastern side of Regent’s Park in a house that is now a grade I listed building designed by the famous architect John Nash. Her father’s success made this possible.

She was born in a house Daphne du Maurier became more reclusive as she got more famous and spent her time n her beloved Cornwall. As she grew, the family had two houses — one in Hampstead, north London ( a grade II listed building from 1720) and a house in Fowey, Cornwall, where they lived exclusively during the Second World War. She got married to a prominent soldier and had three children, of whom both girls married prominent soldiers.

The Wiki notes that her marriage was somewhat chilly and she herself could be distant from her children. Her husband died in 1965, when she was 34. She moved permanently to Kilmarth, Cornwall. She was made a dame (equivalent of a knight) in 1969 but was very reticent about mentioning it and never made much of it. After she died in 1989, biographers discussed whether she was a lesbian. Her sister Jeanne had a close relationship with another woman. She notes that her father always wanted a son and so she was a tomboy. Her children denied that she was a lesbian. When she died of heart failure aged 81, her body was privately cremated. In her obituary, Kate Kellaway said: “Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers’ minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings.”

The Doll

This story was published in 1937, that is two years after the death of her husband, and one year before the publication of Rebecca. Apparently she was only 21 when she wrote The Doll.
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A Pair of Muddy Shoes by Lennox Robinson Aug 25, 2022

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A Pair of Muddy Shoes by Lennox Robinson

Lennox Robinson was an Irish author, poet, dramatist and theatre produce who was born in Westgrove, County Cork, Ireland in 1886 the son of a Protestant clergyman, who had previously been a stockbroker. Lennox (fully Esme Stuart Lennox Robinson) was often ill as a child and educated by private tutor and at a Church of Ireland (that is the Protestant Anglican Church) School. He became interested in drama when he saw a production by W B Yeats and Lady Gregory at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin when he was 21.
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His play Cross Roads was produced at the Abbey in 1909 and he became manager there the same year. He resigned in 1914 after a poorly reviewed tour of the USA, but came back in 1919 and was appointed to the theatre’s boar din 1923 and served there until his death in 1958. It is said that he was an alcoholic and often depressed.

He was Anglo-Irish but was committed to the Irish nationalist cause (like Yeats and Lady Gregory).

His wife’s mother was a spiritualist.

A Pair of Muddy Shoes is written in a very naturalistic, conversational style which was fun to read and very different from some of the other things we’ve been reading out recently (Poe, I’m looking at you). It’s all fun, and I like both styles.

The story is written from an Irish woman’s voice and I read it as an English man. You will know I debate with myself whether I should do accents (which I enjoy) or read a woman ’s voice. The second I have few problems with to be honest, the first is more of a problem because though I enjoy doing the accent there is always someone who’s ear is so finely tuned that it jars and spoils the story. So, I decided to do this in my native voice.

The story is about a possession but it’s unusual and fresh in its setting in rural Ireland (I thought of Craggy Island and the big priests’ house looming up from the middle of a bare field, no garden, no path, no nothing leading to it). The spirit of the murderer remains very wicked and his pleasure in the crime infects the shy young woman who is speaking.

There is something about weird juxtapositions like the white cat with the narrator’s face and then when she goes into the house, the victim says that she has the face of a girl, but the hands of a rough man.

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The Ghost Ship by Richard Middleton Aug 19, 2022

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The Ghost Ship by Richard Barham Middleton

Richard Barham Middleton was born in 1882 in Staines then in Middlesex, but since 1965 part of Surrey. It calls itself Staines upon Thames now. I checked the 1864 map and then it was a small town surrounded by fields and woods. Even now looking at the satellite, though I see is is a much bigger urbanisation there is still some nice green land around it. But I digress. He died in 1911 in Brussels by suicide
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He was educated at Cranbrook school and then went to work as a bank clerk between 1901 and 1907 but lived, the Wiki says ‘affected’ a Bohemian lifestyle at night and joined a club called The New Bohemians. He knew Arthur Machen who much admired his work and wrote a preface to the collection of stories in which I found The Ghost Ship. It’s available on Gutenberg for free. He became a magazine editor but really wanted to be a poet. He met Raymond Chandler who was put off writing almost because Middleton was so talented and he thought he’d never match it. His most famous poem is The Bathing Boy which is a paean to a beautiful young man swimming.

He made very little money as a writer and lived in poverty. He moved to Brussels and aged only 29, he killed himself by drinking chloroform just after his birthday.

