Classic Ghost Stories

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Episode 57: The Mezzotint by M R James Jul 11, 2020

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M R JamesThis is the third story we've done by M R James, previous ones being https://player.captivate.fm/episode/a39d795e-df46-4123-a0bb-a12dec71069f (The Experiment) and Episode 3: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/a39d795e-df46-4123-a0bb-a12dec71069f (Whistle and I'll Come to You).We talked about James the man there. In a nutshell, he was an academic who had jobs at Eton College and Cambridge University. The heroes of his stories tend to be dusty old academics like himself. He is considered the godfather of the English ghost story, credited for moving the genre from the Gothic to a more modern incarnation. The MezzotintThe Mezzotint was published in 1904 as part of James's collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. The story is a simple one. An academic, Mr Williams, has a job of collecting prints of English country houses and such scenes for his University college. This is such a narrow and particular job it's a wonder to think that anyone had some a restricted role. He receives a catalogue from his dealer with a suggestion that he might like this particular mezzotint with a price tag of two guineas which seems exorbitant for such an amateur work. But as different people look at the mezzotint, it improves in quality and seems to be playing out a story. This leads to a detective investigation to find out where it is and the history of the place portrayed. So, there are two streams to the story: the rational detective work and the supernatural events unfolding in the picture which are quite demonic. James is famous for eschewing the cosy ghost story. He wanted his stories to be nasty. He has a real gift for introducing odd and jarring elements into his story which are disintinctly unnerving. There is something about the description of the figure, whose face is obscured apart from a domed forehead and some straggling hairs.And of course the theft of a child. Children coming to harm is always a nasty element. When the real-world investigation turns up the story of Francis having the poacher Gawdy hung and Gawdy promising revenge, it seems that the only explanation is that Gawdy returned after his death to exact his revenge. The other delightful aspect of the story is the series of in-jokes. James used to read his stories aloud to his colleagues, and so the in jokes about their obsession with golf and the snobby comments of the Sadducean Professor of Ophiology probably got some laughs. Some other features may not be familiar to the modern reader who has not been to Oxford of Cambridge, so the references to 'sporting' doors and 'skips' and 'Hall' are an insight into a world now gone outside these august establishments.New Book!Tony's latest book, London Horror Stories is available on https://amzn.to/2YSSHPb (Amazon UK) and https://amzn.to/2NgZHQu (Amazon US). Ghost and horror stories with a sense of place. https://tonywalker.substack.com/about (Subscribe For All Episodes!)Music by The Heartwood InstituteYou can listen to the album from which this is taken https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (here)Support the show

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Episode 56: The Curse of Mathair nan Uisgeachan by Angus Wolfe Murray Jul 04, 2020

