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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 24, 2021 2:24:07 GMT
I am now fairly certain this was a garbled memory of Margaret Oliphant's The Secret Chamber (1876). It's definitely based on Glamis (renamed Gowrie Castle), and the inhabitant of the Secret Chamber is the immortal Earl Robert, a centuries-old black magician. I also remember such a story. I am sure I have read it not so long ago. Some heir gets told the family secret, but it is so gruesome that he kills himself or something. I just can't remember who it was. Some early Bloch maybe? Could be Bloch's "The Secret in the Tomb" ( Weird Tales, May 1935 and here)?
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 24, 2021 3:45:52 GMT
William Meikle - The Beast of Glamis: ( Carnacki: Heaven and Hell, 2011) I've got this, so here is a summary - Carnacki is contacted by Claude Bowes-Lyon, Lord Glamis, whose previously quiet and peaceful life in Glamis Castle has been disrupted by strange knockings that seem to come from inside the castle walls and sightings of a "bogle". These phenomena only started after the birth of his daughter "Lisabet" (i.e. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who in adulthood will be the mother of Queen Elizabeth II), who has recently had a terrifying night-time visit from the bogle in her bedroom. On visiting the castle, Carnacki draws some preliminary clues from a stained glass window and an ancient illuminated manuscript on alchemy that he is led to by a misty apparition. Application of the electric pentacle in Lisabet's bedroom gives Carnacki a clearer view of the bogle, which turns out to have the form of a woman with a red scar round her neck that weeps blood down her chest. She also speaks: "Mine by birth. She shall not have it". Carnacki arranges for Lisabet and the Laird to join him in the electric pentacle and free the earth-bound spirit. Carnacki explains that the "bogle" was the result of an ill-advised attempt by a 16th C. Scottish alchemist to use "The Great Work" to "revive a dead lady", but "What was transformed was not capable of ascension to the Outer Realms... It was forced to remain, rooted to its earthly plane, doomed for eternity to roam, seeking something it could never find". Its recent activity was due to it being confused by a coincidence of names, as it was actually looking for a different "Lisabet" who had taken something from it - turns out the dead 16th C. lady was the beheaded Mary Queen of Scots and the "Lisabet" she held a grudge against was her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 24, 2021 12:37:36 GMT
W. B. MacDougall Anon - Earl Beardie's Game of Cards: (Margaret Armour [ed.], The Eerie Book, 1898). When the servants refuse join him at table on the Sabbath, the wicked Earl swears that he would play a hand with the Devil rather than do without his game. As to the Rivals of... , how could I have overlooked Robert Leslie Bellem - I Am A Monster: ( Spicy Mystery Stories, Jan. 1937). Read it HERE (you really should). Non-fictionNigel Doughty - The Monster of Glamis: (R. Whittington-Egan [ed.], Weekend Second Book of Ghosts, 1978). Peter Hough - The Dark Secret of Glamis Castle: ( Supernatural Britain, Piatkus, 1995) Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe - Glamis and Camelot: Castles with Legends: ( The World's Most Mysterious Castles, 2005) Cecilia Bowes-Lyon - Glamis: ( The Pall Mall Magazine, Mar 1897)
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 24, 2021 19:32:02 GMT
A similar tale, though it's been ages since I read it, is Barry Pain's "The Undying Thing", in one of Hugh Lamb's anthologies.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 24, 2021 21:07:33 GMT
Daily Telegraph, 13th August 1883, p.4 -
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Post by dem bones on Jan 26, 2021 7:42:49 GMT
Frank 'Vicar of Ratcliffe' Smythe's classy presentation of Glamis legends for The Unexplained #60, Orbis 1981. Should you require larger scans, pm me an email address and will send them on.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 26, 2021 9:12:55 GMT
I also remember such a story. I am sure I have read it not so long ago. Some heir gets told the family secret, but it is so gruesome that he kills himself or something. I just can't remember who it was. Some early Bloch maybe? Could be Bloch's "The Secret in the Tomb" ( Weird Tales, May 1935 and here)? I looked it up. Yes, this Bloch has the same plot, but still I meant another story. This drives me crazy, I know I read it.
Just another writer who incorporated this topic into a novel was Sax Rohmer in his Brood of the Witch Queen. The chapter "The Secret of Dhoon".
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 26, 2021 11:09:34 GMT
Could be Bloch's "The Secret in the Tomb" ( Weird Tales, May 1935 and here)? I looked it up. Yes, this Bloch has the same plot, but still I meant another story. This drives me crazy, I know I read it.
I know how you feel. I just about managed to convince myself that the one I was thinking of was Oliphant's Secret Chamber, but there is still something niggling at the back of my brain saying "No, there's another one..."
