A Graven Image: Essex Ghost Tales

[dem bones]

A Graven Image & Other Essex Ghost Tales (Haunted Library, 1985)

Tony Patrick

Rosemary Pardoe - Introduction

David G. Rowlands - A Graven Image
Roger Johnson - The Searchlight
Mary Ann Allen - Margaret And Catherine
Roger Johnson - The Dog
Mary Ann Allen - Ne Resurgat
David G. Rowlands - Truth Will Out

Artwork by Tony Patrick, Russ Nicholson, Wendy Wees, Mark Dunn, Alan Hunter, Allan Kosowski.


Mary Ann Allen - Ne Resurgat: My favourite of the Jane Bradshaw, Antiquarian stories, most likely on account of the dream sequence being so eerie.

St. Marys, Northbridge, East Essex: The Rev. Jim Shaw relates to Miss Bradshaw the history of Hannah Waite, 1809-51, whose drunkard of a husband killed her with a skewer while probing her body for the witch's mark. Afterwards, he sawed off her head to prevent her from rising from the grave but .... it doesn't seem to have worked.

That night Jane dreams of a headless body pursuing a terrified Ernest Waite to his doom on the marshes.

Happy Birthday, Lurker

[Calenture]

This looks very interesting. I do love that beautifully understated cover. I suppose this is yet another of those indie publications that I've never seen or heard of?

Oh, happy birthday, Lurks!

[dem bones]

From the same people behind the legendary Ghosts & Scholars, Rog. G & S was published annually, so every year there would be a couple of special booklets to bide the time. If you ever see any Haunted Library publications lying around, my advice would be to snap them up as you're guaranteed to have a good time with them.

[dem bones]

It's been a stub post for too long. Time for a proper look at A Graven Image.

Introduction: Uncredited but almost certainly the work of editor Rosemary Pardoe. Essex as attractive setting for the ghost story writer. Details nine examples of the form by M. R. James, Marjorie Bowen, H. R. Wakefield, Hector Bolitho, a pair of Birkin's Creeps ( A.D. Avison and E.K. Allen), and Sabine Baring-Gould, whose The Merewigs "begins well with a good evocation of its Blackwater Estuary setting, and a humorous incident in which the writer and his companion get stuck on a mudbank for six hours: but soon it declines into a paranoid and sexist attack on the 'bluestockings' who dared to frequent the British Museum." Having read the above and been unable to resist, I can only second the author's warning to the curious. These stories, supplemented by the six included herein, would make for an interesting anthology in itself.

Mary Ann Allen - via her colleague, Rosemary Pardoe - graciously allowed us to include Ne Resurgat on the most recent Vault Advent Calendar - if you missed it at the time, you're in for a treat. Margaret And Catherine, chronicling a family curse, is incompetently synopsised here: The Angry Dead

David G. Rowlands - A Graven Image: Set in the late nineteen-forties. Colonel Rodding has a huge and magnificent model railway laid out in his back garden for which the narrator's father, a skilled craftsman, provides scaled figures of rolling stock, station staff, passengers, etc . The steam engines run on paraffin and are frequently set ablaze, melting the unfortunate driver in the process. Dad's answer is to apply fireclay to a little wire skeleton. As a finishing touch, he paints on a pair of blue dungarees in honour of "Old Bob" who operates the level crossing at Rodding Lodge Station. Unfortunately, the new engine-driver is no more durable than his predecessors and suffers hideous facial burns. The Colonel, who is a bit of a card, slips him inside a cigar box and buries him by the track. "Ah well", he jokes to the little boy, "maybe you'll have a ghostly ganger walking the branch-line on moonlit nights, eh?" And then they hear the awful news of the real Old Bob's gruesome death. So begins the haunting of the crossing house. We've still half the story and plenty and twists and turns before Father O'Conner gives his thoughtful verdict on the case.

David G. Rowlands - Truth Will Out: Twenty years on from her death, the ghost of pretty young Susan Bell still haunts The Mapel Arms in her Salvation Army uniform, seeking out the wretch who raped then strangled her on a patch of waste ground. Tonight the narrator, a jazz musician, and dancer-vocalist Ethel Sugden, are visiting Mapleford Abbots to perform in the Community Hall as part of the Christian Aid Week concert. Ethel is a local girl, but its her fellow muso sees, and even speaks to, Susan's spectre before heroically fainting in the bar. Bert, the pub landlord (concerned, helpful, a disgrace to his profession) sends for the local priest, who sadly explains that he knows who killed Susan, has done so all along, but to reveal the culprit's identity would be to violate the sanctity of the confessional box. Story also includes a very funny eyewitness account of the fiasco that is the charity evening (apparently all true) and a grim denouement.

[dem bones]

To finish, a winning double from that other G&S stalwart, Roger Johnson. These synopses come spoiler guaranteed unfortunately, but all you need to know is both are top drawer trad ghost stories. A Graven Image may well be my all-time favourite Haunted Library special booklet.

Roger Johnson - The Searchlight: Wartime Experience of Major John Chisholm who, in late 1941, set out with his batman to drive from Watford to a village near Tollesbury during a blackout, there to ready an abandoned mansion house for his unit. The journey across marshland is hairy enough, but nothing to what awaits them at Salting Hall when a roving searchlight falls on the portrait of the De Bourg family black sheep. It was Adrian Lee's boast that there are some men who Death cannot hold, him being primary among them. Lee was executed by firing squad in 1812 for an unspecified war crime, but his ghost won't rest until he's made good on the promise. Chisholm finds himself under attack from a murderous entity fashioned from dust and intent on possessing his body for its own.

Roger Johnson - The Dog: A year married, the Campions, Miles and Sarah, book a room at The Dog & Shepherd public house at Hook End, Tillingham, for the Easter break. The pubs owners, the Wakelins, are charm itself, though, on setting eyes on Sarah, Mrs. Wakelin acts very strangely and babbles something about the best room being unavailable, which reminds her, its always locked. After three near sleepless nights due to a strange shuffling sound followed by raps on the wall, Miles tries his own key on the locked door of this "empty" suite. He enters - to be set upon by a terrifying, if ultimately tragic phantom, whose hatred is not for him but Sarah.

It is left to a distraught and apologetic Mrs. Wakelin to explain. The ghost is that of Captain Bullock, a retired seaman who built 'the Dog' in 1750 and took a wife, several years his junior. Two winters into their marriage, Bullock was thrown from his horse, suffering two broken legs. His wife, who'd only married the Captain for his wealth, took full advantage of the situation by entertaining a string of fancy men in the neighbouring bedroom. Each night the invalid would crawl from his bed and hammer on the wall. Wife's response was to tie him to the bed but Bullock demonstrated a flair for escapology. She finally settled for locking him in without food or water and putting her love life on hold until he starved to death.