R. Dalby & R. Pardoe - Ghosts And Scholars

[dem]

Richard Dalby & Rosemary Pardoe (eds.) - Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories In The Tradition Of M. R. James (Crucible, 1987)

Foreword - Michael Cox
Introduction - Rosemary Pardoe & Richard Dalby
M. R. James - Ghosts-Treat Them Gently

Sabine Baring-Gould - On the Leads
‘B’ - The Stone Coffin
A.C. Benson - The Slype House
R. Hugh Benson - Father Macclesfield’s Tale
Cecil Binney - The Saint and the Vicar
Sir Andrew Caldecott - Christmas Reunion
Ramsey Campbell - This Time
Patrick Carleton - Dr Horder’s Room
Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr) - Blind Man’s Hood
Frederick Cowles - The Strange Affair at Upton Strangewold
‘Ingulphus’ (Arthur Gray) - Brother John’s Bequest
Sheila Hodgson - ‘Come, Follow!’
M. R. James - Ghost Story Competition
Winifred Galbraith - ‘Here He Lies Where He Longed to Be’
Emma S. Duffin - The House-Party
A. F. Kidd - An Incident in the City
Shane Leslie - As In a Glass Dimly
R. H. Malden - Between Sunset and Moonrise
L. T. C. Rolt - New Corner
David G. Rowlands - Sins of the Fathers
Eleanor Scott - Celui-La
Arnold Smith - The Face in the Fresco
Dermot Chesson Spence - The Dean’s Bargain
Lewis Spence - The Horn of Vapula
Montague Summers - The Grimoire
E. G. Swain - The Eastern Window

Select Bibliography

Blurb:

Country-house libraries ... forlorn churches ... quiet college quadrangles and damp cathedral crypts ... a world where lurking supernatural evil is ever ready to pounce on the innocent, the guilty, or the merely curious ... where gentlemen scholars and studious clerics pay the price of their fascination with the past ...
25 chilling and salutary tales written in the tradition of M. R. James, acknowledged master of the antiquarian ghost story ....


Cover illustrations:
(front) based on a view of
King's College, Cambridge, c.1890;
(back) M. R. James in 1895.

As with Rosemary Pardoe's excellent small press publication of the same name, Ghosts & Scholars traces the influence of M. R. James upon his contemporaries right through to present day masters like Ramsey Campbell and the criminally underrated David G. Rowlands. Frederick Cowles is as near as it gets to pulp and there’s little by way of gore and violence, nor are too many crabs known to rampage through these crypts and Cathedrals. What these stories have to offer is an undeniable shuddersome quality courtesy of the many mouldering revenants who show themselves to the usual array of hapless antiquarians, and, unlikely as it seems, the Patrick Carleton story actually originates from Birkin's Creeps.

[alansjf]

Mouldering revenants and hapless antiquarians - what's not to love?

[dem]

for a decent review, see Mike Ashley's from Ghosts & Scholars 10 HERE: otherwise there's this rot;

Patrick Carleton - Dr. Horder’s Room: " … a cold and heavy body, whose stench was beyond all description, lay outstretched upon his own, its mouth pressed greedily to his mouth and it’s hands fastening his wrists.”

Cambridge University. Proper creepy Jamesian tale of the dire consequences that befall any pupil allocated Dr. Horder's old sanctuary. The room is haunted by a bearded, rubbery entity, a psychic sponge, draining life from the young to prolong its own. The timely intervention of old George the porter delivers new boarder, Peter Lake, to safety.

Read more: vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6756/charles-lloyd-ed-thrills#ixzz5Eu0Z2O1k


Revived from Charles Birkin's Thrills. With its ghastly erotic undertones, Dr. Horder’s Room might have been equally at home in one of Michelle Slung’s I Shudder At Your Touch collections. Given its unlikely source, perhaps the most pleasantly surprising selection in the book.

Sabine Baring-Gould - On The Leads: Rather than pack her off to a lunatic asylum, Aunt Eliza's family lock her away in the West Wing of Fernwood where her only means of escape is via a window and up onto the roof where she can scream and pretend to be a bat as much as she likes. One icy November, the inevitable happens .... Her ghost manifests itself in the form of a spectral arm, scrawny fingers working at the window latch ...

