Lost Hearts by M R James

the keenest curiosity. During the short interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the hall door, he saw a tall, square, red brick house built in the rain of ann. A stone pillared porch had been added in the purer classical style of seventeen ninety. The window of the house were many, tall and narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment pierced

with a round window, crowned the front. There were wings to right and left, connected by curious glazed galleries supported by colonnades with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane. An evening light shone on the building, making the window panes glow like so many fires. Away from the hall in front stretched a flat park studded with oaks and fringed with firs,

which stood out against the sky. The clock in the church tower buried in trees on the edge of the park, only its golden weather cock catching. The lights were striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with a sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening in early autumn, that was conveyed to the mind of a boy who was standing in the porch waiting for the door to open

to him. The post shares had brought him from Warwickshire, where some six months before he had been left an orphan. Now, owing to the generous offer of his elderly cousin, mister Abney, he'd come to live at Aswerby. The offer was unexpected, because all who knew anything of mister Abney looked upon him as a somewhat austere recluse into whose steady going household. The advent of a small boy would import a new and it seemed incongruous element. The truth is that very

little was known of mister Abney's pursuits or temper. The professor of Greek at Cambridge had been hurt to say that no one knew more of the religious beliefs of the later Pagans than did the owner of Aswerby. Certainly, his library contained all the then available books bearing on the mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of Mithras, and the Neoplatonists. In the marble paved hall stood a fine group of Mithras slaying bull, which imported from the Levant's

a great expense by the owner. He had contributed a description of it to the Gentleman's Magazine, and he had written a remarkable series of articles in the Critical Museum on the superstitions of the Romans of the Lower Empire. He was looked upon in Fine as a man wrapped up in his books, and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbors that he should have even heard of his awtroan cousin, Stephen Elliott, much more that he should have volunteered to make him an inmate of

aswellbe hall. Whatever may have been expected by his neighbors. It is certain that mister Abney, the tall, the thin, the austere, seemed inclined to give his young cousin a kindly reception. The moment the front door was opened, he darted out of his study, rubbing his hands with delight. How are you, my boy? How are you? How old are you? Said he? That is, you are not too much tired? I hope by your journey to eat your supper. No, thank you, sir, said Master Elliott. I'm pretty well. That's

a good lad, said mister Abney. And how old are you, my boy? It seemed a little odd that he should have asked the question twice in the first two minutes of their acquaintance. I'm twelve years old, next birthday, sir, said Stephen. And when is your birthday, my dear boy, eleventh of September. That's well, that's very well, nearly a year, hence, isn't it? I like, ha ha, I like to get these things down in my book. Sure it's twelve, certain, yes,

quite sure, sir. Well, Well take him to missus Bunch's room, Parks and let him have his tea supper, whatever it is, Yes, Sir, answered the stage mister Parks, and conducted Stephen to the lower regions. Missus Bunch was the most comfortable and human person whom Stephen had yet as met in as would be, she made him completely at home. They were great friends in a quarter of an hour, and great friends they remained.

Missus Bunch had been born in the neighborhood some fifty five years before the date of Stephen's arrival, and her residence at the Hall was of twenty years stand. Consequently, if any one knew the ins and outs of the house in the district, Missus Bunch knew them, and she was by no means disinclined to communicate her information. Certainly, there were plenty of things about the Hall and the hall gardens which Stephen, who was of an adventurous and

inquiring turn, was anxious to have explained. Him. Who built a temple at the end of the Laurel walk. Who was the old man whose picture hung on the staircase, sitting at the table with a skull under his hand? These and many similar points were cleared up by the resources of Missus Bunch's powerful intellect. There were others, however, of which explanations furnished were less satisfactory. One November evening, Stephen was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room,

reflecting on his surroundings. Is mister Abney a good man? And will he go to heaven? He suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which children possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals. Good bless the child, said missus Bunch. Master's as kind a soul as I ever did see, didn't I never tell you of the little boy as he took in out of the street, as you may say this seven years back,

and the little girl two years after I first came here. No, do tell me about them, missus Bunch, now this minute, well said missus Bunch. The little girl I don't seem to recollect so much about I know. Master brought her back with him from his walk one day and give orders to missus Ellis, who was housekeeper then, as she should be, took every care with And the poor child

hadn't no one belonging to her. She told me so her own self, and here she lived with us a matter of three weeks, he might be, and then whether there was something of a gipsy in her blood or what not. But one morning she shot out of her bed before any of us had opened an eye, and neither track nor yet trace of her. Have I said ties on, since Master was wonderful put about and had

