William Croft Dickinson - Dark Encounters

[Swampirella]

Anthologized in "The 2nd Armada Ghost Book", "Realms of Darkness" & possibly elsewhere, I thought I'd get a hold of Dickinson's sole collection, "Dark Encounters" (1963). Surprisingly available in print at reasonable prices, also in digital format. All set in Scotland & "somewhat Jamesian", it's well worth getting a copy. Details below:

The Keepers of the Wall

An archeologist is unwise enough to visit the ruins of an ancient castle after dark where, centuries ago, 6 men were buried (presumably alive) to protect the remaining complete fourth wall.

Return At Dusk

An anthropology professor recounts the story of why he now refuses to look into mirrors at twilight. Posted to Cairntoul castle during WWII, he encounters something he'll never forget.

The Eve of St. Botulph

A historian discovers an ancient manuscript that describes Satanic occurences at Dundrennan Abbey.

Can These Stones Speak

An academic spends the night in a haunted guest room of a friend. The building had recently been converted into living space "affordable to the academic purse" from the remains of an ancient nunnery where, legend has it, a nun had been walled up alive.

The Work of Evil

The librarian of a rare book room keeps a book securely locked up after two men who attempted to read it die by strangulation.

Return of the Native

Visiting Fulbright Professor Dr. MacDonald tries to trace his ancestors to a certain area in Scotland & encounters an ancient curse on his family.

Quieta Non Movera

Two historians open a cairn where supposedly a witch's supernatural dog was buried.

Let The Dead Bury the Dead

An archeologist as for help from a colleague at a Bronze Age burial site.

The Castle Guide

A castle custodian gives his evening visitor a strange tour.

The Witches Bone

A witch's bone allows a professor to get revenge upon a contemptuous colleague.

Found in Realms of Darkness; I can't manage to figure out how to add a link to Dem's splendid summary.

The Sweet Singers

University colleagues on a golf tour hear strange voices chanting the 51st Psalm.

The House of Balfother

Professor Petrie, when still a student, decides to go on a hike, retracing David Balfour's route from Kidnapped (R.L. Stevenson). Caught in a late afternoon mist, he twists his ankle but managed to continue on until suddenly confronted by a tower house. The occupant reluctantly lets him in, after claiming "Na stranger enters Balfother. The king's writ has it." After being shown to a very unwelcoming room, he has an unexpected visitor.

His Own Number

A Highland-born computer technician quits after a computer thrice gives him the right answer to three different calculations.

Found in The 2nd Armada Ghost Book. Same problem as "Witch's Bone">

[helrunar]

Those sound like fun, Swampi. Thanks for sharing these notes with us!

Best, Hel

[humgoo]

It used to be one of those very rare, neither-for-love-nor-money collections, before it was reprinted as paperback-priced hardback a couple of years ago by an Edinburgh publisher, if I remember correctly. There are other fans among the Vaulters, apparently:

vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/3544/william-dickinson-dark-encounters

[Swampirella]

Thanks, Humgoo; I searched for Dark Encounters in the Vault but didn't find this thread....

[Dr Strange]

Dec 10, 2019 17:42:36 GMT humgoo said:

It used to be one of those very rare, neither-for-love-nor-money collections, before it was reprinted as paperback-priced hardback a couple of years ago by an Edinburgh publisher, if I remember correctly.

Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh - I got a copy a couple of years back. The Introduction to that edition had an interesting aside in relation to the story "His Own Number" -

"There is a comparable and apparently authentic ghost story - or urban legend - about one of the older Cambridge colleges. Using a computer, the ghost issues warnings and threats... to date it has reportedly killed two people who disregarded them and the college has banned any further research on the subject. Details may be found in Cambridge College Ghosts by Geoff Yeates (Jarrold, 1994)."

[mrhappy]

This recent re-issue also contains an extra story "The MacGregor Skull".

Mr Happy

[dem]

Dec 11, 2019 3:39:13 GMT mrhappy said:

This recent re-issue also contains an extra story "The MacGregor Skull".

Mr Happy

They've made a nice job of it, too.

William Croft Dickinson - Dark Encounters (Polygon, 2017: originally Harvill Press, 1963).

Alistair Kerr - Introduction

The Keepers of the Wall
Return at Dusk
The Eve of St Botulph
Can These Stones Speak?
The Work of Evil
The Return of the Native
Quieta Non Movere
Let the Dead Bury the Dead
The Castle Guide
The Witch's Bone
The Sweet Singers
The House of the Balfother
His Own Number
The MacGregor Skull

Notes
A Note on the Author of the Introduction

Blurb:

After more than fifty years, William Croft Dickinson's classic ghost stories are back in print. Dark Encounters is an elegantly understated yet spine tingling collection that will appeal to fans of M. R. James and H. P. Lovecraft.
From a demonic book that brings its readers to an early death to the murderous spectre of a feudal baron, these tales are a welcome addition to the long and distinguished canon of Scottish ghost stories.

[dem]

Scottish supernatural stories. Framing device is the Catherine Crowe 'Round the Fire' set-up relocated to Edinburgh Uni staff club, an exclusively male environment by the look of it.

Can These Stones Speak?: Henderson, a medieval historian, on his experience at The Monal, Edinburgh, a house built on the site of a nunnery. Two pillars and a wall of same are incorporated into the new building. Henderson's room is said to be haunted by a sister walled up alive for crime unspecified, whose bones were recovered in 1575. On the first night, Henderson is disturbed by the scraping of a phantom trowel and a telephone call from the beyond, a garbled voice reciting the sentence of excommunication down the line.

