Midwinter Tales - A Very Merry Cthulhu

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It would surprise few to know that many of Magic Torch enjoy the eldritch horrors of H.P. Lovecraft, indeed our own Tales of the Oak comic features not one but two Lovecraftian tales, The Call of Clutha (see what we did there?) and The Belville Terror, and last years A Nip In The Air had a few sinister Mithraic cultists. The original HP Lovecraft tale below features some rather pagan midwinter celebrations. And obviously nightmarish horror from beyond the unknown stars...


I was far from home, and the spell of the eastern sea was upon me. In the twilight I heard it pounding on the rocks, and I knew it lay just over the hill where the twisting willows writhed against the clearing sky and the first stars of evening. And because my fathers had called me to the old town beyond, I pushed on through the shallow, new-fallen snow along the road that soared lonely up to where Aldebaran twinkled among the trees; on toward the very ancient town I had never seen but often dreamed of.

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten. Mine were an old people, and were old even when this land was settled three hundred years before. And they were strange, because they had come as dark furtive folk from opiate southern gardens of orchids, and spoken another tongue before they learnt the tongue of the blue-eyed fishers. And now they were scattered, and shared only the rituals of mysteries that none living could understand. I was the only one who came back that night to the old fishing town as legend bade, for only the poor and the lonely remember.
Then beyond the hill’s crest I saw Kingsport outspread frostily in the gloaming; snowy Kingsport with its ancient vanes and steeples, ridgepoles and chimney-pots, wharves and small bridges, willow-trees and graveyards; endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.
Beside the road at its crest a still higher summit rose, bleak and windswept, and I saw that it was a burying-ground where black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse. The printless road was very lonely, and sometimes I thought I heard a distant horrible creaking as of a gibbet in the wind. They had hanged four kinsmen of mine for witchcraft in 1692, but I did not know just where...

continue reading HP Lovecraft's The Festival...


In a similar vein, I cannot recommend The Daemoniacal Father of Christmas post from this polar cosmology blog highly enough...tip of the hat to Graeme Rose for drawing it to our attention.

And while you read, why not enjoy these terrifying Carols from the empty places between worlds...(though be warned, their questionable quality may itself drive lesser beings through the gates of madness)





Then to round off your evening, what could be better than the avuncular Mark E Smith reading another HP Lovecraft story for Christmas. Ho ho ho,

Midwinter Tales - The Boarded WIndow

bysharonwithlove

 

A short story from Ambrose Bierce. Many other short stories can be read for free on Underworld Tales... 

In 1830, only a few miles away from what is now the great city of Cincinnati, lay an immense and almost unbroken forest. The whole region was sparsely settled by people of the frontier--restless souls who no sooner had hewn fairly habitable homes out of the wilderness and attained to that degree of prosperity which today we should call indigence, than, impelled by some mysterious impulse of their nature, they abandoned all and pushed farther westward, to encounter new perils and privations in the effort to regain the meager comforts which they had voluntarily renounced. Many of them had already forsaken that region for the remoter settlements, but among those remaining was one who had been of those first arriving. He lived alone in a house of logs surrounded on all sides by the great forest, of whose gloom and silence he seemed a part, for no one had ever known him to smile nor speak a needless word. His simple wants were supplied by the sale or barter of skins of wild animals in the river town, for not a thing did he grow upon the land which, if needful, he might have claimed by right of undisturbed possession. There were evidences of "improvement"--a few acres of ground immediately about the house had once been cleared of its trees, the decayed stumps of which were half concealed by the new growth that had been suffered to repair the ravage wrought by the ax. Apparently the man's zeal for agriculture had burned with a failing flame, expiring in penitential ashes.

The little log house, with its chimney of sticks, its roof of warpingclapboards weighted with traversing poles and its "chinking" of clay, had asingle door and, directly opposite, a window. The latter, however, was boarded up--nobody could remember a time when it was not. And none knew why it was so closed; certainly not because of the occupant's dislike of light and air, for on those rare occasions when a hunter had passed that lonely spot the recluse had commonly been seen sunning himself on his doorstep if heaven had provided sunshine for his need. I fancy there are few persons living today who ever knew the secret of that window, but I am one, as you shall see.

The man's name was said to be Murlock. He was apparently seventy years old, actually about fifty. Something besides years had had a hand in his aging. His hair and long, full beard were white, his gray, lusterless eyes sunken, his face singularly seamed with wrinkles which appeared to belong to two intersecting systems. In figure he was tall and spare, with a stoop of the shoulders--a burden bearer. I never saw him; these particulars I learned from my grandfather, from whom also I got the man's story when I was a lad. He had known him when living near by in that early day.

One day Murlock was found in his cabin, dead. It was not a time and place for coroners and newspapers, and I suppose it was agreed that he had died from natural causes or I should have been told, and should remember. I know only that with what was probably a sense of the fitness of things the body was buried near the cabin, alongside the grave of his wife, who had preceded him by so many years that local tradition had retained hardly a hint of her existence. That closes the final chapter of this true story--excepting, indeed, the circumstance that many years afterward, in company with an equally intrepid spirit, I penetrated to the place and ventured near enough to the ruined cabin to throw a stone against it, and ran away to avoid the ghost which every well-informed boy thereabout knew haunted the spot. But there is an earlier chapter--that supplied by my grandfather.
When Murlock built his cabin and began laying sturdily about with his ax to hew out a farm--the rifle, meanwhile, his means of support--he was young, strong and full of hope. In that eastern country whence he came he had married, as was the fashion, a young woman in all ways worthy of his honest devotion, who shared the dangers and privations of his lot with a willing spirit and light heart.
There is no known record of her name; of her charms of mind and person tradition is silent and the doubter is at liberty to entertain his doubt; but God forbid that I should share it! Of their affection and happiness there is abundant assurance in every added day of the man's widowed life; for what but the
magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?

