An Aside...

It was Voltaire who said (something like) “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. Fortunately for him, he was living in a pre-Internet age, because otherwise he would have contributed something very different to the realm of quotable quotes. Something like, “oh for God’s sake, shut up!”.

Everyone on the planet is entitled to their opinion. In some areas on the planet, you are entitled to whatever opinion is considered the status quo and heaven help you if you speak otherwise. Generally though, you are free to make your own mind up about certain things and operate accordingly. What everyone needs to remember, however, is that there’s a difference between what you think is true and what is actually true.

In these over-sharing days, people seem to have lost the ability to discern the difference between what is real and what is a load of horse-puckey. We live in an age where people adopt paleo-diet lifestyles with no discernment other than that some mildly famous TV presenter says that it’s “cool” (and that – erroneously – it sends cancer into remission, among other outright, unproven, lies). We live in a time when measles, whooping-cough and diphtheria are on the rise once more because there’s a handful of people out there – without any valid training whatsoever - who think that the science behind immunisation and herd immunity is “wrong”. We live in an age of chiropractors – it’s witchcraft people: look it up.

On the one hand, we have access to more information than we’ve ever had before. You’d think that that would make us all more rational and intelligent, but no – somehow it’s turned us all into drooling idiots. On the other hand, we live in a time when we’re told that our individuality and right to express that self-importance is at an all-time high. What that means is that we’ve become a population of fawning idolaters, trained upon the least hiccup of Kanye West and his misbegotten coterie (he’s mad, people; certifiable, and now in the loony-bin where he belongs. Huzzah!).

The people who come to this blog are, on the whole (when they’re actual people, not web-crawling robots or people searching for “hitler youth camps sex” – I’ve seen you out there: please stop) roleplayers, and it’s my opinion that that fact means you’re people who know the difference between what’s real and what’s not. Surely then, you can look someone like David Icke right in the eye and tell him where to get off?

My step-father helped to build the Large Hadron Collider; my sister is at the bleeding edge of genetic research: I’m surrounded by the notion of tested evidence and the value of peer review. You may read articles about people bodgy-ing their scientific papers and being caught out as cheats but this is just the scientific process in operation. Why does it make some people think that the entire scientific community is a bunch of shonk-meisters who continually lie about their findings?

(Conversely, these are generally the same people who think that the Illuminati rule world governments from the shadows, that people’s minds are being controlled by secret orbiting satellites, that footage of the World Trade Centre’s destruction “proves” it was an inside job and that David Icke is right when he says that Queen Elizabeth II is an eight-foot tall red lizard with the ability to cloud people’s minds. Seriously people: grow up.)

At one of my earlier positions, we had a very good customer, a Japanese professor who was trying to prove that all human life on the planet evolved from penguins. I shit you not. He was a very good customer, very personable and erudite, but seriously – who, for a moment, thinks that that has legs as far as scientific research is concerned? Of course, science is predicated upon the notion that proving a negative is just as valid as proving a positive – the Theory of Evolution (as some religious retards in the American south are keen to remind us) is just that – a theory. Our customer was obviously just shutting down a dead end, wilted twig on the tree of scientific discovery. Obvious for some, that is.

I see people come into my shop all the time who have fallen prey to other people’s opinions. They show up lurking about the fringes of the store, red-faced, wide-eyed and usually hyperventilating. It means that they’ve spent the morning downloading videos from YouTube about alien invasions, the Lithgow Panther, Yowies, or tracking devices in modern currency. It takes a lot of my time – time which would be better spent doing actual work – talking these idiots off the ledge and reassuring them that, just because something is somebody else’s opinion, doesn’t mean that it’s real.

Look, you come here because you’re a Lovecraft fan right? What did Lovecraft teach us? There’re no superpowers out there pulling the strings. The cosmos is indifferent to us – it rolls along without a plan, without a purpose. There is no conspiracy; there is no hidden agenda. Of course, you are more than entitled to your own opinion, but please, examine what that opinion is; test it against all available evidence (unless your source is somehow related to a Kardashian, then absolutely avoid and decry it), and if it stands up to scrutiny, for God’s sake, shut up.

