Short Story - 'The Ash Tree' by M.R.James

Everyone who has travelled over Eastern England knows the smaller country-houses with which it is studded—the rather dank little buildings, usually in the Italian style, surrounded with parks of some eighty to a hundred acres. For me they have always had a very strong attraction, with the grey paling of split oak, the noble trees, the meres with their reed-beds, and the line of distant woods. Then, I like the pillared portico—perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the 'Grecian' taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a gallery and a small organ. I like the library, too, where you may find anything from a Psalter of the thirteenth century to a Shakespeare quarto. I like the pictures, of course; and perhaps most of all I like fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times of landlords' prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting. I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.

But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk. I think a good deal has been done to the building since the period of my story, but the essential features I have sketched are still there—Italian portico, square block of white house, older inside than out, park with fringe of woods, and mere. The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches. I suppose it had stood there ever since Castringham ceased to be a fortified place, and since the moat was filled in and the Elizabethan dwelling-house built. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimensions in the year 1690.

In that year the district in which the Hall is situated was the scene of a number of witch-trials. It will be long, I think, before we arrive at a just estimate of the amount of solid reason—if there was any—which lay at the root of the universal fear of witches in old times. Whether the persons accused of this offence really did imagine that they were possessed of unusual power of any kind; or whether they had the will at least, if not the power, of doing mischief to their neighbours; or whether all the confessions, of which there are so many, were extorted by the cruelty of the witch-finders—these are questions which are not, I fancy, yet solved. And the present narrative gives me pause. I cannot altogether sweep it away as mere invention. The reader must judge for himself.

Castringham contributed a victim to the auto-da-fé. Mrs Mothersole was her name, and she differed from the ordinary run of village witches only in being rather better off and in a more influential position. Efforts were made to save her by several reputable farmers of the parish. They did their best to testify to her character, and showed considerable anxiety as to the verdict of the jury.

But what seems to have been fatal to the woman was the evidence of the then proprietor of Castringham Hall—Sir Matthew Fell. He deposed to having watched her on three different occasions from his window, at the full of the moon, gathering sprigs 'from the ash-tree near my house'. She had climbed into the branches, clad only in her shift, and was cutting off small twigs with a peculiarly curved knife, and as she did so she seemed to be talking to herself. On each occasion Sir Matthew had done his best to capture the woman, but she had always taken alarm at some accidental noise he had made, and all he could see when he got down to the garden was a hare running across the path in the direction of the village.

On the third night he had been at the pains to follow at his best speed, and had gone straight to Mrs Mothersole's house; but he had had to wait a quarter of an hour battering at her door, and then she had come out very cross, and apparently very sleepy, as if just out of bed; and he had no good explanation to offer of his visit.

Mainly on this evidence, though there was much more of a less striking and unusual kind from other parishioners, Mrs Mothersole was found guilty and condemned to die. She was hanged a week after the trial, with five or six more unhappy creatures, at Bury St Edmunds.

Sir Matthew Fell, then Deputy-Sheriff, was present at the execution. It was a damp, drizzly March morning when the cart made its way up the rough grass hill outside Northgate, where the gallows stood. The other victims were apathetic or broken down with misery; but Mrs Mothersole was, as in life so in death, of a very different temper. Her 'poysonous Rage', as a reporter of the time puts it, 'did so work upon the Bystanders—yea, even upon the Hangman—that it was constantly affirmed of all that saw her that she presented the living Aspect of a mad Divell. Yet she offer'd no Resistance to the Officers of the Law; onely she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direfull and venomous an Aspect that—as one of them afterwards assured me—the meer Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after.'

However, all that she is reported to have said were the seemingly meaningless words: 'There will be guests at the Hall.' Which she repeated more than once in an undertone.

Sir Matthew Fell was not unimpressed by the bearing of the woman. He had some talk upon the matter with the Vicar of his parish, with whom he travelled home after the assize business was over. His evidence at the trial had not been very willingly given; he was not specially infected with the witch-finding mania, but he declared, then and afterwards, that he could not give any other account of the matter than that he had given, and that he could not possibly have been mistaken as to what he saw. The whole transaction had been repugnant to him, for he was a man who liked to be on pleasant terms with those about him; but he saw a duty to be done in this business, and he had done it. That seems to have been the gist of his sentiments, and the Vicar applauded it, as any reasonable man must have done.

A few weeks after, when the moon of May was at the full, Vicar and Squire met again in the park, and walked to the Hall together. Lady Fell was with her mother, who was dangerously ill, and Sir Matthew was alone at home; so the Vicar, Mr Crome, was easily persuaded to take a late supper at the Hall.

Sir Matthew was not very good company this evening. The talk ran chiefly on family and parish matters, and, as luck would have it, Sir Matthew made a memorandum in writing of certain wishes or intentions of his regarding his estates, which afterwards proved exceedingly useful.

When Mr Crome thought of starting for home, about half past nine o'clock, Sir Matthew and he took a preliminary turn on the gravelled walk at the back of the house. The only incident that struck Mr Crome was this: they were in sight of the ash-tree which I described as growing near the windows of the building, when Sir Matthew stopped and said:

'What is that that runs up and down the stem of the ash? It is never a squirrel? They will all be in their nests by now.'

The Vicar looked and saw the moving creature, but he could make nothing of its colour in the moonlight. The sharp outline, however, seen for an instant, was imprinted on his brain, and he could have sworn, he said, though it sounded foolish, that, squirrel or not, it had more than four legs.

Still, not much was to be made of the momentary vision, and the two men parted. They may have met since then, but it was not for a score of years.

Next day Sir Matthew Fell was not downstairs at six in the morning, as was his custom, nor at seven, nor yet at eight. Hereupon the servants went and knocked at his chamber door. I need not prolong the description of their anxious listenings and renewed batterings on the panels. The door was opened at last from the outside, and they found their master dead and black. So much you have guessed. That there were any marks of violence did not at the moment appear; but the window was open.