We have done his winter ghost story, On Brighton Road which is short but good. The Ghost Ship is his most famous ghost story and, unlike On Brighton Road is humorous. In his biography by Henry Savage, Middleton is said to have claimed he had a pirate for an ancestor who was hanged at Port Royal. But Savage notes that Middleton was not diligent with facts.
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The Milk White Child of Ravenglass by Tony Walker Aug 05, 2022

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The Milk-White Child of Ravenglass by Tony Walker, is one of mine. As I explain in the notes, this is one of my More Cumbrian Ghost Stories book. You can purchase the full book or audiobook (just saying, if you were so inclined, and you liked this one, well maybe you'd like the rest?)Check out the Ko-Fi link. I think it's there. I'm giving you this because I'm off on my hols soon so I will schedule this to come out while I'm away.Yes, there's a Romantic theme to it. Yes it includes the good people. So I'd been reading Wordsworth and Arthur Machen at the time. I was all Romanticked up. I like stories of the fey, fae, whatever you call them. Do I believe in them? That would be telling.If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereYou could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)Become a Patronhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)And you can join my mailing list and get a free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback*** (https://bit.ly/somecomeback***)Support the show

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The Entrance by Gerald Durrell Jul 29, 2022

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The Entrance by Gerald DurrellGerald Durrell was born in Jamshedpur which was then part of British India, in 1925 and died in St Hellier, Jersey in 1995, aged 70. This story, The Entrance was published in his collection The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium in 1979. This title was renamed The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories though I suspect that someone who didn’t understand the word pandemonium would struggle with inimitable too. But that’s marketing for you. His family’s life has been the subject of a popular TV series “My Family & Other Animals” taken from the title of one of his books. He was a prolific writer, usually of light, comic fiction and autobiography and a life-long animal lover who set up the Jersey Zoo. Those of you who read these notes will probably predict offended comments about animals being hurt in The Entrance and how zoos are bad. My only comments are: it’s fiction. There were no animals, and; attitudes change over times. I don’t think he set up a zoo because he was a wicked man who wanted to hurt animals. Zoos were uncontroversial once. Those who don’t make comments on videos expressing their hurt and offence probably won’t read the notes.Durrell’s famous siblings is the author and poet Lawrence Durrell. In his early years, as his family were middle class and British, he had an Indian nurse called an ayah. He ascribes his lifelong love of animals to a visit to a zoo when he was small in India. The family moved to the Crystal Palace area of London (with its concrete dinosaurs) and he avoided going to school by pretending to be ill. In 1939 the family moved to Corfu, Grreece and Durrell began to build his menagerie. This period of his life was an inspiration of his many books.Because of the Second World War, the family moved back to England and he ended up working in an aquarium and a pet store. He was not medically fit to be a soldier but ended up working on a farm. After the war he went to work at Whipsnade Zoo. After that, he got a job collecting animals for zoos by visiting Africa and South America. He was known for treating his animals well, which caused him financial difficulties .He founded his own zoo in Jersey in 1959.The EntranceThe Entrance was recommended to me by Alison Waddell. It is a frame story and thus hearkens back to the classic ghost story tales which are often told as frames and often feature old, occult manuscripts. Gerald Durrell goes to meet his charming, slightly comic friends in Provence. They hand him a manuscript they found in Marseilles that belonged to a strange man called Dr Le Pitre. Dr Le Pitre is another layer to the story that seems quite unnecessary to me, but I might be missing something. The manuscript dated as March 16th 1901 features a lengthy set up of a Victorian (the old queen died on 22 January 1901, but her influence lingered a few months at least) antiquarian book dealer (very M R James) who is stalked by a strange foreigner on a foggy night in London (so far so trope, and I suspect that Durrell was doing this to play with the genre). He gets a mysterious warning from his friend about the family, but becomes great mates with this aristocratic frenchman. Ultimately we see that this was a grift and Durrell drops a few ominous sentences along the lines of “If I knew then what I know now”. “That was my gravest mistake” which sort of spoilt the surprise of the twist at the end. But it’s full Gothic. Alone in an ancient chateau in terrible weather, cut off by snow with a lurking monster in the mirrors. Instead of strange old servitors he has some friendly animals. Again he can’t help himself intruding the comic parrot and Support the show

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The Nameless Offspring by Clark Ashton Smith Jul 22, 2022

