Season’s greetings listeners!

We have a Christmas bonus episode for you here, an exclusive readings of one of Charles Dickens’s supernatural Christmas tales ‘The Story of the Goblin who Stole a Sexton‘ which appeared as part of The Pickwick Papers in 1836.

For more information on Charles Dickens and M.R. James, check out Episode 41 in which we talk to M.R. James scholar Jane Mainley-Piddock.

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It’s Christmas Special time again! This year Will & Mike look at the one and only M.R. James story actually set during the festive season, ‘The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance’.

This episode also features a Christmas Bonus in the form of an interview with film director Stephen Gray whose new adaptation of ‘A Haunted Doll’s House’ is available to watch online for a limited period only, starting Christmas Eve!

Our reader this week was Peter Ross and the accompanying artwork is by Alisdair Wood.

As mentioned in our interview, Stephen would like our listeners help deciding which story to film next! Please state your preference below.
Show notes

• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The ever-reliable Ghosts & Scholars website features some useful notes on the more perplexing terms used in this story.
• Punch and Judy (Wikipedia)
  For those unfamiliar with Punch and Judy shows, Wikipedia gives a good explaination of this peculiar form of traditional entertainment.
• Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ (Wikipedia)
  In this story the writer compares Punch’s face to that of ‘the vampyre in Fusili’s foul sketch‘, a reference to the creature in Fuseli’s painting ‘The Nightmare’.
• Bicester, Oxfordshire (Monty’s World)
  Rosemary Pardoe tells us that in the original handwritten manuscript for this story the town called ‘B—‘ in most printed versions is actually given as ‘Bicester’. Bicester is a market town in north Oxfordshire.
• Chrishall, Essex (Monty’s World)
  The first letter in this story is addressed from ‘Great Chrishall’. There is no ‘Great Chrishall’ in the UK, but there is a ‘Chrishall’ and a ‘Great Chishill‘, both near Essex’s border with Cambridgeshire.
• Professor Bert Codman and ‘Toby’ (Punchandjudy.com)
  Mike mentions this fellow in the podcast, one of the famous Codman dynasty of Punch and Judy performers. Apparently Bert died in 1969, just two days after the death of his beloved dog Toby!
• Photos of Bicester (Facebook)
  Will took a trip to Bicester to have a look around the various locations which feature in this story. Photos from the trip can be found at our Facebook page.

The image below shows the King’s Head/Arms inn which features in this story, as it looked in 1885.

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In this Christmas Special* Will and Mike get stuck into Count Magnus by M.R. James, and explore some startling questions:

• What is the connection between Count Magnus and Ghostbusters 2?
• Will sewing your corpse into the carcass of a deer save your soul from the devil?
• Would Mr Wraxall prefer to have been shot in the balls by Robocop?

Answers to these questions and much, much more can be found in this bumber festive edition of the greatest and only M.R. James podcast! This episode features readings by Chris Savory.

Show notes:

• About the real Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (Wikipedia)
• An image and map of the real manor at Råbäck
• Varnham Abbey, the site of the mausoleum of Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (Wikipedia)
• ‘The Familiar’ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Full text at Gaslight)
• The Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin by Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls (Ghosts & Scholars)
• Dark Devotions – M.R. James and the Magical Tradition by Ron Weighell (Ghosts & Scholars)
• About Chorazin (Wikipedia)
• The Tale of the Witch of Berkeley by Rob Hardy (twistedtree.org.uk)

* This edition may or may not feature Mike and Will singing an exclusive acapella rendition of ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’, accompanied by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

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