Ghosts & Scholars 13 (1991)

[dem bones]

Rosemary Pardoe (ed.) - Ghosts & Scholars 13 (Haunted Library, 1991)

Allen Koszowski (The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas)

Fiction:

Ron Weighell - The Circle of the Hieroglyphs
Rick Kennett - The Windows
Sheila Hodgson - The Lodestone
'Ingulphus' [Arthur Gray] - Suggestion

Rosemary Pardoe - Arthur Gray
Rosemary Pardoe, David Rowlands, John Alfred Taylor & Ron Weighell - "The Residence At Whitminster"

Reviews Rosemary Pardoe - Richard Dalby (ed.) , Mystery For Christmas, (O' Mara, 1990)
Michel Desforges - M. R. James, Histoires De Fantomes Complete: Introduced by Francois Truchaud, (Neo, 1990)
Jan Arter - Christopher Fowler, Rune, (Century, 1990)
Rosemary Pardoe - Richard Dalby (ed.) , Mammoth Book Of Ghost Stories, (Robinson, 1990)

Artwork

Allen Koszowski, Dallas Goffin, Jim Pitts, Alan Hunter, Nick Maloret

Should anybody have a copy of G&S 13 with a seriously damaged cover (notably a bite-size chunk missing from top edge), and wonders how it got that way, I can enlighten you. It was attacked by a budgie. That's all you need to know.

Sheila Hodgson - The Lodestone: When asked by his publisher to provide an illustrator for a forthcoming study of English Abbeys, Dr. James (yes that one) nominates talented but wayward Cambridge student Francis Lippiat as best man for the job. Said publisher is horrified when Francis insists on ruining his illustrations by incorporating in each a gravestone bearing the strange inscription "Let the waters rise up." Lippiat's obsession with this lodestone leads he and an increasingly exasperated MRJ on a lightening tour of Cornwall, Dorset and Wiltshire where, incredibly, they finally locate the original of the drawings in the churchyard at Winterset. Miss Eleanor Howard, who, much to James' consternation, is numbered among "the new breed of ladies who contrive to get themselves to Cambridge University" is always one step ahead of them in the hunt. James believes that Francis and Eleanor are, or at least, were lovers, so it comes as quite a shock when Lippiat denounces her as a reincarnated witch and attempts to throttle her. It seems the boy has it in his fanciful head that the lodestone shifts counties every hundred years, relocating in villages with a dark history of witch persecution. These locales are invariably washed away in a flood shortly afterward. A simple consultation of the calendar is enough to disprove this preposterous theory, and Lippiat, finally accepting that his imagination has run away with him, sheepishly agrees to return to Cambridge and knuckle down to work. But this time it is Dr. James who has made a simple but fatal miscalculation ....

Rick Kennett - The Windows: Mr. Beckerman, proper serious Satanist and friend of the station's occult obsessed presenter Kingston Newbry, arrives at Public Radio 3LTD studios shortly before midnight, armed with a stack of oversized, too-chunky-to-be-vinyl discs and such materials he'll need to raise a demon. Narrated by an unnamed DJ who probably isn't Mr. Kennett's celebrated psychic detective, Ernie Pine.

Can't remember where I read it, but didn't John Keir Cross attempt a similar stunt - in his case, I believe, conjuring Satan - live on air?

[helrunar]

Hey Dem, tonight in between feverish bouts of finishing my income tax forms, I read John Keir Cross's account of his invocation of Old Nick on the air (or rather, how he arranged for an actor who "volunteered" to read a mediaeval conjuration of the Evil One as part of a Halloween broadcast in a Glasgow studio--it is implied that this happened sometime in the 1950s).  I've been looking to see if there's already a thread for JKC's delightful little volume Best Black Magic Stories.  I have the Faber paperback edition, dated I think 1960.  Have not been able to find an existing thread for this.

The invocation was followed by 2 minutes of on air silence, but some people at home reported alarums and manifestations.  JKC's own son was attacked by a peculiarly large and vicious rat later that night in a bedroom with no sign of any rat-hole, or means of ingress.  A religious friend who was visiting blamed the appearance of the vermin and the subsequent assault upon JKC's foolish whim to call up Powers of whose true nature he had no concept.  I have to admit I shivered.

JKC's own tale "Mothering Sunday" might be the most unusual piece in the volume, which includes classics from the Ingoldsby Legends and the canons of Bulwer-Lytton and MR James...

cheers, H.

[dem bones]

Apr 18, 2017 4:25:56 GMT helrunar said:

I've been looking to see if there's already a thread for JKC's delightful little volume Best Black Magic Stories.  I have the Faber paperback edition, dated I think 1960.  Have not been able to find an existing thread for this.

There's a very good reason for this. I don't have a copy, and nobody else started a thread. However, all is not lost. Stick around a bit and I'll transfer over the details from the error strewn marvel that is the Vault 'site' on Wordpress.