all the ponds dragged. But it's my belief she was had away by them gypsies, for they were singing round the house for as much as an hour the night she went, And parks, he declared, as he heard them are calling in her woods all that afternoon, dear, dear, a hot child. She was so silent in the ways and all, but Ah, I was wonderful taking up with her, so domesticated she was surprising. And what about the little boy, said Stephen, Ah, that poor boy sighed missus bunch. He

were a foreigner, Giovanni called herself. And he come a tweak in his irdy gurdy round about the drive one winter day, and Master had him in that minute. And that's all about where he come from, and how old he was, and how he made his way, and where was his relatives, and all as kind as heart could wish. But he went the same way with him. They're an unruly lot, them foreign nations, that do suppose. And he was off one fine morning, just the same as the girl.

Why he went and what he'd done was our question for as much as a year after before he never took his herdy gurdy him there it lays on the shelf. The remainder of the evening was spent by Stephen in miscellaneous cross examination of Missus Bunch and efforts to extract a tune from the hurdy Gurdy. That night he had a curious dream. At the end of the passage at the top of the house in which his bedroom was situated,

there was an old, disused bathroom. It was kept locked, but the upper half of the door was glazed, and since the muslin curtains which used to hang there had long been gone, you could look in and see the lead lined bath fixed to the wall on the right hand, with its head towards the window. On the night of which I'm speaking, the Stephen Elliott found himself, as he thought,

looking through the glazed door. The moon was shining through the window, and he was gazing at a figure which lay in the b His description of what he saw reminds me of what I once beheld myself in the famous vaults of Saint Micahan's Church in Dublin, which possessed a horrid property of preserving corpses from decay for centuries. A figure inexpressibly thin and pathetic, of a dusty leaden color, enveloped in a shroudlike garment, the thin lips crooked into

a faint and dreadful smile. The hands pressed tightly over the region of the heart. As he looked upon it, A distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issue from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced Stephen backwards, and he awoke to the fact that he was indeed standing on the cold bordered floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With a courage which I do not think can be

common among boys of his age. He went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of his dream were really there. It was not, and he went back to bed. Missus Bunch was much impressed next morning by his story, and went so far as to replace the muslin curtain over the glazed door of the bathroom. Mister Abney moreover, to whom he confided his experiences at breakfast, was greatly interested and made notes of the matter in

what he called his book. The spring equinox was approaching, as mister Abney frequently reminded his cousin, adding that this had been always considered by the ancients to be a critical time for the young, that Stephen would do well to take care of himself and to shut his bedroom window at night, and that Censoriness had some valuable remarks on the subjects. Two incidents that occurred about this time

made an impression upon Stephen's mind. The first was after an unusually uneasy and depressed night that he had passed, though he couldn't recall any particular dream that he'd had. The following evening, missus Bunch was occupying herself in mending his nightgown. Gracious me, Master Stephen, she broke forth, rather irritably, how do you manage to tell your night dress all to flinders this way? Look here, sir, what trouble do you give to poor servants and have to darn and

mend after you? There was indeed a most destructive and apparently wanton series of slits or scorings in the garment, which would undoubtedly require a skillful needle to make good. They were confined to the left side of the chest, long parallel slits about six inches in length, some of them not quite piercing the texture of the linen. Stephen

could only express his entire ignorance of their origin. He was sure they were not there the night before, but he said, Missus Bunch, they had just the same as the scratches on the outside of my bedroom door, and I'm sure I never had anything to do with making them. Missus Bunch gazed at him, open mouthed, then snatched up a candle hearted hastily from the room, and was heard making her way upstairs. In a few minutes she came down. Well,

she said, Master Stephen. It's a funny thing to me how their marks and scratches can have come there, too high up for any cat or dog to have made them much less a rat for all the world, like a chinaman's fingernails. As my uncle in the tea trade used to tell us of when we were girls together, I wouldn't say nothing to Master, not if I was you Master, Stephen, my dear, and just turn the key of the door when you go to your bed. I always do, Missus Bunch, as soon as I've said my prayers. Ah,

that's a good child. Always say your prayers and then no one can hurt you. Herewith Missus Bunch addressed herself to mending the injured night gown with intervals of meditation until bedtime. This it was on a Friday night in March eighteen twelve. On the following evening, the usual duet of Stephen and Missus Bunch was augmented by the sudden arrival of mister Parks. The butler, who was a rule, kept himself rather to himself in his own pantry. He

didn't see that Stephen was there. He was moreover flustered and less slow speech than was his wont master may cut up his own wine if he likes of an evening, was his first remark. Either I do it in the daytime or not at all, Missus Bunch, I don't know what it may be very like its rats or the wind got into the cellars. But now I'm not as young as I was, and I can't go through with it as I have done. Well, mister Parks, you know it is a surprising place for rats. It's the hall.

