A Warning to the Curious

Okay, here is another post for the countdown to Halloween, just because something struck me: I don't blog about and read enough of M.R. James these days. A few years ago, he was synonymous with Halloween: I had to read at least one of his ghost stories in the weeks leading to Halloween. Sometimes months: I discovered him during a dark and stormy night of May in Liverpool. But I digress. Anyway, if I may suggest some classic terror for you tonight, try A Warning to the Curious. There is no gore, no monster jumping out of the shadow, but a solid, subtle, "corner of the eye" type of ghost story, where tension and fear are slowly and meticulously built. It's absolutely terrifying. There is a BBC adaptation available on YouTube, but the original is still the best. You can read it here, among other places online. I don't want to give anything away, but in a nutshell this is an archeologist's worst nightmare, especially if he happens to be a medievalist.

To see Count Magnus

For today's countdown to Halloween's post, I am going to dwell into a horror story classic by M.R. James. You know how much I love M.R. James and I cannot have my spooky season without at least some of his ghost stories, either by rereading them or by watching some of his many adaptations. One of my favourite of his is Count Magnus, a ghost (or maybe a vampire) story set in Sweden and which is perfect for the weeks leading to Halloween. I plugged it back in 2015. Recently, I found on BBC iplayer an adaptation of the short story done in 2022 for Christmas. I don't know why I skipped my attention then, but in any case, I find James' stories more suitable for Halloween. So I watched it. And I must say I quite enjoyed it. I was worried as it was adapted by Mark Gatiss, who made a massacre and a joke of Dracula. He obviously has more respect for James than Stoker. Okay, so the story was flawed and Gatiss made a few questionable creative decisions, but overall pretty faithful and it had a few genuinely scary moments. If you wish to read the original, you can find it online here. Fair warning: it is a scary read.

The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories

For today's countdown to Halloween's post, another reading suggestion: The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Maybe my favourite anthology, although this may be a case of first love: this was the very first anthology of ghost stories I ever bought, back in 2006, before this blog, to get myself into a Halloween mood. It made me discover so many authors: M.R. James, E. Nesbit, Edith Wharton, Algernon Blackwood, to name a few. It covers two centuries of ghost stories, so its a great book for a crash course in ghostly fiction. It has been for me anyway. Obviously, it has a great deal of classics. And since many stories are set during Christmastime (as traditionally this is when ghost stories were published), you can carry on reading it after Halloween.

Childhood frights

As you know, I have a countdown to Halloween on this blog, but this year I decided to have one, albeit not as regular, on Facebook as well. So as no Halloween season would be completed without it, I decided to plug the ghost stories of M.R. James, accompanied with this picture of the copy I have of his work. One of my friends (I won't name her but she reads this blog) asked me if these were the bedtime stories I read for my newborn son. I replied: "No, he's a bit young for that and his mother would not allow me. I'll wait until he is five or something." I think this deserves to be a new great unknown line. Because albeit I don't intend to tell him such horror stories that young, I know children love to have a good fright for fun. In spite of an early fascination for horror stories, I only managed to discover them when I was a teenager as my own mother could not forbid me to read them anymore. I only found out the likes of M.R. James as an adult and I do think I missed something I could have discovered before. So I do not intend to be overly protective with my son regarding this, if he shares the same fascination I had.

Creepy Lost Hearts

For tonight's countdown to Halloween post, I am blogging again about a ghost story by M.R. James. This time, it has the originality to have the ghosts as tell tale sign of evil rather than the source of evil itself, although they remain terrifying. The villain of the story is actually a warlock. I am talking of Lost Hearts. You can read it online here. Now, I wanted especially to show you a particularly creepy scene from the BBC adaptation of the short story. In the adaptation, the climax that was in the original short story set on New Year's Eve has been moved to... All Hallow's Eve. So it is even more fitting to have it here. The scene below shows that if childhood is the source of many primal fears, children themselves can be a source of terror. Tell me what you think of it.