The Rudraprayag Leopard - Part 1

In 1926, a wild leopard that had preyed on humans in the Punjab region of Northern India over the past eight years, was finally shot and killed by a British big-game hunter – Jim Corbett - specifically commissioned for the job. Why is this such a big deal? Well firstly, the leopard attacked and killed a phenomenal 250 people before being taken out; and secondly, the incident rated a mention as a prophecy in the Hindi version of that mouldy old Mythos tome, the Cthaat Aquadingen.

This story takes place between the years 1917 and 1925, the eight years during which the leopard killed and ate people in the region without anyone seemingly able to check its progress. Getting the party here should be left up to the ingenuity of the Keeper, however this story is not the one about bringing the leopard’s activities to a halt; this is another tale entirely, set against the background of fear which the predator’s activity generates. (If the Keeper wants to play out the story of bringing the feline to justice, they are free to flesh out the details from this premise if they like, possibly using Corbett’s own memoir of the events as a guide – see the Library in a forthcoming post.)

The Keeper should find a solid hook to involve the party; for best effect, they should be involved before 1926. This adventure can form an offshoot to the campaign series “The Masks of Nyarlathotep” if the Keeper wishes. The party could have friends or acquaintances in India who might call them in to look at the problem, or they may be familiar with the prophecy in the Hindi translation of the Cthaat Aquadingen: wherever there’s a prophecy, there are those who seek to investigate it, and since we’re in the district...

Welcome to the Punjab!

The Punjab is a northern region of west India just below the Himalaya mountain range. The Ganges has its origins in this area and, as such, there are pilgrim sites, temples and other holy places galore throughout the countryside. The small town of Rudraprayag lies on a pilgrim trail between two such sacred sites and reaps the benefits of high annual traffic and the influx of tourists. Temperatures in the Punjab are significantly lower than other parts of India, especially during the traditionally hotter months, and this area is a place of escape for most non-Indian residents of the country. Many diplomats and soldiers whose job keeps them in such places as Delhi and Kolkata base their families in the cooler Punjabi hills for at least part of the year to ease the severity of the foreign lifestyle.

Getting There

The best way to get to the Punjab is by train. Trains run frequently between Delhi and Hardwar, the trip taking from two to three days (depending upon delays, break-downs, etc.). Delhi is a good place for research to happen, as there are universities, foreign embassies, trade missions, social clubs and so forth. From Hardwar, the party needs to find alternative transport. Wagons are available, teams of horses and possibly automotive vehicles (averaged Luck Roll of the party), but they should keep in mind that these means will only be of use for a short duration: inevitably, the party will be on foot. Guards, porters and other servants can be hired almost anywhere along the route: this is a pilgrim trail and many locals are adept at making their living by offering their services to the passing tourists.

From Hardwar, it is a three day hike (or one to two day’s Drive or Ride) to Pauri, where they will find the end of the telegraph line and the military outpost which defends it: this is the logical place to fall back to if everything goes pear-shaped in the high country. Rudraprayag is a day’s march beyond but Pauri marks the limit of progression for motorised vehicles.

Supplies

From the earliest days of colonisation by the British, the Indian populace has been motivated to create manufacturing industry throughout the country. Of particular interest is the manufacture of metal goods and of fabric items. Clothing, tents, canopies and other cloth necessities can be obtained at prices one-third of that listed in the standard equipment guides; so too can simple metal objects and contraptions, such as traps, lanterns, shovels, swords and tent spikes. More complex items – such as telescopes, compasses, or guns – will cost twice as much as usual and will be less effective, generally imposing a -20% penalty to the Skill required to use the item (Navigation for example). Guns and rifles will not impose a penalty per se, but will have a base 75% chance of Malfunctioning.

Basic foodstuffs and medicaments are easily obtained, including rice, flour, opium, tea and coffee. Complex or imported foodstuffs, such as alcohol, generally cannot be had, although there is a black market in Hardwar and Dehradun which can supply some items (at black market prices, of course!). Note as well, that alcohol, beef, items of bovine leather or cow horn, fly in the face of Hindu custom: players should choose their vendors wisely when shopping. Of course, while there are many Muslim shopkeepers around to circumvent religious strictures, it is not wise to ask them to provide bacon.

