Most people know Anne Rice best from her famous series of novels The Vampire Chronicles, in particular Interview with the Vampire (possibly because of the awful nineties film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt). Lesser known, but in my view at least as great an achievement, is her witch saga The Lives of the Mayfair Witches, which begins with Witching Hour. The first novel of the series introduces us to Michael Curry, a man with psychic gifts, who falls in love with the witch Rowan Mayfair and is drawn into the exotic and dangerous world of her family, who have been gifted (or cursed) with demon-inspired powers for centuries. It is important to emphasise this history because Witching Hour is simply majestic in the sweep of time and space that it covers – from 17th century Scotland to the present day and from the Old World to the New. Basically the idea behind the saga of the Mayfair Witches is that their powers did not develop naturally but were the gift of the insidious and enigmatic figure known as Lasher, whose precise origin is never entirely explained – he may be a spirit, demon, fallen angel or demi-god. How the witches got their powers and how Michael and Rowan fit into the whole thing is a LONG story (about 1200 pages long in this book alone!).
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!
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Ghost Cities 