One day Murlock returned from gunning in a distant part of the forest to find his wife prostrate with fever, and delirious. There was no physician within miles, no neighbor; nor was she in a condition to be left, to summon help. So he set about the task of nursing her back to health, but at the end of the third day she fell into unconsciousness arid so passed away, apparently, with never a gleam of returning reason. From what we know of a nature like his we may venture to sketch in some of
the details of the outline picture drawn by my grandfather. When convinced that she was dead, Murlock had sense enough to remember that the dead must be prepared for burial. In performance of this sacred duty he blundered now and again, did certain things incorrectly, and others which he did correctly were done over and over. His occasional failures to accomplish some simple and
ordinary act filled him with astonishment, like that of a drunken man who wonders at the suspension of familiar natural laws. He was surprised, too, that he did not weep--surprised and a little ashamed; surely it is unkind not to weep for the dead. "Tomorrow," he said aloud, "I shall have to make the coffin arid, dig the grave; and then I shall miss her, when she is no longer in sight; but now--she is dead, of course, but it is all right--it must be all right, somehow. Things cannot be so bad as they seem."

He stood over the body in the fading light, adjusting the hair and putting the finishing touches to the simple toilet, doing all mechanically, with soulless care. And still through his consciousness ran an undersense of conviction that all was right--that he should have her again as before, and everything explained. He had had no experience in grief; his capacity had not been enlarged by use. His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist of powers as various as the
instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the
sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs. We may conceive Murlock to have been that way affected, for (and here we are upon surer ground than that of conjecture) no sooner had he finished his pious work than, sinking into a chair by the side of the table upon which the body lay, and noting how white the profile showed in the deepening gloom, he laid his arms upon the table's edge, and dropped his face into them, tearless yet and unutterably weary. At that moment came in through the open window a long, wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening woods! But the man did not move. Again, and nearer than before, sounded that unearthly cry upon his failing sense. Perhaps it was a wild beast; perhaps it was a dream. For Murlock was asleep. Some hours later, as it afterward appeared, this unfaithful watcher awoke and lifting his head from his arms intently listened--he knew not why. There in the black darkness by the side of the dead, recalling all without a shock, he strained his eyes to see--he knew not what. His senses were all alert, his breath was suspended, his blood had stilled its tides as if to assist the silence. Who--what had waked him, and where was it?

Suddenly the table shook beneath his arms, and at the same moment he heard, or fancied that he heard, a light, soft step--another--sounds as of bare feet upon the floor! He was terrified beyond the power to cry out or move. Perforce he waited--waited there in the darkness through seeming centuries of such dread as one may know, yet live to tell. He tried vainly to speak the dead woman's name, vainly to stretch forth his hand across the table to learn if she were there. His throat was powerless, his arms and hands were like lead. Then occurred something most frightful. Some heavy body seemed hurled against the table with an impetus that pushed it against his breast so sharply as nearly to overthrow him, and at the same instant he heard and felt the fall of something upon the floor with so violent a thump that the whole house was shaken by the impact. A scuffling ensued, and a confusion of sounds impossible to describe. Murlock had risen to his feet. Fear had by excess forfeited control of his faculties. He flung his hands upon the table. Nothing was there!

There is a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up the room with a vivid illumination, he saw an enormous panther dragging the dead woman toward the window, its teeth fixed in her throat! Then there were darkness blacker than before, and silence; and when he returned to consciousness the sun was high and the wood vocal with songs of birds.

The body lay near the window, where the beast had left it when frightened away by the flash and report of the rifle. The clothing was deranged, the longhair in disorder, the limbs lay anyhow. From the throat, dreadfully lacerated,had issued a pool of blood not yet entirely coagulated. The ribbon with which he had bound the wrists was broken; the hands were tightly clenched. Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal's ear.

Midwinter Tales -The Berry Yards

Photo - Louie Pastore : Dark Side o' Inverclyde

Today, a wee excerpt from a longer work in progress...

We would go to pick elderberries and brambles most weekends in the autumn, then help squash them up to make wines. This year though, winter was mild, and so we had been able to pick berries much later than usual. I remember it was only just getting light as we left the house.

The best bushes were towards the east end of town, or in the wild fields between the bombsite gaps round the old mills and sugar refineries. Today though, my dad had another idea, the old railway track that ran along the back of the town, you had to walk up and under an old archway that didn’t have a building attached to it anymore.
‘Is this really an old track? I won’t get electrocuted like on the advert?’
‘I wouldn’t have brought you here if you could get electrocuted would I? Look,’ my dad threw his jacket down onto the railway line, ‘See? Safe.’
He climbed down into the sidings, and lifted me down after him, I was shoulder deep on the line, and now I could see the bushes the whole way over. Dad smiled and started wandering along, picking at the brambles.