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Angus Wolfe MurrayAngus Wolfe Murray was born in 1937 and now lives at Traquair in the Scottish Borders. With his late wife he founded Canongate Publishers. He comes from a celebrated Scottish family and his details can be found in the peerage. Edcated at Eton and working as a journalist and latterly a film critic. He is still alive, and while I am glad of that, I am slightly embarrassed that I thought he had died. I had been asked to do a Scottish story and I was keen to use my Scottish accent (my father was a Scot), and I found this story in an anthology of Scottish ghost stories. We have holidayed in the Highlands the past two years and it also gave me a chance to say some words in Gaelic.My first degree was in Celtic and I spent a summer in Stornoway learning Gaelic many years ago. I can't really speak it any more though. After I had recorded the story and started researching it, I found Angus Wolfe Murray was alive and I have tried to contact him via Twitter and I see he has a dormant Facebook page. I went ahead with the reading but if anyone can contact him, and he would like the episode removed, then of course I will do that. Mathair nan UisgeachanScottish Gaelic for The Mother of the Waters. The name of the whirlpool in the loch.The story begins as a very naturalistic tale of an idealistic young man from the Scottish upper classes who returns to the family estate and appreciates the history of the Highlands. He comments on the empty glen and alludes to the Highland Clearances and the remaining Highlanders wily ways and tenacity to keep to tradition. Tradition when the clan owned everything in common and Chief was not a feudal lord, but the father of the tribe. Hugh, coming back from Toronto is a reminder of the change in attitudes where the Gaelic Clan Chiefs were Anglicised and transformed themselves into property owners as per the standard European model.Hugh is not a sympathetic character, but his Canadian wife Anne is and our unnamed narrator falls for her. A love triangle evolves, though not as far or with as grisly outcome as in last weeks's story, Oscar Cook's Boomerang.The narrator goes to see his aunt Magda in Aberdeenshire, talks late and falls asleep. Though the fact he has fallen asleep is not stated specifically. We believe he has gone back to the castle as he says, but the story gets weirder until he in fact states that he must be dreaming. It is difficult at first to disentangle which is dream and which is waking. The weirdness of the dream is full of symbols and ends with the legend of the death of Lochlann, murdered by the man who thought he was his father. The story is conveyed in dream, but the ghost Lochlann appears in the real world too. First he is seen by Magda when he is with her sister Fiona, who died, and then he is seen by the narrator himself when he is with Anne. Though probably a ghost, he has some of the flavour of the fairy folk.It seems that the curse affects women who have a child and are unfaitful to their husbands. In the legend the wife Shona was unfaithful and her child was not her husbands. I think it is possible that Anne's child was not Hughe's but was in fact conceived that day of the fishing trip, though this is not specifically mentioned.Ten-year old Fiona was drowned, presumably as part of the curse, though she had not been unfaithful and her body was found in the river, not the whirlpool.All in all though, Angus Wolfe Murray conjures the Highlands wonderfully and I kept thinking of the landscape off the A9 road that we travelled through last year on our trip to Inverness. He also manages to convey the feel of this fairy haunted land and Support the show

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Episode 55 Boomerang by Oscar Cook Jun 27, 2020

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Boomerang by Oscar CookFirst of all, this story was requested by Peter Denyer. To be fair he merely suggested it and I went and hunted it down, so I accept all responsiblity for the gruesomeness of it.Richard Martin Oscar Cook was born in London in 1888 and died also in London in 1952. His father owned an athletic goods company and they were fairly well-off. He seems to have been brought up in Broxbourne just outside London and his first job was a clerk there but very shortly afterwards he went to make his fortune in a rubber planation in Borneo. Unfortunately he did not get on well and was sacked, but remained in Borneo and got another job in the British Colonial Service.He was an administrator of the British Empire and worked in North Borneo from 1911 until 1918 and then had District Officer posts. This was a position in the British Colonial Service and these administrators and often magistrate was at the heart of colonial administration in the British colonies.He was married in 1924 to Christine Campbell Thomson but got divorced in 1938.When he returned to England he wrote an autobiography of his time in Borneo and thereafter wrote supernatural stories, many of which appeared in various anthologies. This story appeared in the 2nd Pan Book of Horror. I used to read those books when I was a kid, which may explain a lot.Cook bought a controlling interest in a publishing company which produced a series of horror anthologies called Not at Night which ran to twelve books.BoomerangBoomerang is usually used to refer to a weapon of wood made by the native people of Australia which reputedly returns to the person who throws it. This story Boomerang first appeared in an antholog in 1931 and was later dramatised for television as The Caterpillar broadcast in March 1972. Cook's most famous story is His Beautiful Hands which I may read at some point in the future. There are several mysteries about this story. Why is it called Boomerang?Why was it called The Caterpillar when filmed, because it's about an earwing, not a caterpillar.The story pushes the gruesome in a fairly predictable way. It's very linear and we have Warwick the narrator pausing to ramp up the tension and adding horrid detail after horrid detail. Firstly, there's an earwig that's really big. Then it eats wax, but best of all it likes human earwax. Then it goes in the ear, and it is going to eat its way right through to the other ear (a fearsome feat of navigation for the earwig, and why would it bother coming out?) And then ha ha! It's a female so it's going to lay eggs!!!! What horror.The other elements seem to come from the Boy's Own Stories of the later British Empire, but also seen in stories of the American West where men wrestle for hunting knives to fight over women who stand and watch, terrified but fascinated. They had some funny ideas about men and women in those days.There are clear traces of its time and period in the casual sexism towards women who always fall to flirting and never know the consequences of the games they play. They can be stolen by other men (presumably not by other women...) and they are prone to irrational actions. At least the narrator gains the moral high ground over Warwick in that he insists that Rhona must have a point of view.When I was a young man I had a girlfriend who's mother had been brought up on a tea plantation in Ceylon (as it was then). It gave me a glimpse into a vanished world of the British Empire and reading this story brough back whiffs of that world as told to me by my girlfriend's mum.You can watch The Caterpillar on Daily Motion https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgo6g (here)SupporSupport the show

