All Hallows

Written by Walter De La Mare and first published in 1926 in 'The Connoisseur and Other Stories', 'All Hallows' tells the story of a traveller's visit to a remote cathedral and his meeting with the verger who tells him of the strange goings on within building.

De La Mare's tale is a masterclass of atmosphere and suggestion.  Any and all sense of the uncanny is literally in the telling, both De La Mare's and the Verger's (and indeed in Richard E Grant's sympathetic reading), and in our and the traveller's imaginations as, potentially, nothing actually uncanny happens beyond a tour of the cathedral at dusk in the company of a companion spinning a yarn of disappearance, death and devilry.  The story ends on a positive note for the future, but we are left guessing as to the veracity of the Verger's tale of diabolic renovations but captivated by the story he's spun.

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Shades of Darkness: Seaton's Aunt

Written by Walter de la Mare in 1922, 'Seaton's Aunt' is a psychological horror which tells a tale of cruelty and familial abuse and, perhaps, of psychic vampirism.

Arthur Seaton is a rather meek and nervous boy, bullied at school by his classmates and at home by his domineering aunt.  Following a small kindness he invites the more vigorous and popular Withers home for the holiday where the visitor is shown the deeply unhealthy relationship between the boy and his guardian and is brought into Seaton's confidence regarding what he believes to be his aunt's 'true' nature.  Further visits, as an adult reintroduces Withers to the household and the depths of the antipathy that exists between it's residents.

Adapted in 1983 as part of a little known anthology series, 'Shades of Darkness' this version features Mary Morris as the titular character.  More widely known in Wyrd Britain as the old shaman Panna in the Doctor Who episode Kinda and, in the episode "Dance of the Dead", as one of the many inhabitants of the Number Two chair in The Prisoner, here she turns in an outrageous performance filled with sarcastic vitriol and scenery chewing grandiosity.  As Seaton and Withers, Adam Lal and Joshua de la Mare as the young versions and Paul Herzberg and Peter Settelen as the adult provide sympathetic portrayals of the two very different men but all pale next to Morris' gothic harridan.

Until the final act this is a fairly faithful recreation of the original and when the change, which does rob the story of much of it's supernatural ambiguity, happens I found I didn't really mind all that much with the televised ending being perhaps being as characteristic of the time it was made as much as the, arguably much better, original ending is it's own era and they both conclude with the same devastating final statement.



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Great Ghost Stories

Readers Digest

A volume which brings together 46 of the very best ghost stories ever written and includes classic works from masters of intrigue like M. R. James, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Nesbit and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

Readers Digest is one of those things that exists around you without ever really making any noticeable impact on your life.  I see their books occasionally and I remember a Simpsons episode where Homer got hooked on one but apart from that they're just one of those companies that exist somewhere doing something for someone who isn't me.  So, it was a bit of a shock when I stumbled upon this fantastic tome of an anthology.

Elizabeth Jane Howard

Handily presented in alphabetical order the book provides us with a veritable who's who of ghostly fiction with stories from the likes of Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, both the James' (M.R. & Henry), Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker most of whom can be pretty much expected to make an appearance alongside less common compatriots such as Lord Dunsany here represented by the lovely 'Autumn Cricket', Cynthia Asquith's tale of redemption in 'The Corner Shop', Walter de la Mare's 'Seaton's Aunt' and the Chinese whispers of Emile Zola's 'Angeline, or the Haunted House'.

There's also a fine selection of stories by writers I was utterly unfamiliar with like Shamus Frazer whose 'Florinda' is a wonderfully macabre tale of an angry and vengeful spirit, Elizabeth Jane Howard who tells in 'Three Miles Up' an intriguing tale of friendship, enigmatic strangers and the perils of journeying into the unknown or Marghanita Laski whose short but terrifying 'The Tower' is a real highlight in a book filled with creepy delights.

Marghanita Laski

This is a book that offers a veritable cornucopia of goodies and achieves an easy balance between the old, the new, the classic and the unknown.  It doesn't let itself get too hidebound by the word 'Ghosts' in the title and includes stories - like 'The Tower', 'Three Miles Up' or 'Ringing the Changes'- that are far from typical of the genre yet are intrinsically part of it's very fabric.