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 26, 2021 12:47:37 GMT
I'm quite taken with the idea that the wealthy people living in these sorts of houses (Glamis is really a very large fortified house, rather than a bona-fide "castle") in the 17th/18th centuries might have made up some stories to keep burglars away.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 26, 2021 20:59:18 GMT
GLAMIS MYSTERY. This was a human being above the waist formed as a frog, below as a man. He was kept in a concealed chamber in the house, and his existence was only known to the reigning earl, the factor, the family lawyer, and the next heir on his attaining majority. One countess, counting more windows than she could account for, ferreted out the mystery, saw the monster, and pined to death through terror. He was the earl; but by what legal fiction others bore the title during his life-time I know not. After his death there appeared in one of the magazines a relation of the whole matter. Some years ago a friend of mine, visiting at Glamis, had just stepped into bed when a glowing brightness arose upon the wall, out of which protruded a goblet held by a hand. After remaining stationary for a few seconds, first the hand, then the goblet, and then the brightness effaced themselves, but, strange to say, the ghost left not the slightest mark on the wall to attest his proceedings. M. GILCHRIST. Burnham, Bucks. Notes and Queries, Jan 10 1885. THE GLAMIS MYSTERY : A PARALLEL. It would appear that Glamis Castle has not the monopoly of a mysterious secret chamber. Re-reading that interesting Memoir of a Highland Lady, edited by Lady Strachey, I find therein mentioned Comyn Castle: "The people said there was a zigzag causeway beneath the water, from a door of the old castle to the shore, the secret of which was always known to three persons only. We often tried to hit upon the causeway, but we never succeeded.''' OUTIS. Notes and Queries, July 27, 1912.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 27, 2021 9:00:11 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Jan 28, 2021 9:42:10 GMT
Beast in the Cellar interludeReggie Oliver Arthur's Cellar Beasts in the cellar, things in the attic, forgotten prisoners, etc. Seabury Quinn - The House of Horror: ( Weird Tales, July 1926 : Christine Campbell Thomson [ed.], You'll Need a Night Light, 1927). David H. Keller - The Thing In The Cellar: ( Weird Tales, March 1932 : Christine Campbell Thomson [ed.], Grim Death, 1934). C. D. Heriot - The Trapdoor: ( Mammoth Book Of Thrillers, Ghosts & Mysteries, 1936). Michael Arlen - The Ghoul Of Golders Green: ( Mammoth Book Of Thrillers, Ghosts & Mysteries, 1936). Seabury Quinn - The House Where Time Stood Still: ( Weird Tales, March 1939: Phil Strong [ed.], The Other Worlds, 1942). David Case - The Cell: (Herbert Van Thal [ed.], 11th Pan Book of Horror Stories, 1970). Harry E. Turner - Fingers: (Herbert Van Thal [ed.], 15th Pan Book of Horror Stories, 1974). Judith Bauer Stamper - The Attic Room: ( Tales for the Midnight Hour, 1977) Richard Laymon - The Cellar, 1980. Tony Richards - The Girl in the Cellar: (Mary Danby [ed.], Armada Ghost 13, 1981). Edward Levy - The Beast Within, 1982. Alison Prince - The Loony: (Mary Danby [ed.] Nightmares 2, 1984). Mort Castle - Party Time: (J. N. Williamson [ed.], Masques, 1984). Philip Lorimer – Under The Carpet: (Clarence Paget [ed.], 28th Pan Book of Horror Stories, 1987). Nancy Holder - Moving Night: (Al Sarrantonio & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) - 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories , 1993) Anna Taborska - Arthur's Cellar: ( For Those Who Dream Monsters, 2013).
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Post by andydecker on Jan 28, 2021 11:57:46 GMT
Beast in the Cellar interlude
H. P. Lovecraft: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (Weird Tales - May-July 1941)
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Post by helrunar on Jan 28, 2021 14:38:45 GMT
In Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, aged obsessive Aunt Ada Doom sits crooning over and over again the words "I saw something nasty in the woodshed."
An article I just looked at said that Gibbons was parodying in part the work of Mary Webb in the novel. Webb's work is described as being all about "soil and gloom" or, in a complementary appraisal, "loam and lovechild."
snowy cheers from Boston,
Hel.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 28, 2021 15:14:08 GMT
In Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, aged obsessive Aunt Ada Doom sits crooning over and over again the words "I saw something nasty in the woodshed." An article I just looked at said that Gibbons was parodying in part the work of Mary Webb in the novel. Webb's work is described as being all about "soil and gloom" or, in a complementary appraisal, "loam and lovechild." Interesting! I didn't care much for Webb's " The Name Tree," so that makes me appreciate Cold Comfort Farm even more. Great book, and the film version was fun, too. Stella Gibbons evidently had range as a writer given that she also wrote an excellent ghost story, "The Roaring Tower."
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