Edward Parnell [ed] - Eerie East Anglia

[dem bones]

#52 Edward Parnell [ed] - Eerie East Anglia: Fearful Tales of Field and Fen (British Library, Aug, 2024)

Sandra Gómez

Edward Parnell - Introduction
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
A Note from the Publisher

M. R. James - "Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad."
R. H. Benson - Father Maddox's Tale
E. F. Benson - The Dust-Cloud
E. G. Swain - The Man with the Roller
Ingulphus - The True History of Anthony Ffryar
Gerald Bullet - Dearth's Farm
H. R. Wakefield - The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster
Marjorie Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate
F. M. Mayor - Miss de Mannering of Asham
R. H. Malden - Stivinghoe Bank
Robert Aickman - Ringing the Changes
John Gordon - If She Bends, She Breaks
Penelope Fitzgerald - Dr. Matthews' Ghost Story
Matthew Holness - Possum
M. R. James - A Vignette

Sept 4, 2024 15:02:28 GMT humgoo said:

Looks like a Jamesian Gang Special.

Its been touched by the hand of Ghosts & Scholars for sure, in fact it might almost be a companion volume to a pre-Tales of the Weird anthology BL anthology, Ramsey Campbell's Meddling with Ghosts (how about bringing that one back into print?). Ro Pardoe, Mark Valentine, Mike Ashley and Ray Russell are included among the acknowledged.

Penelope Fitzgerald - Dr Matthews' Ghost Story: (Extract from The Gate of Angels, 1990). "I was afraid she was going to touch me ..." Hinton Farm, Cambridge, 1869. Father Nisbet's archaeological dig on the site of an ancient convent disturbs the ghosts of three nuns with a terrible secret. An exciting and creepy stand-alone story narrated by the Provost of 'St James.' Very much enjoyed it.

Daisy Johnson - Blood Rites: (Fen, 2016). Three witchy cannibal girls arrive from Paris to sample the local delicacies. They first pick up a drunken vet in the Fox and Hounds, then a sailor via a dating site, only to discover Fen men disagree with them. "They lingered with you the way a bad smell did; their language stayed with you." Style reminiscent of Angela Carter and Tanith Lee in adult fairytale mode.

Frederick Cowles - The House on the Marsh: (The Horror of Abbot's Grange and Other Stories, 1936: Michel Parry [ed], 5th Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories, 1976). Slade inherits a gloomy house on Brenton Marsh from a relative he'd not seen since he was a boy of nine. Uncle Richard was ghastly pale, improbably young looking, and detested by family and neighbour alike. "There was something nasty about him, and he had an unpleasant way of fondling me on every possible occasion." Another horrible Cowles Black Magic offering, this one a mash up of M. R. James' Lost Hearts and E. F. Benson's The Sanctuary

John Gordon - If She Bends, She Breaks: (Catch Your Death & Other Ghost Stories, 1984). The ghosts of two boys who fell through the ice last winter crave playmates ...

R. H. Benson - Father Maddox's Tale: (A Mirror of Shalott: Composed of Tales Told at a Symposium, 1907). While visiting a friend at his sixteenth century Cambridgeshire home, Baxter, an author of no fixed religious persuasion, requests an interview with the local RC priest. His novel-in-progress, set during the reign of Elizabeth I, concerns the reunion of a devout mother with her son who has renounced his faith on the rack. Father Maddox can only advise; the resident ghosts stage a dramatic reconstruction.

[helrunar]

Intriguing. At least this would be a fairly economical way of getting a taste of the literary flair wielded by that legend among authors, F. M. Mayor!

cheers, Hel.

[dem bones]

Max Cowper

E. F. Benson - The Dust-Cloud: (Pall Mall, Jan. 1906: The Room in the Tower, 1912). An early phantom car story. Did the late Guy Elphinstone deliberately run down a little girl and several animals, or was his 25-horsepower Amédée demonically possessed?

M. R. James - A Vignette: (London Mercury, Nov. 1936: Richard Dalby [ed], The Sorceress in Stained Glass & Other Ghost Stories. 1971). Allegedly a factual account of an incident in the author's childhood at Livermere Rectory, Suffolk. A pink, shrouded form with huge eyes and a horrible face lurks behind a damaged gate in the garden.

Matthew Holness - Possum: (Sarah Eyre [ed.], The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease, 2008). Might come back to this one. A children's entertainer returns home to a ghastly relative (?) for Christmas, intent on finally destroying his puppet, Possum; a wax ball head, features molded to resemble his own, attached to a dog's rotting carcass. It proves resistant to his worst efforts. More so than Blood Rites, a story completely alien in this company. Not sure what I just read, but I may even have liked it.

R. H. Malden - Stivinghoe Bank: (Nine Ghosts, 1943). Norfolk. A scholar disturbs the skeletal remains of a monkey dressed in monastic garb concealed within the altar of a derelict chapel - the familiar of John of Costessey, a sixteenth century priest who sold his soul to Satan. Its phantom skeleton follows the narrator back to his lodgings at The Fisherman's Arms.

[bluetomb]

Some interesting stuff here for sure. I read Daisy Johnson's collection Fen a couple of years ago, mostly magic realist musing on young womanhood in the Fenlands but does have one or two overt horror forays. Blood Rites is amusing, but the story Language is an out and out tragic chiller. Also enjoyed her novel Sisters, though it does suffer a little from the common problem of "literary" writers doing genre fare, the prose may be of a superior quality but the plot is familiar.