One of the men went to fetch the parson, and then by his directions rode on to give notice to the coroner. Mr Crome himself went as quick as he might to the Hall, and was shown to the room where the dead man lay. He has left some notes among his papers which show how genuine a respect and sorrow was felt for Sir Matthew, and there is also this passage, which I transcribe for the sake of the light it throws upon the course of events, and also upon the common beliefs of the time:

'There was not any the least Trace of an Entrance having been forc'd to the Chamber: but the Casement stood open, as my poor Friend would always have it in this Season. He had his Evening Drink of small Ale in a silver vessel of about a pint measure, and tonight had not drunk it out. This Drink was examined by the Physician from Bury, a Mr Hodgkins, who could not, however, as he afterwards declar'd upon his Oath, before the Coroner's quest, discover that any matter of a venomous kind was present in it. For, as was natural, in the great Swelling and Blackness of the Corpse, there was talk made among the Neighbours of Poyson. The Body was very much Disorder'd as it laid in the Bed, being twisted after so extream a sort as gave too probable Conjecture that my worthy Friend and Patron had expir'd in great Pain and Agony. And what is as yet unexplain'd, and to myself the Argument of some Horrid and Artfull Designe in the Perpetrators of this Barbarous Murther, was this, that the Women which were entrusted with the laying-out of the Corpse and washing it, being both sad Pearsons and very well Respected in their Mournfull Profession, came to me in a great Pain and Distress both of Mind and Body, saying, what was indeed confirmed upon the first View, that they had no sooner touch'd the Breast of the Corpse with their naked Hands than they were sensible of a more than ordinary violent Smart and Acheing in their Palms, which, with their whole Forearms, in no long time swell'd so immoderately, the Pain still continuing, that, as afterwards proved, during many weeks they were forc'd to lay by the exercise of their Calling; and yet no mark seen on the Skin.

'Upon hearing this, I sent for the Physician, who was still in the House, and we made as carefull a Proof as we were able by the Help of a small Magnifying Lens of Crystal of the condition of the Skinn on this Part of the Body: but could not detect with the Instrument we had any Matter of Importance beyond a couple of small Punctures or Pricks, which we then concluded were the Spotts by which the Poyson might be introduced, remembering that Ring of Pope Borgia, with other known Specimens of the Horrid Art of the Italian Poysoners of the last age.

'So much is to be said of the Symptoms seen on the Corpse. As to what I am to add, it is meerly my own Experiment, and to be left to Posterity to judge whether there be anything of Value therein. There was on the Table by the Beddside a Bible of the small size, in which my Friend—punctuall as in Matters of less Moment, so in this more weighty one—used nightly, and upon his First Rising, to read a sett Portion. And I taking it up—not without a Tear duly paid to him wich from the Study of this poorer Adumbration was now pass'd to the contemplation of its great Originall—it came into my Thoughts, as at such moments of Helplessness we are prone to catch at any the least Glimmer that makes promise of Light, to make trial of that old and by many accounted Superstitious Practice of drawing the Sortes; of which a Principall Instance, in the case of his late Sacred Majesty the Blessed Martyr King Charles and my Lord Falkland, was now much talked of. I must needs admit that by my Trial not much Assistance was afforded me: yet, as the Cause and Origin of these Dreadfull Events may hereafter be search'd out, I set down the Results, in the case it may be found that they pointed the true Quarter of the Mischief to a quicker Intelligence than my own.

'I made, then, three trials, opening the Book and placing my Finger upon certain Words: which gave in the first these words, from Luke xiii. 7, Cut it down; in the second, Isaiah xiii. 20, It shall never be inhabited; and upon the third Experiment, Job xxxix. 30, Her young ones also suck up blood.'

This is all that need be quoted from Mr Crome's papers. Sir Matthew Fell was duly coffined and laid into the earth, and his funeral sermon, preached by Mr Crome on the following Sunday, has been printed under the title of 'The Unsearchable Way; or, England's Danger and the Malicious Dealings of Antichrist', it being the Vicar's view, as well as that most commonly held in the neighbourhood, that the Squire was the victim of a recrudescence of the Popish Plot.

His son, Sir Matthew the second, succeeded to the title and estates. And so ends the first act of the Castringham tragedy. It is to be mentioned, though the fact is not surprising, that the new Baronet did not occupy the room in which his father had died. Nor, indeed, was it slept in by anyone but an occasional visitor during the whole of his occupation. He died in 1735, and I do not find that anything particular marked his reign, save a curiously constant mortality among his cattle and live-stock in general, which showed a tendency to increase slightly as time went on.

Those who are interested in the details will find a statistical account in a letter to the Gentleman's Magazine of 1772, which draws the facts from the Baronet's own papers. He put an end to it at last by a very simple expedient, that of shutting up all his beasts in sheds at night, and keeping no sheep in his park. For he had noticed that nothing was ever attacked that spent the night indoors. After that the disorder confined itself to wild birds, and beasts of chase. But as we have no good account of the symptoms, and as all-night watching was quite unproductive of any clue, I do not dwell on what the Suffolk farmers called the 'Castringham sickness'.

The second Sir Matthew died in 1735, as I said, and was duly succeeded by his son, Sir Richard. It was in his time that the great family pew was built out on the north side of the parish church. So large were the Squire's ideas that several of the graves on that unhallowed side of the building had to be disturbed to satisfy his requirements. Among them was that of Mrs Mothersole, the position of which was accurately known, thanks to a note on a plan of the church and yard, both made by Mr Crome.

A certain amount of interest was excited in the village when it was known that the famous witch, who was still remembered by a few, was to be exhumed. And the feeling of surprise, and indeed disquiet, was very strong when it was found that, though her coffin was fairly sound and unbroken, there was no trace whatever inside it of body, bones, or dust. Indeed, it is a curious phenomenon, for at the time of her burying no such things were dreamt of as resurrection-men, and it is difficult to conceive any rational motive for stealing a body otherwise than for the uses of the dissecting-room.

The incident revived for a time all the stories of witch-trials and of the exploits of the witches, dormant for forty years, and Sir Richard's orders that the coffin should be burnt were thought by a good many to be rather foolhardy, though they were duly carried out.