Haggling is the rule rather than the exception when shopping in India, so the players will have excellent opportunities to utilise their Bargain skill while stocking up for the trip ahead.

Pauri

This small outpost represents the furthest limit accessible by a party conveyed by an automobile: the trails into the mountain foothills beyond this point are rude and narrow and not the place for a lumbering car. Those parties who insist on driving ahead will discover only impassable bridges, near vertical slopes and broken axles. Horses and small, two-wheeled wagons will still be useful for a while longer; however upon reaching Rudraprayag, the party will discover that, if they want to go anywhere, they will have to walk.

At Pauri is a small, walled compound which houses two British soldiers – Major Thomas Evans and Captain Brian Harrows - and their families. These two military men maintain the telegraph line which terminates at this point, and oversee the mail deliveries (which are infrequent). They have command of a small troop of twenty Sikh soldiers who help to keep order in the local district. Both commanders have engineering backgrounds and the compound with its surrounding village is neat and well-maintained; military rigidity is noticeably absent, although the atmosphere is by no means slack or decadent. While in town, the party will be welcomed and accommodated in an easy-going manner.

Major Thomas Evans

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	12	POW	16	Age	42
CON	14	DEX	15	HP	13
SIZ	12	APP	13	Magic Points	16
INT	15	EDU	19	SAN	80

Damage Bonus: +/-0

Weapon:       Knife 50%; Pistol 65%; Rifle 60%; Shotgun 40%

Armour:        None

Skills:             Accounting 75%; Botany 55%; History 74%; Electrical Repair 65%

Spells             None

SAN Loss       It costs no SAN to see Thomas Evans

Captain Brian Harrows

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	16	POW	14	Age	35
CON	14	DEX	13	HP	15
SIZ	15	APP	12	Magic Points	14
INT	13	EDU	19	SAN	70

Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapon:       Knife 70%; Pistol 60%; Rifle 75%; Shotgun30%

Armour:        None

Skills:             Accounting 65%; Military Procedure 75%; Wilderness Survival 55%

Spells             None

SAN Loss       It costs no SAN to see Brian Harrows

Typical Sikh Troopers

char.	value	char.	value	char.	value
STR	12,13,14,14	POW	14,12,13,12	Age	25,24,36,29
CON	14,14,15,15	DEX	14,14,12,10	HP	14,15,16,16
SIZ	14,16,16,17	APP	15,12,9,13	Magic Points	14,12,13,12
INT	12,15,13,14	EDU	10,11,11,12	SAN	70,60,65,60

Damage Bonus: +1D4

Weapon:       Knife 65%; Rifle 50%; Sword 65%

Armour:        None

Skills:             Bargain 75%; Folklore 45% Sikhism 80%

Spells             None

SAN Loss       It costs no SAN to see a Sikh Trooper

Once the locals become aware of the party’s intentions, they will not hesitate to point out the uselessness of vehicles, horses and wagons beyond Pauri and Rudraprayag respectively. Evans and Harrows will offer to help find porters from the local community and, under these circumstances, Bargaining Rolls have a +20% effectiveness. Despite the relative ease of haggling however, there may be some issues about finding people willing to head out towards Rudraprayag (see sidebar).

While at Pauri, any mechanical difficulties affecting the party can be left in the hands of the soldiers. Ammunition can be re-stocked to a reasonable extent and telegrams and letters may be despatched. Some local supplies are available in the form of fresh vegetables and fruits and laundry can be done here.

Rudraprayag

This village has an air of tension about it which the party will detect as soon as they enter. Depending upon what year it is, the atmosphere will be more or less heightened by the fear which the man-eater has generated by its presence. If the party arrives in 1925, all windows and doors in the village will be barred shut with rough-hewn planks of wood; people will scurry furtively from place to place, keeping their backs to the walls of the buildings; a constant sound of grieving and praying will fill the air. Prior to 1923, the atmosphere will be one more of excitement than fear, with much chattering and bluster and occasional arguments amongst people with differing views on how to approach the issue of the big cat.

Throughout the village (and indeed the entire district from here on in) the party will see decorated flags flying wherever they go. These are prayer flags (or yantras) and the one that they see most often is dedicated to Shiva for whom this is sacred territory.