I didn't know Holness wrote Possum before filming it. I'm a bit leery of watching the film because I'm not so big on mental illness downer stories on screen, but the puppet was on display at a horror themed exhibition I went to last year and it was an estimably creepy creation. Interesting that he has a properly creepy side as well as larking it up as Garth Marenghi. 

Saw the great 1968 adaptation of the James on Saturday at the BFI. Had forgotten how funny Hordern is with his muttering, but then the humour makes the payoff all the more heartbreaking.

[dem bones]

Sept 9, 2024 21:40:04 GMT bluetomb said:

Some interesting stuff here for sure. I read Daisy Johnson's collection Fen a couple of years ago, mostly magic realist musing on young womanhood in the Fenlands but does have one or two overt horror forays. Blood Rites is amusing, but the story Language is an out and out tragic chiller.

Thanks bluetomb. Have now ordered a copy from Fen the library.

"She was also monstrously fat; her gross, flaccid figure was shapeless and she wore a badly cut, full dress of no colour at all, but stained with earth and damp where Miss Pym supposed she had been doing futile gardening; this gown was doubtless designed to disguise her stoutness, but had been so carelessly pulled about that it only added to it, being rucked and rolled "all over the place" as Miss Pym put it to herself."

Mendoza Dearth's Farm, Evening Standard, 27 Aug 1932

Marjorie Bowen - The Crown Derby Plate: (Grace Latouche and the Warringtons, 1931; The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, 1949; Robert Aickman [ed.], Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, 1964, etc). "I get used to the weather. You've no idea how used one gets to the weather." Harleys, a drab, isolated house on the Essex marshes. On the death of Sir James Sewell, Miss Pym bought his Crown Derby set at auction, only to find it lacking a piece. Now, thirty years late, Miss Lefain, an elderly eccentric, has taken the property, Miss Pym wonders if perhaps she has come across the missing plate? Hartleys is locally regarded a haunted house, though no-one is sure who or what by, only that Sir James is buried in the garden. Miss Pym risks a visit.

Gerald Bullett - Dearth's Farm: (The Street of the Eye, 1923; Evening Standard, 27 August 1932: J. M. Parrish & John R. Crossland [eds], Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries, 1936; Michael Sissons [ed.], In the Dead of Night, 1961, etc). As a last resort, Bailey, destitute, reluctantly moves in with Monica, a disliked cousin, and James Dearth, her pathologically jealous husband, on their Norfolk farm. Bailey can't help notice that Dearth and his white horse, Dandy, bear a horrible facial resemblance, nor that Monica is terrified of both — with good cause.

H. R. Wakefield - The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster: (They Return At Evening, 1928, Charles Lloyd [ed], Shivers, 1932, etc). An extension to the Norfolk course encroaches on 'Blood Wood.' a Druid burial site. Mysterious and bloody murder ensues.

Took a chance on Eerie East Anglia as a copy was going cheap. Had I known the TOC in advance would have passed as only Stivinghoe Bank, the Penelope Fitzgerald extract, and the two recent stories were new to me. Glad I did, as revisiting the Bowen, Bullett, Wakefield, Cowles and Gordon stories has been a joy, while Dr Matthews' Ghost Story is an instant 'creepy nuns' classic. Informative story notes, and I adore the frontpiece illustration by Sandra Gómez.

[humgoo]

Thanks a lot for the review! Looks like an excellent introduction to (some of) the James Gang, and completely agree with you that "Dr. Matthews' Ghost Story" is top-notch (not a word in it is out of place, or at least it seems to me; can certainly give Gerald Durrell's "The Entrance" a run for its money when it comes to "favourite Jamesian story from a non-genre author", if there's such a thing), and that Mr. Campbell's Meddling With Ghosts should be reprinted as part of the series ASAP.

[dem bones]

"What do you bet me that in one season I shall successfully assault the virtue of the three most innocent and immaculate maids, old are young, in Bath?"

F. M. Mayor - Miss De Mannering of Asham: (The Room Opposite: And Other Tales of Mystery & Imagination, 1935: Richard Dalby [ed.], Virago Book of Ghost Stories, 1987; Chris Baldick [ed.], The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, 1992, etc). A belated Victorian supernatural melodrama. Miss Sophia de Mannering is ruined and deserted with child by notorious rake Captain Frederic Phillimore. The baby lives only three hours, leaving Sophia with the cruellest dilemma; how best to swiftly dispose of the tiny body before her puritanical father is any the wiser.

Arthur Gray - The True History of Anthony Ffryar: (The Cambridge Review, 16 Feb. 1911). August 1551. Anthony Ffryar, alchemist, is on the verge of distilling the Magisterium, the cure for all human ills, when "the sweating sickness" descends on the college. As the death toll increases, Cambridge is evacuated, but Ffryar refuses to abandon his work at so crucial a stage. The recently deceased lure him to a ghastly funeral mass in the chapel.

E. G. Swain - The Man with the Roller: ([The Stoneground Ghost Tales: Compiled from the Recollections of the Reverend Roland Batchel, Vicar of the Parish, 1912; R. Thurston Hopkins [ed], Cavalcade of Ghosts, 1956; Bone to His Bone: The Stoneground Ghost Tales of E. G. Swain, 1989, etc). A photograph of Stoneground vicarage captures the image of a man with "indescribably horrible" tortured face dragging a roller across the lawn. Whenever Mr. Groves or his landlady dare study the print, the figure has moved. The Ghost is that of a gardener doomed to tend the turf indefinitely as punishment for the murder of a churchwarden. Not sure a ghost story can be described as 'pretty'? If so, Swain's charming tales qualify.