Sir Richard was a pestilent innovator, it is certain. Before his time the Hall had been a fine block of the mellowest red brick; but Sir Richard had travelled in Italy and become infected with the Italian taste, and, having more money than his predecessors, he determined to leave an Italian palace where he had found an English house. So stucco and ashlar masked the brick; some indifferent Roman marbles were planted about in the entrance-hall and gardens; a reproduction of the Sibyl's temple at Tivoli was erected on the opposite bank of the mere; and Castringham took on an entirely new, and, I must say, a less engaging, aspect. But it was much admired, and served as a model to a good many of the neighbouring gentry in after-years.

* * * * *

One morning (it was in 1754) Sir Richard woke after a night of discomfort. It had been windy, and his chimney had smoked persistently, and yet it was so cold that he must keep up a fire. Also something had so rattled about the window that no man could get a moment's peace. Further, there was the prospect of several guests of position arriving in the course of the day, who would expect sport of some kind, and the inroads of the distemper (which continued among his game) had been lately so serious that he was afraid for his reputation as a game-preserver. But what really touched him most nearly was the other matter of his sleepless night. He could certainly not sleep in that room again.

That was the chief subject of his meditations at breakfast, and after it he began a systematic examination of the rooms to see which would suit his notions best. It was long before he found one. This had a window with an eastern aspect and that with a northern; this door the servants would be always passing, and he did not like the bedstead in that. No, he must have a room with a western look-out, so that the sun could not wake him early, and it must be out of the way of the business of the house. The housekeeper was at the end of her resources.

'Well, Sir Richard,' she said, 'you know that there is but the one room like that in the house.'

'Which may that be?' said Sir Richard.

'And that is Sir Matthew's—the West Chamber.'

'Well, put me in there, for there I'll lie tonight,' said her master.
'Which way is it? Here, to be sure'; and he hurried off.

'Oh, Sir Richard, but no one has slept there these forty years. The air has hardly been changed since Sir Matthew died there.'

Thus she spoke, and rustled after him.

'Come, open the door, Mrs Chiddock. I'll see the chamber, at least.'

So it was opened, and, indeed, the smell was very close and earthy. Sir Richard crossed to the window, and, impatiently, as was his wont, threw the shutters back, and flung open the casement. For this end of the house was one which the alterations had barely touched, grown up as it was with the great ash-tree, and being otherwise concealed from view.

'Air it, Mrs Chiddock, all today, and move my bed-furniture in in the afternoon. Put the Bishop of Kilmore in my old room.'

'Pray, Sir Richard,' said a new voice, breaking in on this speech, 'might I have the favour of a moment's interview?'

Sir Richard turned round and saw a man in black in the doorway, who bowed.

'I must ask your indulgence for this intrusion, Sir Richard. You will, perhaps, hardly remember me. My name is William Crome, and my grandfather was Vicar in your grandfather's time.'

'Well, sir,' said Sir Richard, 'the name of Crome is always a passport to Castringham. I am glad to renew a friendship of two generations' standing. In what can I serve you? for your hour of calling—and, if I do not mistake you, your bearing—shows you to be in some haste.'

'That is no more than the truth, sir. I am riding from Norwich to Bury St Edmunds with what haste I can make, and I have called in on my way to leave with you some papers which we have but just come upon in looking over what my grandfather left at his death. It is thought you may find some matters of family interest in them.'

'You are mighty obliging, Mr Crome, and, if you will be so good as to follow me to the parlour, and drink a glass of wine, we will take a first look at these same papers together. And you, Mrs Chiddock, as I said, be about airing this chamber…. Yes, it is here my grandfather died…. Yes, the tree, perhaps, does make the place a little dampish…. No; I do not wish to listen to any more. Make no difficulties, I beg. You have your orders—go. Will you follow me, sir?'

They went to the study. The packet which young Mr Crome had brought—he was then just become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus—contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard. They amused him a good deal.

'Well,' he said, 'my grandfather's Bible gave one prudent piece of advice—Cut it down. If that stands for the ash-tree, he may rest assured I shall not neglect it. Such a nest of catarrhs and agues was never seen.'

The parlour contained the family books, which, pending the arrival of a collection which Sir Richard had made in Italy, and the building of a proper room to receive them, were not many in number.

Sir Richard looked up from the paper to the bookcase.

'I wonder,' says he, 'whether the old prophet is there yet? I fancy I see him.'

Crossing the room, he took out a dumpy Bible, which, sure enough, bore on the flyleaf the inscription: 'To Matthew Fell, from his Loving Godmother, Anne Aldous, 2 September 1659.'

'It would be no bad plan to test him again, Mr Crome. I will wager we get a couple of names in the Chronicles. H'm! what have we here? "Thou shalt seek me in the morning, and I shall not be." Well, well! Your grandfather would have made a fine omen of that, hey? No more prophets for me! They are all in a tale. And now, Mr Crome, I am infinitely obliged to you for your packet. You will, I fear, be impatient to get on. Pray allow me—another glass.'

So with offers of hospitality, which were genuinely meant (for Sir
Richard thought well of the young man's address and manner), they parted.

In the afternoon came the guests—the Bishop of Kilmore, Lady Mary Hervey, Sir William Kentfield, etc. Dinner at five, wine, cards, supper, and dispersal to bed.

Next morning Sir Richard is disinclined to take his gun with the rest. He talks with the Bishop of Kilmore. This prelate, unlike a good many of the Irish Bishops of his day, had visited his see, and, indeed, resided there, for some considerable time. This morning, as the two were walking along the terrace and talking over the alterations and improvements in the house, the Bishop said, pointing to the window of the West Room:

'You could never get one of my Irish flock to occupy that room, SirRichard.'

'Why is that, my lord? It is, in fact, my own.'

'Well, our Irish peasantry will always have it that it brings the worst of luck to sleep near an ash-tree, and you have a fine growth of ash not two yards from your chamber window. Perhaps,' the Bishop went on, with a smile, 'it has given you a touch of its quality already, for you do not seem, if I may say it, so much the fresher for your night's rest as your friends would like to see you.'

'That, or something else, it is true, cost me my sleep from twelve to four, my lord. But the tree is to come down tomorrow, so I shall not hear much more from it.'

'I applaud your determination. It can hardly be wholesome to have the air you breathe strained, as it were, through all that leafage.'

