The Waxwork (audio drama)

A.M. (Alfred McLelland) Burrage first published 'The Waxwork' in 1931 and it has since become perhaps his most recognisable work, although it is far from his best.

It's the story of Raymond Hewson, a freelance journalist who concocts the idea of passing the night in 'Murderer's Den' at his local waxwork.  There he is confronted by the effigy of ' Dr. Bourdette', a French serial killer who, unlike the rest of those represented, is still at large.

This dramatisation made for the BBC Home Service in 1963 - with 'Hewson' played by William Bedle and 'Bourdette' by the Black Guardian himself, Valentine Dyall - took an already short story and made it even shorter losing much of the tension derived from the fracturing of Hewson's mind. But, as a quick listen it's still a fairly effective introduction to the work of an author that's been unfortunately sidelined.

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Playmates

A.M. Burrage was the author of numerous stories of the supernatural but, with the exception of a couple of well known tales that have often appeared in ghost story collections - 'Smee', 'The Waxwork', 'One Who Saw' and 'Playmates' - and having been chamioned by such ghost story luminaries as M.R. James and Richard Dalby he has remained outside the awareness of many readers.  Happily this seems to be changing with the British Library's recent Burrage collection, 'The Little Blue Flames', placing him in a series of releases that stands him shoulder to shoulder with the likes of James, Algernon Blackwood and Edgar Allan Poe.  

Benign but aloof historian Stephen Everton unexpectedly adopts, Monica, the daughter of a distant, and dissolute, artist aquaintance.  Everton's whim is to allow the child to essentially raise and educate herself by providing for her needs whilst allowing her free access to his extensive library.  Within this loveless environment Monica slowly matures exactly as one would expect until that is a relocation of the household to the countryside elicits a change in the girl as she discovers new playmates.

'Playmates' was first published in Burrage's 1927 collection 'Some Ghost Stories' and is a gentle and rather lovely story that only hints at a darker world beyond. It's primary concerns are far more earthly and it tells a story of the importance of love and companionship and it's long been my favourite ghostly tale.

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Between the Minute and the Hour

A.M. Burrage
Herbert Jenkins

I've been stumbling across various Burrage shorts for the last few years - mostly 'Playmates' and 'Smee' but others too - and invested in a copy of his occult detective stories 'The Occult Files of Francis Chard' and I've pretty much loved them all.  This 1960s collection of some of his ghostly tales has been sitting around on eBay for a while now beckoning and flaunting it's unearthly wiles and I was finally pushed beyond temptation when they dropped the price a few quid.

The big pull for me here was the presence of 'Playmates' a story I never get tired of re-reading and which makes me smile everytime but it turned out that the goodies contained within were many.

The book opens strongly with a fun little oddity from which the book draws it's name that sees a shop keeper receive some disproportionate retribution from a fairly uppity gypsy beggar woman before everything gets very dark indeed for a recuperating chartered accountant in the shadow of 'The Hawthorne Tree'.

'Playmates' is next with it's story of a bookish old man and his neglected ward finding their own lives amongst those who lost theirs.  'The Affair at Paddock Cross' is a rather silly follow up tale of circular history or possibly just a fever dream and then 'The Waxwork' which always struck me as a competently written but ultimately daft story of an overactive imagination.

'The Ivory Gods', 'The Green Scarf' and 'The Captain's Watch' all tell stories of items well hidden and the ghosts attached to them.  Of the three it's the second that is the more powerful with it's air of invading, relentless terror.  The first is an amusing dalliance and the last a fairly light tale that borrows a key aspect of it's plot from the Robert Hichens classic 'How Love Came to Professor Guildea'.

The much anthologised 'Smee' and it's ghostly party always reminds me of the 'Christmas Party' segment of 'Dead of Night' a film I've loved since childhood and so can't really read it that other one echoing in my head. 

Trees with unorthodox root nourishment make a second appearance in 'The Oak Saplings' a vividly written but essentially obvious tale of ghostly retribution which gives way to a far more powerfully realised tale of the same in 'One Who Saw'. 

Burrage once again goes for the heart with 'The Garden in Glenister Square'.  It's a story of a life ending and a love realised that tells of a good man refusing to give way to hate even in the face of betrayal and loss and it's quite lovely.

'The Gambler's Room' is an odd take on the idea of possession - by a habit rather than a spirit - that for me never quite took off perhaps because the injured party who we meet at it's beginning seems, well, happy with his circumstances.  The book ends with a fairly traditional haunted house story in 'Browdean Farm' which does give a little twist to the form at it's end.

As I said earlier, even tempted as I was I took sometime in deciding to grab this book.  From what I'd read before I kind of knew it was going to be readable at the very least with the potential of being very good indeed and in the end it proved to be somewhere in the middle.  Burrage was a writer with a strong, personable and enjoyable style and his ideas could be poignant and disturbing.  His tales are straight forwardly told but often manage to raise a chill or two. 

