Rosemary Pardoe – The Black Pilgrimage & Other Explorations

Rosemary Pardoe – The Black Pilgrimage & Other Explorations: Essays On Supernatural Fiction (Shadow Publishing, May 31 2018)

Cover montage: Rosemary Pardoe

David A. Sutton – Introduction: A Fanzine Life

M. R. James And His Stories:

The Black Pilgrimage (with Jane Nicholls)
Who was Count Magnus? Notes towards an identification
James Wilson’s Secret (with Jane Nicholls)
Hostanes Magus
Two Magicians: Wilsthorpe and Aswarby (with Darroll Pardoe)
‘I’ve see it’: ‘A School Story’ and the House in Berkeley Square
The Night Raven
‘A Wonderful Book’: George MacDonald and ‘The Ash Tree’
Hercules and the Painted Cloth
The Demon in the Cathedral: A Jamesian Hoax
The Herefordshire of ‘A View from a Hill’ (with Darroll Pardoe)
How did Mr. Baxter find his Roman Villa
The Manuscript of ‘A Warning to the Curious’
The Three Fortunate Concealments
‘The Heathens and their Sacrifices: The God(s) of ‘An Evening Entertainment’
‘The Old Man on the Hill: Beelzebub in ‘An Evening’s Entertainment’
‘I seen it wive at me out of the winder’: The Window as Threshold in M. R. James’s Stories
‘Fluttering Draperies’: The Fabric of M. R. James
Scrying and the Horse-demon
The Date of ‘Merfield Hall/ House’
Adventures of a Jamesian Detective
The Man in King William Street
M. R. James and Arthur Machen
M. R. James and the ‘native of Winsconsin’
Introduction to Eton and Kings (with Darroll Pardoe)
Introduction to The Five Jars
Afterword to Two Ghost Stories: A Centenary
‘Strange Pastures’: Introduction to Occult Sciences
Introduction to Tales from Lectoure

Other Authors:

Walter Map’s De Nugis Curialium
Arthur Gray
E. G. Swain
A. P. Baker and A College Mystery
Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness: A Jamesian Classic
Fritz Leiber’s ‘The Button Molder: A Jamesian story?’
Fritz Leiber’s ‘A Bit of the Dark World’
Manly Wade Wellman’s ‘Chorazin’

An Everlasting Club Miscellany:

Remembrances of Early Fandom and Old Fanzines
Early Reading: Dogs, Cats and Hobby Horses
Phil Rickman and Gwendolen McBride
The Real Thing: Garner, Lindholm, Brust and Pratchett
Paul Cornell’s ‘Shadow Police’
Jack Finney and the Disappearance of Rudolph Fentz
Wraiths don’t show up on CCTV (except when they do)
Creatures which frequent the roads and byways of America
The Magic of Maps

Frequently mentioned works
An Index to Story and Novel Titles

Blurb:
THE GHOSTLY WORK OF M.R. JAMES

The celebrated writer M.R. James (1862-1936) is arguably the most significant author of ghost stories in the world. His macabre work has terrified and fascinated readers for over a hundred years. Now collected in one volume, here are twenty-nine essays on his ghostly tales and themes by editor and James scholar Rosemary Pardoe.

Plus eight further essays on other authors, including Fritz Leiber, E.G. Swain and Manly Wade Wellman, and a fascinating miscellany of nine additional pieces on a variety of topics.

Rosemary Pardoe is a respected essayist and has edited the influential M.R. James-related magazine Ghosts & Scholars since 1979. She also edited three volumes of The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows (Sarob Press), and is the co-editor of Ghosts and Scholars: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James (with Richard Dalby, 1987) and Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James (with S.T. Joshi, 2007).

