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Post by dem bones on May 2, 2022 8:30:53 GMT
Pretty excited about this one. Of course, they're just copying from the Ghosts & Scholars Book of Folk Horror (only joking - honest!). I'd not be surprised if there's some truth in that. Shame the book doesn't offer a 'suggested further reading' biblio. Liked all of these. Simon Strantzas - The King of Stones: A wrong turn off the highway en route to Murtaugh and a detour to photograph a peach orchard deliver Judith and Rose in the clutches of an Idaho human sacrifice cult. Rose is offered as bride to the tree king, Judith, helpless to intervene on her friend's behalf, is abandoned to misery. References Bikini Kill and the Slits and intrusively (it broke the spell) drops lines from a Nick Cave masterpiece. Jan Edwards - The Devil's Piss-Pot: Boldbury Down. Daisy's diabolical scheme to sacrifice fellow park ranger Keira Anderson to the Knucker — "Sussex's very own water dragon" — of the ancient well horribly backfires. Stagnant water not literally Satan's urine, but still better left undrunk. Storm Constantine - Wyfa Medj: Elphie calls upon the woodland spirit of Black Ella, the 'midwife of death,' to cast out the sickness from her cousin's terminally ill son. Beautiful and sad.
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Post by humgoo on May 2, 2022 13:41:00 GMT
Further exploits of the Faerie folk. Two excellent stories. Six months ago the book looked totally I-probably-don't-need-it, now it feels totally indispensable. And I'm still saving up to get The Best of Dark Terrors, which is a bit pricey. Very typical Vault experience!
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Post by dem bones on May 3, 2022 9:43:10 GMT
Six months ago the book looked totally I-probably-don't-need-it, now it feels totally indispensable. And I'm still saving up to get The Best of Dark Terrors, which is a bit pricey. Very typical Vault experience! I'd made my mind up to give the book a miss until the folk horror bandwagon burnt out and moved on. Then a copy turned up in a sale — and here we are. M. R. James - Wailing Well: ( Wailing Well, 1928). An Eton scout troop camping in Wailing Well Field are warned to stay clear of a certain clump of trees. Lucky for us, Stanley Judkins, undisputed school trouble-maker, is not one to do as he's told. Still very good fun. After the atypically ghoulish Lost Hearts, perhaps the James story that would most easily lend itself to an EC comic adaptation. Christopher Fowler - The Mistake at the Monsoon Palace: (Timothy Parker Russell [ed.], Dark World: Ghost Stories, 2013). A revelation at outset of the monsoon persuades American tourist Marian Wilson to stage her own disappearance and remain behind in India as self-appointed guardian of the palace of Parjanya, old God of the Heavens, ruler of lightening, rain and thunder. Property developers are a curse the world over. David A. Sutton - St Ambrew's Well: Two families, caravan holidaying at Crantock, Cornwall. The two boys, Billy and Alan, sneak out in the night in search of the Spriggan - a mischievous sprite who may or may not be responsible for a terrifying phantom howl, "like a thousand voices pent up in misery, with one long wail dying away in the distance." An unnerving encounter with an old man in a hedgerow hurries them on toward an ancient well brimming with ..... I liked how this one kept me wondering which of the county's malevolent phenomena would get to inflict damage.