'Your lordship is right there, I think. But I had not my window open last night. It was rather the noise that went on—no doubt from the twigs sweeping the glass—that kept me open-eyed.'

'I think that can hardly be, Sir Richard. Here—you see it from this point. None of these nearest branches even can touch your casement unless there were a gale, and there was none of that last night. They miss the panes by a foot.'

'No, sir, true. What, then, will it be, I wonder, that scratched and rustled so—ay, and covered the dust on my sill with lines and marks?'

At last they agreed that the rats must have come up through the ivy. That was the Bishop's idea, and Sir Richard jumped at it.

So the day passed quietly, and night came, and the party dispersed to their rooms, and wished Sir Richard a better night.

And now we are in his bedroom, with the light out and the Squire in bed. The room is over the kitchen, and the night outside still and warm, so the window stands open.

There is very little light about the bedstead, but there is a strange movement there; it seems as if Sir Richard were moving his head rapidly to and fro with only the slightest possible sound. And now you would guess, so deceptive is the half-darkness, that he had several heads, round and brownish, which move back and forward, even as low as his chest. It is a horrible illusion. Is it nothing more? There! something drops off the bed with a soft plump, like a kitten, and is out of the window in a flash; another—four—and after that there is quiet again.

Thou shall seek me in the morning, and I shall not be.

As with Sir Matthew, so with Sir Richard—dead and black in his bed!

A pale and silent party of guests and servants gathered under the window when the news was known. Italian poisoners, Popish emissaries, infected air—all these and more guesses were hazarded, and the Bishop of Kilmore looked at the tree, in the fork of whose lower boughs a white tom-cat was crouching, looking down the hollow which years had gnawed in the trunk. It was watching something inside the tree with great interest.

Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of the edge on which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked up at the noise of the fall.

It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us have heard, I hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash. Two or three screams there were—the witnesses are not sure which—and then a slight and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came. But Lady Mary Hervey fainted outright, and the housekeeper stopped her ears and fled till she fell on the terrace.

The Bishop of Kilmore and Sir William Kentfield stayed. Yet even they were daunted, though it was only at the cry of a cat; and Sir William swallowed once or twice before he could say:

'There is something more than we know of in that tree, my lord. I am for an instant search.'

And this was agreed upon. A ladder was brought, and one of the gardeners went up, and, looking down the hollow, could detect nothing but a few dim indications of something moving. They got a lantern, and let it down by a rope.

'We must get at the bottom of this. My life upon it, my lord, but the secret of these terrible deaths is there.'

Up went the gardener again with the lantern, and let it down the hole cautiously. They saw the yellow light upon his face as he bent over, and saw his face struck with an incredulous terror and loathing before he cried out in a dreadful voice and fell back from the ladder—where, happily, he was caught by two of the men—letting the lantern fall inside the tree.

He was in a dead faint, and it was some time before any word could be got from him.

By then they had something else to look at. The lantern must have broken at the bottom, and the light in it caught upon dry leaves and rubbish that lay there for in a few minutes a dense smoke began to come up, and then flame; and, to be short, the tree was in a blaze.

The bystanders made a ring at some yards' distance, and Sir William and the Bishop sent men to get what weapons and tools they could; for, clearly, whatever might be using the tree as its lair would be forced out by the fire.

So it was. First, at the fork, they saw a round body covered with fire—the size of a man's head—appear very suddenly, then seem to collapse and fall back. This, five or six times; then a similar ball leapt into the air and fell on the grass, where after a moment it lay still. The Bishop went as near as he dared to it, and saw—what but the remains of an enormous spider, veinous and seared! And, as the fire burned lower down, more terrible bodies like this began to break out from the trunk, and it was seen that these were covered with greyish hair.

All that day the ash burned, and until it fell to pieces the men stood about it, and from time to time killed the brutes as they darted out. At last there was a long interval when none appeared, and they cautiously closed in and examined the roots of the tree.

'They found,' says the Bishop of Kilmore, 'below it a rounded hollow place in the earth, wherein were two or three bodies of these creatures that had plainly been smothered by the smoke; and, what is to me more curious, at the side of this den, against the wall, was crouching the anatomy or skeleton of a human being, with the skin dried upon the bones, having some remains of black hair, which was pronounced by those that examined it to be undoubtedly the body of a woman, and clearly dead for a period of fifty years.'

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Every now and again I feel the need to dip into a classic and today is definitely one of those days and 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes' is most definitely a classic.

The film tells of the elaborate revenge Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) and his chauffeur Vulnavia (Virginia North) take on the medical team he blames for the death of his wife.   Taking his cues from the 10 biblical plagues of Egypt he exacts a bloody retribution whilst being hunted by Inspector Harry Trout (the great Peter Jeffrey) and potential victim Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten).

Price is at the top of his game here, no piece of scenery is left unchewed and his silent presence for the first 30 odd minutes of the film show just how good an actor he could be and how perfectly cast he is here.  The film manages to be both gory and amusing (occasionally downright silly) is beautifully made with a fantastically creepy ambience especially with regard to Phibes' automaton orchestra and the phenomenal Basil Kirchin score.  Both the actors opposite him give as solid performances as you'd expect given their respective pedigrees and indeed the cast as a whole seem to be relishing the gothic campness; my particular favourite being the gravedigger with the immortal line of "Fools! Fools! They'll have the worms soon enough."

Enjoy.

Buy it here - The Abominable Dr. Phibes [DVD]- or watch it below



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The 2nd Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

Robert Aickman
Fontana Books

Robert Aickman "Introduction"
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "Playing With Fire"
Edith Nesbit "Man-Size in Marble"
Robert Hichens "How Love Came to Professor Guildea"
Elizabeth Bowen "The Demon Lover"
Sir Max Beerbohm "A. V. Laider"
Edgar Allan Poe "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
Lord Dunsany "Our Distant Cousins"
Robert Aickman "The Inner Room"
Perceval Landon "Thurnley Abbey"
John Metcalfe "Nightmare Jack"
Ambrose Bierce "The Damned Thing"
Edith Wharton "Afterward"

It's been a while since I stuck my head into one of these Fontana anthologies but tonight I had the craving.

