THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS by John Bellairs

This is an old favorite from my childhood, and one of the works that set me on the path I am on today.

It's the summer of 1948. Newly orphaned Lewis Barnavelt goes to live with his uncle Jonathan in the town of New Zebedee, MI (based on the author's childhood memories of Marshall, MI, and some touches of his then-home of Haverhill, MA). Lewis notices some strange behavior from his uncle and his neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Zimmermann. Finally, the truth comes out: Uncle Jonathan is a wizard, although not a very powerful one. Mrs. Zimmermann is a powerful witch, although a good one, and they've been trying to find the source of a strange ticking in the walls of the house, suspecting it's something left behind by the house's former owner, an evil sorcerer named Isaac Izard.

Lewis has problems of his own at school; he's fat and bookish, and not very athletic, but he tries. He's also not very popular, but ends up befriending Tarby Corrigan, a popular athletic kid who can't participate in any games because of a broken arm. They start to drift apart, though, as Tarby's arm heals. Lewis, attempting to impress Tarby, claims he can raise the dead, and the two meet on Halloween night to raise a spirit in the town cemetery.

The experiment doesn't go as planned, and Lewis finds himself sitting on a painful secret, afraid to tell anyone. Meanwhile, the ticking in the walls grows louder, a mysterious woman moves in across the street, eerie happenings occur, and Lewis stumbles on clues indicating that Isaac Izard had plotted to destroy the world....

It's horror for younger readers, sure, but it's a fun and atmospheric read. The town is described lovingly, and the characters are appealingly human. Lewis' problems with bullies and a friend who grows increasingly distant and dismissive rang true for me as a kid. It's also got great illustrations by Edward Gorey (see the cover above). Gorey would end up supplying covers and frontispieces for most of Bellairs' works over the years, to the point that the two are almost inextricably linked in my mind. Lewis and his family and friends would appear in a full dozen works, and Bellairs also had two other series running along the same lines, one starring Anthony Monday and set in small-town Minnesota, and another starring Johnny Dixon and set in small-town Massachusetts.

It's not all dark and grim; there's quite a bit of humor on display, and Bellairs was obviously an educated man. Uncle Johnathan's name, Jonathan Van Olden Barnavelt, is lifted from an Elizabethan tragedy. Mrs. Zimmermann is based on Wisconsin poet Mary Zimmermann, whom Bellairs had befriended many years before. There are many literary in-jokes you'll come across here and there in Bellairs' books.

Reading it as an adult, there were a few things that jumped to my attention. There's a few supernatural occurrences that don't seem to make a lot of sense, but could be sendings from the villain to demoralize Lewis. (Mainly, the Aunt Mattie scene.) Bellairs describes a chestnut tree in Uncle Johnathan's front yard, an oddity considering the chestnut blight wiped out the chestnut in most of the country starting in 1904. And at the end, the solution to the mystery is found in a secret passage....which, to the best of my recall, is never mentioned again in the series.

Still, despite a few flaws, it's a quick, entertaining read. Bellairs had intended Uncle Jonathan to be the main character and for it to be an adult work, but there wasn't a market for it, and Bellairs was talked into rewriting it as a book for young readers, and it was an unqualified success and won multiple awards when it was first published in 1973. Seek it out...although later verions have a new cover, they at least preserved the Gorey illustrations inside, even for the Kindle version. Highly recommended.

TALES FROM A GAS-LIT GRAVEYARD, edited by Hugh Lamb

Hugh Lamb was a great anthologist and literary historian, and he dug up quite a few previously unknown stories that have now become standards in anthologies and are studied by scholars and students. His many anthologies of Victorian ghost stories are almost required reading among fans of supernatural fiction.

So, let's run through the contents...

"The Haunted Station" is a great story of a haunted hut in the Australian outback, written by Hume Nisbet. It's a gloriously evocative and eerie tale, where the scenery of the outback is as menacing and ghostly as the hauntings themselves. Although the haunting is fairly standard, it's well-written enough to be worth reading on its own.