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Clark Ashton SmithClark Ashton Smith was an American writer born in Long Valley, California in 1893 who died in Pacific Grove, California in 1961, aged 68. They are actually four hundred and twenty eight miles apart which is longer than the whole of England. For comparison I have only made two hundred yards from the place I was born to the place I now live. He lived most of his life in the small town of Auburn, California. He was madly neurotic, agoraphobic and as with Lovecraft, the existential unease he no doubt felt in life, intrudes into his stories, giving them their unsettling quality, I would guess.Because of his nerves, he was educated at home and was intelligent with a fantastic memory and educated himself by reading, including The Encyclopaedia Britannica all volumes cover to cover more than once.He taught himself French and Spanish and translated poetry from those languages, including Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil. Naturally.Clark was a weird poet and one of the now defunct West Coast Romantics. I can see him playing guitar for Mazzy Star (if he’d been spared). He was one of the ‘big three’ authors of Weird Tales, the others being Robert E Howard and H P Lovecraft. As a teen (though in those days I wouldn’t have been familiar with that word) I lapped up all three, though I preferred Ashton Smith. There is something more poetic and less rude about his style than either the barbarous, muscle-bound stories of Howard and the off-kilter, prolix and baroque tales of H P. Though, as I say, I read them all, aye. All.We have done an Ashton Smith story before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSkA3Hq8qIU (The Maker of Gargoyles).This story: The Nameless Offspring is another tomb story. We seem to have done a run of these recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pSp2_ZPOyA (The Catacomb), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC9epxbb-JU (The Secret of The Vault). And previously we did The https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC-kCEb_oTE (Fall of the House of Usher).It was published in Strange Tales in 1932, and in those days publishing in these pulp magazine was the standard process. Many of the writers of pulps purveyed Cosmic Horror. Of course the primary voice here is H P Lovecraft and his taste seems to have stamped itself on his followers and his approval, given them a significant advantage. Lovecraft was a great admirer of Ashton Smith.You will recall that to write a classic story in this period: first set it somewhere obscure either in time or distance from your average reader> Make the weather bad. Have a gothic edifice: a castle, though in this case and old (Cornish from the name) Manor House will do. Have an aged retainer, an obscure history that is not fully discussed, an aristocrat, poor light then you just need a monster and you’re on. This tale has it all. And let’s face it what Hollywood producers say (though not to me) ‘We want more of the same, but different.” This is what we have. Smith is great with descriptions. I prefer his prose to Lovecraft. IT was the fashion to use obscure words and lots of them, but he does it in a less awkward way than Lovecraft and one that is not as open to parody.The story begins with a little background that makes sense of what is to follow along with a warning that he never foresaw the terrible truth, etc. he goes on a trip and inadvertently comes across the evil Tremoth Hall. How likely is that actually? The place receives few visitors in common with nearly every Manor House in all the stories we have read. None of them are open to the National Trust. I read one recently by Sarah Perry (author of Melnoth the Wanderer and the Essex Serpent) iSupport the show

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The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe Jul 15, 2022

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The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan PoeThe Masque of the Red Death was published in 1842 by Edgar Allan Poe in Graham’s Magazine. He was paid $12 for it. There is an app on the internet to tell you the value of money today and that calculates $12 in 1842 is worth $482 today. That is £353 Sterling, or £4,236 Scots. Good money in anyone’s book for a 16 minute story.It was made into a film in 1964, starring Vincent Price. As any brief study will tell you, it follows the conventions of Gothic fiction: it’s set in a castle (in fact a castellated abbey so two for the price of one)At the time of the story, Poe’s wife was suffering from tuberculosis and would be coughing blood most likely, and this image may have inspired (if that is a suitable word) the imagery of the story. People have wondered what the actual disease was - bubonic plague or tuberculosis or maybe Ebola virus, but in fact I think it’s most likely he just made it up.There have been many attempts at understanding why there were seven rooms and the meaning of the colours. It may be because he liked the imagery, but of course why did he like the imagery? What subconscious needs and desires do the colours represent. Discuss at your leisure. The story is about how even kings may not escape death, despite their pride and majesty and as such it reminds me of Oxymandias by Shelley and the Dog In Durer’s Etching story we did by Marco Denevi.It’s a very neat story structure. Introduce Red Death, introduce Prospero. He retreats from the world, describe the abbey. Now the Masquerade Ball. Now entry of Death. Now he’s dead. Finish. 16 minutes.What’s with the Ebony Clock? Perhaps counting down like a drum roll to increase suspense? Who knows?If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereYou could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)Become a Patronhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)And you can join my mailing list and get a free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback*** (https://bit.ly/somecomeback***)Support the show

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The Eye of The Cat by Ruskin Bond Jul 08, 2022

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Ruskin BondRuskin Bond was born in 1934 in Kasauli in Punjab, India. His first novel was published when he was 22, A Room on the Roof and it won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. He specialised in short stories of which he wrote more than five hundred. He lives in Mussoorie. Bond was born when India was part of the British Empire.. His father taught English to the Indian princesses of the Indian princely state of Nawanagar and bond lived with his family at the palace when he was a boy. At the beginning of the Second World War, his father Aubrey Alexander Bond joined the Royal Air Force. When Ruskin was only eight his father left his mother Edith Clarke and married an Indian, Hindu woman called Hari. (In the story, which has lots of autobiographical details, he says it was his mother who married an Indian man after his father died). His father arranged for him to come to New Delhi where he was posted and Ruskin was happy there and describes his childhood as magical. But his father died during the War when Ruskin was only 10. He went to an English style boarding school in Shimla and won a number of writing prizes when he was there. After finishing at Shimla he went to the Channel Islands (close to the French Coast but a possession of the English Crown) because his aunt lived there. He then went to London and worked in a photo studio. When his first novel was a success he used the money to pay his fare back to India. He worked as a writer there and has been a writer ever since.Despite his British ancestry he feels India. He has said about being Indian that race did not make him one, religion did not make him one, but history did. Most of his works deal with small town India, particularly the hill stations where he grew up. He has described small town India as his India. If You Appreciate The Work I’ve Put In HereYou could buy me a coffee https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker)Become a Patronhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)And you can join my mailing list and get a free audiobook: https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire (https://bit.ly/dalstonvampire)Music By The Heartwood Institutehttps://bit.ly/somecomeback*** (https://bit.ly/somecomeback***)Most of Ruskin’s stories aren’t ghost stories though he admits a fondness for the work of Lafcadio Haearn, an Irish writer who settled in Japan via the USA and specialised in ghost stories with a Japanese background. Support the show

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