This episode it’s conference report time! We’ve just returned from Through a Glass Darkly, an M.R. James conference which brought together authors, academics and fans in ghost-haunted York for a 2-day Jamesfest of epic proportions!

The episode features interviews with:

• Conference organisers Paul M. Chapman, Theresa Dudley and Mark Jones, who told us about how the chance discovery that M.R. James visited York in 1898 sparked the inspiration for the conference.
• Writer and regular Ghosts and Scholars contributor Mark Valentine, who presented on M.R. James’s scholar protagonist and what they tell us about James, his life and audience.
• Writer John Reppion, who had just presented on the challenges of adapting ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’ for the graphic novel form.
• Author Helen Grant, who presented the fascinating true story of Father Reinhardt, the Steinfeld monk who travelled to England to view Steinfeld’s missing stained glass windows, the whereabouts of which was revealed in ‘The Treasure of Abbott Thomas’.
• Professor Darryl Jones, who told us about his exciting plans for the first full-blown M.R. James biography for over 30 years!

The podcast also features Will and Mike’s thoughts on the rest of the conference, including walking in the footsteps of M.R. James for a stained glass tour of two York churches, and performances from Robert Lloyd Parry and Patrick Smith. You can learn more about all the people we mention at the Friends of Count Magnus website.

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This episode Mike and Will return to the realms of the ‘psychic detective’ in this tale from mother-son writing team Kate and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard. Expect terror on the moors with malevolent earth spirits, coughing ghosts, ominous otters and even a bicycle chase scene!

A big thanks to Rob Douglas, who provided the readings for this episode.

Head over to Friends of Count Magnus to find out more about the M.R. James conference that is taking place in York this September!

Story notes

• Hesketh Hesketh-Pritchard (Wikipedia)
  Wikipedia provides a decent summary of Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard’s eclectic life.
• Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist, Collected Stories (Project Guttenberg Australia)
  You can read this story and a selection of other Flaxman Low tales for free online at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• Flaxman Low: The First Psychic Detective (interestingliterature.com)
  A nice summary of Flaxman Low and other ‘psychic detective’ characters in Victorian and Edwardian fiction.
• Haunted Holidays: The Terrible Occult Detectives (Tor.com)
  This highly entertaining article by Grady Hendrix pulls apart and lampoons the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including examples such as Dr. Hesselius, Dr. John Silence and Flaxman Low.
• Who ya gonna call? Ghost doctor, ghost-finder or ghost-seer? (Skulls in the Stars)
  This blog post also talks about the phenomenon of the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including a Top Trumps-esque breakdown the the more famous psychic detective characters along with their skill-sets and character defects.
• Will-o’-the-wisp (Wikipedia)
  In this episode we discuss whether the haunting could be related to or inspired by the natural (or supernatural?) phenomena of the ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘ghost light’.

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Ho ho ho! We have a festive cracker of an episode for you this month (literally), as Mike and Will explore Sir Andrew Caldecott’s M.R. James-inspired tale, ‘Christmas Re-union‘.

A big thank you to Tony Mears, who provided the readings for this episode. Check out his bands new track ‘A Hypothermia Banquet‘ on Bandcamp!

Story notes:

• ‘Christmas Re-union’ by Sir Andrew Caldecott (gutenberg.net.au)
  The collection in which this story appears can be read online at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• Sir Andrew Caldecott (wikipedia)
  Andrew Caldecott was a big cheese in the Colonial Office for much of this life, only starting to publish ghost stories after he retired. You can find out more about his career at britishempire.co.uk.
• Stories I Have Tried to Write by M.R. James (mrjamespodcast.com)
  Not familiar with the M.R. James essay from which Caldecott took his inspiration for this story? We put out a full reading of it back in 2011 which you can listen to online!
• Ghost story reviews: Not Exactly Ghosts (Tychy)
  An interesting review and commentary on the volume in which this story appears.
• Christmas Re-union (Anibalan.com)
  An essay on this story, and on Sir Andrew Caldecott in general.
• The Great Smog of London (wikipedia)
  The characters express a lot of concern about fog in this story. When you read about the Great Smog of December 1952 you will understand why!
• Sir Roger de Coverley (wikipedia)
  This famous country dance, mentioned in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, also makes an appearance in this story.

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