Aickman has put together an admirable collection with only 3 of the 12 stories being of the 'Oh, it's that one again' variety; E. Nesbit's 'Man Size in Marble', Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Demon Lover' and Edith Wharton's 'Afterward'. All great tales and all solid choices but one's I've become very accustomed to skipping past.

Lord Dunsany

A few of the stories here proved to be an absolute delight; Conan Doyle's 'Playing With Fire' with it's cautionary tale of reaching beyond ones abilities, Robert Hichens' superbly crafted 'How Love Came To Professor Guildea' and Aickman's own supremely creepy 'The Inner Room' are all deliciously bewitching,

A few others, such as Lord Dunsany's 'Our Distant Cousins', with it's odd little scfi-fi tale very much in the spirit of both Wells' 'Time Machine' and C.S. Lewis' 'Out of the Silent Planet', and Poe's 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' provided an enjoyable distraction. Whilst others like Sir Max Beerbohm's 'A.V. Laider', Perceval Landon's ghostly 'Thurnley Abbey', John Metcalfe's almost Sherlockian 'Nightmare Jack' and Ambrose Bierce's 'The Damned Thing' filled both time and pages without too much complaint or distraction.

As with the other volume - I have them all here but am eking them out - Aickman proves himself the consummate anthologist. Each story, even the ones I didn't overly enjoy felt as though they belonged, as though they were at home in the collection and it proved for the most part to be a hugely enjoyable read.

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Doctor Who: Tales of Terror

Various
Puffin Books

For the last 3 years the Doctor Who people have taken to putting out one of these lovely hardback anthologies a year.  We've had a Christmas one, a fairy story one and now a Halloween.  They're very much aimed at the lower end of the YA audience and are pretty slight affairs but that's not something that bothers me overly.  I don't read these things for deep philosophical musings I read them for a quick Doctor fix.

A couple of familiar names from other DW books pop up among the authors of the 12 tales (no War Doctor) - Jacqueline Rayner, Mike Tucker & Paul Magrs - alongside three I don't know - Richard Dungworth, Scott Handcock & Craig Donaghy.

For her two contributions Rayner goes deep into Who history with the Doctor finding himself face to face with the Celestial Toymaker for a pair of adventures.  Mike Tucker subjects Doctor 2 to a psychic invasion of the TARDIS and once more gives Tegan over to the Mara whereas Magrs subjects 3, Jo and some kids to a stranded Dalek that wants to get home and 8 gets to match wits with a genetically engineered sea thing.

Richard Dungworth inflicts a trio of witches on Sarah Jane and 10 to a rematch with the Family of Blood.  Scott Handcock has 7 facing off against other dimensional forces and 9 tackles a stranded Cyberman before Craig Donaghy closes the book with two stories that has 11 help a family escape the Weeping Angels and 12 gets to be short tempered with some kids while messing up the plans of the Nestene Consciousness.

Not every story works but on the whole it was a big, silly read that was just what I was after.

Buy it here - Doctor Who: Tales of Terror

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Doctor Who: Short Trips: Snapshots

Joseph Lidster (ed)
Big Finish

Throughout his adventures in time and space, the Doctor meets so many people and each one is affected in some way: the waiter who keeps a special table for the Time Lord's granddaughter, Susan; the American student who befriends lost Lucie Miller; the teenage girl who discovers that she may be something more than human. What is it like when that strange blue box appears in your life? What is it like when your eyes are opened to so much more? What is it like when everything changes?

I've eyed up a couple of these BF anthologies a few times over the years but even 2nd hand the price tag has been too high for me so spotting this in a junk shop recently was a real treat.

As was usually the case with BF (it's changed lately) the stories feature Doctors 1 to 8 and in this case in pretty tiny little escapades...escapadettes perhaps...or not.

James Goss

The book is crammed and the highlights are many. James Goss' 'Indian Summer' featuring the First Doctor, Susan and a lifetime of strange events for a restaurant waiter / maitre d / manager / owner / manager again Suresh Parekh is a particular favourite and being second in the contents means the bar is set high and early. Fortunately there are a few that are up to it; Simon Guerrier provides an intriguing serial Doctor adventure featuring a young girl with a big problem, Brian Dooley gives us a delightfully bickery tale between the Fourth Doctor and Romana and the Eighth repays a favour in Joseph Lidster's 'Salva Mea'.

There are plenty of others both fun and funny and some that just drift past and the book ends oddly with Paul Magrs' 'Fanboys' which feels like it's been printed in the wrong book but I'm pleased to have finally tracked one of these collections down, it certainly didn't disappoint.

A Creepy Company

Joan Aiken
Puffin Books

Here are ten ghastly, ghostly, weird and witty tales from a master of suspense, Joan Aiken. Each macabre story takes readers from the everyday world to the fantastic, creating a collection full of delightful shivers that will hold readers spellbound.

I've a real love for Joan Aiken's stories and have enjoyed several anthologies of her ghostly tales. This one is not going to trouble the best of them but it can sit proudly amongst the rest.

A Creepy Company consists of 11 stories of the supernatural mostly with a young adult audience in mind, as befits the publisher. There are a few stand out stories like the murderous, ghostly children of 'Toomie' and 'Little Nym', the vengeful spirit that condemns a man to a life of tedium and loveless drudgery in 'Die From Day To Day', the gossipy folk horror of 'My Disability' and the obsessive and miserly creature feature of 'They Have Found Out'. There's nothing about the other six to dislike and on a different day I'd probably have listed one or two others as the standouts.

It's always a pleasure to be allowed to take a stroll in the lady's imagination; a place of the most vivid and often unsettling beauty.

Fellside

M.R. Carey
Orbit

Fellside is a maximum security prison on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors. It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.
It's a place where even the walls whisper.
And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess.
Will she listen?

Over the years I've read quite a lot of Carey's writing. I liked his Lucifer series and his run on Hellblazer was fun and I worked my way through a couple of books of Unwritten before lack of funds put a stop to my graphic novel buying. Of his novels I think I've read them all; the Felix Castor books were enjoyable but a little too Constantine and 'The Girl With All The Gifts' was a worthy successor to the apocalyptic proclivities of the two Johns (Wyndham and Christopher).