I'm not denying that, missus bunch. And to be sure, many a time I've heard the tale from the men in the shipyards about the rats that could speak. I never laid no confidence in that before. But to night, if i'd demean myself to lay my ear to the door of the further bin, I could pretty much have heard what they were saying. Oh there, mister Parks, have no patience with your fancies rats talking in the wine cellar. Indeed, well,

missus bunch, I've no wish to argue with you. All I say is, if you choose to go to the farbin and lay your ear to the door, you may prove my words this minute. What nonsense you do talk, mister Parks, not fit for children to listen to. Why you'll be frightening Master Stephen. They're out of his wits. What Master Stephen said, Parks awaking to the consciousness of the boy's presence. Master Stephen knows well enough when I'm

playing a joke with you, missus bunch. In fact, Master Stephen knew much too well to suppose that mister parks had, in the first instance intended a joke. He was interested, not altogether pleasantly in the situation, but all his questions were unsuccessful in inducing the butler to give any more detailed account of his experiences in the wine cellar. We

have now arrived at March twenty fourth, eighteen twelve. It was a day of curious experiences for Stephen, a windy, noisy day which filled the house in the gardens with

a restless impression. As Stephen stood by the fence of the grounds and looked out into the park, he felt as if an endless procession of unseen people were sweeping past him on the wind, borne on resistlessly and aimlessly, vainly striving to stop themselves, to catch at something that might arrest their flight and bring them once again into contact with the living world of which they had formed

a part. After luncheon that day, mister Abney said, Stephen, my boy, do you think you could manage to come to me tonight as late as eleven o'clock in my study. I shall be busy until that time, and I wish to show you something connected with your future life, which it is most important that you should know. You are not to mention this matter to missus Bunch, or to anyone else in the house, and you had better go to your room at the usual time. Here was a

new excitement added to life. Stephen eagerly grasped at the opportunity of sitting up till eleven o'clock. He looked in at the library door on his way upstairs that evening and saw brazier which he had often noticed in the corner of the room, moved out before the fire. An old silver gilt cup stood on the table filled with red wine, and some written sheets of paper lay near it. Mister Abney was sprinkling some incense on the brazier from a round silver box as Stephen passed, but did not

seem to notice his step. The wind had fallen and there was a still night and a full moon. At about ten o'clock, Stephen was standing at the open window of his bedroom, looking out over the country. Still as the night was, the mysterious population of the distant moonlit woods was not yet lulled to rest. From time to time, strange cries, as of lost and despairing wanderers sounded from across the mere. They might be the notes of owls or water birds. Yet they did not quite resemble lither

sound were they not coming nearer? Now they sounded from the nearer side of the water, and in a few moments they seemed to be floating about among the shrubberies. Then they ceased. But just as Stephen was thinking of shutting the window and resuming his reading of Robinson Crusoe, he caught sight of two figures standing on the gravel terrace that ran along the garden side of the hall, the figures of a boy and girl, as it seemed

they stood side by side, looking up the windows. Something in the form of the girl recalled irresistibly his dream of the figure in the bath. The boy inspired him with more acute fear. Whilst the girl stood still, half smiling, with her hands clasped over her heart, the boy, a thin shape with black hair and ragged clothing, raised his arms in the air with an appearance of menace and

of unappeasable hunger and longing. The moon shone upon his almost transparent hands, and Stephen saw that the nails were fearfully long, and that the light shone through them. As he stood with his arms thus raised, he disclosed a terrifying spectacle. On the left side of his chest there opened a black and gaping rent, and there fell upon Stephen's brain, rather than upon his ear, the impression of one of those hungry and desolate cries that he'd heard

resounding over the woods of Aswerby all that evening. In another moment, this dreadful pair had moved swiftly and noiselessly over the dry gravel, and he saw them no more inexpressibly. Frightened as he was, he determined to take his candle and go down to mister Abney's study, for the hour appointed for their meeting was near at hand. The study or library opened out of the front hall on one side, and Stephen, urged on by his terrors, did not take

long in getting there. To effect an entrance was not so easy. The door was not locked, he felt sure, for the key was on the outside of it. As usual, He's repeated not produced no answer. Mister Abney was engaged, he was speaking. What Why did he try to cry out? And why was the cry choked in his throat? Had he too seen the mysterious children? But now everything was quiet, and the door yielded to Stephen's terrified and frantic pushing

on the table. In mister Abney's study, certain papers were found which explained the situation to Stephen Elliott when he was of an age to understand them. The most important sentences were as follows. It was a belief very strongly and generally held by the ancients, of whose wisdom in

these matters. I have had such experience as induces me to place confidence in our assertions that by enacting certain processes which to us moderns have something of a barbaric complexion, a very remarkable enlightenment of the spiritual faculties in man may be attained, that, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of his fellow creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual

beings which control the elemental forces of our universe. It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air, to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy whom, to use the libelous phrase employed by the author of the Clementine recognitions, he had murdered.

