Mark Valentine - The Black Veil

[dem bones]

Mark Valentine (ed.) - The Black Veil And Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths (Wordsworth Mystery & the Supernatural, July 2008)

Introduction - Mark Valentine

Robert Eustace & L.T. Meade - The Warder of the Door
E. & H. Heron - The Story of Sevens Hall
William Hope Hodgson - The Gateway of the Monster
Arthur Machen - The Red Hand
Allen Upward - The Haunted Woman
Robert Barr - The Ghost with the Club-foot
Vernon Knowles - The Curious Activities of Basil Thorpenden
Donald Campbell - The Necromancer
L. Adams Beck - Waste Manor
John Cooling - The House of Fenris
Mark Valentine - The Prince of Barlocco
Colin P. Langeveld - The Legacy of the Viper
Mary Anne Allen - The Sheelagh-na-gig
A.F. Kidd - The Black Veil
R.B. Russell - Like Clockwork
Rosalie Parker - Spirit Solutions

Blurb:
The Gateway of the Monster… The Red Hand… The Ghost Hunter

To Sherlock Holmes the supernatural was a closed book: but other great detectives have always been ready to do battle with the dark instead. This volume brings together sixteen chilling cases of these supernatural sleuths, pitting themselves against the peril of ultimate evil. Here are encounters from the casebooks of the Victorian haunted house investigators John Bell and Flaxman Low, from Carnacki, the Edwardian battler against the abyss, and from horror master Arthur Machen’s Mr Dyson, a man-about-town and meddler in strange things. Connoisseurs will find rare cases such as those of Allen Upward’s The Ghost Hunter, Robert Barr’s Eugene Valmont (who may have inspired Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot) and Donald Campbell’s young explorer Leslie Vane, the James Bond of the jazz age, who battles against occult enemies of the British Empire. And the collection is completed by some of the best tales from the pens of modern psychic sleuth authors.

Robert Eustace & L.T. Meade - The Warder of the Door. i just read this in Michel Parry's The Supernatural Solution (which also includes Hodgson's The Gateway Of The Monster and two different stories from Machen and E & H. Heron). John Bell, 'the master of mysteries' is invited to Clinton Abbey for a pheasant shoot. Sir Henry Clinton, approaching eighty and his grave, is despondent that his son, Allen, is set on marrying Phyllis Curzon, not through any dislike of the girl but on account of the family curse. Better that the Clinton line dies out with Allen than that it continues to provide a Warder of the Door!

"And in this cell its coffin lieth, the coffin which hath not human shape, for which reason no holy ground receiveth it. Here shall it rest to curse the family of ye Clyntons from generation to generation. And for this reason, as soon as the soul shall pass from the body of each first-born, which is the heir, it shall become the warder of the door by day and by night. Day and night shall his spirit stand by the door, to keep the door closed till the son shall release the spirit of the father from the watch and take his place, till his son in turn shall die. And whoso entereth into the cell shall be the prisoner of the soul that guardeth the door till it shall let him go."

Sir Henry survives Bell's visit by just three months, and leaves for his son the obligatory "to be opened in the event of my death" envelope, the contents of which so alarm the young man that he wires the detective imploring him to return to the Abbey as he is the only man in the world who can help him! Bell, it seems, is a seasoned scoffer at mumbo-jumbo - "The curse on the soul of the first-born to keep the door shut as warder is absurd. Matter does not obey witchcraft." - but he's not so smart that the pair don't find themselves trapped in the secret vault. Allen Clinton is hysterical, so Bell's first concern is to calm him down, which he does by reassuring him that they are "buried alive in this ghastly hole!" with no hope of rescue before they slowly suffocate or starve to death. Actually, the situation isn't as bad as all that. Bell's belief that there is no supernatural agency involved in the curse is proved to be correct - the evil Abbot merely devised a diabolically fiendish man-trap all these centuries ago and the whole thing works on giant magnets!