Opening the book and seeing the huge number of authors I knew I was going to enjoy working my way through it.  Just how much I enjoyed it though was a real treat to discover.

The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales

Kathleen Lines (editor)
Puffin Books

This is one of a fairly large selection of books that have sat patiently on my shelf waiting their turn in the sun.  The hideous cover art was always going to work against this one but a quick gander inside revealed a pretty interesting contents page.  There are a few stories here that are pretty ubiquitous anthology fare and a few authors that I was already very familiar with but what really caught my eye was one particular name that's been on my wants list for years, Walter de la Mare, but we'll come to him in due course.

The book presents some 26 stories ranging from the late 19th to the late 1960s when the book was originally published - this Puffin reprint is 1972.

As I said there are a couple of anthology staples here M.R. James' 'A School Story', William Croft Dickinson's 'cursed family of 'The Return of the Native', W.W. Jacob's unlucky 'The Monkey's Paw' and the exemplary folk horror of Saki's 'Gabriel-Ernest', but these are only 4 amongst 26 so there is much that is new and unfamiliar waiting to be discovered.

W.W. Jacobs

Opening the book is a story by the American writer Edward Lucas White which has provided the collection with it's name.  The story itself is a pretty run of the mill haunted house story that has a better title than narrative.  It's followed by 'The Hauntings at Thorhallstead' which tells an old Icelandic saga about an angry spirit and the hero who defeats him.  It's one of two folktales included here, the other being the English folktale 'Mr Fox', and is the least satisfying thing here.  Folktales are rarely narratively satisfying and this one is very much the case in point as bad stuff happens for no reason and is put right but in a way that allows it to carry on regardless for no good reason. 'Mr Fox' on the other hand is a much more satisfying tale of macabre events and righteous retribution.

Elizabeth Bowen

The aforementioned William Croft Dickinson makes another appearance with an attempt at a more modern sort of ghost story featuring a computer and a set of numbers, the significance of which you'll be able to guess fairly easily.  Elizabeth Bowen offers up a spiteful tale of society girls whilst L.M. Boston tells a Jamesian tale of lost antiquities.

Ambrose Bierce makes a fairly customary appearance in one of these anthologies with the especially vindictive little tale of 'John Bartine's Watch', a short but macabrely satisfying tale of curiosity killing the cat's friend and 'A Diagnosis of Death' a four page short with little to recommend it.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch provides an odd and folky tale of a drunken bet, soggy ghosts, detached body parts and unrequited fancies which, after an odd opening that sent me online to look up 'eggy hot' proved to be an enjoyable read as did E.F. Bozman's 'The Red Cane'; I do like a happy ghost story.

Walter de la Mare

And so we arrive at the Walter de la Mare story, 'Bad Company'.  de la Mare has been heading my must read list for a few months now after I finally managed to track down a good selection of Robert Aickman stories.  A first encounter is always important and this proved auspicious.  It certainly wasn't as odd as I was expecting with its tale of a wandering spirit and post-mortem remorse but it was beautifully written and very satisfying in it's simplicity of purpose.

Whilst we're on the topic of simple next up is Henry Cecil's bar-room anecdote of fugitives and mountain rescue.  It's an unoffensive little tale brought to life by the simple humour of it's ending.  This is followed by the vaguely unsatisfying 'The Amulet' by Thomas Raddall which ends up as a bit of a tedious fantasy story and leads into A.J. Alan's murderous and  unfunny 'The Hair'.

The fiction section of the book ends on a high with 'The Earlier Service' by Margaret Irwin where a young girl is terrorised by ancient events at her father's church.

The book finishes with several supposedly real short encounters by authors.  They are all well presented  and readable but truthfully I have little interest in 'true life' ghost stories and only a day later I can't remember a single one of them which I think speaks volumes about both them and me.

Under that pig ugly cover this proved to be a most readable collection and an engaging selection of the known and the obscure.