Supernatural Tales

If you've read M.R. James' ghost stories, you're familiar with his account of his childhood home turf in East Anglia, His guidebook, Suffolk and Norfolk , is also worth a look, giving lots of background to the kind of places that helped inspire his tales. Now a blog, Eastscapes , has posted some very fine photos of sites mentioned in the guide, and very atmospheric they are. Here are a couple that certainly evoke Monty's tales.

Here's a link  to an article entitled 'The Demonic Origins of Ventriloquism'. It contains such interesting revelations as: In 150 A.D., a man called Alexander of Abonoteichus captivated contemporaries when he discovered a talking serpent with a human head. Not so captivated was the skeptical writer Lucian, who declared that the head was made from linen, mounted on a snake's body, and made to speak through a tube operated by a concealed assistant. While not ventriloquism, it was an early use of a “dummy” to focus the audience’s attention on a miraculous voice. (Thankfully, animal carcasses have been phased out of modern interpretations.) Apparently ventriloquists were known to the Greeks as 'engastrimyths'. By medieval times throwing your voice was linked to witchcraft. 'An account of the possession of a boy in 1500s England declared baying hounds could be heard in his stomach.' This was, of course, long before the invention of Rennies. Horror films...

Here's an interesting documentary from Ray Russell of Tartarus Press. The blurb says: This documentary explores and provides new insights into the life and writing of British author Robert Aickman (1914-1981), with special reference to his celebrated 'strange stories' - modern ghost stories - his two volumes of autobiography and his campaigning work for the restoration of the British canal system. The film includes rare footage, recordings and photographs of Aickman, interviews with his friends and with writers Jeremy Dyson and Reggie Oliver, and dramatized excerpts of his stories.

Yes, it's time to vote for work by a living author. (Living authors are, themselves, as entitled to vote as anyone else. But only once, mind!) Yes, over to the right is the online poll for the last-but-one issue. Other methods of voting are acceptable, of course. You can do it in the comments here, you can send me an email, you can strap your vote to a carrier gerbil and point it in the direction of Tyneside. The point is to vote, so that one lucky author can win a glorious victory and twenty-five smackeroos. Or pounds, as most people call them.

The idea was not Robert's, of course. It was the brain-child - horrendous expression! - of Valdemar, a moderately absurd individual who made a point of wearing what learning he had lightly. (Is there any other way to wear one's learning, these days?) To be be fair to him Valdemar did at least seek to list Robert's best stories, in so far as lasting value can be assigned to any literary endeavour in a culture founded on self-destructive irony and competing consumerist moralities, each one as threadbare as the last. The result was predictable, and indeed had been predicted. More readers (Yes! Such fantastical entities still exist, it seems, even 'online') had voted for 'The Inner Room' than for any other story of Robert's. It was of course a haunted house tale with much that was conventional about it, yet not entirely devoid of merit for all that. Was Robert pleased? The question is reasonable enough, one might suppose... Thanks, Bob, always nice to hear...

Truth is not always stranger than fiction, but it can be. Back in the 1930s a farming family on the Isle of Man (which lies roughly midway between England, Scotland, and Ireland) claimed that a talking mongoose had moved in with them. A talking mongoose with human hands. Oh, and it was a ghost. The mysterious creature first showed up in the Irving residence sometime in 1931, and, according to the accounts of James, Margaret, and Voirrey, initially lived in the walls and, not yet able to speak, imitated a range of animal noises. Quickly, the unseen entity started to pick up human language from the Irvings, and, before long,introduced itself to the family: His name, he said, was “Gef” (pronounced “Jeff”), and he was a mongoose from India. You can read one account of the story here . Not surprisingly, some people - among them the famous ghost-hunter Harry Price - concluded that the Irvings were deluded or hoaxers. Journalists, of course, don't tend to worry too much about the t...

I've posted a Robert Aickman popularity poll on the right. He would probably have hated the whole idea, which is just another good reason for doing it. As before, you can cast multiple votes. I appreciate that some people can't stand Aickman, but including negative votes is a bit beyond me at the moment. The point is, if you like his stuff, here's an opportunity to say so.