Amy Myers: After Midnight Stories

[alansjf]

Here's the first of Amy Myers' five 'After Midnight' anthologies:*

After Midnight Stories (William Kimber, 1985)



(cover: Ionicus)

Alma Priestley - Going Up, Going Down?
J.C. Trewin - Under the Shadow
Fred Urquhart - The Straitened City
Brian Lumley - Vanessa’s Voice
Meg Buxton - The Marigold Cow
Rosalind Wade - The Cat’s Teaparty
T. Arthur Bawden - To be of Good Behaviour
A.L. Barker - Just in Time
A.L. Rowse - All Souls’ Night
Rosemary Timperley - The Ghost-House
Derek Stanford - The Old Brighton Road
Frances Stephens - The Phantom Snorer of Much Wilcombe
Mary Williams - The Ferret
Nancy Tregenna - Perseverance House
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Underground
Lanyon Jones - The Punch & Judy Man

*Details of the 4th & 5th books are on the main site; I'll add threads for the 2nd & 5th.

[Swampirella]

May 28, 2008 21:16:37 GMT alansjf said:

Here's the first of Amy Myers' five 'After Midnight' anthologies:*

After Midnight Stories (William Kimber, 1985)



(cover: Ionicus)

Alma Priestley - Going Up, Going Down?
J.C. Trewin - Under the Shadow
Fred Urquhart - The Straitened City
Brian Lumley - Vanessa’s Voice
Meg Buxton - The Marigold Cow
Rosalind Wade - The Cat’s Teaparty
T. Arthur Bawden - To be of Good Behaviour
A.L. Barker - Just in Time
A.L. Rowse - All Souls’ Night
Rosemary Timperley - The Ghost-House
Derek Stanford - The Old Brighton Road
Frances Stephens - The Phantom Snorer of Much Wilcombe
Mary Williams - The Ferret
Nancy Tregenna - Perseverance House
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Underground
Lanyon Jones - The Punch & Judy Man

*Details of the 4th & 5th books are on the main site; I'll add threads for the 2nd & 5th.

My copy just arrived today....

Alma Priestly - Going Up, Going Down?: Right before they close for Christmas Eve, Bellerby's dept. store elevator operator (try saying that 5 times fast) Mrs. Haynes finds herself with a passenger wanting to go to the long vanished Roof Restaurant. So far, my favorite.

J. C. Trewin - Under The Shadow: The unnamed narrator travels with his wife to the Cornish village of North Pralla, where he spent part of his childhood and where his parents still live, after the accidental drowning of two brothers. A very odd event befalls the village, and not for the first time. Nothing to do with ghosts, but a fairly good story nonetheless.

Fred Urquahart - The Straitened Cry - A mostly comedic ghost story. Aging actor Grizel Pryde is on a flight to India. Mid-flight "the solid figure of Dame Clara Scarborough, who died in 1977" appears, and she has a lot to say.

Brian Lumley - Vanessa's Voice: Another unnamed narrator described the relationship of his good friend Jim and Vanessa, an aspiring singer. Little by little, her career takes over their relationship until eventually tragedy results. Then it gets much worse.

Meg Buxton - The Marigold Cow: Well, somebody had to write a story featuring a ghost cow. Mrs. Teagle, the Devon-born widow of a Cornish village doctor ignored by the villagers for her "airs and graces" suddenly finds a companion in the form of a sweet little heifer who appears on her garden path. You won't be too surprised to learn that nothing scary happens, but it is, like the heifer, a sweet story.

Rosalind Wade - The Cat's Teaparty - Would you believe another unnamed narrator features in this story? Well, at least this one is female for a change. She's invited by a woman who's new young step-daughter who encounters "people sitting around chattering" in their new Cornish home. 

T. Arthur Bawden - To Be Of Good Behaviour - Finally, a story I enjoyed as much as Going Up, Going Down? This time the narrator has a name, or at least a surname. Mr Povey finds himself at The Joint Allocation Centre, or as we might call it, Limbo. Due to a backlog, the lowest level of Heaven is unable to accept him, so he's given the choice between spending 50 years in Purgatory or becoming an earth-bound spirit at his old home. He chooses the latter, and quickly learns that his wife has help getting over her loss in the person of somebody named Carshallton Smith. He also makes some new ghostly friends while endeavoring not to interfere in the lives of those he left behind, which would result in an instant trip "down there".


A. L. Barker - Just In Time - A pointless 11-page story with nary a ghost in sight.

A. L. Rowse - All Souls' Night - An excellent story of a young man invited to an old Cornish manor house to write the family history.
His first night there will prove to be his last.