I find it set down moreover, with considerable detail in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, that similar happi reessis may be produced by the absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings below the age of twenty one years. To the testing the truth of the receipt, I have devoted the greater part of the last twenty years, selecting as the corporeavilia of my experiment such persons as could conveniently be removed without occasioning a sensible gap in society.

The first step I affected by the removal of one Phoebe Stanley, a girl of gipsy extraction, on March twenty fourth, seventeen ninety two. The second by the removal of a wandering Italian lad named Giovanni Pauli, on the night of March the twenty third, eighteen o five. The final victim to employ a word repugnant in the highest degree to my feelings must be my cousin Stephen Elliot. His day

must be this March twenty fourth, eighteen twelve. The best means of affecting the required absorption is to remove the heart from a living subject, to reduce it to ashes, and to mingle them with about a pint of some red wine, preferably port the remains of the first two subjects. At least it will be well to conceal them. A disused bathroom or a wine cellar will be found convenient

for such a purpose. Some annoyance may be experienced from the psychic portion of the subjects, which popular language dignifies with the name of ghosts. But the man of philosophic temperament, to whom alone the experiment is appropriate, will be a little prone to attach importance to the feep efforts of

these beings to wreak their vengeance on him. I contemplate with the liveliest satisfaction, the enlarged and emancipated existence which the experiment, if successful, will confer on me, not only placing me beyond the reach of human justice, so called by eliminating to a great extent the prospect of death itself. Mister Abney was found in his chair, his head thrown back, his face stamped with an expression of rage, fright, and mortal pain. In his left side was a terrible lacerated wound,

exposing the heart. There was no blood on his hands, and the long knife that lay on the table was perfectly clean. A savage wildcat might have inflicted the injuries. The window of the study was open, and it was the opinion of the coroner that mister Abney had met his death by the agency of some wild creature. But Stephen Elliot's study of the papers I have quoted led him to a very different conclusion. Everybody dies. So that was lost hearts by m R James. Now, actually some

people reckon that's their favorite Mr James story. I'm going to talk a bit about the story. Obviously, I'm going to say a tiny bit about Mr James. We know Montague Roads pretty well by now, and but for those of you who don't know him, he is the probably considered the master of the classic ghost story. His brother Henry James. That's a joke, Henry James, turn of the screw he gets in the I mean, there are a lot of people I rate, you know, but Mr James

is generally probably considered the best one. So he was born in eighteen sixty two in good and Stone in Kent, and his father was a clergyman. He spent much of his life in Suffolk and that part of East Anglia. Suffolk Norfolk, Cambridgeshire. This one's in Lincoln is that's his patch. Really. He went to King's College, Cambridge and he was a brilliant scholar and it became provost at Kings in nineteen oh five. He went to school at Eton, which is

in oh, come on Tony Berkshire. Imagine me not knowing that to the western London on the Thames anyway, and it's at Eton, it's at Windsor and the pre eminent British public school. And he went there and he later worked there and died there when he was provost there in nineteen eighteen. So his life, what I'm trying to say is and that isn't East Anglia, but his life was spent between those two places. Really. He lived a

very conservative life probably in every sense. He traveled a bit, mainly in pursuit of finding old churches and old manuscripts, and of course that comes through in his story, you know, and he's classic, the classic Mr James protagonist is someone a bit like him. I think he was a very

intelligent man. I think he had a lot of wit, and so you know, he was perhaps poking fun of himself as well when he wrote these stories, and they have these antiquarians who were driven by this lust four old things manuscripts or ruins or treasure sometimes, but it's all to do with all this palaeontological stuff. Paleographer, he was a paleographer, not a paleontologist. That's about dinosaur, isn't it.