[dem bones]

Mary Anne Allen (Rosemary Pardoe) - The Sheelagh-na-gig: "Under the eaves, to the east of the porch was as fine an example of a sheelagh-na-gig stone as I had ever seen. These rather gross symbols of female sexuality, usually depicted as a naked, pregnant, and very busty woman, holding open her genitalia, are quite rare, and no one really knows what they represent. In most cases, I tend to favour the prosaic explanation that they are charms to prevent the church against being struck by lightening."

Not this one ...

Church restorer Jane Bradshawe is staying over Christmas at the Rectory in Applestone, Essex, the parish having recently come into the care of the young and enthusiastic William Haydn who has all sorts of ambitious clean up plans for the local church. But it's the 'stone hag' which fascinates, and ultimately, terrifies Miss Bradshawe. Over the decades it has undergone a slow but very definite transformation since the locals stopped leaving their offerings of fruit. The belly is now impossibly swollen - what hellish monstrosity will the sheelagh-na-gig give birth to?

The pay off line, delivered in supremely understated manner, is a beauty though may cause upset to persons of a certain religious persuasion.

John Cooling - The House of Fenris: Michael Overbury is tormented by a recurring nightmare. "I see suspended above my head a severed hand, dripping blood. And I hear, like a great gust of wind, a terrible howling." Overbury, recently returned to England after a lengthy spell on the Yukon, has taken up residence at the remote Thornby House, its first occupant in several years. He's already started on the renovations, the first of which was to unbar the door to the wine cellar as the previous fool owner had sealed it up. His friend, Dr. Morrow of the School of Comparative Mythology at the University of St. Edmundsbury, knows loads about evil and suggests they keep vigil down there to see what transpires. In the dark, dank cellar they witness a shadow-play reenactment of an event from Norse mythology. Nicely told, though if I'm honest, I've read less boring remedies to a haunting.

Rosalie Parker - Spirit Solutions: After the death of their father, the four children, now adults, return home to resolve what they're going to do about the upkeep of the house. The winter weather is harsh, the heating appliance is on the blink, so the last thing they need is an outbreak of extreme poltergeist activity. Crockery smashing, phantom piano chord playing, footsteps and whisperings - the ghost grows more destructive with each passing night. But is it trying to get them to sell up or angry that they would considered doing so? They resort to contacting Spirit Solutions, an online "remote detective agency" (no charge, but satisfied customers are expected to make a donation to esoteric studies) - and a fat lot of good it does them.

Rosalie Parker's In The Garden (5th Black Book Of Horror) went down well with several of our readers and can't see them being disappointed with this classy shocker.

[cauldronbrewer]

I'm most of the way through this one (haven't gotten to the Allen/Pardoe and the Parker stories yet--I have high hopes for both), and I'll give Mr. Valentine this: his selections tend toward both the obscure and the eclectic. Of the stories in the book, I'd only previously read two: the classics by Machen and Hodgson.

Leaving those two aside, there's a wide range in quality here. At the high end is E. and H. Heron's The Story of Sevens Hall, an excellent Flaxman Low installment in which he investigates an ancestral curse that drives the men of the Yarkindale clan to suicide. (Ah, if only someone would bring out a cheap paperback edition of the Flaxman Low stories--are you listening, Derek? ).

At the other end, there's Vernon Knowles' tedious The Curious Activities of Basil Thorpenden. After reading page after page about Basil's psychic journeys to the "Land of Ideas," "The Territory of Reality," the "House of Friendship," and (I kid you not) the "House of the Great Friendship," I started to skim toward the end.

The most dramatic contrast, however, is between Donald Campbell's The Necromancer and L. Adam Beck's Waste Manor, written within six years of one another and included back-to-back in this anthology. The former is absolutely wretched--a contrived Sax Rohmer rip-off that reads as through it were written by a malignantly jingoistic and racist 12-year-old trying to wrap things up in a hurry so that he can get back to pushing around some 9-year-olds or maybe setting a cat on fire. By comparison, the latter seems to come from another universe: it's a moody, intellectual, and somewhat ponderous story that incorporates allusions to the murder of Thomas Beckett, Le Morte d'Arthur, King Solomon's Mines, Buddhist and Hindu theology, and Socrates. I suspect that the juxtaposition is intentional.