Count Magnus

For tonight's countdown to Halloween post, I am plugging (again) a story by M.R. James. It is a ghost story, although the first time I read it it was in an anthology of vampire stories. The undead villain of the story shares the characteristics of both creatures, without clearly taking the shape of one or the other. Let's just say he is one particularly malevolent ghost and not unlike some other famous count of another great classic horror story. It may be one of the most chilling tale written of the mild mannered academic. I am referring to Count Magnus. You can read it on this website and if you feel more like listening to it, see (well, listen to, really) this YouTube video. The action is set in Sweden, which is in this story just as eerie and darkly exotic as the most remote corner of Transylvania. The protagonist is Mr Wraxall, an academic, like most of James's protagonists. Like many the others, there is nothing heroic about him. He has an overwhelming curiosity mixed with carelessness that will unleash terrifying forces. Anyway, I will say no more, I don't want to spoil your first chill discovering the story for yourself. The Halloween season would not be completed without M.R. James. Enjoy.

Number 13

We are the 13th of October, so for tonight's countdown to Halloween's post, I have decided to share with you a ghost story by M.R James, aptly named Number 13. It is set in a hotel/inn in Viborg, Denmark, where like in many hotels, the room number 13 does not exist. Or does it? Because slowly, the narrator slowly discovers that there is a sinister presence in the hotel, barely perceptible at first, and a room that should not exist appears in the middle of the night. Like all of M.R. James story, the seemingly mundane situation of the beginning gradually disintegrate until the gruesome climax. Because when the ghost reveals itself (sort of), he is often gruesome in the stories of M.R. James.

As for his own Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You My Lad, another favourite of mine (read more about it here), it is a horror story set in a hotel, a fairly common trope in ghost stories. You can read about another such ghost story in a hotel setting on this post from last year. More than triskaidekaphobia (the fear of number 13), it is claustrophobia that is featured here. The bedroom of the protagonist literally shrinks as evil manifests itself. But I don't want to give too much away. You can read it on this website. If you are feeling lazy, you can also watch on YouTube the BBC adaptation from 2006, which I enjoyed too. But I would recommend that you read first the original, which is far superior, especially the climax. And please comment and tell me what you think.

Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book

(Before you read this post, please read and comment part 1 and 2 of my last Jack O'Lantern story. A warning: it gets violent and nasty near the end.)

Tonight for my countdown to Halloween post, I thought about making you discover a horror story from the great M.R. James. Since I mentioned plenty of ghost stories recently, I also thought it should be one when the antagonist is not a ghost. Although at the time all horror and supernatural stories were called ghost stories, Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book has as its villain a demon. And the protagonist, like in most of M.R. James' stories, is a mild-mannered academic. You can read it online here. But I would recommend that you get your hand on a paper copy. In any case, read it by a dim light and enjoy. It is not very long. This was the first horror story he ever wrote and the second I read. It is one where evil is at its most malevolent and most inhuman. And it is one ugly monster too. Anyway, read, enjoy, and tell me what you thought of it in the comments.

Classic Ghost Stories on stage

Well, this is not Halloween yet, but there is a good reason at any time of the year to enjoy a good ghost story. And let's not forget that you can prepare for Halloween months in advance, the same way you need to bake your Christmas pudding in the middle of Summer. So I prepare myself mentally for Halloween early, and when an occasion like this one arises I take it. So yes, I went to see two plays in a matinee performance, two ghost stories adapted for the stage: The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens (misspelled The Signalman for some reason) and Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James. This was the first story I ever read of M.R James and it remains one of my favourite. The production was done by Middle Ground Theatre.

So what did I think of them? I have read mixed reviews afterwards, but I really enjoyed my time. Sure, there were some technical issues: the surrounding sounds in Oh Whistle often made the conversations difficult to hear for instance. There were also some minor changes to the short story which, however minor, were not necessary, for example the cliché cat showing up as a red herring in the middle of the play. But otherwise, I really enjoyed my time. The stage gives an extra dimension to the stories and its limitations as a medium force the production to be creative to create the proper atmosphere and create the manifestations of the supernatural convincingly. I found the special effects far more effective on stage yesterday than in many horror movies I watched. It doesn't need much: a shrouded figure, a wind blowing, lights getting off and some background music. I found the way Oh Whistle went from agoraphobic to claustrophobic atmosphere particularly effective and very similar to the original short story. I was less familiar to Dickens' story, obviously, but loved how he used a modern environment, the railway, and a modern mean of transport, the train, as the setting of a ghost story. So I enjoyed my afternoon and had a few pleasant chills.

