With Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day not long past, I’m reminded of one of the strangest occurrences of the entire First World War – the disappearance of an entire regiment of men in the midst of battle during the infamous Gallipoli campaign. The incident came to light mainly through the eyewitness account of three members of a New Zealand field company, who said that they watched from a clear vantage point as a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill was shrouded in a low-lying mist that the English soldiers marched straight into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the mist, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join the clouds in the sky. When the Great War was over, assuming that the battalion had been captured and held prisoner, the British government demanded that Turkey return them. The Turks insisted, however, that they had neither captured not made contact with these English soldiers and ever since then theories have abounded as to their fate.
Downton Abbey and The Great Game
8 OctThis may seem an odd thing to say but when I watched the latest episode of Downton Abbey the other day I was inspired to re-read a work of fantasy I once came across that now seems to have been largely forgotten by the book-buying public. Dave Duncan’s Great Game trilogy is now about a decade and a half old but remains as bold, unique and sometimes shocking as it was when I first read it as a Law student many summers ago. The reason why Downton Abbey reminded me of Duncan’s books is because they partially share the same Edwardian/First World War setting of Julian Fellowes’ popular drama serial. Intrigued? Let me tell you more…
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
-
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, […]
-
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 […]
-
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!
-
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 […]
-
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 