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Episode 54: The Bridal Party by S Mukerji Jun 20, 2020

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The Bridal Party by S MukerjeeS Mukerji, whose name appears in various transliterations, including S Mukherjee, published his book of Indian Ghost Stories in 1917. I can find no biographical information on him, or even what his first name was. I wondered if he were related to the Mukherjee family who pioneered Indian cinema in the early 20th Century. I have no evidence that he is!At the time of writing the first edition he lived in Calcutta (Kolkata) and his stories show his familiarity and residence in Bengal, but he later lived in Allahbad (Prayagraj) in Uttar Pradesh. The name Mukerji is a Kulin Brahmin name and common in West Bengal.He moved in high circles and his friends were judges and lawyers during the later British Raj. He alludes that his father had a coachman and he had a nurse growing up.I picked an Indian story because there are a lot of Indian listeners to the podcast. The ghost story form was very prevalent in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods and then metamophosized into the uncanny tale and later into a branch of speculative fiction. Running in parallel with the fictional ghost story, we have "true accounts" which are the reportedly true accounts of visitors to actual places. Years ago, I ran the Haunted Britain and Ireland website which specialised in sending visitors to locations with supposedly true ghost hauntings. There is still great mileage in the true account genre and there are a good number of podcasts, TV shows and Youtube channels still seeking people's personal accounts of ghosts. With The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast I had deliberately kept to fictional stories up until now.I excuse myself because S Mukerjee writes his story in dramatic form rather than just as a witness report and he gives characters who have lines within the story.Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Facebook GroupWhy not join Classic Ghost Stories Podcast on https://www.facebook.com/classicghoststories/ (Facebook) for the lastest news?MusicBeginning music ‘Some Come Back’ is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Because I had a little more time, I included the full track of The Heartwood Institute's Powers of Darkness just to chill your bones.Support the show

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Episode 53: Little Heart by Georgina Bruce Jun 13, 2020

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Georgina BruceGeorgina Bruce is a British writer, born in the West Midlands of England but who has taught English in different parts of the world, not least in sub-tropical Okinawa in Japan before spending the last ten years or so teaching in less sub-tropical Edinburgh, Scotland.Little HeartLittle Heart is a dark tale that explores a woman's confused memories of her childhood and her conflicted relationships with her mother, once a film star, and her father who smells of ink and paper and at times is indistinguishable from a dark-beaked crow.Full of luscious imagery, the story reminded me of the work of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson with its fairytale themes and dark twists.In the interview Georgina talks about her influences and the nature of her stories. She has just finished a novella Honeybones, and this story comes from her very well-reviewed collection This House of WoundsGeorgina's Linkshttp://www.georginabruce.com/tag/honeybones/ (Her Website Monster Soup)https://undertowpublications.com/shop (Her publisher Undertow Publications)https://amzn.to/2TBPpOw (This House of Wounds on Amazon UK)https://amzn.to/2X2d1Ow (This House of Wounds on Amazon.com)Call to Action! Patreon!A big thank you to my Patreon supporters. These ongoing pledges help me continue to produce the Podcast, paying as they do for hosting and other ongoing costs. If you have enjoyed listening to this, and other episodes, I would like to invite you to consider becoming a Patreon to help me produce more of what you enjoy!As well as helping me out, Patreons get exclusive content, usually in the form of stories that are not available for free elsewhere.If you could sign up, I would be extremely grateful.Tonyhttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (Here's the Link)Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Facebook GroupWhy not join Classic Ghost Stories Podcast on https://www.facebook.com/classicghoststories/ (Facebook) for the lastest news?MusicBeginning music ‘Some Come Back’ is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Support the show

