With Christmas fast approaching and the ghost story season with it, this is perhaps a useful time to ask where the phenomenon of the Haunted House story first came from. For some, what effectively launched the genre of Haunted House stories was The Haunted and the Haunters, described by H P Lovecraft himself as “one of the best short haunted house tales ever written.” It is based on reports the writer, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, had heard about a building in the heart of London’s Mayfair, but it is also perhaps based on his own real life experiences. Lytton was born in London in 1803 and, despite his noble birth, was forced to earn his living as a writer, until he inherited the title of Lord Lytton in 1866. In the interim, he had become popular with readers for his historical novels – notably The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) – and a number of stories of the occult and supernatural. Highly regarded among these are his novel A Strange Story (1861) and short story Glenallan. The family seat of Lord Lytton was Knebworth House, a notable Tudor mansion, with a beautiful Jacobean banqueting hall, overlain with a 19th century Victorian Gothic exterior. Knebworth House has been the home of the Lytton family since 1490 and boasts some hauntings of a deeply personal nature. For example, the family is warned of an impending death by the sound and occasional sighting of a girl named Jenny, spinning. Other phenomena include a presence in the rooms once frequented by Edward Bulwer-Lytton himself, who died in 1873, and some believe he may have decided to remain there. “The pen is mightier than the sword” – an iconic proverb coined by Lytton in 1839 – is a phrase which makes regular appearances to this very day; just like its creator, the ghost of whom is said to haunt the gothic stately home where he once lived.
The Myth of London Stone
21 Nov
London Stone has been a landmark for centuries. And where facts and science have failed to provide a definite history, myths have flourished. London’s Cannon Street is a frantic mêlée during the morning rush hour. As commuters hurry to work, few notice the small crypt, with a glass encasement within it, built into the wall of 111 Cannon Street. Fewer still know that to peer inside would reveal a stone – nothing extravagant, just a lump of oolitic limestone. There are no precious metals or engravings; it’s not a dazzling artefact you might find in a museum. But what it is, and has been as long as records exist, is a literal and metaphorical part of London. Some 18th-Century writers even suggested that, much like the palladium that protected the city of Troy in Ancient Greek mythology, the stone’s survival is key to the continued existence of London itself. One thing that is for sure is that it is always there, and always remains the same, it has stood roughly in the same spot, while everything around it has changed. To this day, however, the exact origin of this 53cm-by-43cm-by-30cm piece of rock, known as London Stone, remains a mystery. Studies undertaken in the 1960s revealed it was likely Clipsham limestone, probably extracted from the band of Jurassic-era rock that runs from Dorset in England’s south-west to Lincolnshire in the north-east. London Stone was included on the earliest printed maps of the city in the 16th Century. What remains today is only a fraction of the original stone that was once embedded in the ground in the centre of Candlewick Street, now known as Cannon Street, a short walk from the Tower of London. John Stow, a 16th-Century London historian, wrote in 1598: “It is so strongly set, that if carts do run against it through negligence, the wheels be broken, and the stone itself unshaken.” It was an entirely impractical position, no doubt, but bearing how much the topography has changed in London over the last millennium, it’s fair to assume that the streets were built around the stone. But that is all we can say definitively.
Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected
17 Oct
Nowadays everybody knows who Roald Dahl is – one of the most popular children’s writers the world has ever known – but there is also a generation who first became aware of him sitting in his cardigan introducing the TV series Tales of the Unexpected. For a while there were two Roald Dahls in people’s consciousness. One – the Tales of the Unexpected Dahl – who wrote slightly sinister, blackly humorous adult stories with a sting in the tail. The other – the Willy Wonka Dahl – who wrote slightly sinister, blackly humorous children’s stories illustrated by Quentin Blake. And back in 1979 the TV Dahl, the Tales of the Unexpected Dahl, took over for a while. After all, he had yet to write many of his most popular kids’ books, like The Twits, The BFG, Matilda and The Witches. But there is a third Roald Dahl, and that is the one to be found in the pages of his short stories – quite simply the master of the short-story form – because there is so much more to his tales than ‘the unexpected’, a label that has perhaps been too often applied to his adult work and which gives too narrow a view of its appeal. If every story consisted of nothing more than a twist we would read them once, perhaps skipping through to the big reveal, and then forget all about them. But you never forget a Dahl short story. He starts with ones based on his experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War and ends with ones of country life. In between there is horror, comedy, science fiction, satire and sex. Yes, many of them do end with a final drop of acid, but the pleasure goes far beyond the punchline.