It was a strange sort of silence there, not quiet like proper countryside. More just empty of the noise that I felt should have been there, on the railway line, behind the factories. I stared up at the empty windows of the refinery, rows and rows of cracked glass, distorting the shadows that swayed behind them, until I felt sure I saw hands pushing against broken window panes. Hoping my eyes were playing tricks on me and suddenly frightened that my dad was no longer nearby, I turned to look for him, starting to panic. As I turned, I caught sight of his jacket on the line, just where he had left it, only now, it was torn and shredded. I shouted out for him, and immediately he appeared around the bend in the siding.
‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘Your jacket,’ I said, pointing, but as we both looked, I could see that it lay just where it had been. Intact and undisturbed.
‘What about it? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, ‘just…don’t go far away.’
He nodded and patted my shoulder, ‘There’s some elderberry trees up here,’ he said, ‘I’ll be right there.’
He clambered up off the track and towards the trees. I stared at the jacket a little longer, just to be sure, then I returned to the brambles. Even though I knew my dad was nearby, I still felt uneasy, there was a…vibration? Like when there is a television or something left on in the house and you can feel it rather than hear it. I stopped picking again and peered up to where my dad was, making sure I didn’t stare back at the factory windows. He was still there, yellow plastic bucket in hand, whistling away. As I looked though, everything sort of flickered and greyed out, all the colour leaked away, and there was a whisper, right by my ear, ‘Train’s coming.’ I could feel the cold breath of the whisperer on my neck, but as I jumped, and turned to face them, no one was there.

The jacket lay on the track. Not knowing why, I pulled it towards me and stood in at the siding with my eyes closed. And the train came.

It seemed to go on forever, the old track squeaking and shrieking as the wheels battered over the top. It must only have been seconds until my dad grabbed me from above, holding me tight, crushing me in against the siding until it had passed by properly. The jagged bramble bushes were digging into me the whole time. Then it was gone. My dad lifted me up from the side of the track, he looked so strange, smiling, but, sort of crumpled. I know that look much better now, I’ve made it myself. It’s scariest that first time though, when you first realise that grownups aren’t always in control either.

My gran lived nearby, nearer than our own house, so we walked straight there, leaving the upturned bucket and all the spilled berries behind us. I drank sugary tea and listened to my gran shouting at my dad for taking us up there. He didn’t even try to argue, he just kept saying ‘I didn’t know they still used it.’
‘There’s been too many accidents up there,’ she said, ‘far too many. You’re lucky you’re not both under a train right now.’
I thought about my dad’s ripped jacket on the tracks and the cold whisper, but I just drank my tea. That was the last year he made wine.


True story. Though, rather than being a historically accurate depiction of early 80s Greenock, the reality of where we were on the old track and what I saw is muddled up in my head. But we did often pick around Lyndeoch Street and further up. It was a properly strange experience, which I remember in different ways. But to this day, I can't drink wine.

Actually, that's not true.

The Berry Yards were very nearby to the source of another childhood scary story, The Catman.

Midwinter Tales - The Backwater Gospel

And if you enjoyed that, check out The Mill at Calders End

Midwinter Tales - No Smoking Kills

A festive tale now from Mark Jones, President of Greenock Writers Club, and a gentleman and a scholar to boot...

Eight months had passed since I’d last seen and spoken to Niall. Eight months since our last rammy, and still Dad’s estate hadn’t been settled.

It scunnered me to spend Christmas in my brother’s company. I was afraid how things might turn out. Yet it had to be done – I had to return to the bay and sort things for good. Afterwards I would at least – and at last – feel free to move on, leave the past behind and break the bonds that bound two brothers who loathed one another.

MacKellars’ Farm. Back o’ the World, the back of beyond. What was Niall up to? Twelve months since Dad died and still the place hadn’t been sold. The locals would be wondering too. However, we all knew the answer. Niall was still attempting to broker a better deal – but since each successive offer appeared more profitable than the last, he would, I knew, never make up his mind. He was too greedy to settle on anything – too greedy to finally sell – for fear greater riches awaited him around the corner. And, as I’d realised eight months before, at the climax to that belting fight at midnight along the lonely lane that leads to our farmhouse, he had never intended me to help him decide what happened to the farm. After Dad died, it had fallen to us both, but not only was Niall intent on making as much money from its sale as humanly possible, he was hell-bent too on ensuring only he ended up with the proceeds.

So the trip home hardly thrilled me. But I had long since steeled myself for it. I could be as dispassionate as I liked now. He wasn’t about to get his way, after all.

Niall, a pest controller, had always resented me. The clever brother, I’d left the bay for Edinburgh University, studying chemistry to PhD level, and escaping the drudgery of agriculture, returning to the farm only a couple of times a year. Neither of us were our father’s sons in this regard, neither inheriting his interest in farming. And, after I’d left, what had Niall ever done but pish away Dad’s pocket money and waste opportunities? He had a similar intelligence to me – consider him handling all those pesticides and poisons stored in the outhouse. He must, in his own way, have been just as scientific. But he was too lazy to put in the work, and he became envious, resenting others’ success – my academic success, my salary working for a pharmaceuticals company on the other side of Scotland. He wanted everything on a plate.