I am, at the final reckoning, very glad I invested in this.  I bought the book specifically to have a nice old hardback copy of 'Playmates' but in the end got so much more.

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Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

Penguin Books

Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than that supreme connoisseur of the unexpected, Roald Dahl? Of the many permutations of the macabre, Dahl was always especially fascinated by the classic ghost story. For this superbly disquieting collection, he selected fourteen of his favorite tales by such authors as E.F. Benson, Rosemary Timperley, and Edith Wharton.

In his introduction to this collection Dahl makes a big thing about how he read 749 ghost stories and had only found 32 that he deemed to be any good; of those he includes 14 here. One of them, 'Playmates' by A.M. Burrage, is my favourite of all the ghostly tales I've read over the years and a few of them - Robert Aickman's 'Ringing the Changes', Edith Wharton's 'Afterward' and Marion Crawford's 'The Upper Berth' - are staples of these sort of books. Of the rest they can best be described as a tepid selection.

A.M. Burrage

Of these remaining stories a couple such as L.P. Hartley's 'W.S.', Rosemary Timperley's 'Harry' and Cynthia Asquith's 'The Corner Shop' have a flavour of those 'unexpected tales' that Dahl himself was famous for. A few such, such as the ever readable J. Sheridan le Fanu's 'The Ghost of a Hand' are a little cliché or lovely but a little bit twee like Timperley's other tale 'Christmas Meeting'. Some are just bad - 'Elias and the Draug' by Jonas Lie and 'The Telephone' by Mary Treadgold - and a couple proved to be a delightful surprise - E.F. Benson's 'In The Tube' and A.M. Burrage's 'The Sweeper'.

It must be said I was expecting more from this collection. I thought a writer like Dahl would be able to assemble a collection to beat all others but this one rarely seemed to sparkle and was often a bit of a chore. It did serve to remind me though that what I really need to do is more fully explore the writing of A.M. Burrage.

Buy it here:  Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

The Occult Files of Francis Chard

A.M. Burrage
Burrage Publishing

Alfred McLelland Burrage was born in 1889. His father and uncle were both writers, primarily of boy's fiction, and by age 16 AM Burrage had joined them and quickly became a master of the market publishing his stories regularly across a number of publications. By the start of the Great War Burrage was well established but in 1916 he was conscripted to fight on the Western Front, his experiences becoming the classic book War is War by Ex-Private X. For the remainder of his life Burrage was rarely printed in book form but continued to write and be published on a prodigious scale in magazines and newspapers. His supernatural stories are, by common consent, some of the best ever written. Succinct yet full of character each reveals a twist and a flavour that is unsettling.....sometimes menacing....always disturbing. In this volume we bring you - The Hiding Hole, The Pit In The Garden, The Affair At Penbillo, The Third Visitation, The Woman With Three Eyes, The Soldier, The Tryst, The Bungalow At Shammerton, The Protector & The Girl In Blue.

I've been on a real detective trip of late but I managed to hold off for a fortnight before it was time to indulge myself in some more supernatural sleuthing with a selection from the author of my favourite ghost story, 'Playmates'.  It took me a while to cough up the readies for this slim volume, number 6 in a series of reprints of Burrage's work, which features the escapades of his detective character Francis Chard and his companion Torrance as the pair investigate a series of unearthly, chilling and unpleasant supernatural episodes but in the end desire overcame thrift.

As is ever the case with these sort of things Chard is a veritable font of knowledge regarding all things supernatural whilst Torrance is suitably dim enough to allow us some semblance of a clue as to what's going on as things are explained to him. There's a satisfying humanity to the pair and they seem a comfortable partnership with each coming to the others aid as they often struggle through their adventures occasionally coming a bit of a cropper or finding themselves scared witless.

I've encountered a few of Burrage's stories before (the above mentioned 'Playmates' and 'Smee' are both regular in spooky anthologies) and have always found him to be very readable which proved to be the case here.  The stories are inventive and adventurous with a unexpectedly violent streak and his characters are believable and engaging.

As I said I initially balked at paying the asking price for this tiny little booklet but I have to admit, in the end, I'm glad I paid it.

Buy it here - The Occult Files Of Francis Chard: Volume 6 (A.M. Burrage Classic Collection)

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Tales of Witchcraft

Richard Dalby (editor)
Michael O'Mara Books

In the figure of the witch, our ancestors summed up their fears of nature, women, and social outsiders. Today, this archetype still possesses the power to disturb and unnerve us--especially in the hands of such masters of the horror genre as Saki, M. R. James, and Stephen King, all of whom are represented in this collection of seventeen tales.