The Most Haunted Places in Dorset
19 Sep
The distant past is perhaps more tangible in Dorset than in any other part of England. Predominantly rural, this county overlaps substantially with the ancient kingdom of Wessex, whose most famous ruler, Alfred the Great, repulsed the Danes in the ninth century and came close to establishing the first unified state in England. Before Wessex came into being, however, many earlier civilizations had left their stamp on the region. The chalky uplands of nearby Wiltshire boast several of Europe’s greatest Neolithic sites, including Stonehenge and Avebury, while in Dorset you’ll find Maiden Castle, the most striking Iron Age hill fort in the country, and the Cerne Abbas Giant, source of many a legend. The Romans tramped all over this southern county, leaving the most conspicuous signs of their occupation at the amphitheatre of Dorchester – though that town is more closely associated with the novels of Thomas Hardy and his distinctively gloomy vision of Wessex. None of the landscapes of this region could be described as grand or wild, but the countryside is consistently seductive, its appeal exemplified by the crumbling fossil-bearing cliffs around Lyme Regis, the managed woodlands of the New Forest, or the gentle, open curves of Salisbury Plain. With this weight of history it is hardly surprising to hear that Dorset has often been called one of the most haunted parts of the British Isles. You can feel your skin crawl as you stand amidst the ghostly occupants of Dorset’s spooky pubs, stately homes and historic buildings, where paranormal activity haunts the grounds and current residents. From whispering voices and swirling white mists to eerie spirits and ghastly ghouls, Dorset is full of haunted locations and ghost stories, guaranteed to leave you with a chill.
The doppelgänger effect
15 Aug
A doppelgänger is a mysterious, exact double of a living person. It’s a German word that literally translates to “double walker” or “double goer”. A doppelganger isn’t someone who just resembles you, but is an exact double, right down to the way you walk, act, talk, and dress. A friend or even a close relative who encounters your doppelganger will swear it was you, even though you can prove you were not in the location the double was sighted. Although the word doppelgänger is often used in a more general and neutral sense, and in slang, to describe any person who physically resembles another person, in German folklore it is used to described a wraith or apparition of a living person, as distinguished from a ghost. The concept of the existence of a spirit double, an exact but usually invisible replica of every man, bird, or beast, is an ancient and widespread belief. To meet one’s double is a sign that one’s death is imminent. The doppelgänger became a popular symbol of horror literature, and the theme took on considerable complexity. In The Double (1846), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for example, a poor clerk, Golyadkin, driven to madness by poverty and unrequited love, beholds his own wraith, who succeeds in everything at which Golyadkin has failed. Finally the wraith succeeds in disposing of his original. An earlier, well-known story of a doppelgänger appears in the 1815 novel The Devil’s Elixir, by the German writer of fantastic tales E.T.A. Hoffmann. In fiction and mythology, a doppelgänger is often portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelgänger with an evil twin. In modern times, the term twin stranger is occasionally used.