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Post by Michael Connolly on May 3, 2022 20:03:17 GMT
Six months ago the book looked totally I-probably-don't-need-it, now it feels totally indispensable. And I'm still saving up to get The Best of Dark Terrors, which is a bit pricey. Very typical Vault experience! I'd made my mind up to give the book a miss until the folk horror bandwagon burnt out and moved on. Then a copy turned up in a sale — and here we are. M. R. James - Wailing Well: ( Wailing Well, 1928). An Eton scout troop camping in Wailing Well Field are warned to stay clear of a certain clump of trees. Lucky for us, Stanley Judkins, undisputed school trouble-maker, is not one to do as he's told. Still very good fun. After the atypically ghoulish Lost Hearts, perhaps the James story that would most easily lend itself to an EC comic adaptation. Christopher Fowler - The Mistake at the Monsoon Palace: (Timothy Parker Russell [ed.], Dark World: Ghost Stories, 2013). A revelation at outset of the monsoon persuades American tourist Marian Wilson to stage her own disappearance and remain behind in India as self-appointed guardian of the palace of Parjanya, old God of the Heavens, ruler of lightening, rain and thunder. Property developers are a curse the world over. David A. Sutton - St Ambrew's Well: Two families, caravan holidaying at Crantock, Cornwall. The two boys, Billy and Alan, sneak out in the night in search of the Spriggan - a mischievous sprite who may or may not be responsible for a terrifying phantom howl, "like a thousand voices pent up in misery, with one long wail dying away in the distance." An unnerving encounter with an old man in a hedgerow hurries them on toward an ancient well brimming with ..... I liked how this one kept me wondering which of the county's malevolent phenomena would get to inflict damage. There's an excellent illustration from a book appearance of "Wailing Well" from the M.R. James Appreciation Society Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/groups/2343022578/search/?q=wailing%20well
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Post by dem bones on May 4, 2022 11:58:25 GMT
Heitman H. P. Lovecraft - The Hound: ( Weird Tales, Feb. 1924). St. John and, presumably, Lovecraft, prolific English grave robbers and curators of their own illicit museum of morbidity, travel to Holland to loot the tomb of a fifteenth century cemetery ghoul. Legend has it that their predecessor met an appropriate end, his body "torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast." Even before spade touches soil, a horrible baying in the night ... They dig him up regardless, pilfering a weird green jade amulet from the coffin while they are about it ... A real treat for fans of Lovecraft in The Loved Dead mode. Reads like a deliberate attempt to out-insane everything Edwin Baird had seen fit to publish during his stint in the editor's chair. Terrific fun. Mike Chinn - All I Ever See: In the death throes of their relationship, Bryan and Jen are persecuted by 2D stick figures of various shape and size following a visit to the Uffington chalk carving. Michael Marshall Smith - The Offering; When in Christianshavn, it is imperative that you pay due courtesy to Nisse, guardian of the land, by leaving a bowl of porridge with generous knob of butter on top. Failure to do so will cost you dear.
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Post by dem bones on May 6, 2022 10:17:34 GMT
My overall favourite to date. Reggie Oliver – Porson's Piece: ( The Ballet of Dr. Cagliari and Madder Mysteries, 2018). Jane, a BBC producer, arranges to film an interview with Sir Bernard Wilkes, the 'Grand old man of British philosophy,' at his home, the former rectory, at Bourton Monachorum, a tiny village near Stow-on-the-wold. Now into his eighties, Sir Bernard has become reclusive in the decade since the cruel death of his wife, Alison, a woman half his age, with whom he shared the happiest years of his life. An outspoken atheist, still he insists on walking Jane to a meadow beside the churchyard, where, local lore has it, chalk-white people dressed in white dance to a tune played on a white fiddle. These are the destitute dead, unworthy of heaven but not wicked enough for Hell. A source quoted in Ramblings in Old Gloucestershire is adamant: "Them as sees the dancers are not long for this world, but them as both sees and hears them will perish at the coming of the next new moon after they hears them."
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Post by dem bones on May 7, 2022 9:59:41 GMT
Didn't keep up with the Mammoth Best New Horror books after they changed publisher — I just didn't have that great a fondness for the series. I so much prefer Stephen Jones' theme anthologies - Werewolves, Vampires, the first Zombie Apocalypse (and much of the second), New Terrors and Summer Chills, to which list we can add Folk Horror. This next is quite the creepiest thing I've read since Paul Finch's The Old Traditions are the Best in Terror Tales from Cornwall. Ramsey Campbell - The Fourth Call: Snowbound in Leanbridge village over Christmas as he empties his late relatives' cottage, Michael recalls the eerie and intimidating birdie dance ritual of local oddballs, the Bundles, which he was obliged to endure over alternative years from the age of six. Kindly neighbours the Darlington's don't seem at all upset to confirm that the Bundle house is no longer occupied — "the last of them's been dead for years." So why are they on tenterhooks whenever he mentions the family by name?
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Post by andydecker on May 7, 2022 19:31:26 GMT
My overall favourite to date. Reggie Oliver – Porson's Piece: ( The Ballet of Dr. Cagliari and Madder Mysteries, 2018). Jane, a BBC producer, arranges to film an interview with Sir Bernard Wilkes, the 'Grand old man of British philosophy,' at his home, the former rectory, at Bourton Monachorum, a tiny village near Stow-on-the-wold. Now into his eighties, Sir Bernard has become reclusive in the decade since the cruel death of his wife, Alison, a woman half his age, with whom he shared the happiest years of his life. An outspoken atheist, still he insists on walking Jane to a meadow beside the churchyard, where, local lore has it, chalk-white people dressed in white dance to a tune played on a white fiddle. These are the destitute dead, unworthy of heaven but not wicked enough for Hell. A source quoted in Ramblings in Old Gloucestershire is adamant: "Them as sees the dancers are not long for this world, but them as both sees and hears them will perish at the coming of the next new moon after they hears them." Inspired by your posts, I re-read and read two stories today - this one and Ramsey Campbell's The Retrospective which you mentioned a few weeks ago.
