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Post by helrunar on Aug 12, 2022 14:35:41 GMT
Those all sound like great stories. I've read very little of Wakefield's work; I need to remedy that.
I don't know why it's so difficult to believe that there could be unexplained and unknown phenomena that manifest as hauntings of various kinds. When one considers all the scientific advances of the last one hundred and fifty years, and how scientific understanding is rapidly accelerating, it should not be too difficult at the very least to accept that there could be phenomena that have an objective existence, even if they defy the ability of currently available tech to be recorded or "duplicated in lab conditions."
Most hauntings that have been documented are described by the more legitimate psychic investigators (as opposed to those pantomiming along on various trash television shows--admittedly, the latter are quite entertaining) as recordings. Recorded in what medium? One possible explanation was already discussed by writers such as E. F. Benson and Algernon Blackwood in tales they wrote over a century ago. There are other possible explanations.
The Universe abounds in things of which the limited scope of our tech, not to speak of our mass mental outlook, hasn't a clue.
And now I slither off my soapbox--for now.
H.
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enoch
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 117
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Post by enoch on Aug 12, 2022 15:04:09 GMT
Those all sound like great stories. I've read very little of Wakefield's work; I need to remedy that. I don't know why it's so difficult to believe that there could be unexplained and unknown phenomena that manifest as hauntings of various kinds. When one considers all the scientific advances of the last one hundred and fifty years, and how scientific understanding is rapidly accelerating, it should not be too difficult at the very least to accept that there could be phenomena that have an objective existence, even if they defy the ability of currently available tech to be recorded or "duplicated in lab conditions." Most hauntings that have been documented are described by the more legitimate psychic investigators (as opposed to those pantomiming along on various trash television shows--admittedly, the latter are quite entertaining) as recordings. Recorded in what medium? One possible explanation was already discussed by writers such as E. F. Benson and Algernon Blackwood in tales they wrote over a century ago. There are other possible explanations. The Universe abounds in things of which the limited scope of our tech, not to speak of our mass mental outlook, hasn't a clue. And now I slither off my soapbox--for now. H. Yes, I prefer to keep an open mind. Skeptical, but not so hidebound that I can't consider new evidence or face the fact that I might be wrong.
As to Wakefield, may I recommend some of my favorites? " ' Look Up There!' "; "The Red Lodge"; "The Triumph of Death"; "Ghost Hunt"; "Blind Man's Buff"; and "The Frontier Guards." I just recently read " 'Look Up There!' " and was quite taken by its look at the PTSD of a post-supernatural-encounter survivor.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 12, 2022 17:28:14 GMT
Thanks for those recommendations, Enoch! there's a very reasonably priced electronic version of They Return at Evening, as well as another collection, which is compatible with m reading device--I love reading this kind of thing on my commute and my lunch break.
cheers! Hel.
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Post by ripper on Aug 21, 2022 17:34:55 GMT
Thanks for those recommendations, Enoch! there's a very reasonably priced electronic version of They Return at Evening, as well as another collection, which is compatible with m reading device--I love reading this kind of thing on my commute and my lunch break. cheers! Hel. As well as They Return at Evening, Strayers from Sheol and Old Man's Beard are available on Am*z*n UK on Kindle for 77p each.
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Post by weirdmonger on Sept 21, 2022 15:40:36 GMT
A FISHING STORY by H. Russell Wakefield
“Sometimes he gave the impression of being very tired and tired of feeling tired. And he had to peer up close when he tied a fly. He spoke in a charming, reflective sing-song, but it was the voice of an old man.”
“By ten o’clock the sun was elbowing the clouds away, and the three of them were trudging along beside the racing, rising Glady, and soon to the loch and in the boat and out upon it.”
And so the scene is set in Donegal, with the old gillie and much fishing parlance, and bridges over the Glady that more often break when someone’s on them, and places where fishing or hunting avoided by gillies, with haunted implications from the old Irish troubles, today two tourists fishing with this gillie, and well, a catch that took one tourist in and the other after him, some strange hardness and softness to be parted beneath the river…reminded me (me, a sensitive tired old man, too) of flesh needing to be unhinged from bone….
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 26, 2022 12:34:18 GMT
A new anthology of classic ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield Contents: HE COMETH AND HE PASSETH BY BLIND MAN’S BUFF THAT DIETH NOT INTO OUTER DARKNESS THE RED LODGE ‘LOOK UP THERE!’ THE FRONTIER GUARDS LUCKY’S GROVE THE CAIRN THE FIRST SHEAF THE SEVENTEENTH HOLE AT DUNCASTER NURSE’S TALE THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH A BLACK SOLITUDE Ordering: incunabulamedia.com/books
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Post by weirdmonger on Nov 3, 2022 16:41:16 GMT
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH by H. Russell Wakefield …
“What happened to mad people in that Other World? Were they mad there, too, and forever?”
That Other World where we all go after we die, I infer. At first, madly, I thought ‘The Triumph of Death’ was the above book’s horror hoax, because it has such unmitigated nastiness. It what it is Amongst even worse things, it has a legend of small girls being tortured for curious purposes. And it is another work with MR-Jamesian bedcovers getting up like a human being to scare an old man like me but here they grow even greater in amounts — a swaddling nightmare to envelop the church Rector who comes into this story to rescue the latest young attenuating female companion of the ‘she-devil’ Miss Pendleham. Miss Pendleham has out-lived several such companions in this large house overlooking Lake Windermere. The Rector’s wife, an agnostic, made him go there at night to carry out such a rescue! What actually happens, I’ll leave you to discover, assuming you can rescue this story from where it hides. It is where it is.
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