Welcome, dear souls. For your delight – rural horror, a mythic film and an M R James card game. You find us in the middle of interviewing the Great and Good across the land. Between planning searing exposés, and hauling longdogs through endless mud, we’re feeling our age. And there’s writing to do, of course. So this is one of our traditional mid-week medleys – traditional except when we forget and do them on a weekend.
Longdog news is thin on the ground this afternoon, apart from the fact that Django has taken to rushing out into the garden at two in the morning and barking madly for no apparent reason. As he is normally a no-bark zone, this has us puzzled. Either the garden is filled with a malign presence which threatens our very reality, or the local cats are trying it on. If we become hollow shells filled only with the desire to corrupt and defile, we will know the answer. We will have become cats ourselves.
Weird news, on the other hand, is plentiful. Our first mention goes to the endless saga that is our attempt to write about scary tales author, H R Wakefield. Never has an article divided our brain cells so dramatically. However, we did find something very interesting from old HRW which touches nicely on folk-horror and the supernatural in rural settings:
‘And don’t despise the rustic intelligence,’ exclaimed Palliser. ‘Its apparent sluggishness is often a sly pose. Those who divide the peasant often get a rude awakening, for there is a virtue and a mystery in his fields and streams unknown to the Nathans of Throgmorton Street. Frankly, the country often puts the wind up me, the Townee’s uneasy sense of intrusion. There is always something highly charged and formidable about the primitive. As we drove down today, we passed a wide meadow running up to the margin of a wood. There was a scarecrow in the middle of it—I never quite like scarecrows. If some mocking fellow who knew his runes dressed one and whispered in his ear as he set him up, he might scare more than birds. I wondered if that drôle in the field there was such a one. If so,’ he went on excitedly, ‘I’m not sure I’d like to walk out to him on a not quite dark night, fancying, perhaps, he had beckoned, so that you felt you had to pay him a visit. And when you reached him, gingerly tilting up his battered billycock, and—well, what might you find underneath, and how would you address such a one?’
H R Wakefield, The Alley (1940)
And we will be having folk-horror features on and off over the next few weeks.
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The 77 Pages
Our second delight is from someone who is rapidly becoming the greydogtales Argentinian editor, Diego Arandojo of Lafarium. His film Las 77 Paginas, made in collaboration with Mauro Savarino, is now available for the first time with English subtitles. This 40 minute film is a fascinating mixture of myth, mysticism and fantasy which is hard to describe. It is at times surreal, at times quite moving.
Adapted from the official site:
“The Earth is in a dangerous geologic process: all the continents are moving back to the original Pangaea position, the first continent that arose more than 200 billion years ago. This will end in the extinction of the human race… A group called The Necessary Council presents itself before the UN, claiming to have the key for the salvation of the Humanity: a strange book of indeterminate age, which possesses on its pages the great secrets of the History and Science.”
Made primarily in Spanish, Las 77 Paginas nevertheless includes Hebrew, Mandarin, Latin and other languages, and has a weird vibe all of its own. We feel it proper to say that Las 77 Paginas is available to purchase as a DVD, so if you’re feeling virtuous, you should have a hunt around at:
There is a lot of weird and fascinating stuff there. Gradual Hate Records was founded in order to provide a breeding ground for Darkwave, Neo-Classical, Medieval, Dark Folk, Dark Ambient and Industrial music and related genres in Spain and the World.
Naturally, if you want to see what you might be getting, we have the English subtitle version right here, but don’t forget to support the creators if you find yourself into the scene.
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Third out of the hat: A card game based on M R James, Monsters and Miscreants. Hmm, that’s different.
Basically you play an out-of-shape antiquarian on a bicycling holiday. One afternoon in Suffolk, you find an old manuscript inside a curious whistle on the beach. The runes on the manuscript, written by an 18th century Danish scholar, lead you to a cathedral full of hirsute spiders wearing unpleasant-smelling binoculars… no, we’re lying, as usual.
We have no idea how it works. We don’t even know why it works or what it’s like as a game. But we like the illustrations on the cards. That’s how simple we are.
You can find more at their facebook page here:
m r james: monsters and miscreants
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Fourth and last today, a nod to another UK blog/website we discovered recently – Horrorblog, by Carrie Buchanan. Carrie is an audio artist who provides reviews and commentary on the world of horror. She also has dogs, which is a good start. We should warn you that one or two of the illustrations are a tad gruesome, but if you fancy a look at her reviews and so on, click below:
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At the end of this week, a jolly interesting interview with folk-horror artist Paul Watson and lots of weird illustrations. Do call in, and remember – if you subscribe to greydogtales or follow me on facebook, it makes me no money whatsoever. But it does tell you what we post when we post it. So there’s that…