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Post by dem on Sept 24, 2019 11:21:34 GMT
Denys Val Baker (ed.) - Haunted Travellers (William Kimber, 1985) Denys Val Baker - Introduction
Rosalind Wade - Doubled Crossing
J. C. Trewin - Station Cab
Fred Urquhart - The Saracen's Stick
Chris Simons - All in the Mind
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Labyrinth
Edgar Allan Poe - A Descent Into the Maelström
Patricia Daly - The Day Trip
Mary Williams - Poor Kate
Lanyon Jones - The Coastguard
Derek Stanford - A Trip to the Forest
Meg Buxton - The Lerryn-Brown Line
Denys Val Baker - Voice from the Past
A. L. Barker - Lost Journey Blurb: 'But safer to stay at home' - so runs the song, and certainly the travellers in this new anthology of ghost stories would have agreed with it. For when they left their own hearthsides they had some strange encounters indeed, finding that their journeys ended not in lovers' meetings but in something rather different.
This is undoubtedly an assembly of remarkable stories with contributions from .... More West Country tales of the supernatural plus an incongruous public domain Poe. Denys Val Baker - Voice from the Past: Keen amateur archaeologists William Hocking and Samuel Leddra finally get to visit Castle Pednolva ... and wish they hadn't. Inexplicably, the academics are thrown back two thousand years to relive past lives as warrior guards of a Celt fortress. Initially friendly, their charges grow increasingly suspicious and hostile toward them. With no pencil and paper available for centuries to come, William the once-librarian, takes a flint, carves details of their miserable plight on a slab for posterity. Chris Simons - All in the Mind: Driving home in the early hours from Lands End to Penzance, narrator's car stalls in Towednack village. As she waits for temperamental vehicle to right itself, a phantom woman in white manifests in the passenger seat. The stranger's eyes betray a deep hatred of the driver - but why, and who is she? The motor comes back to life. On reaching Nancledra, the unwelcome guest vanishes just as suddenly as she appeared, but narrator can't forget the incident. She breaks up with her lover, suffers a nervous breakdown and falls out with all her female friends, suspecting one of them must be the original of the apparition. Mary Williams - Poor Kate: ( Where Phantoms Stir, 1976) . Astonishing that a deadly bore of a woman like Kate Pettigale should have landed a catch like Robin Clees. More outrageous still that she should reportedly run off with a lover within a mere six months of the wedding! Five years on, our narrator, Jane, meets Kate at Pendillon station. Together they board an unscheduled train to Coldbrook, Kate cheerfully insistent she show Jane the "Gorgeous place at Roselynne", where she will soon be setting up home with her lovely fiancée, .... Robin Clees. Jane wonders if the woman is confused, suffering from amnesia, mad, in denial, or possibly even hallucinating? On reaching Roselynne, it is immediately apparent that things aren't as they should be. The "gorgeous place" is a dust-laden, decaying mausoleum of a mansion, its garden similarly neglected. And there, directly beneath a rotting apple tree, the key to the mystery .... R. Chetwynd-Hayes - The Labyrinth: ( The Elemental, 1974). A witch, a werewolf, and a mansion on Dartmoor with an insatiable appetite for the life-essence of unwary travellers. Commented upon on earlier thread, which is a mercy as I've little inclination for a reunion.
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Post by helrunar on Sept 24, 2019 16:45:09 GMT
Thanks for this review. This one is available in a popular online vending site for a very reasonable price and I might spring for it, simply because I had never even heard of this anthologist (name makes me think he was "to the manor born") before I began hanging out here.
Oddly I've also never seen any of Herbert van Thal (ne Bertie Maurice van Thal)'s books. I don't think they got any distro over here. Halloween is coming but here at Schloss Helrunar, it's pretty much Halloween year round.
cheers, H.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 24, 2019 18:30:06 GMT
A strange thing, this thread appearing when it did, as today I started reading this very volume. Only two stories in so far but entertaining enough. I quite liked the first one, Rosalind Wade's "Double Crossing". The ending you can see from a fair way off but I enjoyed the description of one of those journeys we've all suffered at one time or another when failed connections, lousy weather, etc. make a tough trip (in this case Ireland to Wales by rail, ship, bus and on foot) into a real endurance course. Flooded station platforms, landslips blocking railway lines, crashed bus, you name it. Not to mention the sour-faced woman who dogs the protagonist throughout and whose behaviour gradually coaxes an unpleasant memory back to the surface.
The second one, "Station Cab" by J C Trewin, is really pretty obvious but pleasant enough. Having many years back lived in Cornwall, I can certainly empathise with the writer's misery at the state of the rail service to there from London. Dismal at the best of times, it's wretched in a storm. Worse still if you really must get there asap to attend a sick relative. And terminal if there's no road transport available when you reach the station in Cornwall and still have several cross-country miles to cover in the downpour. But, hey, there's a horse-drawn cab over there with a weird looking coachman...
