In the first episode of Season 4 ^tm, Mike and Will are delighted by Let Loose by Mary Cholmondeley, a tale of crypts, clergymen and crikey, what is that in the dog’s mouth?

Big thanks to Jim Moon for allowing us to use extracts from his excellent reading of the story. You can listen to the whole thing over on the Hypnogoria podcast feed.

Show notes:

• Mary Cholmondeley (Victorian Fiction Research Guides)
  You can learn more about Mary’s life and work in this article, or for a briefer summary, try wikipedia.
• Temple Bar Magazine (Wikipedia)
  This story first appeared in the April 1890 edition of Temple Bar magazine, a literary periodical that ran for nearly fifty years.
• ‘The Dead’ by Mathilde Blind (Poetry Nook)
  The two lines quoted at the start of this story come from this poem by 19th century British author and poet Mathilde Blind.
• The Dark Triad (Wikipedia)
  During this episode Mike describes the character of Blake as possessing at least two of the personality traits that make up the Dark Triad, a psychological theory of personality first described by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002.
• History of Charnel Chapels (Rothwell Charnel Chapel Project)
  In this story we discuss the crypt at Wet-Waste-on-the-Wold church as being more of a charnel house.
• Bartleby the Scrivener (Wikipedia)
  Blake’s repeated use of the phrase “I’d prefer not to…” put us in mind of Herman Melville’s famously work-shy clerk Bartleby!
• Asaph (wikipedia)
  In this story, the vicar is locked in an ongoing arguement with a neighbouring clergyman about the meaning of the word ‘Asaph’. Dry stuff, but if you are interested there is a summary of the different opinions on this matter on Wikipedia.
• Fists of fear: severed hands in films – ranked! (theguardian.com)
  Here’s a fun listicle of movies where, like in Let Loose, a severed hand returns to cause havoc. A special mention should go to the our personal favourite, the ‘hand’ scene from Evil Dead 2!
• Gelert the Faithful Hound (NationalTrust.org.uk)
  Here’s another famous example from legend of a faithful dog who was killed by his master after a tragic misunderstanding. #RIPBrian
• Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 (Handheld Press)
  We quoted a line from Melissa Edmundson’s introduction to this anthology, ‘[Let Loose] predates James’s stories if haunted churches and crypts, so that it could be legitimately said that James’s stories were in the style of Mary Cholmondeley’.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Join Will and Mike for haunted cathedrals, lecherous minor canons and hair-based horrors in Noel Boston’s ‘Right Through My Hair’!

Big thanks to Debbie Wedge for providing the readings for this episode.

Show notes

• Noel Boston (The Haunted Library)
  Biographical information about Noel Boston is a bit hard to find online, but there is an excellent introduction in the Ash Tree Press edition of Yesterday Knocks, available as an ebook.
• Norwich Cathedral (Norwich Cathedral website)
  The location of this story is most likely based on Norwich Cathedral, where Noel Boston started his ecclesiastical career as a minor canon in the 1930s. A Google Image search for ‘Norwich triforium’ will also give you a good idea of what to picture when imagining Minor Canon Jogglebury getting menaced in this story!
• All Hallows by Walter De La Mere (Project Gutenberg)
  In this episode, Will sings the praises of this Walter de la Mere tale. It explores similar themes of the dangers lurking in a cathedral after dark!
• Upon Julia’s Clothes by Robert Herrick (Poetry Foundation)
  On seeing Pamela, Minor Canon Jogglebury’s mind immediately goes to this poem by notoriously randy 17th-century poet Robert Herrick. At least it wasn’t Herrick’s companion poem On Julia’s Breasts!
• The Heavenly Twins by Sarah Grand (Project Gutenberg)
  The novel mentioned in this story as The Heavenly Twins by Sally Smalls is actually a reference to a book of the same name by Sarah Grand, which features an anecdote that closely matches the events related in this story about Old Martle. The anecdote can be found in Book III, Chapter I of the novel.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Open your hymn books to episode 89, as we’re back in church for Christopher Woodforde’s “Cushi”: a tale of capering cats, sabotaged surplices and vengeful vergers. Don’t lose your head!

Show notes:

• Christopher Woodforde studied at Peterhouse, Cambridge before becoming an Anglican priest. He was later Fellow and Chaplain at New College, Oxford, and Dean of Wells (as was Richard Maldon of ‘The Sundial’ fame – Episode 80). He was an antiquarian with a love for stained glass, rather like MR James!
• ‘A Pad in the Straw’ was his only book of stories. It is currently out of print, but previously available from Sundial Press.
• Richard Dalby wrote that Woodforde based some of his clerical and antiquarian characters on himself, and many of the locations on the parishes in which he served.
• In his introduction to ‘A Pad in the Straw’, Lord David Cecil said that “A waft of the uncanny blows through these tales, just enough to make the spine agreeably tingle… The general atmosphere is at once eerie and friendly… The intimate apprehension of landscape and the past gives his tales an unexpected weight and depth. Slight and fanciful though their action is, they are the expression of an imagination soaked through and through in the English scene and in English history.”
• Hymn number 386 ‘The Sower Went Forth Sowing’ was written by William Bourne, a pastor, for a harvest festival in 1874. And very jolly it is, to: “And then the fan of judgment/Shall winnow from His floor/The chaff into the furnace/That flameth evermore.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS