Regular listeners will have noticed that we are more than a little bit obsessed with working out the real-world locations that M.R. James may have had in mind for his stories. Well this obsession has led us to create an exciting new feature for the podcast website!

We are calling it ‘Monty’s World’, and it is an interactive map featuring locations not only mentioned in M.R. James’s stories, but also various locations that were important to James during his lifetime such as his childhood home at Great Livermere. There are currently nearly 50 locations featured but we plan to keep adding new locations as we cover them in the stories (if not sooner). Click the map to the right to view it now!

If you know any locations not already featured which you think should be added please drop us an email at mrjamespodcast@gmail.com. Also any corrections or suggestions for improvements (we are aware that the mobile/tablet browsing experience is pretty horrible at present) can be sent to the same address.

Mike is off on his honeymoon at the moment, so in lieu of a full episode Will provides a reading of and short commentary on an M.R. James essay ‘Ghosts – Treat them Gently!‘ which was originally published in the Evening News on 17 April 1931.

In the essay Monty talks about what ingredients he thinks go to make up a really successful ghost story, and gives an insight into the supernatural fiction he rates most highly.

Links

• The ‘Not at Night’ series
• Society for Psychical Research
• Mr Wardle’s Fat Boy
• Sheridan Le Fanu
• William Harrison Ainsworth
• The Lancashire Witches (Novel by above)
• E.F Benson
• Algernon Blackwood
• A. M. Burrage
• Walter de la Mare
• H. Russell Wakefield
• Margaret Oliphant
• Lanoe Falconer

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Join Mike and Will as they peer through their scrying glass at the second installment of ‘The Residence at Whitminster’ by M.R. James.

More black magic, strange visions, swarms of satanic flies and is that Beelzebub hiding in the closet? Or is it just R. Kelly? One things for sure, you’ll never look into your underwear draw in the same way again!

Show notes:

• William Oldys (wikipedia)
  This English antiquarian and bibliographer provided James with the inspiration for Dr Oldys in ‘Residence at Whitminster’.
• Sir Walter Scott – The Talisman (wikipedia)
  This is the book which Mary is reading in ‘Residence at Whitminster’ that puts the idea of talismans and scrying into her mind.
• Ichneumonoidea Fly aka Sawfly (wikipedia)
  Is this the strange species of insect that the inhabitants have such difficulty conclusively identifying?
• Anna Seward (wikipedia)
  Anna Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield’, is the English romantic poet whose prose style James parodies in Mary Oldys’s letter to her friend Emily.
• Beelzebub – The Lord of the Flies (wikipedia)
  Could the sorcery of Lord Saul have literally summoned up Beelzebub, the devil? In various texts Beelzebub appears in the form of a swarm of flies.
• M.R. James – The Fenstanton Witch (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Simon McCollough describes M.R. James’s unpublished short stoy ‘The Fenstanton Witch’ as a prototype for ‘Residence at Whitminster’. It also features a pair of young necromancers whose naive sorceries summon up a terrible winged creature, and also namechecks the Witch of Endor. ‘An Evening’s Entertainment’ by M.R. James also features a horrible swarm of flies, which a sexton describes as “Lord of the Flies, sir”.
• Salem’s Lot (1979) (youtube)
  This is the ‘window’ scene from the 1979 Stephen King adaptation which reminded Will of the ghost of Saul tapping at the villagers windows on cold winters nights.
• R.Kelly – Trapped in the Closet (youtube)
  The Oldys family are not the only ones with some closet trouble, check out R.Kelly’s magnum opus, his epic 22-part ‘hip-hopera’ “Trapped in the Closet”!

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