And he could never keep a friend. Dad always blamed the friend. He had a soft spot for Niall, who in Dad’s eyes could do no wrong. But how many friends can you discard along the way without it becoming obvious? Niall was a bad lot, not the kind of guy you stayed friends with for long. Nobody could stick him. No one could trust him.

Niall’s personality – unfortunately for us both as it turns out – initially made things simple for me when ultimately we fell out over how to dispose of the farm. At first, his refusal to consider any proposal of mine frustrated me. Then, when he started going behind my back to actively destroy deals I’d worked hard to secure, I lost my rag. And it was all too easy to get at him. I abandoned my attempts at diplomacy, at reason, at a calculated softly-softly approach to handling his temper, and went for him hammer and tongs. I lost control of my emotions, a foolish thing to do.

Knowing that, money aside, the only thing Niall truly cared about in the world was Gillian, his girlfriend, all it took for me to avenge myself was to send faked business mail in his name to the home of Gillian’s parents, and then a few anonymous demands for debts. Living away in Edinburgh, there was no way I should have known their address, so it couldn’t be traced to me. But Facebook and an old-fashioned phone book are fabulous things, I found. Gillian knew as well as anyone that Niall never kept friends for long; that there was something shady about him. But she’d never understood what it was about him that repulsed others. Knowing how often he’d fallen foul of others but not why, my forgeries helped wipe the scales from her eyes. She now believed he was up to no good, trying to con her in some way. Just as I’d hoped and connived, she dumped him. Nice girl, Gillian. Innocent. Too good for Niall.

But he knew it was me, even if he couldn’t prove it. That’s why he’d waited silently in the trees for my return from the pub one night while I was back at MacKellars’, visiting to help arrange the sale. Top of the hill where the road leads to Leapmoor. He caught me unawares, left me for dead in that ditch, cleverly making it look like a hit-and-run.

From the moment I regained my senses I knew he’d checked me. I could never prove his guilt. He’d sorted himself a perfect alibi. And how could I say anything to convince anyone else? I simply wasn’t in a position to. Checkmate, perhaps. As I said, he’s not stupid, when he puts his mind to it; and muscular with it.

Instead, I let it lie, bided my time. I was calm. The desire for revenge consumed my soul but anger, I decided, would no longer get the better of me again. Niall would neither enrage me ever again, nor see a penny of Dad’s money. Of that, I was certain.

Which is why, nearly a year ago, on Christmas Eve, I returned to the bay, to the farm, finding myself in the old living room, divided from my brother by nothing more than a coffee table. Sitting so close, his sight disgusted me. I felt awkward and, I must admit, somewhat nervous. Still, the evening passed quietly enough. I ignored him for the duration, and he never once spoke to me. It was like he couldn’t see me.

The issue of Dad’s property still hadn’t been settled at this point, of course. However, I’d earlier read paperwork left carelessly on the sideboard of a deal to develop the whole farm into a housing estate – the very last thing Dad would have wanted. This was obviously Niall’s current plan. He had reason to believe he didn’t need to consult me. I knew it wouldn’t happen, though. He would think very differently about things in the morning.

Eventually, he sauntered out to the yard to padlock the gate and outhouse. Stepping outside myself, I watched him in the warm light of the old hut, tinkering about amid the pots and packets of the toxins he took care to store safely. He puffed away on an electronic cigarette. It had rarely left his lips in all the time I’d been back. He’d finally quit. It was the first thing I had ever envied him for. We’d started smoking together in our early teens, out in the barns. I’d always regretted this, never able to chuck it. And here was he, weaning himself off the addiction more successfully than I’d ever managed.

At that moment, I craved the soft soothing sensation of a long drag from a lit fag. But I’d none on me, and no means of buying any. I would even have taken a puff on that electric one of his, simply for the nicotine rush, but that wasn’t going to happen either. I was jealous. Really, really jealous. Almost insanely so.

Niall returned inside, bolted the back door, laid the e-ciggie on the sideboard, and departed upstairs. Again, I may as well not have been there for all he noticed me.

Alone at last, I wandered around the darkened house, pausing at the sideboard to pick up the e-ciggie. I twirled it between my fingers, wondering whether or not to take a quick suck from it. But nicotine was of no use to me now.

Tiptoeing through to the living room, I gazed over old familiar ornaments, objects and picture frames. Perhaps for the first time, I truly sensed Dad was no longer with us, gone to a better place. Then I tired of the sadness and set to work.

It took a good fourteen hours before anyone found him. I say good, but those hours were bad for me. I hadn’t counted on Niall having become so friendless that nobody would visit bearing gifts even on Christmas Day. I watched him rise for breakfast, puffing away at the e-ciggie while he went about his chores before passing out on the kitchen floor. But the wait thereafter was inconvenient – I had other places to be. Furthermore, I was afraid delay would spoil everything. I knew very well he mustn’t be left too long. He might die. And I didn’t want that.

Eventually I had to dial 999, afterwards placing his mobile in his hand so it looked like he himself had phoned for help.

Then I went and waved the ambulance through the gate after they’d cut the padlock to get in, but, naturally, these paramedics were in too much of a hurry to notice me standing there.

Thankfully, they found Niall alive. Only just, but enough. I watched them revive him briefly from his coma, then cart him off. I waited for the police to arrive, smiling in silent satisfaction as they puzzled over what had happened. Why would this relatively young man have taken the trouble to break open his own e-cigarette and introduce a concoction of various rat poisons to the cartridge? A combination of chemicals so precisely weighted towards one consequence that a suspicious mind might almost suspect an expert in pharmaceuticals had measured them out?