Paleo old There you go anyway, So he was seventy three when he died, and I've talked about him at length. Lots of people talk about I just let me talk about this story, this story Lost Hearts. So it was first published in eighteen ninety five in the pal Mall Gazette magazine rather and was collected the following year in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, published by Edward Arnold in

nineteen oh four, which is doesn't make sense. The collection's publication date is sometimes given as nineteen oh foe and sometimes as nineteen oh five. It still makes no sense if it says the first is eighteen ninety five and then the next year. Anyway, that's about when it came out, sort of end of the nineteenth beginning of the twentieth century. The interesting thing lost Hearts. There's lots of references to hearts isn't there in it. It just drops the word

heart in which is literally artist. But I quite liked it, you know, So it's teasing, it's playing with the audience. I think he considered it one of his least satisfactory stories, and that tells you something about James himself. So the classic Gemesian method of writing a story that unnerves you is to put the horror off stage when it comes on stage. We'll talk about that in a minute, but it's hinted. It's the thing down the corridor you don't go towards. It's the thing in the library that you

barely see, you know. Sometimes it comes on stage. To be fair, I mean it does come on stage, yeah, but you know it's hinto that it's not explained, and I suppose yeah, that's his strength, really, and he was explicit about that. He didn't want to explain it because we all know the things you can once you I've said this many times about horror and ghost stories and things. The reason that vampires generally having a little fear for

us now is that we know all about them. We know about were wolves, we know about vampires, we know about Frankenstein's I like saying that because I know it's gonna that's not isn't it. I know it's gonna accept some people. It's gonna be coffee thrown at the walls. Frankenstein was the doctor. It's franken Stein's monster and you can't just call them Frankenstein's and hurling coffee at the wolves of course, sudden he said to me, what you

need is have the eggshell paint. So if you're in the habit of getting very upset, why I'm saying through hurling your coffee at the walls. I mean, hurling is better than spitting. That's fair. I mean in terms of damage, hurling is more dangerous and does more damage. But spitting is just a bit vulgar, isn't it. I mean, is it's totally vulgar. It's horrific. So you know I'm repulsed by it anyway, So yeah, eggshell pain is what you want. So Frankenstein's yeah, we know all about them, don't we,

And so they're not frightening anymore. So the thing is is, James knew you just this. I've talked before about the Zigana contention, which I think is she was a Bulgarian psychologist. I can't remember her first name. Now I'm having a morning of it blowing a hurly here. You know, dogs didn't want to go out. I don't know if you could hear the rain in the recording. I mean, I have a little choice of when I can record sometimes, and it can be quite noisy in the background. But

there we are. It's just how it is, mate, anyway, so rare in the background, mind all over the place, going to struggle on with it never mind nevertheless. So yeah, it's not like his normal thing, is it. James is also the master of the weird. Very often some of his stuff is very weird, like the thing on the bed. I keep coming back to a whistle, the weird contorted shape in the mets of tint In, mister Humphries and

his inheritance, the thing in the black ink. I mean, it's lovecrafting and its weirdness, because if you remember, the definition of weird fiction is that the juxtaposes things should not be together and gives us a shock because that shouldn't be there. That's not right, it's wrong. You know, that's a much overused word in horror pros. It was wrong. That's like you've actually you've got no you can't be bothered explaining anymore about it. You just say that and oh,

hope it works. It doesn't work anymore. We've heard it too many times. But anyway, so that's his normal thing. He uses a lot of weird stuff. He didn't think much of Lovecraft. Lovecraft thought he was great. But nevertheless, I think James does use weird fiction techniques, probably without either acknowledging it or knowing it was related, because I mean, he work, he lived in the different I'm going to say something about else about James. You know, this is

a guy. He's the son of an Anglican clergyman. He lives a very narrow bounded life in respectability in what you do. And yet and we could, if we were minded, talk about shadows. You know, there's something in him that wants to get out and comes out in his stories. And that's fine, that's fine, But this is not weird fiction. This is almost like looking forward to mid twentieth century

gore horror. So you know, as you remember those what's his name vantale horror books, pan horror books that used to sit and read when you're a kid, I did, and they were like gruesome skulls and rats in your skull and horrific slugs, horrific, And I think, yeah, there's all sorts of categories of what scares us. I've said about the weird, and then there's a earie. We won't go into that. Then there's the unheimly, the uncanny. We've talked

about those at length. Elsewhere, there is the there's a dismemberment, because you know, we are a species, we are an animal, and we look and see dismembered things we think, ooh, predator scared. Simple it's a simple thing. I mean, the whole idea about the weird is related to that. It's like we cannot trap it in our net of conceptions. What I'm saying is we can't zero in on it and go, yeah, I know what that is. I'm in control, I know what I'm going to do. That's it. The

weird works because it's like, WHOA, what's going on? This isn't out of my control. I need to control it. I'm anxious. Whereas the if you like, the gore, horror is right there in your face. Actually it's not just a shadow that might be a predator. Look what it's done. It's a predator, so that's a bit more immediate. But you know, James doesn't only do this but except I mean, you know what those images of the heart being removed,

it's very graphic, you know. And then at the end when he says, Oh, you're gonna you've got to get the heart and you've gotta have it with a bit of port preferably port. Any red wine would do, but port fortified a bit sweeter. Actually proper port isn't that sweet as it isn't as sweet from a portal in Portugal or ports So yeah, he goes into that thing and it's sort of like if you get to Clive Barker.