"The Hour and the Man" is a conte cruel by Robert Barr, reminiscent of "The Torture by Hope" by Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "Nut Bush Farm" by Mrs. Riddell is an OK haunted-house story, centering on a theft and unsolved disappearance. J. H. Pearce's "The Man Who Coined His Blood into Gold" is an interesting folk tale/dark fantasy/adult fairy tale that is unusual for the period; unfortunately, its avant-garde nature probably cost Pearce any fame. Not much is known of him today and his work remains obscure.

Next up is two short-shorts by Lady Dilke, who was involved in a scandal that rocked the Victorian age, and of course is almost forgotten now. "The Shrine of Death" and "The Black Veil" are very Gothic, and seem almost old-fashioned compared to the other stories here. Ambrose Bierce's "The Ways of Ghosts" is a collection of brief essays about ghostly phenomena, in his typical style, always dry and mordantly witty.

"The Fever Queen" by K. and H. Prichard is more of dark irony than ghosts; the same with W. C. Morrow's "The Permanent Stiletto." The former is of an artist who vanishes after his greatest work is a flop...but later it's acclaimed as a masterpiece. The latter is of a man seeking treatment after a murder attempt...and of the fear that leads to his eventual fate.

Richard Marsh's "The Houseboat" is a straightforward tale of a haunted craft and an investigation that leads to its resolution. It's good fun, vividly told. "Dame Inowslad" by R. Murray Gilchrist, one of the Decadents, is a good cruel tale of supernatural vengeance...or is it otherworldly fulfillment? It's a masterful work, and Lamb was responsible for Gilchrist being revived and studied again.

Two fictionalized Spanish legends, "The Mountain of Spirits" and "The Golden Bracelet," are by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, and are a pleasant dash of dark folkloric fantasy. "The Tyburn Ghost" by The Countess of Munster is a very nicely grisly short piece that prefigures some of Elliott O'Donnell's "true" ghost stories.

"Remorseless Vengeance" by Guy Boothby is a cruel little tale from another specialist in Victorian Australia. And the volume is ended with two tales from Bernard Capes. First is "The Green Bottle" which is a pleasantly vivid story of a soul trapped in a bottle. And finally is the now anthologized-almost-to-death "An Eddy on the Floor," which is hardly worth going into as everyone's read it.

There really isn't a bad story in the bunch; every one is worth reading in one way or another. I really liked "The Haunted Station", "The Houseboat," "Dame Inowslad," and "The Tyburn Ghost," and I will keep this handy to refer to them from time to time. This is still in print, both in physical editions and as an ebook. Go get it now.

RETURN FROM THE DEAD, edited by David Stuart Davies

Another example of Wordsworth's efforts at bringing back a slew of obscure and half-forgotten supernatural literature, this anthology has quite a bit of interest for some...although for me it was a bit of a slog.
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First off, I have to say that I got all giddy when I saw the dedication..."To Richard & Tom, with fond memories of when we were the walking dead emerging from Eighty Eight's in the early hours." A bit of asking around confirmed it; he's talking about my own friends, the late Richard Valley and his partner Tom (I am leaving out his last name as he's still around but the last I heard had distanced himself from the genre community, and I'm not sure how he would react to having his name cited here.) Anyway, having an unexpected personal connection to the book in your hands is always a thrill.

This anthology is weird, though, for containing an entire novel, The Jewel of the Seven Stars, by Bram Stoker. It takes up most of the book; there's 273 pages and Jewel takes up 187 of them. And, honestly, I found Jewel to be rough going. Maybe it was me or my mindset, but I found it horribly slow-moving and lacking in clear menace. It's about an Egyptologist who had the mummified body of Tera, a witch-queen of ancient Egypt, who seems to have prophesied her own reincarnation...or resurrection. And it's hard to tell if she's a menace or if there's some other force at work. They decide to do a ritual to resurrect her...but why? There are times when character motivations are unclear. And I'll get spoilery...at the very end, it seems to be suggested that Tera's spirit starts to go to her body to reanimate it, but then another evil force takes over and inhabits the body. But that's all up to the imagination of the reader; it's not explained. One interesting thing here is that it's given the original dark, bleak ending that Stoker gave it, with most characters dead or awaiting death, and an evil force on the loose...but with the second edition Stoker was convinced to give it a happy ending, and the new ending is also provided.