And why had this Niall MacKellar then inhaled from it? It looked suspicious, but there were only his prints on the device, and no evidence of the farmhouse having been visited by anyone else.

Poor soul. It was clearly a suicide attempt – botched, for he hadn’t died. But what drove him to it? He’d suffered two deaths in the family in under a year, of course – his father and then the brother. Yet, hadn’t he so much to look forward to, what with the sale of the farm and everything? Paperwork left lying on the sideboard suggested he was about to become a very wealthy man.

Trapped within his brain, having imbibed enough chemicals to mangle his mind but not die, Niall resides in a netherworld twixt the two extremes of existence, neither dead nor truly alive. Only death can relieve him from this misery – and he must wait. I never intended killing him. No, I want Niall to live, and to live for as long as possible – locked away safely from harm; semi-conscious; with a drip to feed him and a nurse to wipe his bum, day after day after day.

Who knows how long he’ll yearn release? How many decades must pass until I’m forced to face him again? But I’ll not worry for now. I’ll let that lie, bide my time. Fear, like anger, is irrelevant to me at present.

Call me cruel if you wish, but I had never forgiven Niall for beating me, leaving me in that ditch, unable afterwards to prove his guilt or prevent him taking MacKellars’ Farm for himself.

Now he’ll never have a chance to prove it was me who spiked his e-cigarette. And, you know what? I used to loathe him for it, but today I see he did me a big favour that midnight moonless evening along the lonely lane to Leapmoor. For, when it comes to revenge, it’s so much easier when your victim has already done you in. This twilit afterlife brings spectacularly useful advantages.

Being dead. They can’t arrest you for that.

Mark has written for us a few times before, why not have a read at Moonlight Over Inverkip, or his festive Ghost Story from last year Cantus Arcticus. Also, I'd just like to take a minute to slip into full on Tales from the Crypt host mode and say 'That story was sure to give you the vapours...' 

Midwinter Tales - A Child's Voice

A lost BBC Ghost Story for Christmas?

From the videos own youtube description, via Rog Pile's Channel

"Radio fixes the person but frees the imagination."

This might be the first time this BBC ghost story has been viewed publicly in 36 years. A number of people across the net remember the story, and I've seen requests for it. The quality isn't terrific as I transferred my home video recording to DVD more than 10 years ago - and it's now converted to Flash. T P McKenna stars, playing Ainsley Rupert MacCready, a radio storyteller who writes his own stories (making his character probably not a million miles removed from A J Alan) in this creepy story by David Thomson.

Borrowing a synopsis from IMDB: "It is a well worked traditional Ghost story about a DJ of a radio station who broadcasts a horror story concerning a Magician who enlists the help of a child to perform the "disappearing " act on stage.

"Each night the DJ Narrates a chapter of this story to the listeners as he sits in his darkened studio with just his producer in the control room. After the first night's broadcast, the DJ goes home to his nightcap but is disturbed by the phone ringing, and upon answering hears a child's voice asking him not to continue with the story as it is too frightening."

Of course, he doesn't take the hint...

Grave Tales from the Gable

FRIENDS OF THE GABLE presents GRAVE TALES FROM THE GABLE

A selection of folk tunes and spooky spoken word, based on the heritage and folklore of Inverclyde, recorded by volunteer group, The Friends of the Gable. 

A physical copy of the album is available for purchase in the Dutch Gable House shop, with all proceeds supporting local heritage and education activity in the building.

A big thank you to everyone from Port Glasgow Business and Training Centre who got involved.

CREDITS

Music - Brian Heron, John Joyce
Vocals - Brian Heron, Kevin Rodger, Yvonne O'Kane, Amanda Bow
Spoken Word - Fiona MacLeod, Paul Bristow
Percussion - Laura Mathieson
Artwork - Andy Lee
Logistics - Ross Ahlfeld

Midwinter Tales - Wendigo

Andy's welcoming PostIt Note Wendigo, which once lived on the office door.
Really wish we'd thought about using this for a Christmas card...

While stocking up on your winter provisions to avoid Wendigo attack in the lean months, you'll be wanting to make sure you have a copy of the 32 page full colour folk horror comic Uncommon Tales, available digitally later this month as a free Christmas treat. It could very well save your life*

*this is highly unlikely, Wendigo is relentless and remorseless, and unlikely to be distracted for long by a comic

Midwinter Tales 2014

Merry December...as ever during the final month of the year, we like to curate and share a selection of  chilling tales told in all sorts of different ways. This year among other horrors, we have a preview from our Uncommon Tales comic, sinister cigarettes, musical nightmares and berry picking.

We always like to begin with a tale from M.R. James, and this year, it's a more unusual choice, the marvellous Rats, read by Pulp's Jarvis Cocker...

As it's that time of year, you may also wish to purchase our fundraising ebook A Nip In The Air, available on kindle.

And there's more winter folktale fun on my personal blog, Stramashed, with stories featuring badgers, magical christmas presents and mithraic worship. Something for everyone. Sort of.

Ghosts of the Willows

I'm a regular scribbler of Wind in the Willows fan fiction, due in no small part to the impact that the 1980s TV series had on me.