The first difficulty the party will have (assuming they arrive during the time of dread) is simply trying to convince someone to step outside and talk with them. Once their presence is made known, the reaction of the villagers will be mixed: some will think that, being Westerners, they are expert hunters come to kill the leopard; others will believe that the presence of foreigners will only anger whatever forces are already punishing them. If the party makes an averaged Credit Rating roll, the villagers will eventually be predisposed to believe that the arrival of the party is a good thing: accommodation will be provided and the party will learn that the village elders sent a deputation to Delhi many months ago to ask for help in removing the wild cat from the district. The party may feel it appropriate for the villagers to believe that they are the help provided by the government; otherwise, they might choose to quickly disabuse the townsfolk of this notion. The choice they make here may cause a later meeting with Jim Corbett to be somewhat uncomfortable...

Pilgrim Territory

Passing through Rudraprayag puts the traveller on the path to Badrinath and its temple, a site which is sacred to adherents of Shiva, or Saivid Hindus. Journey to this shrine is part of a larger pilgrim trail known as the Char Dham, a voyage that takes the pilgrim to the four corners of the Indian sub-continent, and which is shared by Vaishnavite Hindus, or followers of Vishnu. Further, here in the Himalayan foothills, there is another pilgrim trail called the Chota (or small) Char Dham, which follows the footsteps of the Hindu saint (or sadhu) Ari Shankara: this walk takes in another powerful Saivid site at Kedarnath.

Pilgrims tend to walk clockwise along the Chota Char Dham so as to arrive at Kedarnath before coming to Badrinath. Kedarnath is the site of a temple where the Pandavars, a fraternity of warriors from the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, performed acts of austerity which won them the blessings of Lord Shiva. Kedarnath is located beneath a glacier and is open only between April-May and October-November – heavy snows completely cut off the town outside of these months and the residents depart to friendlier climes.

Badrinath is sacred to Saivid Hindus because of its location near the Alaknanda River. According to legend, when the goddess Ganga fell to earth, Shiva interposed himself to protect the Earth from her impact, catching her in his matted locks. The place where she left his coiffure to walk upon the ground is the trail of the sacred River Ganges. The River Alaknanda is a tributary of the Ganges formed by this dramatic fall. In the Ninth Century, Ari Shankara found a stone in the river, naturally carved into the likeness of an incarnation of Vishnu who did great penance at the site to ease the suffering of the world: this stone murti, or three-dimensional holy image, is housed within a temple in the village and pilgrims from all over India come to see it.

The surrounding area is full of other holy sites and places of interest, including hot springs and caves. Of note amongst these is a mountain which, when viewed from Badrinath seems to be carved with the Devanagari word “Aum”, a sacred syllable to Hindus; near Sonprayag is a temple where the Goddess Parwati was spiritually wed to Lord Shankar and in which a fire illuminating this ceremony has burned since the Ninth Century; and there is a spring at Udar Kund which, according to tradition, contains water from all the oceans and which never loses its freshness: its powers of purification are well-known.

Settling in...

The villagers put up the party at an abandoned farmstead on the edge of town. This is a four-sided construction surrounding a courtyard: a walled gate forms the front entrance with kitchens and laundry on either side, while staff quarters make up the left-hand side and stables are to the right. The main house is a two-storey construction with an upper balcony overlooking the central yard. The villagers will attempt to precede the party and clean up: they do not immediately (or ever, if they can manage it) reveal that the house was abandoned after the owner was attacked and killed in his bedroom by the infamous leopard. It will be noted by the party however, that the roof above the master bedroom has caved in at some point; this is where the leopard pushed through to make its assault.

Any servants that the party may have accumulated will, if they have journeyed to Rudraprayag and are not locals themselves, at first be unconcerned about moving into these premises; after a few days however, they become sullen and moody, jumping at shadows and muttering under their breath. Contact with the local villagers has revealed to them the nature of the past events in the house and the fact that most villagers consider the place cursed at least, haunted at worst. Any helpers engaged in Rudraprayag itself will straight-out refuse to move into the place.

To Be Continued...

The Age of Lovecraft...

SEDERHOLM, Carl G., & Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, The Age of Lovecraft, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis MN, 2016.

