Summonings

by Ron Weighell, Santiago Caruso (Cover art)

Sarob Press is delighted to present the first hardcover collection of wholly supernatural stories by Ron Weighell since the now fabulously sought after and extremely rare The White Road (Ghost Story Press, 1997) ~ signed copies now commanding many hundreds of pounds U.K. sterling. Here are ten stories from the pen of a truly rare author. Mr Weighell delivers an amazing dark feast of supernatural imaginings ~ from classic Jamesian-like tales of terror to darker, deeper and far more arcane and esoteric horrors. This volume is an absolute MUST for the connoisseur of fine occult & supernatural fiction and is, like the earlier Ghost Story Press collection, a weird treat not to be missed.

Stories: “D’Arca*” “The World Entire” “The Counsels of Night” “Suburbs of the Black Lyre” “Now Feel that Pulse No More*” “The Mouth of the Medusa” “An Image of Truth” “The Four Strengths of Shadow*” “The Tears of the Gods (NOVELLA ~ newly expanded & fully revised)” “Into the Mysteries (an excerpt)” “Afterword” by the author. (*newly written & previously unpublished.)

Genres: Horror, Occult, Weird Fiction

206 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2014

About the author

Ron Weighell (1950 - 2020) was a British writer of fiction in the supernatural, fantasy and horror genre, whose work was published in the United Kingdom, the U.S.A., Canada, Germany, Ireland, Romania, Finland, Belgium and Mexico.

Reviews

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some books allow you to be entertained. Some books broaden your sphere of knowledge & understanding. Some books make you realise your limitations. The book under discussion, which I managed to finish over several days & nights, belong to the last category. But whatever limitations of my feeble mind got exposed during the course of my reading would come later. First, let me describe the contents of this book (strictly fulfilling the superior standards set by Sarob Press, with a slight change from their routine in the sense that the dust-jacket and signature-page design hasn’t been done by the great Paul Lowe, but by another famed artist Santiago Caruso).

After mentioning the sources (of those pieces that had got published earlier, and occasionally in a quite different shape & size) and acknowledgements, we come across the stories, which are: -
1. D’ Arca
2. The World Entire
3. The Counsels of Night
4. Suburbs of the Black Lyre
5. Now Feel That Pulse No More
6. The Mouth of the Medusa
7. An Image of Truth
8. The Four Strengths of Shadow
9. The Tears of the Gods
10. Into the Mysteries (an excerpt)
The final piece is an ‘Afterword’ that describes the imaginative-source of the stories, with hints regarding things to come.

This sumptuous book, which has been justifiably prized by the connoisseurs of bibliophilic weird-fiction lovers, turned out to be quite an eye-opener for me, as it taught me two things: -

(I) These stories, dealing with books, rituals, claustrophobia-inducing sculptures, and mysticism, were some of the most soporific works that I have EVER read. I have read works of several Jamesian authors, who are considered brilliant disciples of the great M.R. James, and Ron Weighell was described as one of the masters of such tales. But he seems to have lost his touch in the past decade, since his two stories published in 1997 & 2000 were the only readable pieces here. I would still wait for a reprint of his fabled collection “The White Road”, which is supposed to contain all his works published in Rosemary Pardoe’s “Ghosts & Scholars” magazine (cradle of the finest Jamesian ghost stories) and I would continue to enjoy his fantastic “The Irregular Casebook of Sherlock Holmes”, but anything else written by him, especially the sort published by Ex Occidente Press, would have to be eschewed.
(II) In a world ravaged by terrorists and fundamentalists of all sorts, who try to stake their claim onto various pieces of hell by torturing & killing women & children, I don’t think I can read this type of stories any more. I am taking myself off the Sarob Press list, and would henceforth confine myself to other sorts of mindless literature that rather accurately describe our world full of blood, hormone-driven teenagers, and pizza.

[Χρυσόστομος Τσαπραΐλης · Rating 4 out of 5]

A refreshing dose of occult fiction that shies away from the opulent introspection, decadence, and the obsession with human condition that seem to be the purview of a large part of today’s weird fiction, and instead focuses (for the most part) on plot and lore. It’s the first time that I read something from the late Ron Weighell and I was thrilled (alas I am some years late to his twice out-of-print major collection, The White Road).

Weighell’s prose is practically structured and pretty easy to tread through, without lacking in the literary department. The stories move from the M.R. Jamesian ("Now Feel that Pulse No More") to the occult epic (the novella-long "The Tears of the Gods") and everything in between. The paranormal takes many faces and is touched upon with the proper awe and reverence. There is a love for the trappings of the occult, which at some points becomes obsession ("Into the Mysteries (an excerpt)"), and at certain parts the writer tends to get lost in atmosphere and stylized form ("Suburbs of the Black Lyre"), but most of the stories of this collection are gold.

D’Arca: 4/5 (A mansion in Venice and the lure of magic, now and then)
The World Entire: 5/5 (Where three boys enter the house of an old Jewish gentleman)
The Counsels of Night: 4/5 (Garden renovations reveal a buried folly built according to some very specific instructions)
Suburbs of the Black Lyre: 2.5/5 (Of different types of divination)
Now Feel that Pulse No More: 5/5 (A church boy infiltrates a derelict house. Really touching and atmospheric ghost fiction)
The Mouth of the Medusa: 4/5 (Droughts reveal Roman ruins with a grotesque font)
An Image of Truth: 3/5 (A light-hearted short story inspired from Machen, concerning a tobacco cult)
The Four Strengths of Shadow: 3.5/5 (Investigating the library of a Rennaisance architect in Venice)
The Tears of the Gods: 4.5/5 (Following a secret society from the Rennaisance to mid-20th century)
Into the Mysteries (an excerpt): 2/5 (An alternate history piece based on an interesting idea but the execution is tedious)
Afterword (Loved it. I wish more writers commented on their stories)

[Andy Weston · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

This is, overall, an impressive collection of quite traditional ghost stories published by the wonderful Sarob Press. It’s the first Weighell that I have read.

The overall theme is related to it’s excellent cover art. The characters are a collection of bibliophiles, scholars, antiquaries, archaeologists, those with that enviable role of delving into the murkier regions of history, but then finding themselves infatuated or even possessed by the occult.

The first story, D’Arca, is typical, and one of the best. A British scholar working in Italy is offered the chance to examine the library of a villa where an eccentric countess recently met with her end. Instead of a conventional haunting the protagonist discovers the journal of an 18th century traveller who acquired occult knowledge.

Another good example is The Four Strengths of Shadow which is set in Venice and is a sort of literary detective story. The central premise, a dark ritual that paralleled the ceremonial marriage of Venice to the sea, is cleverly done, and there is an unpleasant twist that works very well. Venice lends itself well to weird tales, and this puts one in mind of Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in the film adaptation of Du Maurier's 'Don't Look Now', and of Aickman's splendid 'Never Visit Venice'.

Unfortunately the collection is let down by a more lengthy novella, The Tears of the Gods which drags, and does not have anything like the same impact as the shorter pieces.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is a remarkable Machenesque yet no doubt uniquely Weighellish vision, including a vast Hawksmoor-aligned Pyramid in London that is used to house the dead of many religions and with different funeral rites enacted therein, its labyrinthine floors swept by sweepers… This is a classic story that is also a mockery that I think retrocausally infects what I have already suspected about my prior reading of the rest of the whole book, sown with humour and absurdity, an insidious creeping into my review and booby-trapping it. A mockery that sometimes seems sinister, at other times amenable. The vision itself, though, is stunning – with “faith in the underlying oneness of all confusions…”

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.