Thankfully, this is followed by two humorous pieces, "The Mummy" by Jane Webb, and "Some Words with a Mummy" by Edgar Allan Poe. The latter, especially, has some pointed political commentary that's a bit surprising and still fairly relevant today. Poe is undervalued as a satirist, in my opinion.

Wrapping up the collection are two very good and fun stories from Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Ring of Thoth" in which a man, trapped in a museum overnight, witnesses a ancient ritual performed by an immortal Egyptian, and "Lot 249," a very fun story of a reanimated mummy wreaking havoc on a university campus.

Is this worth it? Eh...I question the judgement of putting a novel in an anthology. They could have very easily done a separate edition and dug up some other stories. The only other story here that hasn't been frequently anthologized is Webb's, and it's not all that great anyway. Doyle's stories are great but you can find them in other collections. So save your money, folks. This one is a bit of a letdown, although with good intentions.

AYLMER VANCE: GHOST-SEER by Alice and Claude Askew

Wordsworth Editions has started a marvelous series of horror and mystery reprints, and I snapped a handful or two when I could, and am finally getting around to reading them now that I've getting settled in at the new place and adapting to a new normal.

Alice and Claude Askew were prolific writers of pulp fiction in the early part of the 20th century. A husband-and-wife team, they wrote a slew of works, and even had a few adapted for the stage and the silent screen. They were involved in support and relief for Serbians during WWI, operating in Serbia and Corfu. (For some reason I find Corfu impossibly exotic and enticing. I'll say it again. Corfu.) They died together in 1917 when a ship they were traveling on was sunk by a German torpedo.

This slender volume of short stories (only 127 pages) is a very nice example of the early 20th century occult detective genre.Some are built around supernatural menaces, and a few are more mystical in their outlook. The first tale, "The Invader," is a tale of possession, but the next, "The Stranger," tells a story of a woman who is apparently beloved of a pagan god and eventually rejects an earthly suitor to join her true love. (In that respect it's reminiscent of the preachy Dr. Tavener stories by Dion Fortune, only less preachy.)

"Lady Green-Sleeves" is an occultist love story with no real detection. "The Fire Unquenchable" tells of a series of mysterious fires and poltergeist activity ties into a deceased poet's unfinished work. "The Vampire" is a fun variation, mixing vampirism with possession. "The Boy of Blackstock" revolves around a haunting and an unhappy marriage. "The Indissoluble Bond" is more mystical in exploring a girl's bond to a man who may be her destruction. "The Fear" is a more straightforward tale of a destructive haunting.

The stories do follow a progression; the narrator, Dexter, moves from being an acquaintance hearing some stories, to Vance's partner in detection. And there's a thread in these stories that distresses me...a few times, the solution to a haunting is the complete razing and destruction of an old manor or castle, something that would have M. R. James screaming in horror. It made me blanch, that's for sure.

This entertaining collection can be purchased by itself in paperback by the aforementioned Wordsworth Editions, but you can also get an electronic edition from Ash-Tree Press that contains two other collection of occult detection, Rose Champion de Crespigny's Norton Vyse stories, and Kate & Hesketh Prichard's Flaxman Low stories. Take your pick with these.

THE HOUND OF DEATH by Agatha Christie

"Oh jeez, is he going to start reviewing Christie? Is this turning into another Poirot-worship blog?" I hear you screaming.

Well, I like Poirot, but there's enough about him on the 'net to let other people pick up the slack. I'm not wild for Miss Marple. However, there's some less-known Christie that I'll tackle from time to time.

The Hound of Death is very atypical Christie. It's a short story collection, and while some of it is the usual Christie mystery plotting, mostly it's a departure as it deals with ghosts and psychic phenomena. This is Christie taking a stab at horror writing!

