Supernatural Tales

Well, the verdict is in. I liked it. Some people didn't like it. But there it is, a ghost story for Christmas, helmed as per by Mark Gatiss, the Beeb's go-to guy for genre stuff with a touch of class. The I-hate-everything-Gatiss-does brigade has been out in force, denouncing his latest effort. But that's silly and futile, not least because if the internet had been around in the 70s Lawrence Gordon Clark would've got the same treatment.  Indeed, when I compare 'The Mezzotint' adaptation with some of the classic Ghost Stories for Christmas of the Clark era, I see some similarities. I rewatched 'The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' last night and was struck by how much extra material writer John Bowman had added. What's more, the ending - quite definitely not found in the original story - was somewhat similar to Gatiss' take on 'The Mezzotint'. Then there's the implicit sexual involvement of the squire and the witch in 'The Ash Tree'....

The penultimate story in Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands is set in the countryside north of |Glasgow. A man with a special talent goes to meet the local laird, who is having some supernatural problems. It turns out that the main character has a special power - he can not only see ghosts but assists them in 'moving on'. This talent is nicely handled by way of flashbacks, before the nitty-gritty issue of the haunting is tackled.  I like a story that could go in a number of ways and still surprises you. This one (no spoilers) does not follow the conventional route of ghost seer or exorcist, but there is a definite sense of closure. The only other living character, Lumley, is a well-drawn example of an all-too-familiar British type, one of whom is currently ensconced in Downing Street. This is a solid horror tale, modern but with a definite tinge of Gothic.

 h/t Steve Duffy and hard luck Lancashire...

If you're looking for a different kind of ghost story over the Christmas season, you might try Typewriter, which I enjoyed a lot. Set in the Indian state of Goa, it has a lot of familiar ingredients. It's a five-parter that packs a lot into its regular-length TV episodes. Here are some pesky kids, complete with a dog, forming a ghost hunting club. Here is a young family moving into an old house where, it turns out, the wife's grandparents lived - and died in unusual circumstances. Sinister characters, one of them distinctly murderous, are watching the house and awaiting the Blood Moon. 

It's a mini-anthology, and it's on your interwebs!  Four spooky readings - four, count them! - by myself, Helen Grant, Lynda E. Rucker, and Sean Hogan. If you read Supernatural Tales, Helen and Lynda need no introduction. If you've seen the film The Devil's Business (which I reviewed here ) you will be delighted to see its writer/director Sean here too.  Enjoy!

Scrooge on a loop!  This is nice. You can drop in on 'A Christmas Carol' at any time and listen to the familiar tale while enjoying a real fire on your videotronic screen. This is a good, old-school reading, with clear diction for us old folk. As often happens with familiar stories, listening to it read properly has brought home to me just how good it is.  That Dickens bloke knew a thing or two. 

This story from Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands  interweaves the terrible history of witch persecution with the modern domestic tyranny of domestic violence. It mentions a silver statue erected somewhere in the Borderns (I think it's the right one below), which commemorates those women - and quite a few men - who were executed for witchcraft. The book contains 'pardons, for people misunderstood'. The main character, Dallis, is routinely assaulted by the thuggish Tommy, a familiar 'man's man'  type who is all too commonplace in our screwed-up culture. Toxic masculinity, official indifference, and self-blaming hamper Dallis' ability to get away or protect herself. But then she encounters a mysterious woman who gives her a business card that suggests a very different way to deal with the problem.  A straightforward story of tables turned, and supernatural vengeance. The idea that witchcraft might be a real force in the world is of course familiar, but thi...

 

 Our next story from Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands has all the right ingredients. An archaeologist working on a Roman site discovers some mysterious drawings. The images he finds are in fact reminiscent of the famous Dancing Men in the eponymous Sherlock Holmes adventure - but with an important difference. These stick figures always seem to be missing parts of their body. A limb here, a head there, it all adds up.  Or rather, it doesn't, as attempts to decode the stick figures fail. Then a clever student makes a breakthrough that I will not drop here as a Great Big Spoiler. Suffice to say that our protagonist makes a classic blunder and delivers a talk that is well-received, but not quite as he expected. The conclusion is foreshadowed well and overall this is a satisfying tale of small-town horror. We're approaching the end of the anthology in time for the festive season. Will we get a ghost story for Christmas? One can only wait and wonder.

Another story from Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands , and one written in the present tense. This one has all the classic ingredients of the traditional ghost story. A woman is sleeping alone in an old house miles from anywhere. She hears sounds in the night - a baby laughing, where logically no baby can be. She checks the locked doors and windows, finds no evidence of an intruder. The setting is contemporary so there are security lights linked to motion sensors outside, and they have not been triggered.  So begins a tale that follows a fairly predictable pattern.The main character is carrying the burden of a dark secret, and the baby's laughter offers a strong clue even before the truth is revealed. While she did no wrong, she cannot share this part of the past with her husband, a srong-minded man of the Borders. Noises persist and she calls the police, who act pretty much as cops always do in this kind of tale. Is the haunting - if that's what it is - purely psychological...

  Imagine one of Alan Bennet's Talking Heads characters turned up to 11 and given a horror twist. Maud is a twenty-something trained nurse in Scarborough, and has recently moved into providing care for the elderly with a private agency. This follows a bad incident at a hospital that haunts her - the film opens with her cowering in a corner of a tiled room, her hands bloody, looking up at an insect crawling on the ceiling. Imagine following this superficially ordinary woman through a very convincingly acted breakdown as she becomes fixated on saving the soul of a former dancer/choreographer she is sent to care for. Imagine what we call insanity as something profound, complex, terrifying, even beautiful.  Saint Maud is one of those horror films that is also a powerful character drama with a strong thriller element. Alan Bennet and Ruth Rendell put in a blender, perhaps, with a dash of Stephen King. Maud is superbly acted by Morfydd Clark as an isolated, confused, but often reli...

A reading by yours truly of a Christmas ghost story with more than touch of M.R. James. 

I heartily recommend the Dark Corners YouTube channel for its vast array of movie reviews. As well as the bad ones (so many!) there's also some great stuff about good movies, esp. those of Val Lewton.