For the morbidly curious, Valentine's blog offers some back story on "The Necromancer" (have I managed to convey how much I hated this story?):

wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2009/06/golden-snake.html

It begins: "In my anthology of occult detective stories for Wordsworth, The Black Veil, I included a story, ‘The Necromancer’, by Donald Campbell, which some readers have thought might be a spoof." As he goes on to explain, however, it's no spoof.

[cw67q]

Nice summary cauldronbrewer, I remember enjoying this anthology although I have trouble keeping my psychjic detectives apart in my memory. I do however recall feeling pretty much how you did about "the Necromancer" I'm surprised that Mark thought it a good choice for inclusion. But other than that a fine anthology.

- Chris

[pulphack]

Campbell is pretty full on, but I must admit I read it without blinking. If you've ever read Sapper or Dornford Yates, this is hardly surprising. Fear of the the foreign was common (my mum was a little girl in the 20's and her mum used to warn her not to go down a certain alleyway or a Chinaman would get her - she wished he had, she remarked as she tucked into her chow mein... anyway... - and in a sense you have to leave your 21st century values at the door. Doesn't mean you think it's right or good, just that you have to contextualise.

Having said that, Yates and Sapper could write and Campbell isn't that great. However, as to WHY this was included... Was this really a 'Best Of' the era, or rather an attempt at representing the ear and form without in cluding too much that was well known? And as it's a hens teeth rare story, it qualifies.

[cauldronbrewer]

Apr 9, 2012 9:48:31 GMT pulphack said:

Campbell is pretty full on, but I must admit I read it without blinking. If you've ever read Sapper or Dornford Yates, this is hardly surprising. Fear of the the foreign was common (my mum was a little girl in the 20's and her mum used to warn her not to go down a certain alleyway or a Chinaman would get her - she wished he had, she remarked as she tucked into her chow mein... anyway... - and in a sense you have to leave your 21st century values at the door. Doesn't mean you think it's right or good, just that you have to contextualise.

Having said that, Yates and Sapper could write and Campbell isn't that great. However, as to WHY this was included... Was this really a 'Best Of' the era, or rather an attempt at representing the ear and form without in cluding too much that was well known? And as it's a hens teeth rare story, it qualifies.

Right, I think that Valentine was trying to include a wide range of seldom-seen stories rather than compile the greatest hits. His blog makes it clear that he's not under any illusion that Campbell was a "quality" writer: "There does not seem to be a copy of this pulp volume in the British Library - no great loss to the nation’s literary heritage, perhaps." In trashing the story, I don't mean to trash the anthology as a whole, which is excellent. And I like a good deal of schlock myself--just not Campbell's kind of schlock (though I did get a laugh out of how he stopped the story dead at one point to explain away an especially obvious plot hole).

As for the contextualization, I can do that to a point (I've read everything Lovecraft ever wrote, and he goes up to 11 on the racism--o-meter), but I find that easier to do when there's something--anything--else I can get out of the story. What I found particularly interesting here was what I took to be Valentine's own sly way of contextualizing the story--by following it with another story, "Waste Manor," that idealizes the East and presents a conversion to Buddhism as a happy ending (unfortunately, Beck's focus on the philosophical aspects of his scenario ultimately dilutes a creepy beginning). I could be reading too much into the table of contents, however.

[cauldronbrewer]

I just finished the final seven stories, all of which are latter-day tales of psychic detectives--some set in the past, some in the present. All seven are good. I particularly liked Allen's The Sheelagh-na-gig (capably summarized by Dem above), Valentine's own The Prince of Barlocco (a nifty tale about an old Scottish family's duty to serve as "regents" for the mysterious prince of a small island), and Kidd's The Black Veil (a Carnicki story spun from a brief reference in one of Hodgson's original tales).