The title story is a very interesting tale of a man's encounter with a traumatized nun from Belgium, a refugee from WWI under the care of a psychologist. The nun has strange memories and appears to have psychic powers. She is telepathic and has visions of a remote "city of circles" which far too many critics maintain is supposed to be a city in the far future, but is very, very, very obviously supposed to be Atlantis. The psychologist wants to tap her hidden power, an ability to call down immense destruction, which she apparently used on a German battalion that attacked her convent; the battalion was destroyed, but so was the convent, leaving her the only survivor...and the wreckage is in the odd shape of a hound...

"The Hound of Death" is odd, somewhat unsatisfying, but at the same time very bloody intriguing.

"The Red Signal" is a tale of twisted emotions and semipsychic warnings. "The Fourth Man" tells of possession...or is it madness? Is a young girl the victim of multiple personalities, or has she been possessed? "The Gipsy" is a very standard tale of love denied and true lovers being united in death.

"The Lamp" is also a rather standard ghost story, but with an added element of a person's deliberate self-sacrifice to bring aid to a lost soul. "Wireless" is a nasty twist tale of a murder plot that ends up going hideously awry, and I found rather reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith or Ruth Rendell. "The Witness for the Prosecution" is obviously the basis of the famous play and movie, and little needs to be said about it other than the ending is a bit different. "The Mystery of the Blue Jar" starts off as a rather eerie ghost story...but ends up something else entirely. "The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael" is more supernatural hijinx with hints of witchcraft, as a man suddenly seems to develop the personality of a cat.

"The Call of Wings" isn't mystery or supernatural, just a tale of spiritual awakening and self-sacrifice. "The Last Seance" is a harrowing tale of spiritualism, in which a desperate women confronts a medium...whose powers may be real, and may be someone's undoing. The final story, "SOS," is a cute little mystery with overtones of the eerie but all rather mundane at the core.

How is it overall? As with any anthology, it has ups and downs. Some stories left me cold, like "SOS" and "The Call of Wings." Nobody can argue that "The Witness for the Prosecution" is a classic; it is. "The Hound of Death" is an intriguing tale with elements I may incorporate into a role-playing game, perhaps. (Yes, I said it.) And I truly loved "The Mystery of the Blue Jar" and "The Last Seance."

Christie was a great technician when it came to plots, but she wasn't always a great stylist. (Exception: The Hollow. Look for it.) She wasn't always great at creating atmosphere, at least in her earlier work. Sometimes in her later years she was good at it. (The stories were written mostly in the '20s, and the collection published in 1933. I found a reference claiming that "The Call of Wings" was one of the first things Christie ever wrote.)

It's actually a little difficult to get this in a physical edition; most of the stories here were republished in other anthologies, but a straight reprint with the stories in original order is hard to find. But it is available electronically; I got the ebook edition from Amazon and it's probably not horribly long until it's in public domain as some of Christie's early work already is.

Worth reading for Christie fans; general fans of supernatural and gothicism might be interested.

THE BANSHEE by Elliott O'Donnell

Elliott O'Donnell's claims that this stories are true don't always strike me as credible, but I have to admit that he's a darn good storyteller and his recountings of various legends is zesty fun and good reading on a cold windy night.

A banshee, for those who don't know, is an Irish legend of a fairy woman, normally attached to a particular family or locality, who weeps and moans, or sometimes sings, as a sign of a death. Banshees could be ugly hags or beautiful young women, they could be weeping and keening mournfully or cackling in maniacal glee, and sometimes are not seen at all. They do not cause a death (as they do when translated in D&D or Chill games), but merely foretell a death that is about to happen and that is inevitable, although in some legends they simply warn when someone is in danger of their lives. Although prevalent in Ireland, there are also legends of banshees in Scotland and in some areas of the United States...presumably, in places with heavy Irish populations.