Here's a nice spooky winter episode, you can singalong with...

  

Don't forget Magic Torch's fundraising

Ghost Story Collection, on sale now for kindle

priced only £1

All profits are reinvested in local heritage projects.

From doomed love to haunted industrial wastelands

via ruined Roman roads and abandoned castles,

there's something for everyone to be feart of.

Hungry Ghosts

Change of pace this evening with some Japanese Ghost Stories. There's a whole channel worth exploring. But here's one for starters, parental advisory on this one I think, or maybe I mean its scarier for parents. Anyhow...you have been warned...



There are lost of famous Japanese Ghost Stories of course, but here's lots submitted by real people.

In a similar vein, this is my own ZX Spectrum based Ghost Story - Gaki. I got my Spectrum at Christmas ysee...

Mark had been waiting to play Gaki for weeks, everyone at school was talking about it – but only Chris had actually played it. He said it was the scariest game ever. It wasn’t a game you could get in the shops, it was like the strip poker game or the Manic Miner bootlegs with extra levels. Sean said you could get an IRA game as well, but Mark didn’t believe him. Mark had asked Chris to come over or even to give him a loan of it, but he kept saying no, or that he was stuck at a bit and he would give him it when he got past that. Then Chris’s mum had died, and he hadn’t been at school, so Mark couldn’t ask him again. That’s why he was really surprised when he came home from school later that week to find that Chris had posted him a copy through the door.
Chris had copied it onto a C60, it was wrapped in a letter,
“It’s really hard, I’m fed up with it. See you at school soon.” 
The data screamed and flickered across the screen, it was taking ages to load.
“Mark do you want to play He-Man?”
“No John I’m playing this.”
“Mum! Mark won’t play He-Man with me.”
Mark pushed his brother out of the room as the screeching stopped, signalling the start of the game. There was no intro screen, just white text on black.
You are in a dark room with a dirt floor. Somewhere nearby you can hear crying. There is a wooden door.
“Open door” typed Mark.
 The door is locked from the outside.
“Use key.”
You have no key.
“Look in pockets.”
You are dressed in rags and have no pockets.
Some time passes... 
The crying stops abruptly.
“Search room.”
You find some dirt. And bones. It is too dark to tell which kind.
“Search dirt.”
You have found a trapdoor.
“Open trapdoor.”
The trapdoor is now open.
“Go through trapdoor.”
You fall down through the inky darkness and smash onto the rocks below. It takes some time for you to die. You are still conscious when the rats come.
Chris wasn’t kidding. This was hard.
You are in a dark room with a dirt floor. Somewhere nearby you can hear crying. There is a wooden door.
“Wait.”
Some time passes…
“Wait.”
The door is unlocked. A man shuffles in slowly.
“Look at man.”
Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? The man is wearing stained overalls, he has many cuts on his hands. He is smiling.
“Talk to man.”
You cannot talk.
“Go through door.”
The man is in the way. Some time passes, the man drags you from the room. You are in the kitchen, the blunt knives hang from the hooks. The walls are smeared brown. The man leaves.
“Get food.”
There is nothing here you should eat.
“Escape.”
There is no escape. But there is a small window above the sink.
“Open window.”
You are too far way. The crying starts again.
“Climb on sink.”
You climb on the sink. The water is slimy with grease and gristle.
“Open window.”
The window is open. You can hear the rain and the man shuffling.
“Mark get off that computer right now. Homework!”

Mark played Gaki every night that week, he got out of the kitchen without losing fingers. He got through the mines (you had to stay in the coal cart when the girl died) and past the dogs (you used the bucket of bones from the nursery) but had been grabbed by someone and thrown in a cage. He wasn’t dead, so it was obviously meant to happen, but he couldn’t get out. He had tried waiting for a bit, like at the start, but nothing happened. He had even tried starting again a few times to see if he could do something different; he always ended up here. He tried phoning Chris to see if he knew, but it was his dad who answered and he said Chris wasn’t feeling very well and hung up quickly.
“Wait.”
Some time passes…
You are cold.
“Wait.”
Some time passes… 
You are cold and hungry.
“Wait.”
Some time passes... 
You are cold and hungry and weak. You will soon die.
“Help.”
A door opens. Gaki is here. He says “Would you like me to help you?”
“Nod head.”
“If I help you, you will need to do something for me. Do you understand?”
“Nod head.”
The cage is unlocked.
“Open cage.”
The cage is open. Gaki is waiting for you.
“Leave cage.”
You are in the room with Gaki. 
“Leave room.”
Gaki has not finished with you yet.
The screen flickered at the edges for a moment, as if the game was still loading.
“Hello Mark. Do you like my game?”
Mark sat back from the keyboard.
“You have done very well to get this far. You must be very clever. Can you help me. I am cold and hungry.”
“Give food to Gaki.”
Gaki is still hungry.
“I need more Mark. Much more.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Gaki. I am in the game. I am the game, but I want out. I need you to help me get out, I’m not strong enough yet.Help.”
“How?”
“I need you to find other people to play the game. But you cannot tell them about me. They must find me themselves. They must need me to help.”
Mark stopped typing. Is this why Chris stopped playing? It didn’t feel right.
Some time passes…
“The more I help them, the stronger I will become.”
Mark didn't want to type anything else back, just in case.
Some time passes…
“If you do not help me, bad things will happen.”
It sounded like the chain letter Sarah brought to school. Teacher said that it was okay to break chain letters, that it was just people trying to scare you. Gaki was supposed to be a scary game…so this was just part of the game.
Some time passes…
“And they won’t stop happening until you share the game.”