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Post by helrunar on Sept 24, 2019 20:19:05 GMT
Shrink Proof, in the past couple of years I've seen some horrific accounts about making what should be routine trips via BritRail (if that's what it's still called--I think they changed the name?) The infrastructure for the trains and the equipment, etc sounds about on the same level as the subway system over here in Boston.
Definitely thinking of getting this book for the festive holiday season...
cheers, H.
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Post by cromagnonman on Sept 24, 2019 23:03:21 GMT
Shrink Proof, in the past couple of years I've seen some horrific accounts about making what should be routine trips via BritRail (if that's what it's still called--I think they changed the name?) The infrastructure for the trains and the equipment, etc sounds about on the same level as the subway system over here in Boston. Definitely thinking of getting this book for the festive holiday season... cheers, H. Put it this way Steve: Sherlock Holmes would not prosper in this day and age. There would be none of this "consult the Bradshaw Watson but I think we might just make the quarter hourly express service to Hanging-Yokel-in-the-Wold." More likely it be "confound it Lestrade we would have got the scoundrel were it not for the leaves-on-the-line/signal failure at Herne Hill/broken down train/over heated tracks/wrong type of snow...." or any one of the hundred and two other wheezes churned out daily to explain third world reliability provided at extortionate prices. Network Rail probably run in-house competitions among the staff to see who can come up with the most proposterous excuse for a non running train. In the current climate it can only be a matter of time before the fragility of the ozone layer is being trundled out to explain the cancellation of the 8.27 to Didcot. |
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 25, 2019 7:40:23 GMT
Shrink Proof, in the past couple of years I've seen some horrific accounts about making what should be routine trips via BritRail (if that's what it's still called--I think they changed the name?) The infrastructure for the trains and the equipment, etc sounds about on the same level as the subway system over here in Boston. Definitely thinking of getting this book for the festive holiday season... cheers, H. Helrunar, I'll try to keep this as short as I can, though that's not easy with such a complex issue - I don't want to derail the thread (sorry...). The nationalised railway (British Railways, later renamed British Rail) was pretty dodgy, for all sorts of reasons, most of them down to the incessant meddling of politicians. But it achieved great things on a shoestring budget. In 1996 it was privatised and broken up. Insanely, the fixed infrastructure (track, stations, bridges, tunnels, overhead wires, etc.) was split from the train operating. So the train operating companies (TOCs) pay to use the tracks and stations to run their trains. Which, believe it or not, they don't actually own, rather they lease trains from yet more different companies. All of these entities have separate staff. This of course is a middle managers dream, as there are a billion contracts, agreements, etc. to work out the billion interfaces between these organisations, making it very popular with lawyers, accountants and those pig-tailed, roller-blading parasites called management consultants. The possibilities for pointless, time-wasting meetings with flip charts and Powerpoint are endless. As you might imagine, this is a recipe for continuous problems, and for never-ending evasion of responsibility when things go Code Brown. Unsurprisingly, even allowing for inflation, British taxpayers are now paying over 300% of the subsidy to the railways than they did in the days of BR. The infrastructure was privatised as a company called RailTrack, which went bust after a few years, so that bit was renationalised and named Network Rail. The TOCs have stayed in private hands, except when one of them goes bust too. Most spectacularly this happened when GNER (Great North Eastern Railway), who operated trains on the East Coast Main Line, went bust. That bit was renationalised as East Coast. After a short while it was returned to profitability at the taxpayers' expense, but in time it was profitable and started returning millions each year to the Treasury. So they privatised it again, this time as Virgin East Coast, and within a short time it was making a loss again. It too went bust and it's now renationalised as London North Eastern Railway and doing OK. Once more the taxpayer is paying out to rescue it, and once we've bailed it out, it'll be passed over to some group of morons in the City who'll screw it up again... Everybody loves this, except the public, but, happily, they don't count. According to the polls, even a large majority of Conservative voters want the railways renationalised! Funnily enough, the politicians all promise to do it but don't... Sorry for the rant. As far as the book goes, it was published in 1985, well before the current lunacy. The authors really had no idea what the future held. Have now read a bit further. "The Saracen's Stick" by Fred Urquhart is OK, especially as a greasy paedophile gets his. Chris Simons' "All In The Mind" is a simple enough idea (as outlined by Dem, above) but the hopelessness of the denouement is well done. As a former shrink, I liked the last sentence particularly. "The Labyrinth" is very much R. Chetwynd-Hayes doing what R. Chetwynd-Hayes does. And quite well too. You could do much worse over Yule than this volume. Go for it. |
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Post by dem on Sept 25, 2019 9:50:44 GMT