This time out Carey has condemned us all to prison, a women's prison on the Yorkshire moors where newly convicted child killer, Jess Moulson, has started to see and hear the one person who absolutely cannot be there, the little boy she accidentally burned to death whilst in a heroin stupor.

'Fellside' is a dark and unforgiving book that sometimes feels just a little too soap opera for it's own good. The prisoner hierarchy has a whiff of a certain Australian prison show about it and the less 'conventional' aspects of what's going on with Jess aren't explored anywhere near deeply enough for my liking.

When it's on game though it's an engaging read that uses a pretty intense premise to explore guilt and redemption without leaving you too emotionally drained.

Buy it here - Fellside

Dark Towers

In the 1970s there was relatively little actual television available to watch in the UK.  Only 3 channels that all shut down over night and which occasionally went off air throughout the day displaying only a test card accompanied by some stock music of varying degrees of grooviness.  In the spirit of television (and the BBC in particular) as a medium required to “inform, educate and entertain” it also dedicated a proportion of each day's broadcasting to showing programmes intended for use in schools and colleges.  In my school  watching these shows involved trooping into the hall where the television was kept inside a padlocked wooden box on top of a metal stand and sitting cross legged on the hardwood floor craning our necks to watch the shows while the teachers took turns to nip into the staff room at the far end for a opportunistic cigarette break.  Whether or not we ever actually did any of the work you were meant to do in conjunction with the shows I don't remember - probably not - but I do remember the shows themselves and in particular 'Look and Read'.

'Look and Read' as you can probably guess (or remember even) was a show intended to improve children's literacy skills through tasks, songs (created by Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb and Peter Howell of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and mostly sung by Derek Griffiths) and tuition based around a serial drama occasionally interrupted by a squeaky voiced flying...thing.  They produced quite a few of these dramas, most of which have disappeared into well deserved obscurity but a couple have found their way into Wyrd Britain folklore, sci fi adventure 'The Boy from Space' being one of them (not currently available for streaming but you can buy it here - The Boy From Space [2 - Disc DVD Set]) and the ghost story 'Dark Towers' being another.

Written by Andrew Davies, 'Dark Towers' tells the story of Tracy Brown (Juliet Waley) and her new friend Lord Edward Dark (Gary Russell - now more known as the author of several Doctor Who novels) and their race to find the hidden treasure of Dark Towers before it's stolen by the nefarious trio of Miss Hawk, Benger and Bunce (Juliet Hammond-Hills, Christopher Biggins and Harry Jones).  In this they are aided by Edward's father and The Friendly Ghost (dual roles for David Collings - beloved by us here at Wyrd Britain as Silver in Sapphire and Steel), Tracy's dog Towser and The Tall Knight (Peter Mayhew - who had previously achieved worldwide fame playing Chewbacca in a heart wrenching family drama called 'Star Wars Holiday Special'.

I'm not sure when I first saw this show, in 1981 when it first aired I had moved on to the comp so the days of TV in the school hall were over, but nevertheless it's a show that I have very fond memories of, the music (by Roger Limb) in particular.

The episodes in the playlist below come complete with all the mid show breaks - where Wordy the floating thingamabob would try to teach you something - so you'll also have the opportunity to learn about apostrophes or magic 'e'.

Enjoy.

Look and Read: Dark Towers (YouTube playlist)

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Doctor Who: In the Blood

Jenny T. Colgan
BBC Books

All over the world, people are venting their fury at one another on social media. Dropping their friends, giving vent to their hatred, and everywhere behaving with incredible cruelty. Even Donna has found that her friend Hettie, with her seemingly perfect life and fancy house, has unfriended her. And now, all over the world, internet trolls are dying...
As more and more people give in to this wave of bitterness and aggression, it's clear this is no simple case of modern living. This is unkindness as a plague.
From the streets of London to the web cafes of South Korea and the deepest darkest forests of Rio, can the Doctor and Donna find the cause of this unhappiness before it's too late?

Colgan has got to play in the Doctor Who sandpit a few times now, most notably with her 11th Doctor novel 'Dark Horizons' which had it's charms but if a good Viking story exists I've yet to read one. This time out though you can tell she's living the dream and getting to play with her favourites, the 10th and Donna Noble. Right from the off you can feel Colgan's enjoyment of these particular characters; their voices are perfect and Donna especially seems made for Colgan's pen.

Plot wise an alien conspiracy that is pushing internet trolls to greater and greater levels of vitriol is pretty silly but no more so than that episode about the Adipose that brought Donna back to the series after ' The Runaway Bride'.  What we get is a globe trotting romp - minus the TARDIS - with much banter and bluster which seems to lose focus as it progresses into it's fairly overblown final third.

I'm not entirely sure I was the target audience for this book. I've always preferred the more gothic end of the Doctor Who spectrum and the Tennant / Tate era was never a favourite but it's an OK and occasionally amusing read that very much revives that era and I'm sure it's fans will find much to like here.

Buy it here:  Doctor Who: In the Blood

The Cold Embrace

Alex Hamilton (ed)
Corgi Books

There are two fields of the arts where I think women have truly overcome the belittling misogyny that would devalue their contributions, have made their presence felt and stand shoulder to shoulder with their male contemporaries. Happily for me they're two fields I like very much indeed; experimental music - oh the glory of Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Pauline Oliveros, Else Marie Pade to name just the first four to come to mind - and as tellers of stories of the macabre and the supernatural. Why these two in particular? I don't know. Perhaps it's just my taste bias spotting immensely talented women in the fields to which I'm most drawn, perhaps it's a willingness by fans of these fields to accept diversity, perhaps other fields have a more ingrained misogyny, perhaps all of these, perhaps none.

Shirley Jackson

The reason I bring this up is that this here anthology is staffed almost entirely (Editor Alex is sole exception) by women and there are some of the greats here too, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth Bowen & Edith Nesbit amongst them. Storywise though there is one tale here that stands head and shoulders above the others, Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' a classic piece of witty and terrifying writing. That's not to say that others fall far short it's just that it really is that good.

