Voices of the (un)dead

Photograph © Martin Parr/MAGNUM PHOTOS

By MIKA ROSS-SOUTHALL

It’s clear that there’s an enduring taste for the dark side – in literature, theatre, film, television, music, art etc. All things Gothic, including Martin Parr’s photographs from Whitby Goth Weekend in April, as above, are celebrated in the new exhibition Terror and Wonder at the British Library, which was reviewed in last week’s TLS. This week’s issue (out on Friday) includes a review of classic horror stories, Mary Shelley as a bringer of life but also of death, and the fates of famous corpses, such as John Milton’s, whose body, apparently, was dug up by drunken opportunists and sold as lucrative keepsakes.

To accompany these unholy pieces, in the latest in the TLS’s series of readings Michael Caines, Lucy Dallas and I have chosen a trio of tales from the early twentieth century to personally mark the coming of Halloween. A very witching time of the year, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world . . .  – well, that’s how mysterious goings on are described in Hamlet, and The Winter’s Tale would also inspire the first of our short ghost stories – read and introduced by Michael – “There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard” by M. R. James, one of the undisputed masters of the genre . . . 

 

My choice is an extract from “The Eyes” by the American writer Edith Wharton – a somewhat terrifying reminder that real horror is found in our imagination, often spurred on by a guilty conscience:

 

And later in the week, we’ll hear about a shape-shifting beast in the wood – Lucy Dallas’s selection is the short story “Gabriel-Ernest” by Saki, who, as Lucy tells us, is a writer not usually associated with ghost stories, but there’s plenty of black humour to make his tales suitably uncomfortable.

We hope you enjoy listening . . . .

 

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