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Episode 52 A Visit by Shirley Jackson Jun 06, 2020

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Shirley JacksonShirley Hardie Jackson was bon in 1916 in San Francisco, California and died in Vermont in 1965 aged only 48. Though born in California, she attended Syracuse University in New York where she became involved in literary affairs. She published her first novel in 1948 when she was 32, but it was her short story The Lottery that brought her to public attention. Published in The New Yorker it divided opinion between those who thought it bold and daring and those who found it macabre and disturbing. In essence, like a lot of Jackson's work, it starts out in a realist, every day setting of a folksy rural community where everyone behaves just like we know they would, and then it turns out they have a mysterious lottery where the winner (or loser!) gets sacrificed for some undisclosed reason -- maybe just because it's tradition. She puts in such everyday details of community life that it's a real switch and bait as we think we're getting a home-town story and then it turns weird.Jackson's work has more than a touch of the surreal and I was reminded of the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges as I was reading her collection Dark Tales recently. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1958 and is considered the best haunted house story ever written. I enjoyed it very much. She also wrote We Have Always Lived In The Castle towards the end of her life and I must admit I haven't yet read it!Jackson didn't take care of her health and ate and drank too much. This led to heart disease which killed her in 1965.Jackson didn't get on with her mother who seems not to have wanted her much and this seems to be echoed in themes of mothers and estranged daughters in lots of her stories. Jackson was a wildly interesting character. She played the guitar, sang folk songs and could also play the zither. I wonder if she seems so interesting because we know more about her, being more recent, and I wonder if any of the old Victorian and older 18th Century Gothic writers were equally as quirky. Certainly Byron, Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft seem a wild crowd, and we know about them because they were famous and rich. Jackson told people she was a practising witch and joked (?) that she put hexes on publishers and critics who offended her. This may not have been just a joke as these were the years of the first growth of Wicca and occultism was definitely a thing following Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons and others. Jackson suffered from extreme anxiety and saw a psychiatrist who prescribed barbiturates and amphetamines, and then other meds to counteract the effects of these. This cocktail probably didn't help much.A new movie of her life Shirley has come out this year 2020 but I can't see it because all the cinemas are shut due to lock down...There is a nice review a biography of Jackson called A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin in the New Yorker, and you can find it https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/the-haunted-mind-of-shirley-jackson (here)A VisitA Visit was first published under the title A Lovely House in 1950, and then reissued after Jackson's death in 1968 as A Visit The horror literature critic S T Joshi describes it as a 'quiet weird tale at its pinnacle' and refers to 'manner in which a house can subsume its occupants.'At first listen, or maybe even second, I thought, what the heck is this story about?Like last week's story, Mr Jones, this is a gothic tale. We have a large and rambling house which is full of mystery, we have an imprisoned woman in the tower (old Margaret), we have unreliable witnesses, I told trust Mr and Mrs Montague, or Carla one inch.When Margaret is being Support the show

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Episode 51 Mr Jones by Edith Wharton May 30, 2020