Octavo; paperback; 256pp. Fine

After Houllebecq and Harman, you’d think I’d had enough of mind-bending philosophy to last me a lifetime, but no – it seems there’s plenty more to be had. We live in the age of the post-humanists; the object-oriented ontologists; the philosophers of speculative reality. All these burgeoning fields of thinking have found in HPL a writer who captures the quintessence of their theories in his works, almost 80 years after his death.

It’s a big turnaround. In 1945, American literary critic Edmund Wilson said of Lovecraft that his work was simply “the horror of bad taste and bad art”. This champion of the Library of America series – a publishing endeavour that seeks to capture all that is best of American writing – would be spinning in his grave to discover that HPL is now a title within that collection. Some have said that HPL’s inclusion shows that American literature has reached some kind of nadir, but I suspect the speculative realists would have something to say about that.

(I myself have some titles from the Library of America series, specifically the two-volume collection of Raymond Chandler’s works. It seems that no matter what accolades HPL receives, they’re always going to be hard-won. I mean, it doesn’t get much pulpier than Chandler, so how does his inclusion barely raise a ripple while Lovecraft’s causes conniptions?)

The publishing of the new title, The Age of Lovecraft, is an overview of all the discussion that HPL is engendering around the world at the moment. The editors – Carl H. Sederholm & Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock – approached the exercise with a twofold question in mind, seeking its resolution: “Why Lovecraft? Why now?” Accordingly, they have commissioned a series of essays which form the chapters of the work and the sheer weight of multi-syllabic words that have ended up on paper as a result is a reason to give pause. Herein are discussions of HPL’s stylistic gimmickry, his debt to the Gothic tradition – even his use of sound within his stories. Most of the writers owe a debt to Graham Harman’s Weird Realism at some point, so if you’re interested, that book might well be worth finding before you tackle this brute.

I say “brute”, but I don’t mean to cast aspersions. This is an even-handed embracing of all things Lovecraft with critical eyes examining why so many people take his work onboard as a kind of cultural touchstone. That being said, it’s a weighty academic tome, with all the jargon that philosophers love to splash around. Bookending the brain-bending material are a Foreword written by Ramsey Campbell and an Interview with China Miéville – neither of which are as good as the material which they sandwich, but if you’re a fan, you might consider them the wading pools of this Lovecraftian Wet ‘n’ Wild extravaganza.

Given the state of play in America at the moment, I was wary about looking at this collection. Any discussion of Lovecraft inevitably wends its way towards his racism, and I half suspected that the groundswell xenophobia coming out of his home country was going to answer that “Why Lovecraft? Why now?” statement in a heartbeat. I have to confess that I’m only partway through the volume and I’m still gingerly picking my way, expecting some kind of horrible alt-right enthusiasm at each page turn. Hasn’t happened yet, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t.

What’s of particular interest to me are the various discussions about Lovecraft pastiche and HPL-inspired writing and how most of it fails to live up to the format imposed by its exemplar. Having reviewed many collections of such material, I’m feeling quite justified in my responses, and starting to see more clearly where the line divides between ‘Lovecraftian’ and ‘Not’. Hopefully the editors of those collections will pick this volume up at some point and refine their own thinking on the matter.

In the meantime I heartily recommend this book for serious analysers of Lovecraft’s material. If you’re just trolling for ideas for a new Cthulhu tattoo, then perhaps Metallica’s new album is something better to spend your money on: despite the lurid cover, there’s little going on here that will satisfy a fan-boy’s geeky urges. I’m not going to give this book a score in Tentacled Horrors because I think that it’s too fundamental to be treated as an entertainment. A recent “Fortean Times” review gave it 9 out of 10 and recommended it for all HPL fans; I’m not so sure it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re a deadly serious Lovecraft fan – not just a wearer of a Cthulhu ski mask – then you need this book.

*****

PS: There are dissenters to this point of view. Amazon has some fairly scathing reviews about the value of this collection, written by folks with perhaps better qualifications to comment than I have. Before you shell out your hard-earned - and it is an expensive volume - read around and draw your own conclusions.

Review: Ghost Story

STRAUB, Peter, Ghost Story, Jonathan Cape Ltd., London, 1979.