Paul Finch (ed.) – Terror Tales Of Yorkshire

Paul Finch (ed.) – Terror Tales Of Yorkshire  (Gray Friars Press, Sept. 2014)

Neil Williams

Simon Avery – In October We Buried The Monsters
The Decapitation Device
Keris McDonald – The Coat Off His Back
Haunting Memories of the Past
Mark Morris – They Walk As Men
The Yorkshire Witches
Alison Littlewood – On Ilkley Moor
The Black Monk of Pontefract
Stephen Laws – The Crawl
The Woman in the Rain
Gary McMahon – Ragged
The Hobman
Christopher Harman – A True Yorkshireman
The Town Where Darkness Was Born
Mark Chadbourn – All Things Considered, I’d Rather Be In Hell
A Feast For Crows
Chico Kidd – The Demon of Flowers
City of the Dead
Stephen Bacon – The Summer of Bradbury
Radiant Beings
Rosalie Parker – Random Flight
Death in the Harrying
Simon Clark – The Rhubarb Festival
The Alien
Gary Fry – The Crack
The Boggart of Bunting Nook
Jason Gould – A Story From When We Had Nothing

Blurb:
Yorkshire – a rolling landscape of verdant dales and quaint country towns. But where industrial fires left hideous scars, forlorn ruins echo the shrieks of forgotten wars, and depraved killers evoke nightmare tales of ogres, trolls and wild moorland boggarts…

The stalking devil of Boroughbridge
The murder machine at Halifax
The hooded horror of Pontefract
The bloody meadow at Towton
The black tunnel of Renfield
The evil trickster of Spaldington
The shadow forms at Silverwood

And many more chilling tales by Alison Littlewood, Mark Morris, Stephen Laws, Simon Clark, Mark Chadbourn, and other award-winning masters and mistresses of the macabre.

M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires

M. J. Trow – A Brief History Of Vampires (Robinson, July 2010)

Blurb:
Vampire culture is everywhere: in the bookshops, on TV, in nightclubs, and in the cinemas. With the success of the Twilight saga and True Blood, the lore of the undead is a global phenomenon. But where does the legend of the Vampire come from, and why does it have such a perennial appeal? Historian and vampire aficionado M. J. Trow goes in search of the origins of this blood craze a long way from the shopping malls, to the story of the fifteenth century Hungarian warrior prince, Vlad of Wallachia, who was famed for his brutality in war as well as his passion for excruciating torture. Vlad would later become the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu.

Trow’s fascinating search uncovers the forgotten story of Vlad and charts his legacy throughout history up to the present day. He shows that the legend and lore of vampirism has evolved over centuries and still has a powerful hold on our imaginations.

Press Release Robinson
From Vlad the Impaler to Edward Cullen, M.J. Trow goes in search of the allure of the vampire.

A Brief History of Vampires

By M.J. Trow
Published by Robinson
July 8th 2010 Paperback, £8.99

A must-have book for all vampire fans, A Brief History of Vampires charts the phenomenal craze of ‘popular vampires’ such as Nosferatu and Count Dracula to screen vampires such as those played by Bela Lugosi and Robert Pattinson. With the current global vampire craze taking the book, film and TV charts by storms with the Twilight saga and True Blood, this book begs the question: why do we love to be frightened?

Within a society which has become increasingly desensitised to horror, M.J. Trow charts the vampire’s global phenomenon and seeks its terrifying origins. A long way from the billboard we learn the story of Vlad ‘The Impaler’ of Wallachia. a ruler infamous for his brutality in war as well as his passion for ‘impaling’ his victims, and who later became the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous Dracula.

In order to uncover the fascinating, forgotten story of ‘The Impaler’, Trow looks into the history, legend and lore of his legacy. Compellingly and historically, he shows how the legend of the vampire has evolved over centuries and explains how it still has such an intense hold on modern day imagination.

About the Author
M. Trow studied history at university, after which he has spent years teaching. He is also an established crime writer and biographer, with a reputation as a scholar who peels away myths to reveal the true history behind them. Originally from Rhondda, South Wales, he now lives on the Isle of White.

*******

Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley

Phil Baker – The Devil is a Gentleman: The Life and Times of Dennis Wheatley (Dedalus, October 31st, 2009)

Cover design: Jonathan Barker

Blurb
One of the giants of popular fiction, with total sales of around fifty million books, Dennis Wheatley held twentieth-century Britain spellbound. His Black Magic novels like The Devil Rides Out created an oddly seductive and luxurious vision of Satanism, but in reality he was as interested in politics as occultism. Wheatley was closely involved with the secret intelligence community, and this powerfully researched study shows just how directly this drove his work, from his unlikely warnings about the menace of Satanic Trade Unionism to his role in a British scheme to engineer a revival of Islam.