I just bought Clive backer book the other day, Weave World, which is one of his fantasy things, and I had it in the nineteen eighties and I read it, but I can't know much about it. And I was in a Settle in Yorkshire. We had a lovely day last week with my daughters. We went down to Settle on

the train for my birthday. It was absolutely beautiful day and I went in a bookshop there called Limestone Books, and it was a delightful man in charge of it, and so if you're ever in Settle, and I would recommend you go if you're within you know, a couple of hundred miles at least, and get yourselves. They're preferably on a good day. It's a love little place. Limestone Books, great books. He's talking about he's going to get the

heat on our digression now at Limestone Books. He has small print houses, so he features he has shelves of small publishers, which I think is fantastic, you know. And he had another one. He was saying, he's going to get rid of whatever he had on that shelf, and he's got this American Horror house publishing house. They're like, especially it has to do American horror, and he's going to have that. And I said, I'll come back for that. So that was that I got there. Really Now horror

types of horror we were talking about. Yeah, we've talked about I've got can of rehearsed that, haven't I yes, Oh yeah. Clive Barker with Clive Barker is very famous for the graphic descriptions of his horror, really in your face graphics. And of course then we had a whole slew of films that really went into the really grossness of dismemberment. We could talk about the abject, but again

probably we won't. I've talked about that as well before, Julia christ Dave or the abject, you know, one of these days, I mean, I'm kind of interested in the idea of actually not doing an episode that isn't about a story. But we talk about these things in depth. So we talk about you know, Julie Christave is the object, or we can talk abo about freuds, Hencanny or what's his name, Tiered or tier dot Ov he had a and we can talk about monster theory and all these

kind of things. They're a little bit perhaps not what people I mean. You know, the podcast has a number of different types of listener. Some people simply want to consume the stories and fall asleep, and I do these long compilations. I've got the the online radio that's always on. If you go to www dot Gravenheim g R A V E N H E I M dot com, you will find a twenty four to seven radio station that just broadcast stories. I tried to cut out the commentaries

where I can. Some of the old ones the commentaries are still there, but all the new ones I'm putting up have no commentaries on, so you don't have to listen to me, because I know what people say is, you know, the story has a certain cadence, and then I start talking in my accent changes and I talk a lot faster, and I repeat myself and I say and it's different, and it wakes people up, you know. And so I've tried to avoid that on the live radio.

But perhaps it's not complete. It's not perfect anyway. So yeah, he didn't. So yeah, it's what it is to say about the story. He didn't like it. I think it's all right. I think it is not his normal style. But even so, what the things are normal about it are the country house, and we have the academic. The weird academic in this case is not the protagonist, is

the villain. But he's the same ilk, isn't he. He's the same sort of dude in the track mid off, the bloke who does the Who's Horrible, and he's into black magic and stuff as well, and he does his will, doesn't he. Obviously that's a spoiler in case you haven't heard it, not much of a spoiler. I don't think you get the story from what I just said then, I thought that the two, the two, the two victims, the previous victims. I thought Steven Elliott, the current victim,

isn't really there. You know, he's not really described much at all. He's just an eleven year old boy. That's it. He reminds me of Oliver Twist more, sir, you know that he's just he's just a camera ends. Really. The two other characters, the gypsy girl what you call Phoebe, and the Italian herdy gurdy boy, they seem massively more interesting and colorful characters actually probably not colorful because they're

all gray. And of course BBC did a version of this, didn't they, And I think they did it quite well with the two. Those two. It was a little bit gothic and a bit of makeup. That was It was the eighties, seventies or eighties, so it was the good old days. I mean, there's a you could say a

lot more about it. I'm I'm always in I'm going to go onto my final point, really, which which maybe extended, is about James and the occult, because he has a number of his characters and they they are a cult, not even a cultage, isn't there wizards or these academic occultists who dabble in old manuscripts and summon forth spirits. So it always strikes me what was the connection of James with the late Victorian early arn Edwardian a cult movement in Britain. So let me talk about this. So