First edition: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 507pp., top edges dyed navy blue. Minor wear; spine heel softened; previous owner’s ink inscription to the flyleaf; mild offset to the endpapers; mild spotting to the text block edges. Dustwrapper is mildly edgeworn and sunned. Very good to near fine.

Here’s a weird thing – from a very young age, I always thought that Stephen King and Peter Straub were the same guy. It came about, I think, because I saw a paperback re-print of Ghost Story with a blurb on it by King around about the same time that I learned that King wrote under an alias – remember, I was the kid who used to hang around in bookstores looking at the covers, but not buying because I was always worried about what my parents would think (which is why I became a comics fan, but – another story). I conflated King and Straub rather than King and Bachman, and – because I was never really a fan of King’s work – I avoided Straub like the plague.

What a mistake! I am just now – at the age of 51 – reading Ghost Story and it’s a wonderful experience. What irks me about King’s books (and even moreso in James Herbert’s books) is that much effort is spent upon characters who then get crunched down like corn chips. We get presented with an individual; we get told about their work habits, lifestyle choices, the minutiae of their daily lives... then wham! They’re toast. What is the point? We get so invested in a character that lasts three or four paragraphs while the main protagonists are blank slates that barely resonate after 300 pages. Something is horribly wrong here, and it’s not the vampire lurking in the woods, the rats boiling up from the sewers, or the pet cat buried disrespectfully in the indigenes’ sacred site. It’s a mistake in the narrative.

How enjoyable is it then to find a writer who has things the right way around? In Straub’s major opus, incidental characters are just that – incidental – while the main players are revealed to us, not over paragraphs, but over the course of chapters, getting built up layer by layer until we know them completely. Then, when the hammer falls, its impact is so much greater.

Straub writes like a dream. It’s the difference between riding in a finely-tuned high-end Jaguar and bumping along in a 60s VW Beetle. From the first page you feel like you’re in capable hands and the narrative draws you in like a well-oiled machine. I made the mistake of starting to read this one morning when I got up too early to go to work; in no time at all I was six chapters deep and running late.

The story takes its time to unfold but that’s in no way an issue. Like the best ghost stories, the source of the menace is nebulous and not easily explained – in fact, the root cause of the horror in this tale is the tiniest of catalysts, so small that those involved aren’t actually sure about what’s happening themselves.

The story revolves around five elderly friends who live in a small town in New England. Two are the local lawyers, one is a doctor, one is a writer and the last is a retired hotelier. When we begin our journey with this quintet, the writer is dead of a heart-attack, apparently frightened to death. The remaining four decide to maintain a tradition of meeting each fortnight to drink whiskey and tell tall (but true) tales, although now, they tell stories about awful things that have happened to them in their pasts, effectively ghost stories.

This bi-weekly ritual, known as the Chowder Society, has a creeping effect on its members: as we meet the friends, we learn that they have all been having nightmares, and – more alarmingly – they have started sharing the same dream. They decide to contact the son of their dead friend – a novelist who wrote a successful horror novel containing echoes of the Chowder Society’s woes – and he agrees to hear them out, but not before the doctor injects himself with morphine and jumps off a bridge into a frozen river in fright. Time, it seems is running out.

The narrative switches back and forth in time and we get to see different aspects on the nightmare that is slowly closing in on the Chowder Society. Strangers come to town; relatives of those involved in the death of the writer appear unexpectedly; sheep in the local fields are killed and drained of their blood; an invisible entity starts pursuing our group of friends. In between the spooky tales of the Society’s members, we have the distinct sense of a crystallising menace coming into play. It’s a treat, and I’m just sorry it took me so long to get here!

If you’re a fan of Stephen King, give this a try: it feels like the sort of thing that everyone thinks King writes but patently doesn’t. The only downside is that Straub is nowhere near as prolific as King, so if you go on a ‘Straub binge’, you’ll run out of things to read very quickly!

Four-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

Review: The Alabaster Hand...

MUNBY, A.N.L., The Alabaster Hand and Other Ghost Stories, Dennis Dobson Ltd., London, 1950.