A strange thing, this thread appearing when it did, as today I started reading this very volume .... The second one, "Station Cab" by J C Trewin, is really pretty obvious but pleasant enough. Having many years back lived in Cornwall, I can certainly empathise with the writer's misery at the state of the rail service to there from London. Dismal at the best of times, it's wretched in a storm. Worse still if you really must get there asap to attend a sick relative. And terminal if there's no road transport available when you reach the station in Cornwall and still have several cross-country miles to cover in the downpour. But, hey, there's a horse-drawn cab over there with a weird looking coachman... Read Station Cab last night. Set during the winter of 1902. All things considered, Hugh's complex rail journey from North London to Cornwall passes remarkably smoothly: it's the last leg of the mercy dash - the relatively short trip from a soon-to-be flood-bound Gwavas station to Bozawn village - proves a nerve-shredder, especially when the taciturn cab driver Dick Trevellick insists on taking the precarious scenic route. Have enjoyed all five stories read to date. Voice from the Past is almost Tales from the Crypt minus the obligatory blood bath. I like All in the Mind for it's not-quite phantom hitch-hiker vibe and devastating kiss off (see also Mary Williams' Poor Kate). Don't apologise - that is one brilliant post! |
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Post by Swampirella on Sept 25, 2019 10:28:15 GMT
Shrink Proof, in the past couple of years I've seen some horrific accounts about making what should be routine trips via BritRail (if that's what it's still called--I think they changed the name?) The infrastructure for the trains and the equipment, etc sounds about on the same level as the subway system over here in Boston. Definitely thinking of getting this book for the festive holiday season... cheers, H. Helrunar, I'll try to keep this as short as I can, though that's not easy with such a complex issue - I don't want to derail the thread (sorry...). The nationalised railway (British Railways, later renamed British Rail) was pretty dodgy, for all sorts of reasons, most of them down to the incessant meddling of politicians. But it achieved great things on a shoestring budget. In 1996 it was privatised and broken up. Insanely, the fixed infrastructure (track, stations, bridges, tunnels, overhead wires, etc.) was split from the train operating. So the train operating companies (TOCs) pay to use the tracks and stations to run their trains. Which, believe it or not, they don't actually own, rather they lease trains from yet more different companies. All of these entities have separate staff. This of course is a middle managers dream, as there are a billion contracts, agreements, etc. to work out the billion interfaces between these organisations, making it very popular with lawyers, accountants and those pig-tailed, roller-blading parasites called management consultants. The possibilities for pointless, time-wasting meetings with flip charts and Powerpoint are endless. As you might imagine, this is a recipe for continuous problems, and for never-ending evasion of responsibility when things go Code Brown. Unsurprisingly, even allowing for inflation, British taxpayers are now paying over 300% of the subsidy to the railways than they did in the days of BR. The infrastructure was privatised as a company called RailTrack, which went bust after a few years, so that bit was renationalised and named Network Rail. The TOCs have stayed in private hands, except when one of them goes bust too. Most spectacularly this happened when GNER (Great North Eastern Railway), who operated trains on the East Coast Main Line, went bust. That bit was renationalised as East Coast. After a short while it was returned to profitability at the taxpayers' expense, but in time it was profitable and started returning millions each year to the Treasury. So they privatised it again, this time as Virgin East Coast, and within a short time it was making a loss again. It too went bust and it's now renationalised as London North Eastern Railway and doing OK. Once more the taxpayer is paying out to rescue it, and once we've bailed it out, it'll be passed over to some group of morons in the City who'll screw it up again... Everybody loves this, except the public, but, happily, they don't count. According to the polls, even a large majority of Conservative voters want the railways renationalised! Funnily enough, the politicians all promise to do it but don't... Sorry for the rant. As far as the book goes, it was published in 1985, well before the current lunacy. The authors really had no idea what the future held. Have now read a bit further. "The Saracen's Stick" by Fred Urquhart is OK, especially as a greasy paedophile gets his. Chris Simons' "All In The Mind" is a simple enough idea (as outlined by Dem, above) but the hopelessness of the denouement is well done. As a former shrink, I liked the last sentence particularly. "The Labyrinth" is very much R. Chetwynd-Hayes doing what R. Chetwynd-Hayes does. And quite well too. You could do much worse over Yule than this volume. Go for it. Thanks for the wonderfully acerbic but sadly true description; I'm unlikely to ever find a better one, not that I'll go looking for it. Our Via Rail Canada is little if any better, thanks to budget cuts, downsizing, etc. However a recent trip, the first in decades, was quite enjoyable and only 30min late. Oh, and the book sounds better and better, I might look out for a copy for myself. |
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Post by cromagnonman on Sept 25, 2019 11:42:51 GMT
Back when I was a sprog British Rail was a source of fond national derision. The Two Ronnies especially made endless capital out of the dire state of its buffet car delicacies. But my favourite gag comes from the 60s radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again:
Tannoy announcement: The train now arriving at platforms 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14 has come in sideways. (Groan) British Rail apologises for the late arrival of this joke."