The Highgate Vampire
18 Jul
For years, North London had been plagued with a series of apparently inexplicable events and sightings, in and around the confines of Highgate Cemetery, culminating one Friday morning in February of 1970, when the Hampstead and Highgate Express ran a headline calibrated to chill the blood of residents across suburban north London: “Does a Vampyre Walk in Highgate?”. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of bizarre events occurred in and around Highgate. In 1967, two adolescent girls walking home along nearby Swain’s Lane claimed to have witnessed the dead rising from their graves by the cemetery’s north gate. Another teenager had been awoken one night with “something cold and clinging” on her hand, which left prominent marks the next morning, while reports circulated of a “tall man in a hat” walking in the area, before melting through the cemetery’s walls. Then, more chillingly, in the 1970s, several animals were found dead and drained of blood near Highgate Cemetery. A number of ‘sightings’ of phantoms and spectres – particularly of a tall, dark-cloaked entity with burning eyes – led to speculation the capital had acquired its very own vampire. Reports soon came from Highgate of tombs being broken into. Graves and bodies were desecrated and black magic rituals allegedly performed. Vampire hunters claimed to have broken open coffins, and plunged stakes into – and even burnt – the corpses of the ‘undead’. Newspapers obsessed over these strange occurrences. TV programmes were made about a supposed nest of vampires in Highgate Cemetery and those promising to root out this ancient evil were interviewed. In the years that followed, two men went to war over the narrative.
Mystery of the Mothman
20 Jun
Perhaps the most widely known and talked about modern American myth is that of the Mothman, a creature first documented in the late 1960s. Since then, the Mothman has been spotted countless times in the United States. Some say it’s a harbinger of cataclysmic events. Others say it’s an alien life form with connections to UFOs and Men in Black. Many thing it has a more practical explanation, is a hoax, or is the product of mass hysteria. Whatever the case, the Mothman continues to pop up in real life and pop culture and is one of the more intriguing examples of modern American folklore – something where a quick Google search can’t dissuage its origins; something that permeates the minds of the people inflicted and the communities that branch off of them; a thing that lingers and re-manifests, jostling memories of the first time it crept from the depths of nowhere and made itself known. As legend has it, on November 12, 1966, in Clendenin, West Virginia, a group of gravediggers working in a cemetery spotted something strange. They glanced up from their work as something huge soared over their heads. It was a massive figure that was moving rapidly from tree to tree. The gravediggers would later describe this figure as a “brown human being.” This was the first reported sighting of what would come to be known as the Mothman, an elusive creature that remains as mysterious as it was on the night that a few frightened witnesses first laid eyes on it. The Point Pleasant Mothman is a local legend that over the years has gained worldwide fame. Author John Keel popularized local folklore about the creature with his 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies. The book was later adapted into a 2002 feature film with the same title, starring Richard Gere. Some believe The Mothman is a bad omen , only appearing when catastrophe is about to strike. Whether the pictures are real or not, the benefits the legend of the Mothman brings to the town of Point Pleasant, it would seem, are very real.
T G Jackson – Architect of the Gothic
16 May
Around a hundred years ago, two celebrated Gothic architects each began writing ghost stories. One was the young American, Ralph Adams Cram, whose first book Black Spirits and White appeared in 1895, but was sadly never followed by any further similar tales during his remaining forty-eight years—whereas, unlike the much younger Cram, the veteran English architect Sir Thomas Graham Jackson waited until his eighty-fourth year to publish his own sole collection, Six Ghost Stories, in 1919. Although not really a ‘Jamesian’ writer, Jackson is clearly a genuine antiquarian, scholar, and classicist, and his personal love of arcane lore, objets d’art, historic buildings, and Italian antiquities is clearly evident in these traditional post-Victorian ghost stories. During his own lifetime, very few readers knew Jackson as a writer of ghost stories (or any other kind of fiction). He was celebrated as a great ‘New Gothic’ architect, with a special devotion to the Romanesque style. In retrospect he is seen as one of those pioneers who strove to loosen the bonds of rigid medievalism in the belief that by doing so a living Gothic style, capable of gradual development, would take the place of one that was bound by archaeology, and for which they felt there could be no future. An inveterate traveller, and pursuer of antiquities, he virtually rediscovered Dalmatia as far as its art and history were concerned. A brief résumé of his incredibly busy life and achievements will reveal the unique personality behind the long-neglected collection of Six Ghost Stories.