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Mr Jones by Edith WhartonThis is the second Edith Wharton story we've read, the first being https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/7696635d-86ff-42d2-a2cf-317694d891d6/1747150-episode-4-bewitched-by-edith-wharton.mp3 (Bewitched which was Episode 4). Wharton was an American of course but she spent time in England and set a number of her ghost stories there. This story is the third of a series of stories where the house is a major character. In this story of course, the house is inhabited by the ghost of Mr Jones as we learn. As normal with Wharton there is incredible craft in the shaping of this story. It is at least in part a mystery story and we are familiar with the mystery ghost story where the ghost is debunked at the end, not least in Scooby Doo, but also in Wilkie Collin's The Woman in White. We have the mystery of the house with the strange old servants. We realise early on that Mrs Clemm has something to hide and her niece Georgina who is portrayed as a clumsy idiot is actually the one whose information ties up the tale.We have locked room, conniving housekeepers, blind gardeners and a historical tragedy to boot. The poor deaf and dumb Juliana, locked up in the house by the evil Mr Jones on the orders of her philandering husband is a Gothic staple and Wharton knew this of course and probably drew the character knowingly with a nod to gothic tradition. Wharton does a bit of foreshadowing that you might not get at first listen, but early on in the story when she is impressed with Bells, she muses about her ancestors who lived and died there and adds, unknowingly that to some of them, it may have been a prison! We later learn that it was indeed.Then when Lady Jane asks Mrs Clemm to take her to Mr Jones, Mrs Clemm agrees that he's not well; "He's between life and death as it were." This is in fact the literal truth but we don't understand that at this point and take from some figurative description. In fact, Mrs Clemm tells the exact truth: "He'd know you, my lady, but you wouldn't know him." "He's in no state for you to see him." Wharton must have had fun writing that.I think that the posh lady guests breaking off to crush over the Tempeltonia Recusa rare plant by the wall is probably an in joke that Wharton's friends may have recognised as a reference to their mutual acquaintances.She sees Mr Jones only once, when she enters the Blue Room to retrieve her friend's lost handbag. Her friend Stramer doesn't notice him, but Mr Jones is messing about in the citron desk where the incriminating papers are later found. We learn slowly, detail by detail that this Blue Room had been the prison of Juliana the poor shut-away wife.The first clue is the tomb of old Peregrine who died at Aleppo of the Plague and 'Also His Wife' unnamed. Things move on and we don't get another clue for a while.Then the next clue is them finding her portrait and Lady Jane mentioning that she might look so miserable because she was an inconsolable at his death. Stramer, a bright chap, says that they didn't dress like that as late as Peregrine's death so she was clearly miserable before he died.They identify the poor woman as Lady Juliana. Stramer is a font of knowledge. Not only does he know about fashion, but he remarks that they clearly used the Blue Parlour in those days, even in winter. She's leaning on the citron desk: it's here the secret of her fate is of course, though we don't know that at this point. And Stramer then mentions the family archives, which Lady Jane hasn't thought of yet. She only knows Mr Jones won't allow her access to them because the key is lost. Hmm. Convenient. Stramer says that in Mrs Clemm's Support the show

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Episode 50 Fullcircle by John Buchan May 23, 2020