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Post by Swampirella on Sept 25, 2019 11:49:45 GMT
Shrink Proof, in the past couple of years I've seen some horrific accounts about making what should be routine trips via BritRail (if that's what it's still called--I think they changed the name?) The infrastructure for the trains and the equipment, etc sounds about on the same level as the subway system over here in Boston. Definitely thinking of getting this book for the festive holiday season... cheers, H. Thanks to your lively discussion with Shrink Proof, I decided to get a copy for myself....
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 25, 2019 12:46:56 GMT
Thanks to your lively discussion with Shrink Proof, I decided to grab a copy for myself. At the moment there are 2 very reasonably priced copies on A****n.com If you're thinking of getting a copy, I suggest you get it now rather than later!
Cheers, S.
A good use of a few quid/dollars. |
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Post by andydecker on Sept 25, 2019 17:10:26 GMT
Helrunar, I'll try to keep this as short as I can, though that's not easy with such a complex issue - I don't want to derail the thread (sorry...). You could do much worse over Yule than this volume. Go for it. Thanks for the wonderfully acerbic but sadly true description; I'm unlikely to ever find a better one, not that I'll go looking for it. Our Via Rail Canada is little if any better, thanks to budget cuts, downsizing, etc. However a recent trip, the first in decades, was quite enjoyable and only 30min late. Oh, and the book sounds better and better, I might look out for a copy for myself. I liked it too :-) While some basic things are different, it is much the same here in Germany. Still a comparison of price in 2013 showed that at the time British prices were the highest in relation to Germany, France and Italy. While I am not a traveller, sometimes I like train-stories. I read one or two of the Andrew Martin novels, a crime series. I think this series was mentioned here a long time ago. The Necropolis Railway. |
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Post by Shrink Proof on Sept 25, 2019 20:07:28 GMT
While I am not a traveller, sometimes I like train-stories. I read one or two of the Andrew Martin novels, a crime series. I think this series was mentioned here a long time ago. The Necropolis Railway. Indeed it was. The Necropolis Railway wasn't bad. IMHO, Andrew Martin tried to drag it out though and there were too many sequels to it. I think that the character Jim Stringer (ex-loco fireman turned railway detective) got stretched so thin that he became translucent. |
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Post by helrunar on Sept 26, 2019 20:06:13 GMT
Thanks, Shrink Proof, for that very informative summing-up about the fate of British Rail. Far more horrific, really, than anything discussed elsewhere in this forum. Particularly from the point of view of British taxpayers.
I visited Cornwall for a couple of days back in 1995. What I remember best was an evocative afternoon and evening exploring the ruins of the cliffside castle of Tintagel. My friends and I stayed in a lovely inn that served a delicious veggie tart for my dinner. I still remember the yummy flavors.
Best wishes, Helrunar
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Post by dem on Sept 27, 2019 9:32:06 GMT
Patricia Daly - A Day Out: Strange episode in the young life of Jane Despry, 23, an actress with a theatre company touring The Tempest on the SW Peninsula. Jane is engaged to producer Andrew Paragon, 30, a broody introvert whose life is haunted by childhood tragedy. She loves him dearly, but sometimes he's difficult to be around. On impulse, Jane boards a pleasure steamer to Lynmouth. The boat docks during a gale, so she shelters in the restaurant of the Beach Hotel. It seems to her that this quaint coastal resort is stuck in a 'fifties time warp. A glamorous couple ask if they may join her. Rita and Mark Paragon - her prospective in-laws! After dinner, which goes swimmingly, they drive her to the bus stop at Lynton. "We can't come any further than this. We have to stay in the storm." When she eventually arrives back at the theatre, Jane gets to talking to her fiancée about his parents. {Spoiler} Andrew offers that he never really knew them. They were among the victims when a Hotel at Lynmouth was swept away in the flood disaster of 15th August, 1952. Derek Stanford - A Trip to the Forest: Brockenhurst in the New Forest to be specific. John Dowland takes wife Anne there for a second honeymoon in celebration of her having been discharged from hospital, the baffling condition that so nearly killed her suddenly just as mysteriously righted itself. All is well until they chance upon a phone booth in the trees. Anne asks John what he'd say if he called home now and had someone pick up at the other end. He playfully puts it to the test .... The only story to date I got fed up with, although to be fair, it's very simple but effective premise has proved difficult to shake.
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