Rosemary Timperley - The Ghost-House - An amusing little tale of Paul and Cynthia's attempt to cohabit with the four ghosts in their new home.
 
Derek Stanford - The Old Brighton Road - I'm pleased to say this story is strongly connected to Richard Middleton's On The Brighton Road. So please read that before reading this.

Frances Stephens - The Phantom Snorer of Much Wilcombe - Reporter Clay Coppard decides to leave the past behind him after his daughter's death and his wife's desertion. He finds himself in the village of Much Wilcombe and then he.....finds himself, so to speak. Oh, and there is a phantom snorer.

Mary Williams - The Ferret -  Shirin believes her late, abusive first husband is haunting her, in the form of a savage ferret, in revenge for her not stopping him driving a car with faulty brakes. That alone tells you this will  be a good story, and it is.

Nancy Tregenna - Perseverance House - Another unnamed female narrator describes how she become homeless due to circumstances beyond her control and ends up housed in Perseverance House. She becomes acquainted with Win, a fellow tenant.
But is Win all she seems?
 
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Underground - Laura Munro begins to encounter the sad ghost of a young soldier during her nightly commute home on the Underground.

Lanyon Jones - The Punch And Judy Man - "Old Gilbert Dibble" is Castlechurch's Punch and Judy man. In the fall and winter he retreats to his shop which houses his doll collection and from where he runs his doll's "hospital", where children love to visit but adults aren't much welcome. An unlikable almost dwarf-like man with bad breath and a worse attitude, things don't go well when Ben Harper, new director of the National Doll Centre, comes calling with an offer to buy some of his dolls. For me this story is the highlight of the book; it would have made a great episode of "Thriller" or "The Twilight Zone".

[dem]

Amy Myers - After Midnight Stories (William Kimber, 1985)

iconicus

Alma Priestley - Going Up, Going Down?
J. C. Trewin - Under the Shadow
Fred Urquhart - The Straitened City
Brian Lumley - Vanessa's Voice
Meg Buxton - The Marigold Cow
Rosalind Wade - The Cat's Teaparty
T. Arthur Bawden - To be of Good Behaviour
A. L. Barker - Just in Time
A. L. Rowse - All Souls' Night
Rosemary Timperley - The Ghost-House
Derek Stanford - The Old Brighton Road
Frances Stephens - The Phantom Snorer of Much Wilcombe
Mary Williams - The Ferret
Nancy Tregenna - Perseverance House
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Underground
Lanyon Jones - The Punch & Judy Man

Notes on the Contributors

Blurb:

Ghosts are always associated with the witching hour and here are sixteen stories of the most varied and spine-chilling. Some ghosts return to terrify those they left behind, some hover unseen, while others are not — or were not — human at all. These are phantoms of the twentieth century and bring a touch of modernism to their haunting methods. All but two of these tales are published for the first time.


Alma Priestley - Going Up, Going Down?: Closing time at Bellerby's department store on Christmas Eve. A dishevelled young lady in battered felt floppy hat and a man's crumpled raincoat asks lift attendant Mrs. Susie "would give you the shirt off her back" Haynes to take her up top to the roof restaurant. She's fifteen years too late, Mrs. Haynes informs her. It's now the accounts department. And anyway, look at her! Doesn't she have any pride in her appearance? What must her poor mother think! A runaway, I'll bet. I know the type! On drugs. "Oh, they make us decent people sick." No, I won't "lend" you any money. Go out and work for it like I've had to. Nobody ever gave me a handout .... Having suffered a minute or so of the sanctimonious Mrs. Haynes, Nicole Pembury, destitute junkie, stops the lift, climbs the stairs to the roof, and throws herself off.

It's now the following Christmas eve. A cheerful young mum and her little girl enter the lift, asks the Sainted Mrs. Haynes to take them to the roof restaurant ....

Rosemary Timperley - The Ghost-House: On the discovery that their new home is haunted, Paul constructs a wire cage for the resident ghosts to move into while he and Cynthia share the rest of the house. The ghosts find this arrangement agreeable, living and dead cohabit in harmony until an artist friend is so taken with Paul's "avant garde sculpture" that he buys it for exhibition at a local gallery.

Frances Stephens - The Phantom Snorer of Much Wilcombe: Clay Coppard, a veteran journalist on a national newspaper would have considered himself breakdown proof until the tragedy of his seventeen year old daughter's death in a car accident and the subsequent desertion of his wife. Something compels him to take a train to Church Stretton and cycle deep into the countryside. Eventually he arrives at a hamlet to rent a cottage on impulse. It's former resident was the late gardener to Sir George Meredith, a man so contented with his lot that his home is haunted by the essence of his contentment. Those broken people who find their way here have their lives put back together.