Regular readers of Wyrd Britain will have noticed that I really like these anthologies of ghostly and macabre shenanigans.  This never used to be the case.  My prejudices against short stories were long held and ran deep but a few years ago I discovered the joy of the collection of spook stories and haven't looked back since.  Most of the ones I've read have been a worthwhile experience weighted to the better but a couple of them have shone through as being just a well put together collection - Mark Valentine's occult detective collection 'The Black Veil' and Susan Dickinson's 'Ghostly Experiences' spring immediately to mind - and today this one is added to the list as it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Opening the book is Saki's 'The Peace of Mowsle Barton' a characteristically witty little jape of petty tit for tat spell casting by gnarly old country women which is followed by M.R. James' 'The Fenstanton Witch' in, what was, it's first publication within the pages of a book.  The collection of James stories I own predates this so the story of young clergymen attempting an avaricious exhumation of a suspected witch was a real treat to read even if it's not the most refined of the great man's works.

N. Dennett's 1933 story 'Unburied Bane' tells of a nasty and spiteful hag in a remote, ramshackle cottage but does so with an ever so subtle possibility of just plain old delusional madness.  This is contrasted nicely with the next story, 'The Toad Witch' by Jessica Amanda Salmonson which is a beautifully poignant exploration of childhood imagination and loss.

Next is a writer who I've had the privilege of reading a few times recently, Ron Weighell, who unleashes ancient horrors on a remote convent in the terrific, 'Carven of Onyx' which is followed by A.M. Burrage's fine tale of gypsy revenge in 'Furze Hollow'.

Marjorie Bowen

In 'Miss Cornelius', W.F. Harvey tells a twisted little tale of possible madness or potential witchery.  Neither is really certain and the story is all the better for it.  Marjorie Bowen's 'One Remained Behind' on the other hand suffers from a slightly telegraphed resolution that is redeemed by the panache of it's telling.

One of the more disappointing inclusions is Robert Bloch's 'Catnip' which just tried far too hard to make something out of a terrible pun ending and the low point continues with Shamus Frazer's haunted tree story, 'The Yew Tree' before Stephen King gets everything back on track with his repulsive 'Gramma' and a young boys attempt to deal with the responsibility of caring for her.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, himself a descendant of one of those involved in the Salem witch trials presents a short story of regret, betrayal, sin, death and family in the 'The Hollow of the Three Hills' whereas for the narrator of Roger Johnson's 'The Taking' the sin is not his but the impulse to make amends is laid on him by a restless spirit which is a theme echoed by David G Rowlands', 'The Executor'.

E.F. Benson

Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes presents an amusing little story called 'The Day of the Underdog' which goes some way to proving that not every dog has it's day before the book ends with two stories of love being tested at the hands of devious old crones.  E.F. Benson's 'Gavon's Eve' is by far the better of the two and features lost love and the machinations of a necromantic witch.  The last, 'The Witches Cat' by Manly Wade Wellman would have been more at home in an issue of one of EC's horror comics.  It's not a bad little tale but it's a little too whimsical for the company it's keeping here and makes for an odd ending to the book.

So, with a couple of stories that were perhaps less than they could be and maybe seemed more so in light of how enjoyable the rest of the stories were, this collection proved to be a real treat filled with well sourced stories that haven't appeared in hordes of other anthologies.

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghostly Gallery

Various authors
Puffin Books

"Good evening, and welcome to Alfred Hitchock's Ghostly Gallery..." So begins the introduction to this marvellous book for young readers presented by none other than the master of the macabre himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Following his invitation to "browse through my gallery", readers will find ghoulish ghost stories "designed to frighten and instruct" -- instruct, that is, about the strange existence ghosts must endure! Stories include Miss Emmeline Takes Off by Walter Brooks; The Valley of the Beasts by Algernon Blackwood; The Haunted Trailer by Robert Arthur; The Truth About Pyecraft by H.G. Wells; The Isle of Voices by Robert Louis Stevenson; and more. Parents and kids can't help but chuckle at Hitchcock's comment, "I don't want to appear disloyal to television, but I think reading will be good for you."

Bit of a classic this one.  It's one of those books that loads of folks seem to have owned back in their youth.  I didn't, I wasn't a horror book reader as a kid, films yes, books no.  I was all about the sci-fi books and it's only in the last few years that I've got into exploring these old horror folks which is one of the things that make these 1970s Puffin (and the like) reprints such a draw - the other reason is I'm a sucker for the wonderfully lurid cover art.

A.M. Burrage

So, as you'd probably expect from a book with that title this one is heavy on the big names but also has a pleasing selection of stories that aren't common fodder in anthologies.

After a short and silly introduction by the man with his name on the top the book opens properly with a story I've seen pop up in a few places, A.M. Burrage's 'The Waxwork' where a reporter endeavours to spend the night in a house of horrors.  It's a pretty nondescript little thing that feels old fashioned and a bit weak in it's ending.  This is followed by the first of several humorous stories that are littered throughout the book, 'Miss Emmeline Takes Off' by Walter Brooks (the creator of the 'Mister Ed' stories).  A tale of witchcraft, friendship, social climbing and money.  It's entertaining enough in it's way but not something I have any particularly desire to read a second time.

