May 8, 2021
Resident Evil 8 !
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Resident Evil 8 !
Horror’s Pleasure of Distance
Horror’s Pleasure of Distance
One of my favourite moments from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho(1960) is not a typical choice considering the film’s many infamous scenes. Rather than showers, murders and other more memorable images, I particularly love a relatively bland scene later on in the film. It has narrative development in its eerie punch line but has little else on screen in terms of Hitchcock generally: it is perfunctory…
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On a rather muddled day in early autumn, I decided to visit M.R. James. In recent years, I’ve become interested in the places that James frequented, usually because they have had clear and profound effects upon his ghost stories. Visiting them with a sense of curiosity seems to invert the man’s clichés back upon him; walking in search of the known as opposed to the unknown. This trip was to be more simple than previous James-themed explorations in that I simply wanted to ground the spectre, so to speak, by finding his grave. James’ fame as the formidable intellect and provost of King’s College Cambridge comes only second in his adoration to his childhood school of Eton in Windsor. Having gone to the school itself and later retired there as provost in an unparalleled academic career, it’s clear that the school and town held a special place in James’ affections. There’s a sense of safety there for the writer; it’s the most unquestioningly English, middle-class island James could have possibly asked for at a time when World War One and its trauma was still echoing. It seems only right, therefore, for him to have been buried there.
I made my way there on a surprisingly sunny day from London Paddington, stopping briefly in Slough where the passing trains threaten to pull you along with their great speed, before taking the meandering train directly to Windsor. The castle came into view, along with a spitfire, flower beds and various other clichéd paraphernalia of Englishness. A quick wander over the Thames and the atmosphere turns from country town into country village; the shops turn smaller and (aside from the Costa) have mostly been there for at least 100 years or more; sinking into the ground, creaking with age. The streets became filled with Eton boys, ties and tails waving as they surreally ran about with Macbooks under their arms; the contrast between new technology and their endlessly archaic uniform is incredibly odd.
Walking against a parade of dressed-up parents, clearly attendeding some event at the school, I eventually wandered down a lane consisting simply of school buildings before an old church and graveyard came into view. The church is basically abandoned, later learning that Eton College has actually bought it but has yet to really do anything with it (judging from the outside at least). Thankfully, this same benign neglect has been applied to the graveyard and the graves; only if James himself had designed it could it have been more in keeping with the sensibilities of his fiction. The gravel crunched underfoot, ivy grew over many fallen graves, moss covered stone like a shadow and its northern most part was darkened to an eerie black by a thin forest. I had initially been worried that it would be pristine, reading of the restoration of James’ grave having occurred some years back closer to the millennium, but it was to prove a needless concern.
Wandering around, it was hard to believe that the Thames was only metres away. The place was deathly silent aside from the occasional bird call, including that of a song thrush. After months in the bustle of London, a sense of tranquility was incredibly welcome. I began to look for James’ grave, noting the grave of H.E. Luxmoore near the entrance whose scripture was actually written by James, having been a tutor to a him when first at Eton as a student. After some time searching, I had failed to find the grave and a mounting worry began to take over. Luckily, the darkness of the small forest drew me quite naturally and eventually I found James’ grave housed within it at the very edge of the graveyard. It was heavily overgrown, vine spindling around its foot and lit only by an old street lamp from the adjacent lane behind the wall. I could hear more Eton boys chattering away behind it, probably avoiding a lesson at no doubt extreme cost to their parents.
I snapped several photos of the grave, knowing that it would be too dark for my simple (and now defunct) 35mm to capture. The graveyard was so peaceful that I ended up sat on a dilapidated bench there eating my lunch alone and disturbed only by the occasional plane above heading to Heathrow. The bench was damp and rotten, several of the wooden planks having crumbled into the ground. I lifted up a fallen urn next to the bench on the ground which showed a variety of life scurrying away and some small, white eggs, possibly reptilian. I took in this atmosphere for a considerable time, making the most of the mossy vista that, in some ways, felt more alive than the town that lay all around it. The dampness of the graves was beginning to dry in the afternoon sunlight and, as I made to leave, I could not help but give one last glance towards the church and the graves; as if something fleeting had, for just a brief moment, tempted the corner of my eye to look back in nervous curiosity.
Wanders: M.R. James’ Grave On a rather muddled day in early autumn, I decided to visit M.R. James. In recent years, I've become interested in the places that James frequented, usually because they have had clear and profound effects upon his ghost stories.
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance by M.R James
One of James’s lesser-known but fascinating tales — set at Christmas, it’s presented as a series of letters about a disturbing Punch and Judy show, a mysterious disappearance, and a spectral visitation on Christmas Eve. It first appeared in print in the June 4, 1913 issue of the magazine Cambridge Review. It was published again in 1919 as part of the anthology A Thin Ghost and Others. The…
Whistle and I'll Come to You (Jonathan Miller - 1968 - TV)
An Episode of Cathedral History by M. R. James
The story unfolds in an English cathedral town where the renovation of an old cathedral disturbs a long-forgotten tomb. This disturbance unleashes an ancient, malevolent entity that wreaks havoc on the town. It has often been deemed a vampire story.
“An Episode of Cathedral History” by M. R. James, published in 1914, is an example of gothic horror that blends scholarly intrigue with supernatural dread. The story unfolds in an English cathedral town where the renovation of an old cathedral disturbs a long-forgotten tomb. This disturbance unleashes an ancient, malevolent entity that wreaks havoc on the town. It has often been deemed a vampire…
Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance by M. R. James
Written by M. R. James, the story is set in the late summer in England, when Mr Humphreys, arrives after inheriting a house from his uncle who died under mysterious circumstances and strange things start to happen around the maze next to his house.
About fifteen years ago, on a date late in August or early in September, a train drew up at Wilsthorpe, a country station in Eastern England. Out of it stepped (with other passengers) a rather tall and reasonably good-looking young man, carrying a handbag and some papers tied up in a packet. He was expecting to be met, one would say, from the way in which he looked about him: and he was, as…
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A View From a Hill by M.R. James
"A View from a Hill" is a short ghost story by M.R. James, first published in 1925. In June, an academic named Fanshawe travels to the English countryside to spend his summer vacation at the home of his friend where he finds some strange binoculars.
How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the…
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