Musing on witches

Tonight, I have decided to write a more substantial and more profound post for the countdown to Halloween.This picture was taken on the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal. A decoration that I found absolutely beautiful, with the witch and her black cat surrounded by bats. The witch is one of the most famous characters of Halloween, one of the most pictured anyway, one of the most seen among trick or treaters and she is in folklore one of the most famous characters of old stories, often a villain, sometimes an ally, sometimes a morally ambiguous character.

That said, nowadays, in horror stories, the witch is a relatively little used villain. I have a theory about the cause: for one, so called witches have been persecuted and massacred through centuries, burned at the stake (the Catholic way), hanged (the English way), tortured and so on and so forth. Nowadays, witchcraft is associated with neopaganism and their practitioners appear harmless, except for some fundamentalist Christians, hardly the stuff of nightmare anyway. I think it is a bit of a shame really. Because witches are wonderful villains, heck, they are wonderful characters, period. They have various appearances, sometimes beautiful and mysterious, sometimes ugly and deformed, they represent evil in all shapes and sizes, both the seductive, bewitching aspect, and the terrifying one. Same thing with the way they perform evil: they use poisons, curses, they spy, they scheme, in other words they are lying, hypocritical, treacherous villains, which makes them all the more despicable. There is a witch in this neighbourhood, so I know what I'm talking about. She may not poison (yet), but she certainly spies. And since she hates cats, this hag has no redeeming quality whatsoever. So I wish they would show up more in horror fiction. M.R. James did a great job in The Ash Tree, but even the witch was from another age. I would love a modern take on it (anybody has any reading suggestions?). I remember vividly a few childhood dreams about witches, maybe I should try myself at it. And there is the one living nearby, but this one is a bit too close to comfort.

The Station Hotel (a setting)

I have blogged a few days ago about the railway model in the local DIY store, which is like a local museum display of local history. I love it. On this picture, you can see the station hotel. The building still exists, but no more as a station hotel: it is now a pub, the pub by the train station. Which means that it gets very popular every evenings and on Friday nights in particular. You can see a picture of one of its entrances here. Its walls are covered with creeping plants and it is a beautiful pub, not my favourite anymore, but it has character. When I first walked in that pub, it was to wait for a job interview in a business that was based here. It was my first memory of the town. I waited for the interview and for the train to the journey back in the pub, reading, incidentally, horror stories of M.R. James. It was in early October.  Because of this, I associate this place with Halloween and horror stories. The fact that it once was a small hotel somewhat strengthens this association. I often muse about writing a horror story set there. I know this is just a miniature, and it does not have all the details of the real thing, but isn't it an inspiring setting for such story? On a cold autumn evening, it is just so wonderfully eerie.

The Ash Tree (by M.R. James)

Fancy a chill before going to bed? I promised that I would upload a horror film for the Halloween countdown. Here it is. My readers know that I admire the work of M.R. James. I found on YouTube the BBC adaptation of The Ash Tree. Not as good as the original (which you can read here), but still. It is the story of the ghost of a witch, grosso modo. be warned: it is a very slow, subtle, subdued, "corner of the eyes" type of horror. I still find it very effective. Tell me what you think of it anyway.

When the trains run late

I used this title before, but I had to use it again. So this morning, the train ran late again. Well, by this I mean that for the first five minutes of the journey, there was no train coming: a shuttle bus was waiting for the commuters to carry us from A to B. Of course, a bus going through the narrow streets of a small town is slow, so it took quite a while to get to B, the second train station on my journey. And then the train was late. A fellow commuter asked me when was the next train coming, I answered "I don't know, thirty minutes ago". She laughed. I think it deserves to be counted as a great unknown line.