Algernon Blackwood

The ubiquitous Algernon Blackwood tale follows and it's one of his American adventure stories, 'The Valley of the Beasts', where a belligerent, arrogant and wasteful Englishman meets native American spirituality and both loses and wins which is a fate that also befalls the hapless lead in Robert Arthur's, 'The Haunted Trailer'.  Arthur actually provides three stories to the book which is no surprise as he was the actual compiler of the contents with Hitchcock's name added purely as a selling point.  His other two stories, 'The Wonderful Day' and 'Obstinate Uncle Otis' are both as whimsical and readable as the first but all three come across as very disposable and a little like a comedy back-up tale from an old 'Vault of Horror' comic or some such.

Lord Dunsany

F. Marion Crawford is another of those authors that turns up regularly in these things as does this particular story, 'The Upper Berth' as a ship-board traveller is disturbed by a ghostly presence on an Atlantic crossing.  Following this there's a run of humorous stories topped and tailed by the two Robert Arthur stories I mentioned earlier.  H.G. Wells', 'The Truth About Pyecraft', is a pretty dreadful little tale about one unpleasant little man and one unpleasant bigger one.  Henry Kuttner tells of a mysterious bird cage in 'Housing Problem' and, of most interest to this reader, a chance to finally read something by Lord Dunsany in the form of 'In a Dim Room' an amusing little tale about a tiger.

Closing the book is one of Robert Louis Stevenson's south sea islands stories of greed, magic and cannibalism on 'The Isle of Voices'.  These sort of stories aren't of great appeal to me as my anthropology degree starts yelling in my head and it all gets a little uncomfortable but the story itself is obviously written with a fondness for both people and place.

This is very much a book for those with a marked fondness for amusing, lighter stories or simply a need for an occasional smile.  For me it was a reasonably entertaining way to pass an afternoon.

Small Shadows Creep

Andre Norton (ed)
Puffin Books
1979

An antiquarian bookseller takes a sinister interest in a schoolboy who visits his shop; a pair of twins hardly old enough to walk, strike deadly terror into anyone who sees them; a young girl who died for love finds being a ghost much too enjoyable to give up. This assortment of ghost stories is eerie, touching or funny, and never quite what you expect.

One of a stack of old Puffin books I've been picking up lately and the one that jumped out at me from the pile. This is a selection of Victorian, and slightly later, ghost stories all of which feature children. It is split into three parts - Ancient Evils, Vengeful Spirits & Quiet Visitors - and features eight stories - split 3, 3, 2.

Opening, proceedings is 'Salooky' by Margery Lawrence, a very fine tale featuring her occult investigator Dr. Miles Pennoyer as he removes the deeply malevolent spirit of an Elizabethan sorcerer that is haunting his sisters new home and having a deeply troubling impact on his nephew. This is followed by what is easily the most vicious, and modern feeling, of the eight, 'Herodes Redivivus' by A.N.L. (here credited as A.B.L.) Munby. In this a young man meets a supremely creepy antiquarian bookseller and after a close call finds himself somewhat in tune with the going ons at the shop. Closing out this section was a cool little piece of rural horror - H.R. Wakefield's 'The First Sheaf' - involving intractable locals, pagan rites, an intrusive Christian and a something.

The second set features spirits of a more purposeful nature and begins with E.F. Benson's 'How Fear Departed From The Long Gallery' which is a humorous little tale whose fairly obvious ending isn't spoilt in the telling. Next is probably the book's weakest tale, Mrs Gaskell's 'The Old Nurse's Story' is a fairly transparent story of spinsters, children and past regrets. Not bad but as I said a bit obvious. The section ends with M.R. James' fabulous 'Lost Hearts' where the ghosts of children murdered in an alchemical procedure take gruesome revenge.

The final two stories are a very different kettle of fish with the ghosts being very much the benevolent heart of each tale. Hugh Walpole's 'A Little Ghost' puts a man mourning the death of his friend into a house filled with exuberant children. Escaping to his room he finds comfort and solace in the presence of a shy spirit of a young girl.

The final tale has an almost Dickensian feel to it with its tale of a crusty, aloof academic taking an orphan child into his home and allowing her free range over his library. The story, 'Playmates' by A.M. Burrage eventually finds the girl befriended by the seven ghosts who inhabit the old schoolhouse where they live. As time and circumstances soften the hearts of he and her (but not of his crotchety assistant) they both come to find a level of affection for each other and grow closer before he finally opens himself up in frankly fabulous finale.

It's a thoroughly enjoyable book. It's varied and intriguing and filled with invention, fear and finally, love.