The Hollow Earth Theory
18 Apr
The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. In recent decades, the idea has become a staple of the science fiction and adventure genres across films, most recently in Warner Bros’ MonsterVerse movies. Godzilla vs King Kong for example is loosely based on a real-life idea that dates back hundreds of years. Ancient civilizations had myths about an entire world that exists underground, hidden from the eyes of humans. In the 18th century, there were scientists who firmly believed in a ‘Hollow Earth’ theory, which postulated that the planet was actually hollow, and that there’s a massive, empty space under the surface. In most versions of the legend there are people or creatures living within it. This can vary depending on the theory or story, but Hollow Earth tales generally feature an entirely subterranean culture and community miles underneath the surface of our home planet. It’s not just fictional, though. There are people who claim our true Earth is hollow too. Some of those proponents even claim that there is a secondary sun within our planet, fueling those who live within the Hollow Earth. While it might seem utterly wild, it has as a theory at times been supported by famed scientists like Edmund Halley – who potentially came up with the idea – while also becoming a staple of science fiction storytelling as well as a popular conspiracy theory.
The Black Reaper
14 Mar
Literary fame seems almost like a lottery; ghost story writers in particular seem to pick losing tickets more than any other kind of author. It is an interesting exercise to ponder why certain authors and their works in this vein, just as well equipped to stand the test of time as their contemporaries, fall into speedy obscurity, while others stay in the public eye. The Victorian era is a fine example of this – for every tale of terror that has survived in print today, there are a hundred languishing in undeserved obscurity. Bernard Capes is a case in point. During his writing career, he published forty-one books, contributed to all the leading Victorian magazines, and left behind some of the most imaginative tales of terror of his era – yet within ten years of his death, he had slipped down the familiar slope into total neglect. Until the early 1980s, Capes seldom appeared in reference works in this (or any other) field of literature, and even histories of Victorian writers published in his lifetime give him scant mention. He was overlooked by every anthologist in this genre from his death in 1918 right up until 1978: sixty years of lingering in the dark while many of his contemporaries were brought back to light. I would place Capes among the most imaginative writers of his day. He turned out plot after plot worthy of the recognition accorded to such contemporaries as Stevenson, Haggard, and Conan Doyle, all of whom are still in print today. This selection of his stories help put Capes in his deserved position with the leading talents of Victorian fantasy.
Top Posts & Pages
Liddell’s Ghost
Click image to read my short story, 'Liddell’s Ghost' in Cygnus, the Journal of Speculative Fiction.
Changed
Click image to read my short story 'Changed' in The Cynic Online Magazine.
First Date
Click image to read my short story 'First Date' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Ghost Walk
Click image to read my short story 'Ghost Walk' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
M R James
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Ghosts of Christmas Past
‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails’. Dickens would no doubt agree, […]
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M R James’s Suffolk
The macabre beneath the landscape is not dispelled by nearness to the sea. What Henry James knew, and described in English Hours (1905) – the strangeness present on a flattened seashore – M R James (no blood relation, although the two were acquainted) expressed in two of his best-known ghost stories: Oh, Whistle, and I’ll […]
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A Warning to the Curious
Here’s a real festive treat. In 2000 the BBC produced a series called Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee in which Lee played M R James reading four of his own stories. Lee, who actually once met James, obviously enjoyed making this series and A Warning to the Curious is a real highlight – enjoy!
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Lost Hearts
I have been haunted by the writings of M R James since childhood but when asked what is my favourite of all his ghostly tales I’ve never fully been able to answer. Lost Hearts, an early tale which apparently James didn’t much care for, and which only appeared in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary to […]
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A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Tractate Middoth
Here’s a real treat to conclude the series of Christmas ghost stories that I’ve been posting for the last few weeks – the BBC adaptation of The Tractate Middoth from just a couple of years ago. Fingers crossed they do another one this year!
Ghost Cities 