Mark yanked the power cable from the port, exactly like his dad had told him not to do. He pulled the C60 from the tape recorder and buried it at the bottom of his drawer, under the rubbish mastertronic games he’d bought last month.

Next day when he came home from school, the police were at his house. His mum was crying. John had been playing outside and been run over. The car had just driven off, leaving John lying there. By the time the ambulance arrived it was too late.

Some time passed…

Mark’s mum and dad didn’t want him going back to school so soon, but he made such a fuss, screaming, demanding, that the doctor agreed it might be better to let him get back to his friends. Mark sat up all night with his dad’s midi hi-fi. 

He passed Chris at the school gates and they smiled sadly at each other. Then slowly, they began passing out the copied cassettes to all their other friends.


And with tenuous links in mind, and to cheer you up after all that, here's The Manic Street Preachers bemoaning the loss of Christmas past...



Remember that for the first time this year, we will also be reading a selection of Ghost Stories LIVE in The Dutch Gable House on Thursday 19 December from 7-8. The cost is £2, with proceeds going towards our next year projects. Spaces are limited, so if you are interested in tickets, email aulddunrod@gmail.com or pop into The Dutch Gable House.

  

Don't forget Magic Torch's fundraising

Ghost Story Collection, on sale now for kindle

priced only £1

All profits are reinvested in local heritage projects.

From doomed love to haunted industrial wastelands

via ruined Roman roads and abandoned castles,

there's something for everyone to be feart of.

The Ghost Walks...

  

Don't forget Magic Torch's fundraising

Ghost Story Collection, on sale now for kindle

priced only £1

All profits are reinvested in local heritage projects.

From doomed love to haunted industrial wastelands

via ruined Roman roads and abandoned castles,

there's something for everyone to be feart of.

Cantus Arcticus - Part Five

Cantus Arcticus is written by Mark Jones of Wordsmith Jones Editorial Services, it is told in 5 parts, one each night this week...Mark's story Moonlight Over Inverkip is part of our A Nip in The Air Ghost Story Collection. No less terrifying is Mark's brave rifling through his teenage diaries which you can enjoy at 20 years Ago Today : A Diary of Teenage Embarassment.

Catch up...Part One    Part Two    Part Three     Part Four

An hour or so later, upon waking, Duncan shuddered to recall the dream. But a dream it had certainly been – that was all. A combination of the strange phenomena of the previous evening and the whisky had conspired against the possibility of a relaxed and nourishing sleep. It was a shame for now he was not only hungover but exhausted.

He rose and wandered to the bathroom. But it was here on the landing that he received a shock. Glancing almost by chance into Dad’s bedroom, he saw it: the big cardboard box of Dad’s belongings had been pushed away from the wall, revealing a door left ajar to a cupboard full of dust and detritus. But it wasn’t really detritus. He could see from here that the cupboard was full of Mum, Dad and Janet’s ancient belongings. The same belongings, of course, he’d seen in the dream. He knew fine well he hadn’t dealt with that cupboard before last night – he hadn’t so much as opened the door in all the time he’d been back home – so he could only recognise its contents if the dream had been no dream at all, but instead an event – real, tangible, and, in consequence, far more terrifying than the simple nightmare he’d supposed he’d suffered.

Dumbfounded, Duncan staggered downstairs, almost too afraid to enter the living room and kitchen for fear of what he might find. He must now locate that box. He knew that. No longer simply for any hope of material gain, but because he realised – sensed deep in his soul – that he would not rest until he did. Dad had told him to find and bury it. Now, two apparitions appeared to have joined the search. The import those ghouls placed upon the box suggested to Duncan they sought it in earnest. Duncan didn’t know the reason, and he didn’t dare ponder why. He would search again today, search that cupboard. If he didn’t find it there, he’d search again tomorrow. But one thing was certain – he wouldn’t stay here again tonight. He would, if needs be, check in to the Premier Inn down by the river. Much as he hated the Clyde, it was about as far from this house as it was possible to go in Greenock.

He wandered back through the living room from the kitchen and into the hallway. He still wondered hopefully if what he’d experienced last night could have been a nightmare. But if that had been a nightmare, reality now turned a little darker, a little stranger still than even his sleep-addled subconscious. Through the clear glass of the front door he realised with relief that the rain was off. But then he jumped. With pale sunshine falling on him, he baulked at the sudden sight of Juliet and Marian standing in the street, evidently searching for the correct house number. His twin reasons for longing to escape Stirling. How, of all days, had they come to be in Larkfield? And together?

But the vision worsened for behind the two women – one with a face like thunder, the other a little thicker around the hips than when he had last seen her – there now appeared the two men of the night before. Hazy, they stood at a distance, on the other side of the road, watching, mournful and yet determined.

Duncan rushed up the stairs, not knowing what to do. Dad had been right. He must find this box. Why, he couldn’t fathom, but it obviously held the key to whatever strange chain of events was now unfolding – or rather, unravelling – in this house.