I just did some notes on this. So in the late nineteenth century was, among other things, a period of systematic occult entrepreneurship. Francis Barrett's The Megas eighteen oh one, obviously early eighteenth century, had assembled a grippa angelic hierarchies, talismanic practice, and ceremonial techniques into a single English language handbook available to anyone who could find a copy. So let's unpack that a little bit. So the previous So the idea of the occultists, if you listen to people,

are there any now. But I think I don't even know what chaos magic is doing. Chaos magic was a later iteration of the Westerner cult scene. There may be other kinds of stuff now that I'm just not okay with. And that actually began in Whitby in Yorkshire in the nineteen seventies, and that was a reaction to and basically that says what it's about, the power of belief. It's

a very post modern magic. You know, it's not you don't rely on the grand narrative of your utensils, you know, your atheme and your chalice and your pentangle and all that kind of stuff. Or about the specific words, and he said pacific words, the specific words and rituals and gestures. You know, they say, oh that's all monkey, monkey nuts.

What you need is simply the belief. So if you call upon Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse can be a spirit to work for you, or you call it great in full ironic knowledge that no such creature ever really existed, you can still make it work. This is chaos magic. Okay, let's go back a little bit. That was a reaction to the grand narrative of Victorian ceremonial magic, particularly through

the Golden Dawn. And it's many split offs and variants, and you know, we have a down fortune is that the society in a light And I'm talking off the cuffee. I haven't researched this, but but you know, I'm working back through time, so we get the Victorians. They were very much about the words and everything had to be precisely. So they were very They just bunched everything together. So

they were syncretic. I think they say syncretic syncretism. Anyway, you put it all together, and you know what I mean. And so they had a bit of Egyptian, bit of Hebrew, bit of classical, bit of you know this, that and the other, whack it all together, a bit of Enochian leads me to the point. So they claim that this is an unbroken thread that goes right back to before the Pyramids and back to ancient Egypt and potentially before

that may or may not be true. It probably isn't true that they have this idea that the flame of occult knowledge was always kept burning in secret and it flowered or bloomed or whatever you want to say. So, but before the I think I'm correct in saying before the Golden Down and late Victorian the previous great flowering of a cult, practice and knowledge was in the Renaissance. So we're talking about sixteenth century, seventeenth century stuff. So

let's get back to the eighteen oh one. Francis Barrett's The Megas eighteen oh one, and he he punches it, he punchs it all together. Using a lot of Renaissance things. There were certain characters like a gripper and oh there's loads of them, you know, and of course John d and people like that, and so he puts it all together. That's eighteen oh one. Then we have the French magas Alif as Levi, who fuses in Hebrew Kabbala, Christian mysticism

and the Tarot. That's something that looks like philosophy. So he's mid century. I haven't got his date to hand. And then we have eighteen eighty eight. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was offering grade initiations. If they are again one of these dust bin beliefs, you know, it may all be. I know. What their idea was

that there was a secret truth. So behind all the masks there was one secret truth, and that truth was the occult knowledge of and they relied heavily on as their core the Kabbala, the Hebrew Kabbala really and of course, yeah, I mean we've got to also in addition to the Western Christian occult tradition, there is the Jewish speculation going on that's isn't heretical because they don't have the same

structure of the church killing everybody who believes wrong. And then of course there's you know, some esoteric sufism in Islam as well, but there we go. Okay, so this is all going on. And then, as saying the Golden Dawn, you have eighteen eighty eight, then you have w eight, you have McGregor Mathers, and you have Aleister Crowley of course, and then we have the Theosophical Society with Madame Blavatsky,

and she's bringing in a lot of Eastern stuff. So they were very interested in and they they kind of took Christiana Murti under his wing, and he was going to be I don't know if he was going to be was he gonna be the new Buddha, the new Christ is going to be one of those. And he rejected that he didn't want to be their, their protege,

but they brought him from India. But you know, the Theosophical Society, in addition to everything else, everybody was stuffing in Egyptians and Hebrews and classical and wof it all. And you know later on we've got like heathen all stuff thrown in and Celtic stuff thrown in. Basically just can have what you want into a soup. And then the chaos magicians said, well, it doesn't really matter anyway. None of it's true as such, but it all may

work anyway, So hang on. That was jaspernance test because Sheila's just come in. So he did this, Oh like an I rob you, Raggie. He's a Scooby Doo impression anyway, So I just want to kind of go on and say something, how James m R James fits into this? Is he a member of the gold Non? No, he's not not at all. But yes, he writes about things like this and these occultists and stuff like that. And I think casting the Runes may be actually based on

somebody like Alistair Crowley. But you know, when he was sixteen at Eton, he'd already compiled a complete list of apocryphal books belonging to both Testaments lost and extant. He loved cataloging things. By the time the Golden Dome was consecrating its first temple in London, he was at King's College, Cambridge, catalog in medieval manuscripts and reading the Testament of Solomon

in Cony Beer's eighteen ninety eight Greek translation. And this is parallel and predates the Grimoire tradition that McGregor Mathers. McGregor Mathers came out with the Lesser Key of Solomon and the Great Key of Solomon. Grimoires, they were all into Grimwire. Grimwire is like a magical textbook, you know, like teach yourself car repair. It's like that, but just for summoning demons and probably your car repairs a healthier thing to concentrate on, although you can't repair them these days.