Drawing on a wealth of unpublished material, Phil Baker examines Wheatley’s key friendship with a fraudster named Eric Gordon Tombe, and uncovers the full story of his sensational 1922 murder. Baker also explores Wheatley’s relationships with occult figures such as Rollo Ahmed, Aleister Crowley, and the Reverend Montague Summers, the shady priest and demonologist who inspired the memorably evil character of Canon Copely-Syle, in To The Devil – A Daughter.

Like Sax Rohmer and John Buchan, Wheatley has now moved from being perceived as dated to positively vintage, and this groundbreaking biography offers a major reassessment of his significance and status.

Click on the cute Dedalus logo for more info …..

….. and then buy it for me for Christmas! :)

Stephen Jones – Dancing With The Dark

Stephen Jones (ed.) – Dancing With The Dark: True Encounters With The Paranormal By Masters Of The Macabre (Vista, 1997)

Cover by Splash: Photography by Simon Marsden

Stephen Jones – Introduction: Dancing with the Dark

Joan Aiken – My Feeling about Ghosts
Sarah Ash – Timeswitch
Mike Ashley – The Rustle in the Grass
Peter Atkins – Take Care of Grandma
Clive Barker – Life After Death
Stephen Baxter – The Cartographer
Robert Bloch – Not Quite So Pragmatic .
Ramsey Campbell – The Nearest to a Ghost
Hugh B. Cave – Haitian Mystères
R. Chetwynd-Hayes – One-Way Trip
A. E. Coppard – The Shock of the Macabre
Basil Copper – The Haunted Hotel
Peter Crowther – Safe Arrival
Jack Dann – A Gift of Eagles
Charles de Lint – The House on Spadina
Terry Dowling – Sharing with Strangers
Lionel Fanthorpe – Hands on the Wheel
Esther M. Friesner – That Old School Spirit
Gregory Frost – Twice Encountered
Neil Gaiman – The Flints of Memory Lane
Stephen Gallagher – In There
Ray Garton – Haunted in the Head
John Gordon – The House on the Brink
Ed Gorman – Riding the Nightwinds
Elizabeth Goudge – ESP
Simon R. Green – Death is a Lady
Peter Haining – The Smoke Ghost
Joe Haldeman – Never Say Die
James Herbert – Not Very Psychic
Brian Hodge – Confessions of a Born-Again Heathen
Nancy Holder – To Pine with Fear and Sorrow
M. R. James – A Ghostly Cry
Peter James – One Extra for Dinner
Mike Jefferies – A Face in the Crowd
Nancy Kilpatrick – Raggedy Ann
Stephen King – Uncle Clayton
Hugh Lamb – Go On, Open Your Eyes…
Terry Lamsley – Moving Houses
John Landis – Inspiration
Stephen Laws – Norfolk Nightmare
Samantha Lee – Not Funny
Barry B. Longyear – The Gray Ghost
H. P. Lovecraft – Witch House
Brian Lumley – The Challenge
Arthur Machen – World of the Senses
Graham Masterton – My Grandfather’s House
Richard Matheson – More Than We Appear To Be
Richard Christian Matheson – Visit to a Psychic Surgeon
Paul J. McAuley – The Fall of the Wires
Anne McCaffrey – Unto the Third Generation
Thomas F. Monteleone – Talkin’ Them Marble Orchard Blues
Mark Morris – A Shadow of Tomorrow
Yvonne Navarro – The House on Chadwell Drive
William F. Nolan – The Floating Table and the Jumping Violet
Edgar Allan Poe – Mesmeric Revelation
Vincent Price – In the Clouds
Alan Rodgers – Clinic-Modern
Nicholas Royle – Magical Thinking
Jay Russell – De Cold, Cold Décolletage
Adam Simon – The Darkness Between the Frames
Guy N. Smith – The Mist People
Michael Marshall Smith – Mr Cat
S. P. Somtow – In the Realm of the Spirits
Brian Stableford – Chacun sa Goule
Laurence Staig – The Spirit of M. R. James
Peter Tremayne – The Family Curse
H. R. Wakefield – The Red Lodge
Lawrence Watt-Evans – My Haunted Home
Cherry Wilder – The Ghost Hunters
Chet Williamson – A Place Where a Head Would Rest
Paul F. Wilson – The Glowing Hand
Douglas E. Winter – Finding My Religion
Gene Wolfe – Kid Sister