E. Nesbit

Of the others M.E. Braddon's story - from which this book takes it's name - is a regular in these anthologies and for good reason and Sheena MacKay provides the delightfully ghastly 'Open End' as a grieving widow finds an outlet for her emotions. Elizabeth Bowen's 'The Demon Lover' is another staple with a story of an unavoidable and terrifying fate whereas Agatha Christie's 'The Seance' allows a bereaved mother one last opportunity to see her child.

The book takes a dip with Marie de France's tediously folkloric 'The Werewolf', Margaret Irwin's idiotic 'The Country Gentleman' and Mary Coleridge's 'The King is Dead' before we're back on familiar territory with E. Nesbit's 'John Charrington's Wedding' which for me isn't one of the lady's best but is certainly both readable and a favourite of anthologists.

Hortense Calisher is a new name to me but her body horror tale 'Heartburn' is an enjoyably frivolous beastie worthy of further reads. Scheherezade's 'The Cenotaph' on the other hand is a Robert E. Howard story in most respects full of deceitful women and ancient magic.

Elizabeth Jane Howard

I first came across Elizabeth Jane Howard's 'Three Miles Up' a few years ago and it became one of those stories that stick fast in your head. The tale of two canal riding holidaymakers and the mysterious lady that joins them is a gently unsettling and ultimately deeply eerie read.

Unfortunately the high point delivered by Howard's tale is somewhat short lived by Margueritte de Navarre's 'The Confessor' a tedious piece of folkish drivel and Janet Frame's teeny tiny tale 'The Press Gang'.

Flannery O'Connor's story of sickness, homesickness and family ties tells of a rural man uprooted by family to the city and wishing to return home to die, It's a fabulously grimy and uncompromising tale which would sit proudly in a collection alongside folk such as Harry Crews or Barry Gifford but here it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The books ends on a bit of a low as Elizabeth Gaskell's 'The Doom of the Griffiths' has too much of the Victorian melodrama about it and Elizabeth Taylor's interestingly creepy but ultimately disappointing story felt too much in debt to 'The Turning of the Screw'.

So what we have is the very definition of a mixed bag; one classic tale, a personal favourite, a few solid, reliable old favourites and more than a few page fillers but that's a pattern I can live with for as the good ones really do shine out and that one classic is always worth the price of admission.

Strange Report

John Burke 
A Lancer Book

Strange Report was an ITC TV show about a scientist / sociologist / detective named Adam Strange and starring Anthony Quayle. It also featured a chap called Kaz Garas and former 1st Doctor companion Anneke Wills as his assistants Ham and Evelyn.

This novelisation of, I assume, the first two episodes of the 1st (and only) series reveals a show that very much is following the formula of these sort of things. Older, enigmatic and knowledgeable male with a quirky sideline - in this case sociology to show he's a bit of a counterculture type (he also drives around in a London black cab) - and two helpers to deal with the action or research and to ask what's going on.

The two stories here deal with corporate corruption and the murder of a pop star - still going for that counterculture kudos - and the stories unfold as these things often do. The writing is competent but uninspired, as is the plot and the whole thing resolutely refuses to sparkle.

On a slightly more positive note I do have the soundtrack here too and that's a very different kettle of fish shaped things.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

Penguin Books

Who better to investigate the literary spirit world than that supreme connoisseur of the unexpected, Roald Dahl? Of the many permutations of the macabre, Dahl was always especially fascinated by the classic ghost story. For this superbly disquieting collection, he selected fourteen of his favorite tales by such authors as E.F. Benson, Rosemary Timperley, and Edith Wharton.

In his introduction to this collection Dahl makes a big thing about how he read 749 ghost stories and had only found 32 that he deemed to be any good; of those he includes 14 here. One of them, 'Playmates' by A.M. Burrage, is my favourite of all the ghostly tales I've read over the years and a few of them - Robert Aickman's 'Ringing the Changes', Edith Wharton's 'Afterward' and Marion Crawford's 'The Upper Berth' - are staples of these sort of books. Of the rest they can best be described as a tepid selection.

A.M. Burrage

Of these remaining stories a couple such as L.P. Hartley's 'W.S.', Rosemary Timperley's 'Harry' and Cynthia Asquith's 'The Corner Shop' have a flavour of those 'unexpected tales' that Dahl himself was famous for. A few such, such as the ever readable J. Sheridan le Fanu's 'The Ghost of a Hand' are a little cliché or lovely but a little bit twee like Timperley's other tale 'Christmas Meeting'. Some are just bad - 'Elias and the Draug' by Jonas Lie and 'The Telephone' by Mary Treadgold - and a couple proved to be a delightful surprise - E.F. Benson's 'In The Tube' and A.M. Burrage's 'The Sweeper'.

It must be said I was expecting more from this collection. I thought a writer like Dahl would be able to assemble a collection to beat all others but this one rarely seemed to sparkle and was often a bit of a chore. It did serve to remind me though that what I really need to do is more fully explore the writing of A.M. Burrage.

Buy it here:  Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

The Back House Ghosts

Catherine Sefton (Martin Waddell)

Puffin Books

'You've excelled yourself this time, Ellen,' groaned her mother when Ellen had made the mistake and overbooked their guesthouse, so that the family had to camp out in the deserted old house at the back. It was not at all the sort of place for ghosts, but all the same Ellen began seeing and hearing things she shouldn't, and knew she was being haunted.

(Also published as 'The Haunting of Ellen')

The arrival of a unexpectedly large family of guests sends the two Bailey children, flighty Ellen and pragmatic Bella, out of their own rooms in the guest house they run along with their mother and into the ramshackle old cottage at the end of the garden.

The pair try to make the most of their circumstances but Ellen soon finds herself having visions of a family and of a time past. With the aid of a new friend from amongst the plethora of children roaming the guest house and her sceptical sister she begins investigating into the fate of the family whose memories and presence haunt her cottage.

Originally published in 1974 this book feels older. It's Blyton-esque adventure sub-plot mixed with a gentle and almost wistful ghost story makes it feel more 1950s than 1970s. It does though have a certain charm, the interplay between the various characters is nicely done and it's all wrapped up in 135 pages so it certainly doesn't linger.