The two computerized, So maybe we have to think of something ice cream making, you know, you could make ice cream instead anyway, So, yes, it's a parallel. What my whole point about this is that I looked into it because I thought, you know, was he what did he hang around with him? Did he not? No, he didn't do it is a completely different current than his knowledge of these things did not come out of the command

of a fascination with your cult. It came out now because he loved old manuscripts and he was a smart dude, you know, and he could read them in a Hebrew and read them in Greek and things like that, you know. And so the Testament of Solomon, which he read, presents Solomon as capturing all the demons, compelling them, and I think they uses a magical ring, and he gets their

names in the formula that bind them. And you know, it is a working demonology, complete with demonic hierarchies, physical descriptions, and the incantatory means of dismissal. And he wrote about it in eighteen ninety nine for the Guardian Church and newspaper.

Woow that went Down reviewed McCown's critical edition in the Journal of Theological Studies in eighteen twenty three, so and recycled its demonological furniture named spirits constrained by written and ritual means the sense of a text as a physical locus of demonic presence into Canon Alberick scrap book, without apparently feeling any need to acknowledge the connection. He must have been aware, maybe he wasn't even aware of these

magician dudes. McGregor Mather's a weight, all these people wandering around London doing something similar, like in a practical way. You know. I think they clearly thought that if they did these things they could get some kind of power. They were like, if you think these days, if you ever go on medium, I don't know if you ever

do the writing scene. There's all sorts of loads of articles on them how to use AI to basically make yourself rich, and there's all these hacks, and everybody's got a hack, and everybody's got a system, and everybody's discovered a secret at two am, which is going to make you and everybody kind of recycles. We're looking for power and these guys are doing the same thing in late Victorian terms, except they're not using AI. They're using demons.

If the two aren't the same thing, you should read my Dark World series for that, not just a little bit of plug there, Tomy Walker, Dark World's London, Dark World's Paris. I think you can still buy them if you'd google them. I don't know where, but there we are. And I basically make that I actually have AI as the great Old Ones of Lovecraft. So yes, So that is all to say that this is an archivist who uses old manuscripts to inform his stories. He's not an occultist.

He's just the That was Sheila shouting hello, hello, and I interrupted, God im reconing in a in a in a way that was a bit petulant, and I hope not too grumpy, and I've said all I want to say really about Emma. James is a fascinating guy, and I was just curious about his links to the occult and he and he wasn't. He was an academic rather than a wizard. You're a wizard, Harry, Apparently you're a wizard Monty. No, he's not anyway. So that's that's what I was going to say. So just yeah, I so

we've what we've had is the rain, the wind. We often have this grat man. We have dogs barking, we have birds on Somebody said, though, do you put those sound effects in of the birds on the roof? No, I don't. The birds put themselves in, and the dogs will run upstairs and do Scooby Doo noises, and Sheila comes in and shouts up to me, Hello, Hello, do you want that soup? And so the point about this is should I get a studio? But if I had

a studio, who would look after the dogs? Because I'm able to work from home and combine with that and so I can walk out the dogs when it stops renin. It stopped renning, now probably going to take them out. They don't like the wren and you know, so a studio probably ain't gonna work. I quite fancy the idea of it. Oh yeah, I'm going to my studio, darling. Yes, love, I have my studio. Yes, I hire it. It's all soundproofed,

I have wonderful microphone's most amazing. You'll get nicked, basically, somebody break in and steal everything and sell it down the pub for a bag of brand. I don't think they do. They call it that these days, anyway, I'm not sure. I think it's all I don't know what the bashes it or beak. I'm not really unfair with the current drugs world, not like when I worked in mental health because like most of my patients were involved in that, so I used to pick up stuff useful

information about the drug world. But I'm away from that now anyway, So I probably not going to get a studio. And that means you just kind of have to put up with the noises. I think most of you don't mind that, and I think the people who do mind it will self select a way to something else. Go and listen to a nice ah Ai channel, and remember it's a demon. Everybody dies, doesn't that? So you tried to get into the long drum today, didn't you you?

How do they come back? Didn't you? What's the secrets of like