Unlike the last time in May when the trains ran late, this time I enjoyed it a lot. I love the atmosphere of train stations (really, I do) and I rarely get blasé of them. It was a beautiful autumn day, warm enough but with enough fresh air to make it comfortable. I was neither too hot nor too cold. I sat on the bench and read a ghost story by M.R. James (this one, read it if you haven't already). I arrived at work thirty minutes late, relaxed, energised and having enjoyed the autumn air (and a pleasant chill, thanks to the Cambridge scholar). I wished the train had been later.

Scary reading suggestions

Since Halloween is coming soon, I thought I would give some reading suggestions to my readers. I did the same thing same time last year. I may not be particularly inventive year after year, but this blog is called Vraie Fiction after all and should be sometimes about fiction. This year, instead of giving a list of books, I will give short story titles (and hopefully I can find them all online). So here it is:

-The Judge's House, by Bram Stoker. Not merely because the story was written by the author of Dracula, but because it is a really good spook in its own right. And it has some elements that Stoker will later develop in his most famous novel. (Talking about Dracula, I will blog about it soon. I have wanted to do so for years as it is my favourite horror novel.) What I particularly love about this short story is that the ghost is not merely scary, he is malevolent and can hurt physically. And there are rats, which makes the story even scarier.
-Canon Alberich's Scrapbook and Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R James. Respectively the first story he wrote, the first story I read of him. Little gems of atmospheric horror. Alberich is more straightforward as a ghost story and so is the threat, but Whistle has a long, slow build up of terror that is a real feast for the reader.
-Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson. I only read it once, more than twenty years ago, in a French translation, but I still remember it. I am going to read it again this month. Why did he kept haunting me? Stevenson is great as putting the little sinister details that stick to your mind like a bloodthirsty leech to your vein. I don't want to spoil the ending, but it just makes me shiver still today.
-The Tapestried Chamber by Sir Walter Scott. A classic ghost story from the early days of the genre. 
-The Red Room by H.G. Wells. Wells is of course better known as a science-fiction writer, but he shows he can work in other genres. This story is a deconstruction of the genre, almost an anti ghost story, but it still manages to be scary.

So here it is, there is enough here to keep you in the mood until Halloween.

Terrifying image

This picture was taken in Bath, almost a year ago, on the 30th of October. I cannot remember exactly where. I cannot remember what this statue was or why it was there. I think it was in the Royal Victoria Park. In any case, I think it is a terrifying sight.

In the documentary I put here on M.R. James, one of the persons interviewed mentioned that James's type of terror he created in his writings was subtle, at the corner of the eye, barely perceptible, which was enough to create dread. That is what struck me about this statue in the woods: there is something malevolent about the expression of its face, with the darkness coming, the autumn colours, it simply looked really threatening. I read once a scary Transylvanian tale that spoke of a guardian spirit of the forest, who murdered a few careless lumberjacks. The spirit could take many forms, but I always pictured him like this statue.

More ghost stories

I borrowed from the library The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories. Well, yes, because it is this time of the year, autumn I always thought was the perfect season for reading horror stories, even like when it is warm like today. And of course it puts you in a good mood for Halloween.

I am a big fan of those kinds of anthologies of horror stories. I think short stories are often much more efficient than novels to give the reader the feeling of terror. It is simply difficult to maintain suspense and fear after the first shock and many horror novels, even the greatest ones, lack power after a few pages. Ghost stories are quick, sharp, they go straight to the darkest corners of the mind and never leave it. The downside to those anthologies is that they often all have the same texts: Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad by M.R. James is on this one too, for instance. If I had bought the book, I would have the story for the third time! But on the plus side, anthologies make you discover forgotten authors and lovely little gems from the past. So I will read this one eagerly.

M.R. James

I watched yesterday evening this BBC documentary on M.R. James. The treasures you can find on youtube. I can also find many BBC adaptations of his ghost stories, which I will eagerly watch in the upcoming months. The documentary was so good that I decided to put it here. My small readership knows my admiration for M.R. James . There are many reasons for it, many of which you can know the documentary. M.R. James was also an academic, which I used to be in another lifetime. I love the way he turned familiar environments into unsettling nightmarish ones. As we are slowly getting closet ot autumn, I am getting more in the mood to read his stories.

