Supernatural Tales

  I have revised the contents for the autumn issue, as I was very, very stupid. I originally included a story by Steve Rasnic Tem that is better suited to the winter issue. So I have swapped it out for a tale by ST newbie Roger Luckhurst. Apart from that bit of idiocy, all is well. Probably.

  This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . The final story in this fine anthology is a previously unpublished tale, it adopts a Machenesque approach, with an introduction that stresses the central MS is relatively recent. And yet it is the account of someone born in 1860. How can this be? I suspect most readers will guess how. The memoir is the work of an Englishman who, raised in the Catholic tradition, went over to the 'dark side' by contemplating mysteries of sacrifice and demonic invocation. His life goes off the rails until, in 1888, he finds himself in the Whitechapel area of London, and a sudden impulse leads him to... Well, I think we all know what. I don't think it's a major spoiler to say this is one in a venerable sub-genre of Jack the Ripper stories that involve the paranormal. Robert Bloch may have started it all, and many TV shows (including, rather surprisingly, the original series of Stark Trek) continued the tradit...

  This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . My opinion on the penultimate story in this collection has not changed since I first came across it 2015 in a collection of works inspired by Arthur Machen. So... Ron Weighell's 'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion' is not just an erudite horror story but an extended essay on Machen's cultural significance. It follows a book collector who fails to secure a particular illustration at an auction. His researches reveal a link between the mysterious artist, who used the name Adam Midnight, and Machen. Midnight, whose real name was Philip Youlden, seems to have had a more than purely aesthetic interest in the occult. Our hero is inspired to try and find out more. Thus begins an odyssey that takes the protagonist from the relatively comfortable world of book dealers to the strange house of Plas Gwyllion, where an elderly musician guards Youlden's bizarre and dangerous legacy. Along the way we e...

  This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . I always enjoy discovering new words - new to me that is - and this story begins with 'Grangerising'.  This is apparently the 'addition of relevant but extraneous material' to books. In this case the narrator mentions that long-established practice of adding titles in the back of a book, or inserting them separately, to whet the appetite of the discerning reader.  In this case, a collector whimsically sends off for a book that was advertised many years previously, using a ten bob note. Imagine his surprise when the book arrives.  Naturally our nameless protagonist investigates, and this takes him to the eponymous bookshop of the title. Here he discovers a most unusual woman, and her late husband's strange discovery - a kind of magical time machine.  The problems of time travel have to be explored, while the origins of the Timepiece, as it is dubbed, naturally lead to many myst...

  This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . The Celtic Twilight coincides - or at least overlaps - with the Golden Age of the ghost story and the emergence of modern horror fiction, i.e. that fascinating era incorporating the late 19th and early 20th century. W.B. Yeats was in may ways the mystical guiding star of the former movement, trend, whatever you call it. So it's no surprise to find Yeats - or at least his work and ideas - in this collection of weird tales by the erudite Ron Weighell.  The story is straightforward. The narrator ventures to a remote area of Ireland to examine a collection of Yeatsiana, only to discover hitherto unknown writings. These include an ingenious device that seems to be some kind of mystical computer made - appropriately enough - of paper. There are also 'mystical utterances' by Yeats' English wife, Georgie, who was a spiritualist medium. This literary treasure trove leads the narrator to decipher a ...

This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . Now here's a nasty little story, in the good sense of the term. Adrian and Catherine  discover a hidden door in their newly-bought manor house. The door proves to be that of a closet, inside which is a painting of two people - apparently brother and sister. A diary is also retrieved and offers information about the rather odd looking former occupants.  The couple decide to make the painting central to a Christmas party, which will require guests to don Victorian attire and play suitable party games.  But, by the time the guests arrive, strange transformations have been wrought upon Adrian and Catherine. They are really not themselves at the party, where the games - though engaging - seem to lack a certain jollity. This is another tale in which Ron Weighell seems to be channeling past masters, with a hint of Hugh Walpole and perhaps Blackwood on one of his bleaker days. Good fun, and a wor...

This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more  here . The previous tale in this collection featured book burning, usually a monstrous act. But perhaps, as this story suggests, some books would be better destroyed? This brief tale concerns a disturbing volume that transforms a mild-mannered bookworm into something altogether more exotic and unpleasant. Fauns and satyrs feature in the book, and also in a dream that becomes a nightmare. Pan is truly the god of panic here - panic, and worse.  Our bibliophile wakes to find his body naked and bruised, and his room in chaos. His discarded clothes are damp. Then comes a terrible revelation. Plotwise this is familiar stuff - the mysterious object that casts a spell on its possessor and compels him to commit heinous acts. But Weighell handles it well, giving it an authentic frisson of Decadence and a hint of the Silver Age of the ghost story i.e. the interwar period of Benson, Burrage, and Wakefield among other...