Are you eager to see a thrilling new crossover, featuring occult detectives struggling at both the physical and psychic level against horrors in the nineteen twenties? You are? Then you should be a writer, and get on with it. Or you might wait and see if Joshua M Reynolds and John Linwood Grant come up with anything further in the shadow of Carnacki over the next few months. Who knows? We probably don’t. But here’s what we in the trade call ‘a conceptual framework’, or possibly what we scribbled on the back of spare envelopes…

Mirrors and Splintered Worlds

It may have been a Tuesday when the worlds parted. A chill Tuesday morning in London, when Dr John Dee, astronomer and occultist, knelt before Elizabeth Gloriana, Queen of England and Ireland. In the taking of his new oath, and the confirmation of the Queen’s Conjurer, it is possible that some ‘Subtille Darke Power’ chose to cleave the planes of being and isolate such an injurious office in one dimension only.

Or was it on a Sunday in 1795, when the Wold Newton meteorite thundered through the storm clouds and stuck the Yorkshire Wolds? An event with such force that it “alarmed the surrounding countryside and created so distinctly the sensation that something very singular had happened.” Was reality cut by star-iron that day, and shivered into two, or more, parallel creations?

We do not know. And somehow we are adrift and unsure as to which creation is ours. We sit and pick at our kedgeree; we stare suspiciously at the devilled kidneys. The morning paper is choked with talk of German re-armament. In five years, or ten, we expect war, and we have to consider – is there other weaponry which might meet the threat? Not tanks or planes, but the products of stranger sciences – mentality, colours, vibrations, even the unashamed disciplines of the occult.

We know that Dee continued his work in one clouded parallel, and that the Queen’s Conjurer became a position, known later as the Royal Occultist, which was passed down through the centuries. In that parallel, Thomas Merton Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, undertook the role until his death in 1918, during the Great War. His replacement was the dashing Charles St Cyprian. Before the decade was out, he was joined by a redoubtable young woman, Ebe Gallowglass, and these two discharged their duties against the Dark in fine fashion, even with a certain derring-do.

Yet in another parallel or splinter, Carnacki fell far earlier, with neither post nor post-holder to succeed him. No plans had been made, no resources laid by for times of need. With initial reluctance, the Ghost Finder’s confidante Henry Dodgson took up Carnacki’s mantle. A more dour line this one, as Dodgson and the rare psychic Abigail Jessop went further into the darkness, not always well equipped, and let the ab-natural know that it could not act unchallenged. Here the turning of the decade after the war brought a loss, not a gain. Dodgson was left to fight alone, embittered at a world which had not paid his heart well for its services.

Two pairings, two strands, but each in the shadow of the Ghost Finder, and each a weapon against spiritual, even physical, catastrophe. We do not think that the Germans will hesitate to gather every resource they can. In this troubled time, it may be that we must seek advice from the whispering corners of our land, and find which world is ours, to whom we can turn…

The Last Edwardian or the Royal Occultist.

CARNACKI: ONE GRAVE, MANY SHADOWS

Scribes and scholars agree that whilst there may be many Cheyne Walks, Arkrights and Taylors, and that electric pentacles can be constructed by both the wise and the foolish, four figures took Carnacki’s place at the forefront of the occult struggle in Britain.

In the World of the Royal Occultist

Joshua M Reynolds charts adventures of wild and dark derring-do, headed by his keynote characters:

Charles St Cyprian, a slim, elegant man with style and a ready wit, first met the Ghost Finder in 1914, shortly before the Great War. Promoted to Captain, he took on the role of Royal Occultist in 1918 after Carnacki’s death, and was joined by his ‘assistant’ Miss Gallowglass, in 1919.

Ebe Gallowglass is a determined, occasionally foul-mouthed young woman whose grit and talent with offensive weapons, and penchant for physical violence, ably complement St Cyprian’s grasp of the psychic and psychological.

In the World of the Last Edwardian

And John Linwood Grant delves more often into tragedy and loss with his own protagonists:

Abigail Jessop is the niece of that Jessop who sat in Carnacki’s circle, and is a private woman of very individual psychic abilities. After her uncle’s death, she concerned herself with individual and social justice in the face of the ab-natural forces which threaten humanity, though she holds a degree of disdain for most ‘spiritualist’ circles.

Henry Dodgson, a Boer War veteran and crack shot, was Carnacki’s closest friend (which isn’t saying much), and found himself unable to rest after the Ghost Finder’s death during the reign of Edward VII. He took up Carnacki’s role on the basis of need, relying on Miss Jessop’s more finely attuned talents, and by 1918 held the rank of Major due to his Military Intelligence connections.

The recklessly curious can find out more about both worlds in stories already published by both authors (a wise move if they forget to do anything with the concept).

Josh has a general blog about his work, a patreon, and site devoted to the Royal Occultist, which you can find (in that order) through the links below. There’s a lot of Charles and Ebe out there.

https://joshuamreynolds.wordpress.com/

https://www.patreon.com/joshuamreynolds

https://royaloccultist.wordpress.com/

John simply shoves his Carnacki and Last Edwardian trivia or oddities on here, mostly, because it’s easy, so you can find it through the search box. His recent collection A Persistence of Geraniums, and other worrying tales includes and explains some of the interconnections in his Late Victorian to nineteen twenties world. His novella A Study in Grey also features Abigail and Henry as key characters.

There are many other of his related Edwardian and nineteen twenties tales around or due in various anthologies, including some covering unsettling events during World War One. The first of the latter will be out in December 2017 in the anthology Chthonic from Martian Migraine Press.