A Spectral vision …. The sound of phantom footsteps … An experiment in astral projection ….. A childhood premonition of disaster …. Possession by a voodoo god ….
An Ouija board that predicted death … A body kept alive by force of will ….. A cursed family name …

Such tales as these are more usually associated with horror books and movies. However, these anecdotes are absolutely true! They are ,just a sample of the real-life experiences recounted by some of the world’s most famous frighteners, from such bestselling authors as Stephen King and James Herbert, to actor Vincent Price and director John Landis.

Collected together for the very first time, many or the most successful and well-known exponents, along with rising stars of the horror field, relate their fascinating encounters with the supernatural, revealing how such unique experiences have affected their lives and influenced their works.

Even for the experts, when it comes to Unexplained phenomena, fact can be much more frightening than fiction …

See also Dancing With the Dark thread on Vault Of Evil

Thanks to Nightreader!

Peter Haining – The Legend And Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack

Peter Haining – The Legend And Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack (Muller, 1977)

Blurb

“Out of the darkness sprang a huge, cloaked figure. In an instant the man had thrown aside his cloak, revealing a hideous and frightful appearance. Blue and white flames shot from his mouth, and his eyes appeared like balls of fire. The young girl who witnessed all this was so terrified that she fainted right away.”
This is just one of dozens of contemporary reports of the bizarre criminal who for over sixty years held the British population in a grip of fear. A man known only as “SPRING HEELED JACK”.

During the period of his reign of terror, this frightening, agile figure who attacked unwary travellers and pounced on terrified girls and women – and may have been responsible for several murders – attracted as many headlines and alarmed the authorities as much as his later mysterious compatriot in crime, Jack the Ripper.

From the late 1830’s he confounded the police, outwitted all attempts by the Army to catch him, and even boldly confronted law officers -slapping them across the face with his `ice cold hands’ before disappearing into the darkness with his eerie laugh ringing behind him….
Today, though, while Jack the Ripper is the subject of book after book, “SPRING HEELED JACK” has become just a name associated with anyone who jumps well. His real story is unknown. This is the first book to examine the legend in detail and throw new light on who the man behind the mask might have been.

Peter Haining’s fascinating study not only examines the reports of his activities – and suggests that more than one person adopted the disguise, including a famous nobleman -but discusses his fame as a star bf Victorian melodrama, and considers some of the strange theories that have been advanced about him -including one that he was really a spaceman!

The book is fully illustrated with remarkable engravings and photographs and includes a special section from one of the famous “Penny Dreadful” serials which featured the legend of the extraordinary “SPRING HEELED JACK”.

Peter Haining – Sweeney Todd: The Real Story Of The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street

Peter Haining – Sweeney Todd: The Real Story Of The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (Robson, 1998)

Groan. Another personal ‘one that got away’. I use to see this around fairly often, remaindered or discounted or something. Never snapped it up, because I thought it was merely a repackaging of his earlier The Mystery & Horrible Murders Of Sweeney Todd (Muller 1979). Just goes to show how wrong you can be!

Haining certainly revisits the earlier book (and his introduction to the Frederick Hazleton novel), but this time he takes it that step further as, utilizing fact, “fact”, centuries old remembered conversations and “it was rumoured at the time”s, he not only “proves” that Sweeney Todd exists, but also gives us a cradle-to-scaffold biography! How comes nobody else has consulted The Newgate Calendar for references to the meat-pie martyr and, if they did, what’s their excuse for finding zero mention of him contained in it’s grisly pages? Why have i had to wait until now to learn that Sweeney was a local lad, born in Brick Lane?

It’s research, Jim, but not as we know it. Outrageous. But in a totally brilliant way.

This time, rather fittingly, the dedication runs “To the memory of Tod Slaughter. I’m polishing ’em off well tonight!”