The Grey King

Susan Cooper 

Puffin Books

"Fire on the Mountain Shall Find the Harp of Gold Played to Wake the Sleepers, Oldest of the Old..."
With the final battle between the Light and the Dark soon approaching, Will sets out on a quest to call for aid. Hidden within the Welsh hills is a magical harp that he must use to wake the Sleepers - six noble riders who have slept for centuries. But an illness has robbed Will of nearly all his knowledge of the Old Ones, and he is left only with a broken riddle to guide him in his task. As Will travels blindly through the hills, his journey will bring him face-to-face with the most powerful Lord of the Dark - the Grey King. The King holds the harp and Sleepers within his lands, and there has yet to be a force strong enough to tear them from his grasp.

After the joy of the previous book in the series I had high hopes for this penultimate part of Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising' sequence. Young Will has come into his inheritance as an Old One and is secure and confident in his powers. So much so that he stood alongside the others to face up to the power of the Witch. Unfortunately as we begin this book an all too mundane illness has robbed him of much of this and he starts 'The Grey King' much the worse off.

As with the others in the series this is essentially a quest book. Will is once again tasked with finding and releasing an ancient magical force / entity that will aid in the fight against the Dark. As ever there are forces pushing against him.

Within all this magical malarkey Cooper has written a warmly human novel. The love and friendship experienced by Will during his convalescence / adventures in the mountains of West Wales make this a delightful read. The story is told with a deft hand for character and the keen eye for the fantastical which has helped cement this series as one of the modern classics of Wyrd Britain.

Buy it here:  The Grey King (The Dark Is Rising)

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Doctor Who: The Shining Man / Diamond Dogs / Plague City

So, to accompany Peter Capaldi's last series as the Doctor BBC Books have released another 3 of their series of hardback adventures, These things, which they've been doing with increasing irregularity since the arrival of the 9th, are usually a bit of a wobbly assortment but there's often 1 or sometimes even 2 that are a bit of fun and Doctor Who books are a bit of an addiction with me.

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Doctor Who: The Shining Man
Cavan Scott
BBC Books

“Being scared is the least of your worries.”
The Shining Men are everywhere. You spot them out of the corner of your eye. Abnormally tall, with long lank hair, blank faces and blazing eyes. If they catch you, they’ll drag you away to who knows where. No one is safe. They’re on every street corner. Waiting. Watching. Shining bright.
Of course it’s a hoax. It has to be, right? It started as a joke, a prank for Halloween. Then it went viral. Idiots dressing up as monsters. Giving folk a scare. Silly masks and fright wigs. No one gets hurt. Because bogeymen aren’t real.
Until people start going missing and lights burn in the darkness. Burning like eyes.
But help is on its way, in the form of a strange man called the Doctor and his friend, Bill. The Doctor will keep us safe. The Doctor will stop the monsters. Unless the monsters stop the Doctor first.

Cavan Scott is a new name to me but here he's jumped into the world of the Doctor with both feet. It's not often that Doctor Who goes fully fantasy, usually there's some sort of alien doohickey, thingamabob or race behind the happenings but here we get a full on fairyland extravaganza filled with folkloric traps, supernatural critters and other realms.

Scott has reproduced the Doctor and Bill very well - although the Doctor being outfoxed by cloud storage seems unlikely - but with what must have been only a cursory peek at a couple of the early episodes he has nailed the interaction between the two which is testimony I suppose to just how effective a character Bill Potts was.

As is always the case with these books it's a pretty quick read both in terms of pace and page count which suits me down to the ground as I can read them in an afternoon and get my doctor fix. They're not always entirely satisfying but sometimes, like here, they're often, at the very least, fun.

Buy it here:  Doctor Who: The Shining Man

Doctor Who: Diamond Dogs
Mike Tucker
BBC Books

“Here on Saturn, it literally rains diamonds.”
For over fifteen years the crew of Kollo-Zarnista Mining Facility 27 has been extracting diamonds from deep within the atmosphere of Saturn, diamonds that help to fund the ever-expanding Human Empire. But when a mining operation goes wrong, a rescue mission must be launched to save a worker lost overboard, a worker who claims that he has seen something amongst the swirling clouds. Something that can’t possibly exist.
When the Doctor and Bill arrive, they immediately find themselves caught between hostile miners, suspicious security guards and corrupt company officials as they face accusations of sabotage and diamond theft.
And below them, in the crushing atmosphere of the gas giant, something is starting to rise.

The second - that I read but I suspect it's meant to be the first in the trio - of this years hardbacks is a Who by numbers romp for the 12th and Bill.

The Doctor takes a flying visit to a diamond mine in the atmosphere of Saturn in order to nick a diamond suitable to keep Nardole in biscuits. They are,of course, soon discovered, captured and inevitably find themselves embroiled in some sort of intergalactic incident that will erupt into all out war unless the Doctor does his usual thing.

There's nothing here that we haven't seen many, many times before and the whole thing feels rather tired. I was glad to be finished with this one.

Buy it here:  Doctor Who: Diamond Dogs

Doctor Who: Plague City
Jonathan Morris
BBC Books

The year is 1645, and Edinburgh is in the grip of the worst plague in its history. Nobody knows who will be the next to succumb – nobody except the Night Doctor, a masked figure that stalks the streets, seeking out those who will not live to see another day.
But death is not the end. The Doctor, Bill and Nardole discover that the living are being haunted by the recently departed – by ghosts that do not know they are dead. And there are other creatures lurking in the shadows, slithering, creeping creatures filled with an insatiable hunger.
The Doctor and his friends must face the terrifying secret of the Street of Sorrows – that something which has lain dormant for two hundred million years is due to destroy the entire city.

This third of the latest trio of NSA Who books is an improvement on the last one but still a fairly uninspiring read.

Morris is a regular Who scribe so knows his way around the Doctor and his crew and here he places them in the middle of a plague epidemic in Edinburgh of 1645 alongside a mysterious 'plague doctor' who seemingly knows when someone will die and the ghosts of those who have succumbed to the disease. He really piles it on does Mr. Morris and that's most of the problem.

The Doctor and Bill running around doing their investigating thing, meeting people and butting against authority figures is OK but increasingly it all gets a bit silly and with the arrival of the aliens and the volcano I pretty much gave up and just stumbled through to the end.

Buy it here:  Doctor Who: Plague City