The reading list for the weeks ahead

August so far has been rainy and a little bit gloomy. During daytime it is warm enough to feel like summertime still, but it does not look like summer. Not much anyway. It might change before the end of the month.

Now, the far from perfect weather made me spend more time inside reading and I got into my the crime novel I am reading much faster than expected. Reading makes me fight Sunday boredom and melancholia, and August melancholia too, so it makes me a faster reader. This means that I have to quickly plan the reading list for the weeks ahead.

As people might know, the books I read are often chosen according to the seasons and the time of the year. We are already at the middle of August, so I will allow myself to read some more crime fiction for the next two weeks or so. Then, as September starts I will gradually switch to horror fiction, most likely M.R. James. There are a couple of short fiction books I have that I want to get back into, maybe between two novels. Horror stories will be on my reading list until Halloween of course, then it will be back to crime fiction and hopefully more serious reading. I say this and I will most likely read Shining City before the end of summertime. If I plan correctly, I might be able to stay busy until Christmas. Of course, I do not adhere strictly to the list, but it gives me a nice frame if I cannot decide which the books I am going to read.

The charm of old churches

As I mentioned before, we went to a typical English village last week, and I now have enough pictures to fill the blog for quite a while.

So anyway, there was an old church in this nice little English village. I am not a religious man at all, quite the opposite as you know, but I always found old churches full of charm. Furthermore, as a medievalist I have an academic interest in them. I suspected this one was quite old, but since history of architecture is not my specialty I could not evaluate the time period when it was built. I asked at the local pub, just in case, but of course they had no clue. It appears, after researching the Internet, that the foundation dates back to the XIIth century. Just the time period when I am specialised in. Like many other ancient churches it was rebuilt later on, but it still retains some of its medieval look. Looking at a place like this, one almost feels the past centuries as if they were here and now.

I don't want to repeat what I said in the first post about this village, but looking at it, I felt a bit like a M.R. James story or a Dungeons & Dragons game, or a Ha... well, you must know about that one too. I repeat myself, but I guess that is to be expected after blogging for three years now. Even old cemeteries don't look so sinister. Or, if they do, they remain deeply atmospheric. Which is all they need to be. I got married in an old church, a XIIIth century one looking a bit like this one. I might blog about it one day, until then, you have this picture of a piece of ancient time.

A view down the mysterious well

I am supposed to gracefully accept an award, but I want to think about it for longer to give it the proper answer. Telling my readership about me is something I do every day, it is difficult to find something new to write about. On the other hand, recently I got enough inspiration to blog about something like a dozen different topics. So I better get started.

Yesterday, my wife and I went with another couple, to a small English village, one of those picturesque villages that are lost in the middle of the country and therefore seemingly untouched by modern life (I hope I am not spouting clichés here, it sounds a bit too much like something from a bad tourist brochure). So much there was old, surrounded by English countryside, almost by wilderness. I was feeling like in a Dungeons & Dragons setting, or in a Hammer movie. We stayed about two hours, but I took enough snapshots to feed this blog for a few weeks.

We went to a local pub, a genuine traditional pub, an old building, with lots of real ales, old wooden furniture, a fireplace, etc. We sat at a round table and discovered that said table was built on a... well. Now how cool is that: a well in a pub? I blogged about it before: I love wells and what they represent in our psyche. Now, since the hole was covered by thick, solid glass, I could look into the well, stare at this black muddy water that was both fascinating and frightening. I felt closer to this imaginary (or not?) danger, into this gate to another world the well represents. Of course, I could still drink my beer above it, which diminished its frightening aspect. Or maybe not, actually. On a full moon, in a drunken state, my imagination might have ran wild and the irrational feeling of danger could have been enhanced. The pub and its well could be the setting for a great story, either a D&D adventure, or a classic horror story. The whole village reminded me of something I could find in one of M.R. James' ghost stories, to think that such a place really exists, especially in our modern age, is quite stimulating. I wish I had the talent for horror stories. I could make a good pastiche. Maybe I should try it. Until then, I still have the setting. As I said to my wife, we need to go there in Autumn, when Halloween is coming. We would then be in the perfect setting in the perfect season.