Let The Dead Bury the Dead: Abercrombie, a Professor of Prehistoric study, relates the tragic case of fellow archaeologist Hawthorne, who excavated a bronze age burial site better left undisturbed.

The Work of Evil: To the dismay of Maitland Allan, keeper of printed books, the University Library includes the complete collection of the long dead diabolist John, the Third Earl of Gowrie. Among these works is a book so evil Allan keeps it locked away in a safe until such times as he can find the will to dispose of it at sea. Those few to have read it have met death by strangulation soon afterwards.

[dem]

The MacGregor Skull: (Scotsman Weekend Magazine, 21 Dec. 1963). Narrative of the Reverend Finlay Robertson. He being dead but speaketh. MS found in a second hand book detailing an episode in the Macgregors' never-ending feud with the Campbells. An old woman crosses the moor in a corpse-laden cart, pulls up outside the home of Sir Robert Campbell, and hands a skull to a startled serving maid. The laird, appalled, rushes to return the morbid relic, but white horse, cart and rider have vanished. The old girl's 'gift' leads him to madness and self-destruction.

The Keepers of the Wall: Robson, a professor of medieval archaeology, foolishly ignores the advice of an old crofter and visits the ruins of Duncross Castle after dark. They who preserve the wall are ever-seeking to lure living men to assist them in their work.

[dem]

The Castle Guide: A Custodian in the costume of a mid-sixteenth century man-of-arms treats narrator to an evening tour of the St. Andrews the general public no longer get to see, replete with missile attack, crumbling towers, screams of the dying, etc.

Quieta Non Movere: Legend has it that, in 1594, Barbara Napier, one of the coven of North Berwick witches accused of raising a storm to sink James VII's ship, gifted a hell hound to Logan of Restalrig to guard the castle at Wolf's Crag. For years the Black Dog brought terror to the district until a brave priest secured it an aumbry (a church wall-safe, for those, like me, who didn't know). What would happen if some fool were to break the seal? Henderson and Davidson, medieval historians, allow curiosity to get the better of them.

The Return of the Native: At close of WWII, John MacDonald, American Professor, pays a first visit to Morar, Edinburgh, land of his ancestors. He is lucky to survive the drive through the hills as a red eyed hag in dripping wet clothes twice attempts to forced him from the narrow road by dropping boulders in his path. Father MacWilliam informs him that his tormentor is the ghost of three hundred years dead Isabel Mackenzie. Swum as a witch by MacDonald's tyrannical forebears, she swore a dying curse; "The stones of the earth shall crush you and all your kin."

[andydecker]

I am real curious for your verdict. It sounds not very varied, a lot of short stories treading the same ground. On the other hand, if it delivers what it promises, always a good thing.

[Dr Strange]

It's a while since I read them, but I remember enjoying them well enough. I suppose they might seem a bit samey if read one after the other, but maybe no more so than MRJ. Like MRJ, Dickinson was a professional academic historian (he was the Sir William Fraser Professor of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, which is the oldest chair of Scottish history, from 1943 until his death in 1963), and writing ghost stories was very much a sideline. He also wrote some children's fiction, the best known probably being the fantasy Borrobil (1944) and its sequel The Eildon Tree (1947), which have been described as "the missing link between C.S. Lewis and Alan Garner".

[helrunar]

These stories really do sound like a lot of fun. How lovely that some diligent individual excavated the tales from the pages of Scotsman Weekend Magazine, sandwiched no doubt in between recipes for haggis and a gruelling account from somebody marooned on a mountaintop in a blizzard (it's blizzarding here in Boston at the moment but I am safe at home).

H.

[Shrink Proof]

Jan 29, 2022 13:15:59 GMT andydecker said:

I am real curious for your verdict. It sounds not very varied, a lot of short stories treading the same ground. On the other hand, if it delivers what it promises, always a good thing.

I found them a bit samey but OK. A sort of Second Division MRJ, but certainly worth reading.

I thought that the setting and premise of "Return at Dusk" were excellent, with plenty of ingredients for a creepy tale. Obviously a centuries old castle in the wilds of Scotland is a good starting point for a spooky story, but writing about soldiers posted there in the early years of WWII was a neat move. That adds the anxiety of nocturnal watches for the enemy, a compulsory blackout and a ban on bailing out or running away ("You're on watch, Private, and orders are orders") to the mix.

[dem]

Jan 29, 2022 13:15:59 GMT andydecker said:

I am real curious for your verdict. It sounds not very varied, a lot of short stories treading the same ground. On the other hand, if it delivers what it promises, always a good thing.

I like them a lot. Have read maybe half before in the anthologies Swampi mentions up top, those commented upon to date - bar The Return of the Native - were new to me. They all deliver though, as always, best not to crash through them one after the other (in my experience, bouncing between Dark Encounters, a Spicy Mystery Stories, and Catherine Crowe's plodding Ghosts & Family Legends seems to work, but I'd imagine any combination will do the trick).

Jan 29, 2022 16:50:13 GMT helrunar said:

These stories really do sound like a lot of fun. How lovely that some diligent individual excavated the tales from the pages of Scotsman Weekend Magazine, sandwiched no doubt in between recipes for haggis and a gruelling account from somebody marooned on a mountaintop in a blizzard (it's blizzarding here in Boston at the moment but I am safe at home).

H.

In the Christmas number of Scotsman Weekend Magazine, The MacGregor Skull is preceded with the dignified note.

"Knowing himself to be a sick man, the late Professor W. Croft Dickinson, some months before his death, sent us this characteristic tale of the supernatural to maintain a long tradition of Christmas publication. It is sad to think that this tradition must henceforth be broken."