[ripper]

Just re-read Allen Upward's 'The Haunted Woman' and enjoyed it quite a bit. The only other Upward story I have read is 'The Story of the Green House, Walington' in Richard Dalby's 'Mammoth Book of Victorian and Edwardian Ghost Stories.' According to RD, Upward wrote a series of 'Ghost Hunters' tales in The Royal Magazine in 1905 and they remain uncollected. The narrator is an estate agent who comes into contact with haunted houses in the course of running his business. In the two stories I have read, it is the narrator's secretary, Miss Smith, who actually perceives the ghosts, as she is described as a 'sensitive.' I've no idea if that was the situation in all of the stories, but I thought it made an interesting variation to the usual ghost-busting professional. I think 'The Haunted Woman' may be the final story in the series as at the end the narrator marries Miss Smith and he says he hopes she will no longer have to use her 'gift.'

[helrunar]

Great thread about an intriguing anthology. I'm about to look for a copy on Abebook.

H.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

I have this anthology, and read The Sheelagh-na-gig last night in bed. It's only six pages, and I liked the idea a lot, but it was probably a bit too short and could have done with being developed more. I was interested enough that I'll look for the author's collection about this character, as she is a step away from the more stereotyped psychic investigators that are written about.
What I'm not keen on in stories is when they reference older ghost tales, as if you have read them, but also I feel it can break up the idea of having stepped into the world on the page, it reminds you it's a story after all.
My main complaint with the book itself is that dem bones did a better job of content list than the editor. The copy I had didn't list the authors in content, just story titles. So you had to either look in introduction or reach story itself to find out who wrote it. 

[humgoo]

Jul 15, 2021 11:20:49 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

I have this anthology, and read The Sheelagh-na-gig last night in bed. It's only six pages, and I liked the idea a lot, but it was probably a bit too short and could have done with being developed more.

This author's tales tend to be short and sweet. Before her collection is reprinted (which I hope will be very soon), you can read two more on the infamous Vault Advent Calendars:
- "The Cambridge Beast"
- "Ne Resurgat"

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Jul 15, 2021 11:43:14 GMT humgoo said:

Jul 15, 2021 11:20:49 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

I have this anthology, and read The Sheelagh-na-gig last night in bed. It's only six pages, and I liked the idea a lot, but it was probably a bit too short and could have done with being developed more.

This author's tales tend to be short and sweet. Before her collection is reprinted (which I hope will be very soon), you can read two more on the infamous Vault Advent Calendars:
- "The Cambridge Beast"
- "Ne Resurgat"

Thank you so much.

[dem bones]

From the Richard Dalby, Mammoth Book of Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories thread.

Aug 6, 2023 2:08:15 GMT enoch said:

Aug 5, 2023 13:28:09 GMT ripper said:

Allen Upward's The Story of the Green House, Wallington was first in a series of tales of an estate agent and his female assistant who deals with haunted houses. They appeared in The Royal magazine. Black Heath have collected the stories along with two other sets in a Kindle edition. Having read all of the Upward stories, the one in the Mammoth anthology is probably the best imo, but for 99p the ebook is well worth getting.

I love those Allen Upward stories about the estate agent and his secretary.  They were such likeable characters.  I wish he had written more of them.  They were kind of like an Edwardian era ghostbusting Tommy and Tuppence.

After reading the above, simply had to dig this one out, the last of the five Ghost Hunter stories.

Allen Upward – The Haunted Woman: (The Royal Magazine, April 1906). Mr. Hargrave, Ghost hunter, and his secretary, Miss Alwyne Sargent (the adventurer, gifted psychic and brains of the operation) investigate a haunting at the Abbey, Abbotsford, where Lady Throgmorton is nightly terrorised by the ghost of Eleanor, her recently deceased daughter-in-law. The spectre has taken to sharing her bed. "It has grown worse night after night. The first time I saw it the shroud remained intact ...."

If anything, I prefer this to The Story of the Green House, Wallington (which I liked a lot). Agree with Rip and Enoch — there should've been more.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Read them all here:


archive.org/details/1905theghosthunteraupwardallserial/mode/2up

[dem bones]

Thanks! I love the title heading (by Benjamin E. Minns?).