Liked Alma Priestley's opener, the Timperley and Stephens less so. After Midnight Stories is another of those series - like The Ghost Books - I couldn't warm to for the most part, though am sure others would. The Chetwynd-Hayes recently saw service in Mike Ashley's The Platform Edge

[dem]

Meg Buxton - The Marigold Cow: St. Severan, Cornwall. A phantom Friesian brings friendship and happiness to a lonely widow, Mrs. Teagle, during her final days. Mrs. Haynes, the lift attendant in opening story, would fit in very comfortably with the two-faced old bags exchanging the most spiteful gossip in the village post office.

A. L. Barker - Just in Time: Everyone believes Adelaide and Dick share the perfect marriage, a millstone around their necks when they would much rather be left to quietly get on with lives instead of constantly meeting the unreasonable demands of their peers. The death of Dick comes as a relief to both parties, and the reader even more so.

[dem]

Lanyon Jones - The Punch & Judy Man: Castlechurch, Wroxetshire, somewhere on the South Downs. During the close season, Gilbert Dibble, the gnomish Punch and Judy man, operates a dolls hospital from his shop in town. His reputation is such that children travel from far afield to have old Mr. Dibble perform surgery on their injured friends, while his magic puppet show, performed in the shop window annually, is a Christmas highlight. Much as Gilbert adores children and dolls, and vice versa, he detests adults and won't have them in his shop. But Ben Harper, unscrupulous director of the National Doll Centre, is not one to take no for an answer. Dibble's beautiful display of china dolls alone must be worth a fortune. How to get his grubby hands on them?

Not sure Harper's girlfriend, Cindy-Lou, did too much wrong to deserve Harper's bloody fate, but that only adds to the horror of the thing. Agree with Swampi: The Punch and Judy Man is overdue revival.

Mary Williams - The Ferret: Henry was killed in a car smash. Shirin tried to warn him that the brakes were dodgy but, as always, he paid her no heed. Henry's jealousy had long poisoned the marriage. He despised Shirin her superior intellect and scientific brilliance - to be truthful, his death came as a relief. At least, it did to begin with. Now thirty-six, Shirin has remarried and relocated to Cornwall, but the late Henry still begrudges her the tiniest happiness. Should she confide in Lloyd that his late predecessor's hatred has taken the form of a brain-eating phantom ferret?

[dem]

Getting into it now. The Punch and Judy Man was the turning point.

A. L. Rowse - All Souls' Night: (West-Country Stories, 1945: R. Chetwynd-Hayes [ed], Cornish Tales of Terror, 1970). Tristram Colenso, a West Country lad studying medieval history, at Oxford, is approached to write the histories of two powerful Cornish families, the Lantyans and Blanchminsters of Cara Tyan, whose line will end with the death of the current, 13th Earl. Among the colourful personalities, Tristram learns of the terrifying Victorian Lady Jane Lucinda Lantyan, widowed young, who lived well into her 'nineties, her one great joy in life tormenting a succession of clergymen, one of whom, a young French priest, went "stark raving mad." Her Ladyship spent her final year pin-balling around Britain to ensure she was never served the Bishop's writ of excommunication.

It so happens that Tristram is staying in the tragic priest's study where, among the boxes of documents, he finds the fellow's diary and the real reason for his insanity. Alas, his long troubled soul has yet to find rest ...

Narrated by the Dean between intermissions while a junior Fellow replenishes his whiskey and soda.

Brian Lumley - Vanessa's Voice: (Whispers #11-12, Oct. 1978). Romance between ego-tripping torch diva Vanessa and personable, retiring Jim, who worships her even more than she does herself, is scuppered when an ambitious pianist takes over management duties. Ends unhappily in alcoholism, a "fall" from a cliff and subsequent aural haunting. Seems, despite their natures, Jim and Vanessa truly were meant for each other.

T. Arthur Bawden - To be of Good Behaviour: An admin mix up at celestial Immigration Control sees the late Mr. Povey offered a choice between spending five decades in Limbo or returning to earth as a ghost. He prefers option two. Back home he finds wife Elsie less bereaved than he might have hoped. "It's a blessing, really. My Mother said I was making a mistake and it didn't take me long to find out just how right she was" etc., etc. Elsie has moved in her "brother," Carshallton Smith, who, we suspect, has long been giving her one. Happily, Povey befriends the local spooks, including the floating head across the road and Perce Green, a construction worker who died building the Povey's house. Perce shows him the afterlife can be a prankster's paradise. Good place to settle scores, too.

[Shrink Proof]

Good to hear you sounding more positive. I have a soft spot for anything with an Ionicus cover...