Frederick Cowles - The Strange Affair At Upton Strangewold: The grave of suspected witch Joanna Stanning (died 1628) is disturbed during renovation work at St. Walstan's, Ely, in 1932, and soon her evil spirit is bringing terror to the parish in the form of a monstrous cat. Following the deaths of kindly old Mrs. Turner and a tiny infant whose face and body are torn to pieces, Cowles eventually stabs the abomination with a Toledo dagger, but there's still time for further unpleasantness when the Reverend Bourne opens Stanning's tomb to make certain the haunting is at an end ....

That's what i love about Cowles: he may have his critics, but for me, he most always delivers.

L. T. C. Rolt - New Corner: Rolt's drastic reworking of H. R. Wakefield's The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster. An international motor-racing tournament at Highbury Hill ends in tragedy after a new road is cut through Longbury Hill, despite the protests of the local community who claim the place is haunted. When two workmen are killed and several injured or taken ill after a series of "freak" accidents, even Mr. Nelson, secretary of the MMC and the event organiser, wonders if there's something to the local superstition, but at last the New Corner is ready, even if the place gives off an unaccountable terrible smell and drivers complain of some maniac running out in front of their cars. At the close of the tournament and, as the dusk descends, two drivers set off to contest the decider. Mr. Nelson recalls his evil dream of the previous night but by then it's too late ...

R. H. Malden - Between Sunset and Moonrise: Yaxholme, a village on the outskirts of Cambridge. The horrific experience of an unnamed vicar who visits the remote cottage of old Mrs. Vries on New Years Eve. Mrs. Vries is a woman for whom he and his parishioners share what they delude themselves is an irrational dislike, but it's soon apparent to the reader that she's a dabbler in Black Witchcraft. As the vicar makes his way home across the mist-shrouded fenland, he is attacked by the winged demon Asmodeus, but Mrs. Vries' evening is far worse.

Sir Andrew Caldecott - Christmas Reunion: Caldecott takes up M. R. James' challenge to complete one of the Stories I Have Tried To Write and comes up with a gem, although it reads more like L. P. Hartley than the guy I refuse to refer to as 'Monty'. The Dreyton's have their festivities disrupted when young Mr. Clarence Love returns from the antipodes to spend Christmas as their guest. Love is a gold prospector made fabulously rich by the mysterious death of the uncle who shared his adventure in the Bush. A sinister, bogus Santa with a neat line in macabre doggerel sees to it that Mr. Love pays for his treachery in full.

Shane Leslie - In A Glass Dimly: Begins by pouring scorn on the then public infatuation with mummies and the abominable curses they bestow upon those who despoil their tombs. A far from credulous Egyptian explorer agrees with Leslie and his friends that it's all nonsense, but goes on to relate the one inexplicable episode in all his years of trading artefacts when a dealer gifted him a valuable coffin board on account that it brought bad luck to all who came within its vicinity. This occasion proves no different. Next, a look at London's haunted churches, in particular, one in Kensington where the Holy Father has not been able to complete the Communion service in his eighteen months at the parish. It seems the saintly figure depicted in stained glass was modelled on a condemned prisoner completely against his wishes, and now the face contorts into that of a hanged man whenever the Priest reaches for the sacred wafer.

[monker]

Too bad this one's already as rare as hen's teeth.

It sounds like this, and the even rarer Thrills is the only way you can read the Patrick Carleton story.

There's still quite a few gems to be found in the old Not at Night/Creeps/Thrills series as I'm finding out with the likes of J. A. Hopson's 'The House With No Road' (in The Sorceress In Stained Glass) also from Thrills.

[dem]

The Sorceress in Stained Glass looks like an inspired collection, and not since 3rd Pan Book of Horror has there been so much Creeps action in one volume. Along with House With No Road, you also get:

E.K. Allan - The Round Graveyard
N. Dennett - The Menhir
A.D. Avison - The Horror in the Pond
George Benwood - The Interrupted Honeymoon
H. R. Wakefield - "And He Shall Sing"

looking at the rest of the line-up, i'm wondering how it holds together. surely MRJ could never have imagined in his worst nightmares that he'd be sharing a collection with something like The Horror In The Pond!