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John Buchan: John Buchan, officially 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was born in 1875 in Perth, Scotland and died in 1940 aged only 64 in Montreal, Canada. He was Governor General of Canada until he died in office. His father was a minister of the Church of Scotland. Many of our ghost story writers are children of clergymen. He studied Classics at the University of Glasgow and then moved to Oxford University. After that he went to South Africa where he was private secretary to the High Commissioner of South Africa. Like Kipling, who we read last week, Buchan was a conservative son of the British Empire. He was a bit of a softie for a conservative though because later when MP for Peebles just south of Edinburgh, he supported votes for women, national health insurance for the poor and curtailing the power of the House of Lords.Though a Scot, he was not a Scottish Nationalist, and in common with many Scots of his class and time, he though Scotland was best off within the British Empire.When he returned from South Africa, he was called to the English Bar as a barrister (an advocate in Scotland). He was also editor of the still existing conservative magazine: The Spectator.In 1916, Buchan went to the Western Front, attached to the Intelligence Corps. Just before this he had just published his famous spy story The 39 Steps. In 1935, Buchan went as Governor General to Canada. He had always liked Canada, written about it as a journalist and fought alongside Canadian troops in the First World War. He encouraged a distinct Canadian identity and nationality. He hosted King George VI on the king's tour of Canada. He suffered a stroke at Rideau Hall and then a head injury as he fell. He was treated by the famous neurologist Wilder Penfield. I wonder at Buchan's favouring the rather gloomy, death-fearing folk he contrasts with the happy builder of Fullcircle with his Catholic/Pagan sensibilities. Technical DifficultiesI had very strange technical difficulties in recording this story. The recording kept skipping, parts disappeared, parts recorded on the same track. Of course, it could be the new version of Reaper, or it could be that the story is haunted!There are some weird clicks and bumps that I've tried to get rid of, but I think some remain.FullcircleAgain, the house is the main character in this story, the house of the ghost behind it: Lord Carteron.The first clue that he haunts the house is in the history where Leithen tells our narrator Peckwether that Lord Carteron's soul is in the house Fullcircle. Leithan talks about his own house Borrowby and how the Ancient England knew death. He talks of the restoration of the monarchy and the Merry Monarch Charles II after the English Civil War and how the Restoration brought paganism to England and those pagan types were able to live in a bland happiness. That's Leithen's big complaint against Full Circle and the easy, lazy happiness it produces in the people who live there and the ghost of Lord Carteron who moulds them in his easy going image. Personally, I'm quite keen on happiness bland or otherwise, but Buchan seems to look down his nose at it. The man who built Fullcircle, Leithen says, knew have to live: 'The trouble was, they didn't know how to die.'. He accuses them in their paganess to trying magic and never becoming true Catholics, just going to Catholicism because of its ritual. Leithan is a bit miserable. He tells Giffen that the paradaisical countryside in June makes him sad. Giffen now converted from socialism to paganism can't understand him! Leithen says the Cotswold countryside in June is too perfect a thing for fallen humanity. Giffen thinks him morSupport the show

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Episode 49 They by Rudyard Kipling May 16, 2020

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Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling was the great poet of British Imperialism. He was born in 1865 in Mumbai (then Bombay) British India. He died in London, England in 1936 aged 70.He was named Rudyard because that was the place his parents had met and courted at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England. Kipling was well-connected. HIs cousin was a conservative prime minister and two of his aunts were married to famous painters, one the great pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-JonesHe was immensely successful and you will have heard of The Jungle Book via Disney if nowhere else, but also his books Kim, Gunga Dinand his famous poems (at least to British schoolboys of my generation) Mandalay and I imagine the world-famous poem If is familiar to most peopl.eHe actually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. Henry James thought he was a literary genius. Kipling has the ability to write wonderful prose that puts us right in the scene, whether that me the lush English countryside, dusty India or a grand old haunted house.It is worth saying also that Kipling also evidenced great affection for India and the Indians. He had a nanny or 'ayah' when he was small, but went back to England for his education. Interestling, after he finished at his military school, which he found a little rough, at the age of 17, it was decided he wasn't smart enough to go to Oxford University so he sailed back to India, where he became a journalist. To him, landing back in India was a home coming. He published a collection of short stories set in British India in 1886; Plain Tales from the Hills, these had previously been released over a period of two years in a Lahore magazine. He travelled back to England in 1889, via Rangoon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and San Francisco. He travelled around the USA and Canada before going back to London, spending time in the Pacific North West at Portland, Seattle, British Columbia then going east via Alberta to the Yellowstone National park, Omaha, Chicago, Washington DC, New York and Boston. He met Mark Twain and was very impressed with him. At that time, Twain had published Tom Sawyer and was writing Huckleberry Finn. He then took ship to Liverpool from whence he went to London to great literary acclaimHe went back to America for his honeymoon and it was in Vermont that he got the idea of The Jungle Book. He stayed in New England for a whle and was visited by Arthur Conan Doyle and met Theodore Roosevelt.He visited South Africa each winter and then in 1897, settled in rural Sussex and he lived there until his death in 1897 in a great house called Batemans.TheyThey was first published in Scribner's Magazine for August 1904 and then collected in Traffics and Discoveries in the same year. The 'house beautiful' that it describes is thought to be modelled on his own house in Sussex. I hadn't picked up on this, but some reviewers infer that the visitor's own child has died, and this makes sense of the passage where he says he never sees the faces of his own dead in his dreams. The butler has also lost a child who is now walking in the wood. The butler won't accept a tip for setting the visitor back on his way, which may indicate some commonality of feeling and loss. The girl's kiss on his hand at the end which breaks the spell, is the special kiss of his own dead daughter, and it is only at this point he realises (though we had this figured much earlier) that the children are ghosts of the children who have died. The point is that Miss Florence has never borne a child so she can never see them. In this sense her blindness is symbolic. He can see them and ultimately feel them because he liSupport the show

