|
Post by weirdmonger on Jan 17, 2023 14:41:19 GMT
"Let Loose" by Mary Cholmondeley, available in Dracula's Brood amongst others - Richard Dalby (ed.) - Dracula’s Brood: Rare Vampire Stories by Friends and Contemporaries of Bram Stoker (Crucible, 1987, Equation, 1989) Mary Cholmondeley - Let Loose: Wet-Waste-On-The-Wold, Yorkshire. When Sir Roger Despard, a man of many vices, lay on his deathbed, he did so denying God and his Angels, declaring that all were damned as he, and that Satan was strangling him to death. Taking a knife, he cut off his hand and swore an oath that, if he were to go down and burn in hell, his hand would roam the earth and throttle others as he was being throttled. Thirty years after his death, a young man persuades an old clergyman to open the crypt … I have just read LET LOOSE by Mary Cholmondeley in Women’s Weird: Strange Stories 1890 – 1940 published by Handheld Press (2019) This is a superbly scary pre-M.R. Jamesian story of Fresco hunting in the oppressively insular Wet Waste community of Yorkshire as cast upon by a morbid moon of astrological strengths. A man, for some reason, thinking it may be a fillip to his chances of marriage into a certain family, if he divulged to one of them this story of why he always wore high starched collars!… It would be remiss of me to help make such secrets more widespread here, nor why the Three Authentic Epistles of Ignatius are mentioned. But it is genuinely a story about intricately double-locked area of a church in the Wet Waste that has been unavailable down below for many years — and for good reason! Its piled-up skulls and shin-bones, too, and its toad-like sentinel. The saddest part of this story is what happens to our hero’s dog called Brian, and you will go far to read anything more devastating, so beware! I only mention this incident as I can’t help thinking Brian is an oblique metaphor for our human Brain and the skull that keeps it safe! Not forgetting W.F. Harvey’s hand! I also can’t help thinking this remarkable story’s ‘Evil One’ whispered these words for a character to say as if it were his own… “My son, marry not in youth, for love, which truly in that season is a mighty power, turns away the heart from study, and young children break the back of ambition. Neither marry in middle life, when a woman is seen to be but a woman and her talk a weariness, so you will not be burdened with a wife in your old age.” Which brings me full circle to this story’s need of satirical divulgement?
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Jan 2, 2024 11:41:51 GMT
A HAUNTED COTTAGE
FAMILY'S WEIRD EXPERIENCE NEAR LONDON.
STORY OF A CLAMMY HAND.
Writing to the Chronicle this morning, a correspondent gives an account of the weird experience of a Catholic family living in a village a few miles from London. It appears that about two years ago a friend of his took an old-fashioned cottage containing eight room, and went to reside there with her daughter. The rent was absurdly low, and at first she was apparently pleased with the place. She, however, found it difficult to keep a servant, all her domestics departing, with or without excuse, after a very short sojourn under her roof.
Some little time ago the daughter of the occupier of the cottage—a girl of 11 years of age—went o sleep in a spare bedroom near the roof. Suddenly she was aroused by the consciousness of the presence of someone standing by her bedside in the dark. Startled, she was about to cry out, when a flabby large, clammy hand was pressed firmly over her mouth. With an effort she sat up in bed and tried to tear the hand from her mouth. To her horror, she found the hand of the invisible intruder strongly forcing her back on to her pillow, and at the same time she was conscious of an unbearable odour. Hastily pulling the bedclothes over her head, she went fervently over her prayers, and to her great relief and delight, the grasp of the hideous Invisible relaxed and she went to sleep. In the morning she thought it might have been a nightmare, and said nothing about it. The next time, however, when she had to stay in that room the same horrible haunting occured. Again there was the presence in the room of a horrible odour as of decaying flesh, again the crush of some, flabby, clammy hand pressed on her mouth. She screamed, jumped out of bed, and went down to her mother, declaring that nothing would induce her to sleep in that room.
Later a relative visited the cottage staying there three weeks. She might have stayed longer but on the twentieth night she had the same experience as the daughter of the house. She was awakened by the pressure of a hand upon her month. She shook herself clear, and angrily addressed he visitor but received no response. On the twenty-first night the same visitation occurred. This time the odour was so intolerable that she had to fly from the room, dreading suffocation. The next day she left the house. Another lady also had a similar experience.
A VISIT TO THE DINING ROOM.
Last Thursday, while the family were sitting at lunch, they were subjected to what has now become quite a familiar visitation. Steps were heard descending the stairs from the haunted bedroom, apparently those of a heavy man wearing loose slippers. When he reached the foot of the stairs he enters the dining room, and with him came, as a moving column, the pestilential odour: They could see nothing but heard the footsteps cross the floor, and presently there was a sound as if someone had sat down heavily a one of the chairs at the table. They heard the chair creak but saw no one. To finish the meal was out of the question. The room smelt like a pest-house. All the windows were opened, but the odour filled the house. On a recent occasion, when the wife of a well-known Eastern potentate came to lunch, the meal was disturbed by the unbidden guest and it was impossible to explain the secret of the visitation. Of late he has developed a habit of passing from room to room, leaving behind him the odour of the charnel house and occasionally he persists in looking in at five o'clock tea. The lady of the house has sometimes followed the intruder to the bedroom, and attempted in vain to get into communication with him. Addressing him whomever it may be, she pointed out the extreme inconvenience which his inconsiderate visits were occasioning to the family. She has begged him to inform her what he wanted, undertaking to do anything for him in reason to cure his perturbed spirit, if thereby she could but secure release from his detestable presence. To all her adjurations and appeals there was only one reply—the continuous terrible odour.
It is stated in the village that the previous occupant of the cottage was an old imbecile who had died in what is now known as the haunted chamber. He was an enormously corpulent man, and it was some time before they could effect the structural alterations in the house necessary to remove his corpse, upon which decay had made great ravages before it was finally transferred to the grave.
— Birmingham Daily Mail, 15 April 1908.
|
|
|
Post by Swampirella on Jan 2, 2024 12:54:13 GMT
A fine start to the second day of 2024! Thanks as always, Dem!
|
|
|
Post by humgoo on Jan 2, 2024 14:12:17 GMT
He was an enormously corpulent man, and it was some time before they could effect the structural alterations in the house necessary to remove his corpse, upon which decay had made great ravages before it was finally transferred to the grave. Fat-shaming! This is not allowed!
|
|