[elricc]

Celui-la is one of my favourites, eerie, atmospheric,

[dem]

i agree, elric, Celui-La is perhaps the finest story of a wonderful author. i don't have a copy of her collection, Randall's Round, but between them, Richard Dalby and, especially, Hugh Lamb have reprinted most of the stories over a series of anthologies, so i've been collecting it in installments (only two more to go). According to Richard Dalby, 'Eleanor Scott' was the pen-name of Helen Magdalen Leys (1892 - 1965), the daughter of John Kirkwood Leys, "a barrister who became a popular novelist, turning out several pot-boilers and thrillers with titles like A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing, The Houseboat Mystery and The Black Terror. Intriguingly, Dalby also suggests that 'Eleanor Scott' may have contributed to the Creeps series under a variety of pseudonyms including 'N. Dennet', whose Unburied Bane seems very popular with our readers. There's more information in the first post on the 3rd Pan Book Of Horror Stories thread.

Andre de Lorde in action

getting back to Monker and the Creeps: After the third volume, Birkin only rarely landed contributions from name authors, but one story that intrigues me from Thrills (1935) is The Waxwork by Andre de Lorde, surely the same Andre de Lorde who provided hundreds of scripts for the Paris Grand Guignol!

[monker]

I'd like to get to the bottom of all the 'Eleanor Scott' pseudonyms because I'd really like to know how particular authors stand in the overall scheme of things.

I've only read three from Randall's Round. I read 'Celui-La' ages ago and back then I kind of resented its similarity to 'Oh whistle...' The other two were the title story to the collection, which I wasn't overly fond of and 'At Simmel Acres Farm', which I was.

I certainly intend to give 'Celui-La' another read.

[cw67q]

Jan 11, 2010 2:13:59 GMT monker said:

I'd like to get to the bottom of all the 'Eleanor Scott' pseudonyms because I'd really like to know how particular authors stand in the overall scheme of things.

I've only read three from Randall's Round. I read 'Celui-La' ages ago and back then I kind of resented its similarity to 'Oh whistle...' The other two were the title story to the collection, which I wasn't overly fond of and 'At Simmel Acre Farm'. which I was.

I certainly intend to give 'Celui-La' another read.

I also have a problem with celui-la. The set up and narration of the story is excellent but to my mind it is undermined by the ending (which I won't spoil). Pity as this could have been a really great story rather than just a very good one until the ending.

i'm rather fond of Randals round itself, I think it becomes more quietly sinister with every reading. I prfefer it to Celui-la

[dem]

i can see i'm going to have to brush up on At Simmel Acre Farm and Randall's Round once i get my reading head on again.

Couldn't resist lifting this photo from the gallery at back of Ghosts & Scholars. The Twice A Fortnight Group circa 1890 featuring M. R. James, Hugh Benson, E. F. Benson and .... Jack the Ripper! Or not, as the case may bee. According to Michael Harrison, in Clarence: Was He Jack The Ripper (W.H. Allen, 1972), the Whitechapel murders were the work of James Kenneth Stephen, possibly in conjunction with his 'lover', Prince Albert Victor!

It should be pointed out that legion Ripper *ahem* experts question his "rather dubious logic" in arriving at such a preposterous conclusion.

[elricc]

Is Simmel Acres farm the story set in the Cotswold with the statue?
I liked the twelve apostles as well.

Also really enjoyes Sunset Moonrise, RH Malden
The Fens are such a perfect place to set any creepy story.

Will have to reread this book to remember the rest

[monker]

Yeah, it's the statue one. Hopefully I'll catch up with "The Twelve Apostles" soon, fingers crossed.

[Michael Connolly]

I have just discovered this. Eleanor Scott's Randalls Round, Arthur Gray's Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye and E.G. Swain's The Stoneground Ghost Tales have been reprinted in paperback by Oleander Press. Check here: www.oleanderpress.com/index.php/shopping-cart?page=shop.browse&category_id=25 or on Amazon.

[jonathan122]

Dec 10, 2010 14:33:18 GMT Michael Connolly said:

I have just discovered this. Eleanor Scott's Randalls Round, Arthur Gray's Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye and E.G. Swain's The Stoneground Ghost Tales have been reprinted in paperback by Oleander Press. Check here: www.oleanderpress.com/index.php/shopping-cart?page=shop.browse&category_id=25 or on Amazon.

It's probably quite sad that I find this immensely exciting...

[Dr Terror]

Or theres this:
www.coachwhipbooks.com/titles/ancient-haunts.html