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Episode 48: The Dining Room Ghost by Megan Taylor May 09, 2020

Show notes

Megan TaylorMegan is a British author, who has four novels, the latest being https://amzn.to/2z94akj (We Wait) UK link and https://amzn.to/2XQOFI1 (We Wait) USA LinkMegan lives in Nottingham, England. She teaches Creative Writing workshops has published four novels: We Wait (the latest, which is a haunted house story), The Woman Under the Ground which is a collection of short stories, The Lives of Ghosts and **The Dawning. They are all very well reviewed and there is great praise for the writing.In the interview we talked about a love for the short story form and for ghost stories in general, though not all of Megan's work is in the ghost/horror genre.The Dining Room GhostIt was good being able to talk to the author about what she intended in the story rather than me guessing what long dead writers meant in theirs. The Dining Room Ghost was partly inspired by Megan half-seeing something when overtired coming down the stairs with her young baby. We talked about the silent woman ghosts, often with long hair, sometimes drowned that keep cropping up in horror but she said she wanted the ghost to be the silence and quiet in a house of screaming babies and the busy head of the young mother. The mother seems to want silence and peace above all, and there is just one way to get it!There is ambiguity about the ghost: is it a ghost or is it a post natal psychosis? In that there is a strong pedigree of ghost stories with unreliable narrators; The Yellow Wallpaper being one and The Horlaanother among the stories we have read out. This is a theme in our culture as a whole -- are people who see ghosts simply mad, or do they reveal a whole other realm by their seeing what the rest of us cannot?We talked about a Freudian interpretation where the ghost is a dissociated part of the narrator -- her Shadow if you like (though that is a Jungian term that Freud would not have liked!). The emotions embodied in the ghost, murderous waiting amongst them, belong properly to the narrator, but she cannot tolerate them so she splits this desire to destroy the baby (and thus have quiet) off from herself and creates this spirit.It occurred to me that her standing by the patiently ticking clock introduced a kind of inevitability to the ending which we did not at first suspect, but given the clock was there all along as a kind of hint, perhaps we should have known that the time of silence would finally come.Quite a disturbing story then. Authors!Writers of ghost stories, weird tales, folk horror and other sorts of unnerving fiction, feel free to contact me through the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast Facebook page/direct message if you would like your story read out and to be interviewed on a future episode of the podcast.Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!)http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Facebook GroupWhy not join Classic Ghost Stories Podcast on https://www.facebook.com/classicghoststories/ (Facebook) for the lastest news?MusicBeginning music ‘Some Come Back’ is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) . The end music is by MYUU Bad EncounterSupport the show

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