Second edition: octavo; hardcover, with silver-gilt spine-titles; 192pp., top edges dyed red. Very mild wear; slightly rolled; some faint spots to the text block edges and endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is very lightly edgeworn; now protected by non-adhesive plastic. Very good to near fine.

A.N.L. Munby makes clear his debt to M.R. James on his dedication page in this collection; unfortunately, my Latin isn’t really up to it so I have to take it on faith, but I can decipher it enough to work out that Munby considers himself to be standing on the shoulders of a master. It’s a completely valid viewpoint too – all of the stories gathered here have the Jamesian touch and unfold in much the same fashion that Montague Rhodes unpacks his little horrors. Still, these are not the works of the master and while they approach the chilliness of James’s tales, they fall a little short in execution.

That’s not to say that any of the stories here are bad. None of them are Jamesian pastiche in the manner of Susan Hill’s ghost stories for example. It’s just that Munby makes things a little too explicit and wraps things up four-square. James tends to imply a rationale, not provide one in his stories; Munby pins everything down a little too neatly.

In his defense, Munby wrote all of these ghost stories while languishing in a prison camp outside Eichstatt in Upper Franconia between 1942 and 1945, and three of them appeared in a camp magazine named “Touchstone” which the prisoners organised. The editor of that magazine was an Eliot Viney, who was also one of the printers of this book. I guess that writing fanciful ghost stories might be an interesting way to divert oneself from the all-too-real horrors of the Second World War!

When I settled down to read this collection I immediately turned to the title story – “The Alabaster Hand”. It wasn’t a wise choice. Of all the tales in this book, this is the weakest. It involves a priest, new to his parish, who flouts tradition and conducts his service from a prayer stall standing next to an elaborate marble sarcophagus in the church. While delivering the sermon, he feels the cold marble hand of the carved effigy on top of the coffer clutch him below the knee. Shaken, he calls in a friend, an antiquary, who arrives with a stone mason: they cut off the carved alabaster hand and discover that it is hollow and contains the skeletal hand of an ancient saint, a relic hidden there after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Churches. The relic is removed, the hand re-attached and everyone goes back to work, mystery solved. It was a disappointing end to an otherwise excellent set-up – an expert swanning in at the end and offloading a bunch of historical facts to ascribe a complete explanation. However, it didn’t address the fact that a marble statue moved and grabbed a man by the leg!

I have to admit that I put the book down at this point and turned to other, more promising, things. I came back to it later and decided to start from the beginning and work my way through. This turned out to be the best approach.

All of the other stories carry familiar hallmarks: Oxbridge educated men of varying ages meet past friends in London Clubs or country estates and discuss peculiar events which have happened to them. These generally involve antique books or artworks, odd pieces of furniture, or architecture. Inevitably, it turns out that some ancient taboo has been transgressed, or some dead relative offended, and there’s a rush to try and understand how this occurred and what needs to be done to rectify things – traditionally ghosts don’t verbalise too much; they’re not good at sharing.

There’s a story about a four-poster bed that kills those who sleep in it; it turns out that the fellow who made the curtains and bolsters had a sideline in grave-robbing and used the graveclothes to line and pad his products. There’s another about a young man who removes an ancestor’s folly (never a good idea) and who later gets pushed off a wall; turns out he misread an inscription which threatened death to any demolishers. For the most part these stories work like algebra: A+B=C. Now and then, however, there’s a surprise.

In “Herodes Revivivus” a book collector is asked to see a fellow collector’s acquisitions and recognises one of the titles as having once belonged to the paedophilic murderer who almost killed him as a child; the two discuss the event and work out that the villain was Gilles de Rais reincarnated. In “The White Sack” a holidaymaker sleeps after a gruelling walk on the Isle of Skye and dreams of being locked in a mill and slowly smothered by white bags of grain; waking later and rushing to get back to base, he is pursued by a scrap of white fog that deliberately follows him with evil intent and which turns out later to be an evil Scots bogey-man. For my money, this handful of tales where the connexions aren’t so cut and dried, are Munby’s best efforts.

James’s instructions to horror writers were clear: make the setting cosy and comfortable, then let the horrid thing stick out its head. For the most part Munby does this, but he gives in to a desire to tie off all the loose ends and pin everything down. As we know, and so did James, a little mystery goes a long way!

Three-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.