O'Donnell's The Banshee is a book-length exploration of the folklore and legends of the creature, and while it often slips in to occult mumbo-jumbo and claims of personal experience, it's still a fun read. He discusses just what a banshee is, tales of them from history, the ideas of banshee personality, the nature of banshee hauntings, variations on the legend, and even has a chapter on poetry and prose involving banshees.

Naturally, I don't believe a word of it, but it is good reading, and in an odd way is also a good look into the mythology of the spectral being that foretells death, a folklore trope that's found all over the place. Many old families in the British Isles and elsewhere in Europe have legends of death portents, ranging from certain animals being seen in certain places, to weird supernatural beasts. I once read of a legend of three ghostly women (a young lady, a middle-aged woman, and an aged crone, all dressed in mourning clothes) who were seen knocking on the doors of the Intramuros neighborhood of Manila, and wherever they knocked a death soon occurred, and were supposedly seen knocking doors all over the city just before it was bombed in 1945. While O'Donnell would see that as a banshee-type haunting, I would see it as a repetition of the old folklore.

O'Donnell claims personal experience of banshees, and tells many "personal" stories purportedly heard from friends and acquaintances that may or may not be true, but at least they're shuddersome and entertaining.

The Banshee can be had in an overpriced print-on-demand bound version, but is out of copyright and can be downloaded for free from various online resources, including Amazon. (I read it on the Kindle.) If you're in the mood for some supernatural shudders, this is good fun. Just take it all with a grain of salt.

At the Cinema with a Woman in Black

Not being much for football, I went out this evening and caught the new Hammer film, The Woman in Black.

I'd read Susan Hill's novel a long time ago, and have forgotten much about it, so I can't say how true to the source this is...but damn, this is one spine-chilling film. Literally. After one jolt, I actually felt my spine tingling, not something that happens that often.

In a nutshell, it's the story of widowed lawyer Arthur Kipps, who travels to a remote village to settle the estate of a wealthy widow. The villagers are unfriendly, and he spends long hours in her house going through her papers. The house is isolated, located on an island in a marsh, accessed only by a causeway that's drowned at high tide. There's a string of deaths of children in the town, and Kipps sees the phantom figure of a woman in mourning clothes skulking about the island. He comes to connect her story to that of the deaths of the children, and must solve the mystery...before his own son comes to visit in a few days.

It's actually remarkable for an old-fashioned haunted-house movie to hit theaters like this these days. And a period piece, set in the Edwardian era, about the mid-1910s. This is like Hammer in its golden days, historic horror done at a breathless pace. It's also unusual for Hammer, which despite its many horrors, never actually did a ghost movie.

It's relentlessly suspenseful, and Kipps' night in the haunted house is an unending orgy of horrors. And it sometimes defies expectations. There's a great scene where he hears a rocking chair moving inside the locked nursery. He finally gets in, and we see the rocking chair rocking...and normally, it would stop dead, or simply not be moving. But here, the chair continues to rock, and is only the beginning of the harrowing events.

Daniel Radcliffe shucks Harry Potter for this, and he pulls it off well. The villagers are called on to do one-note performances, but a couple who are Kipps' only friends in the weird place are good. The settings are remarkably naturalistic; I feared a Tim Burton-esque Addams Family fantasia of overdone gothic fakeness, but that was thankfully avoided in favor of settings that could actually looked real and believable. And for all I knew, were.

This is good intense stuff, and I hope it does well. It's the sort of thing I'd love to see more of. This isn't slasher killers and gore, but good supernatural horror. (It's occasionally reminiscent of Asian horror films, but only occasionally, and that's probably more coincidence than anything.) The Woman in Black isn't high art, and there's little deeper meaning to it, but it's a fine example of craft. See it and have fun.

 

(EDIT: As soon as I posted this, Roger Ebert tweeted a link to a story about how the house and settings were done. Turns out to be a real house, the village was a real one in Yorkshire, and there was a huge attention to detail. The toys in the nursery were all genuine antiques from the period. They also looked into macabre Victorian corpse photography [propping up a dead relative or child and taking their photo as a memento] and other aspects of the story. It's good fun; read it here.)