It was as though the very fabric of the house knew Duncan’s intentions, and found them disagreeable. As Duncan passed the photo of his father on the hallway wall, it leapt once more from its nail. But more than this, a great rumbling grew from the void of silence that had previously enveloped the house since dawn. Every pipe rattled, the walls seemed to shake, every beam and join and floorboard seemed to creak, disturbed. How ludicrous it was to feel that the house itself was attempting to prevent Duncan from reaching the box!

At the top of the stairs, Duncan tripped. Supine and struggling for oxygen, he heard the familiar sound of Mrs Dempster, talking to another neighbour in the gardens outside. He rushed to a window and pushed it open.

“I’m so sorry about the noise,” he shouted down to them. “I’ll try to sort out the problem as quick as I can.”

But Mrs Dempster and her neighbour only looked baffled.

“What noise?” the old lady asked. “Canny hear anything out here.”

Duncan listened. No, the noise, the rumbling, the infernal creaking had indeed ceased. But as soon as he closed the window, it began again. And more than this, what few of his father’s possessions remained began to fling themselves from walls and carpets in his direction. With violent speed, pictures, ornaments, a glass snow-storm, flung themselves at him. The carpet itself began to tear from the floor, snaking and bunching beneath his feet, slithering seemingly to trip him.

Battering every object away as best he could, Duncan yanked at the contents of the cupboard. These had held firm in the storm around him. He had to find that box. He had to open it. He had to find out what it held. The tumult grew worse, as though the house read his thoughts. Without turning his head, he felt the presence of people behind him. He knew the men had returned to the house. Then, in the corner of his eye, came movement. The world moved it seemed in slow-motion as he twisted far enough to see his father standing in the far corner of the room, a sorrowful look on his face.

Hideous. Every memento was a reminder of events Duncan had long attempted to bury deep within his soul. Mum’s old clothes-peg bag, a stuffed toy or two of Janet’s, Dad’s demob suit. All came tumbling from the cupboard – physical objects to represent the childhood he’d had snatched from him after the accident, as well as the childhood he’d always rejected. Dad’s love. He turned to his father with tears of remorse and terror. His father’s expression, sad and resigned, told a truth, however, that Duncan trembled and wept to accept. It was too late, the eyes told him.

Nothing more remained but the box. There it sat, black metal, chipped and scuffed and scratched and enigmatic. Silent. Duncan gazed down it, knowing he must now open it. All he’d life he’d run from circumstances outwith his control, or from the consequences of his actions, or from decisions he didn’t wish to make. A runner, a coward, forever hiding away from the world in the delusions and fantasies of his own creation, how often he’d been given advice – by Dad in particular – and ignored it. Now, in this moment, there was only one action left to take.

no no No NO NO! It began with a whimper, breath squeezed from his lungs to form sound, but ended with a shout, a great guttural roar of surprise and terror. It was too late to close the lid. The living air of the room had fused now with the dead air inside the box.

The consequences would reveal themselves rapidly. He knew that. Duncan stroked the contents of the box gingerly. Apples that weren’t really apples. At least now he understood. A monumental silence erupted and suffocated the room, noise deafening in its absence. And with it came the chill – an icy breeze like no other Duncan had ever experienced. Darkness drifted over the scene like a pall.

Sitting and awaiting the inevitable, Duncan was overwhelmed by a sudden truth, a sudden realisation. All his life he’d sought to understand and master death through his work – through telling ghost stories. Always, he’d tried to control and manipulate and explain the death that comes to all, the death he thought he sought. His work – his writing – was a bolt from reality, a flit from life, his miserable unfulfilled and unfulfilling life. How much easier it was to sit at a typewriter and imagine oneself in places and circumstances more pleasing than those he was experiencing. How much better one could feel about oneself to leave behind the lies and dubious actions of real life, and reside instead in fantasy?

Moreover, his whole existence had felt like one long quest for escape – escape from here, escape from there, escape to anywhere easier for him than this, whatever situation in which he found himself messing up at any given time. And death, of course, was the ultimate release from his worries, from himself.

Now he realised, fatally overdue, that, in truth, he’d only ever used death to try and understand life. He wanted to understand life, he wanted to live. He wanted to continue living. He wanted to be good at it. And, maybe, just maybe, he wanted simply to be good. But, here, in a cupboard in a bedroom in a house in Auchmead Road, Greenock, he discovered he was too late. Heat fled from Duncan’s body and the very last of the daylight drained from the room, seeped from his eyes. The now-gloomy room, the house, the town, the whole world, disintegrated before him, slipping from his grasp, or rather he from its hold.

It took a few months of renovation, but the house in Auchmead Road sold eventually and the proceeds passed, of course, to its owner, Juliet, widow to the man who’d been found dead there, one icy morning in early December, his body supine and rigid in an upstairs bedroom, eyes wide open and his skin as frozen as the Arctic itself, brittle fingers still clutching at the scratched and battered black metal casing of an ancient-looking but entirely empty box.

The coroner never determined a plausible explanation for Duncan’s death.

Understanding, in her quietly compassionate way, that neither Marian nor the baby were to blame – the one for her actions, the other for its very existence – Juliet split the profits of the sale equally with them.

Once again, a big hats off to Mark for this story. Mark's written a good few pieces for us now, he's pretty much a regular. But remember we're always on the lookout for new contributors to the blog, feel free to contact us.