I have to say that I am with you in both cases. While Porson's Piece is in many ways a typical Oliver story and the end is not exactly a surprise, it is a creepy piece. The idea to see such dancers while walking your usual round - which I did today - is a haunting image. Maybe much so because Bernard is such a relatable character.
But The Retrospective creeped me out. It is a nightmare without monsters. I often have a problem with Mr. Campbell's work, but this hit a mark.
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Post by dem bones on May 13, 2022 5:59:26 GMT
Inspired by your posts, I re-read and read two stories today - this one and Ramsey Campbell's The Retrospective which you mentioned a few weeks ago. I have to say that I am with you in both cases. While Porson's Piece is in many ways a typical Oliver story and the end is not exactly a surprise, it is a creepy piece. The idea to see such dancers while walking your usual round - which I did today - is a haunting image. Maybe much so because Bernard is such a relatable character. But The Retrospective creeped me out. It is a nightmare without monsters. I often have a problem with Mr. Campbell's work, but this hit a mark. They're the real deal for sure. Hope you get to read The Fourth Call as that is one got right under my skin. Accounting for a fifth of the book, a Newman novel compressed into 110+ pages. Kim Newman - The Gypsies in the Wood: (Marvin Kaye [ed.], The Fair Folk, 2005). A convoluted case sees Victorian troubleshooter, Charles Beauregard, of the Diogenes Club, and Miss Katharine Reed, solitary female journalist on The Pall Mall Gazette, investigate the fallout from the disappearance and reappearance of nine-year-old Davey Harvill and his sister, Maeve, in Hill Wood, Eye, Hertfordshire. Davey returned, bewildered, to his home within days, only for his mother to reject him as an imposter on account of he has the worn look of a man of thirty-five. Beauregard recovered Maeve, evidently her normal self and none the worse for her ordeal. Eight years later. Satterthwaite 'Magister of the Marvellous' Bulge, child-hating publisher of the monthly Uncle Satt's Treasury for Boys & Girls and Uncle Satt's Faerie Airie Annual, takes over the site of a failed second Crystal Palace in Regents Park for his Faerie theme world. That his books are best-sellers is solely down to the extraordinary depictions of goblins by compulsive illustrator 'B. Loved' — Davey Harvill — taking inspiration from his lost week in the faerie realm. His sister Maeve, meanwhile, has not aged a day in the intervening years and behaves as though she were indeed a Pixie Princess. The appalling murder of the Harvell's uncle — mangled in Satterthwaite's faux Fairy Kingdom on the eve of it's opening — and abduction of their precocious nephew, sees Charles and Kate trail the changeling and her intended victim to a treacherous bog in the kingdom of goblins. Good fun rather than frightening, and the love action is sweet. Story seems to meander off-plot more than it probably does.
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Post by andydecker on May 13, 2022 13:59:23 GMT
They're the real deal for sure. Hope you get to read The Fourth Call as that is one got right under my skin. Accounting for a fifth of the book, a Newman novel compressed into 110+ pages. Kim Newman - The Gypsies in the Wood: Good fun rather than frightening, and the love action is sweet. Story seems to meander off-plot more than it probably does. Unfortunately I don't have the Jones. I searched for the stories in collections I have. The Fourth Call must be a rather new one, that is to say I couldn't find it on ISFDB and the linked content of Jones is still not up. As much as I like Newman, I never could embrace the Diogenes Club stories as I should have. It is a bit strange. I dutifully bought the Monkey Brain editions back then, but the concept always was a bit trying too hard. Steed and Peel and Number Six and Mycroft and isn't this fun? I distinctly remember never finishing The Gypsies in the Wood or Seven Stars. Maybe I was a bit burned out at the time of the weird British pop culture hommage with its "Let's throw Jerry Cornelius in for good measure" attitude.Like so much it is best be taken in small doses.
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