[dem]

Oct 17, 2021 14:43:55 GMT Shrink Proof said:

Good to hear you sounding more positive. I have a soft spot for anything with an Ionicus cover...

The series might not be a personal favourite, but the three vols I've read each contain stories to recommend them. Incidentally, a Kimber book replete with Ionicus cover must be one of the very few places where appearance of the word 'fuck' retains any shock value whatsoever.

J. C. Trewin - Under the Shadow: North Pralla is a sleepy Cornish village where nothing ever happens, give or take identical twin drownings in Henty's Cavern over 140 years apart. The most recent, in August 1975, saw the loss of brothers John and Roger Bray when they were lost in a storm while rowing a TV camera crew through the cave mouth. As was the case a century earlier, in the wake of the tragedy "a pall of silence" descends on the village, accompanied by bone-freezing cold, and church bells ring of their own accord. The narrator, Ted, is pursued by the ghosts of his old school pals, 'John and Rog,' snickering his old nickname. He daren't turn to face them.


Fred Urquhart - The Straitened City: Miss Grizel Pryde, 69 (or so she claims), star of stage and screen, is flying to India in a doomed attempt to persuade Jali Desanewart (an innocent casualty of her circle's convoluted love lives) to appear alongside her in latest remake of The Rajah's Ladies. Accompanying Grizel for much of the flight, an old sparring partner, sweary Dame Clara Scarborough, who died in 1977. The bitchy veterans reminisce over acquaintances lost, including Ivor Stewart, a victim of homosexual blackmail who blew his brains out in 1945, and Ulandra Desani, beautiful Indian film star of "semipornographic and pretentious" arthouse films. Dame Clara's is something of a mercy mission. Grizel is not long for this world and welcomes reassurance that their fabulous feuds and romances continue in the luvvies hereafter.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Oct 17, 2021 11:53:27 GMT dem said:

Getting into it now. The Punch and Judy Man was the turning point.

A. L. Rowse - All Souls' Night: (West-Country Stories, 1945: R. Chetwynd-Hayes [ed], Cornish Tales of Terror, 1970). Tristram Colenso, a West Country lad studying medieval history, at Oxford, is approached to write the histories of two powerful Cornish families, the Lantyans and Blanchminsters of Cara Tyan, whose line will end with the death of the current, 13th Earl. Among the colourful personalities, Tristram learns of the terrifying Victorian Lady Jane Lucinda Lantyan, widowed young, who lived well into her 'nineties, her one great joy in life tormenting a succession of clergymen, one of whom, a young French priest, went "stark raving mad." Her Ladyship spent her final year pin-balling around Britain to ensure she was never served the Bishop's writ of excommunication.

It so happens that Tristram is staying in the tragic priest's study where, among the boxes of documents, he finds the fellow's diary and the real reason for his insanity. Alas, his long troubled soul has yet to find rest ...

Narrated by the Dean between intermissions while a junior Fellow replenishes his whiskey and soda.

This is by the famous historian, he was Cornish, I never realised he wrote ghost stories.
I found a thread to the collection Dem Bones mentions on here: vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/2801/rowse-west-country-stories
Are they M.R. James in style?
Oh, I see only the first four pieces are fiction.

[dem]

Concluding After Midnight Stories.

Oct 19, 2021 11:40:19 GMT 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr said:

Are they M.R. James in style?

All Soul's Night looks to have been influenced by his style. It's certainly among personal highlights of a stop-start selection.

Rosalind Wade - The Cat's Teaparty: Ty Killy, Cornwall yet again. Much to her step-mother's frustration, little Madgy Bevill is ever sneaking out to the Padoga to take afternoon tea with an elderly couple and a cat with a distinctive broken tail, none of whom are visible to anyone else. Imaginary friends or ghosts? Underwhelming. Most likely proper literature. May contain scenes of sub-mild terror, etc.

Derek Stanford - The Old Brighton Road: The ghost of Richard Middleton finds welcome respite from eternal tramp to Brighton and back by visiting his favoured bench along the towpath in the gardens of Hampton Court Palace. Narrator offers story - which I enjoyed - as possible vindication of Nietzsche's theory of eternal return (!).

Nancy Tregenna - Perseverance House: Liked this one, too. Widowed and homeless, Mrs. Ellen Walker is moved into emergency temporary accommodation at Perseverance House until, the council none too optimistically assure her, something better becomes available. According to the old girl on crutches, two murders have taken place here at the halfway house, and Ellen suspects her room is haunted by one of the victims. Strangely, no matter her familiarity with the building, Ellen often finds herself lost on a wrong stairwell.