Peter Haining – Buried Passions: Maria Marten & The Red Barn Murder

Peter Haining – Buried Passions: Maria Marten & The Red Barn Murder (Neville Spearman, 1980)

Blurb

The story of the murder in the Red Barn is without doubt one of the most famous melodramas in the world.

The killing of the village beauty Maria Marten by the young squire William Corder in the charming, almost isolated village of Polstead in Suffolk May 1827 has become a legend over the past one hundred and fifty years, familiar to countless thousands of people.

Peter Haining has now, however, researched history and come up with some surprising new facts. Maria was just not the virtuous village beauty callously seduced and then murdered when she had served her purpose; nor was William Corder, her lover, the black-hearted local squire bent on debauchery and crime. Such simplifica­tions have come about for several reasons, yet notwithstanding the real facts, Maria and Corder are now regarded – wherever the tale is told – as the archetypal demure, cruelly-wronged maiden and mustachioed, unscrupulous Squire of melodrama. Indeed, many differing dramatisations take them as their models; and not a few of these plays are unashamedly based on what their authors imagined had happened under the decaying roof of the Red Barn. The facts, in this new assessment of the murder, make rather different, and perhaps even more fascinating, reading.

What the author has set out to do is to show how a basically unpleasant village killing became the crime of the last century. The facts present an amazing and melodramatic story of buried passions….

Profusely illustrated with line drawings and half-tones

Frederick Hazleton – Sweeney Todd

Frederick Hazleton – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (W. H. Allen, 1980)

Photo: Graham Miller

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has become legendary throughout the world. The macabre story of his luring unsuspecting customers into his shop, slitting their throats and then having his partner in crime – a pastrycook named Mrs Lovett – turn the corpses into meat pies has been a favourite melodrama for more than a century.
Yet for all Sweeney Todd’s notoriety the mystery as to whether or not he really existed has remained unresolved. Here, Peter Haining does much to prove that Sweeney Todd did exist, and did indeed own a barber’s shop in Fleet Street. He also presents the original nineteenth-century novel by Frederick Hazleton, which will delight not only believers in the Sweeney Todd saga but those avid readers and collectors of the Victorian Penny Dreadful. The contemporary illustrations add to the relish.

Peter Haining – The Mystery & Horrible Murders Of Sweeney Todd

Peter Haining – The Mystery & Horrible Murders Of Sweeney Todd (Frederick Muller 1979)

Blurb

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is a figure famous around the world. A sinister hairdresser who is said to have disposed of his unsuspecting customers through a revolving chair, and having robbed and murdered them, handed over their corpses to his partner in crime to make into meat pies, he has few peers in the annals of crime – or British history for that matter.

Yet this extraordinary character whose name has been familiar to young and old alike since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, is shrouded in mystery:

Was he a real person who actually murdered a hundred and more victims – or just a figment of a writer’s brilliant imagination?

Why is it that although plays featuring his dark deeds have become among the most popular and enduring of any in the history of the theatre, the novel which gave him literary life has been unheard of for a century and a quarter?

And, perhaps most surprisingly of all in view of this notoriety, why has no full length study of the Demon Barber been attempted before now?

These were just some of the questions that had fascinated Peter Haining since his years as a journalist in Fleet Street, and which he finally set out to try and answer in this remarkable book. And not only has he succeeded in coming up with some surprising evidence about Sweeney Todd, but has studied the illusive book which made him famous, and made extensive use of this work. He also looks at the background to the legend, its subsequent enormous success in the entertainment media, and continued growth to the present day. Indeed he discusses all the elements that have gone towards making this such an intriguing story – and even gives space to a variety of theories about the Demon Barber -including one idea that he might actually have been a woman!

At long last, this book throws a revealing light or a figure as famous in London lore as Dick Whittington and Jack the Ripper

The throat-slasher of St. Dunstans seems to have held a lasting fascination for Haining, who also published the long forgotten Frederick Hazleton penny dreadful, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, with a fine introduction by himself for W. H. Allen in 1980. His Sweeney Todd: The Real Story Of The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (Robson, 1998), is a reworking of the earlier books and sets out to “prove” that, not only was there some substance to the macabre story, but that Todd actually existed. It bears a dedication “To W.O.G. Lofts who helped to spring man of the traps”