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Unseen Footsteps: Ghost Stories
CONTENTS
Unseen footsteps --
The dark thing --
Mrs. Throstle --
The pit --
Pookan --
Perce and Charlie --
I'll walk beside you --
The other house --
Rain --
The wall --
Fear --
Birth of a ghost --
The other side --
The rock --
Green man --
Nemesis.
Unseen footsteps --
The dark thing --
Mrs. Throstle --
The pit --
Pookan --
Perce and Charlie --
I'll walk beside you --
The other house --
Rain --
The wall --
Fear --
Birth of a ghost --
The other side --
The rock --
Green man --
Nemesis.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1977
5 people want to read
About the author
Mary Williams
43 books2 followersMary Williams was born in Leicestershire and attended Leicester College of Art where she trained as an illustrator. During a varied and colourful life she wrote and illustrated children’s programmes for BBC Wales and worked as a newspaper columnist. She has had many occult novels published as well as her bestselling Cornish romances which she wrote under the pseudonym Marianne Harvey.
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April 12, 2022
A comp I picked up because, in trying to complete the "W" section of my short fiction "to be read" list", I had about 5 stories left that I could not track down to read (as they only appeared in this collection). And that's just too many to leave on the list. There was a cheap copy on Amazon UK, but the shipping would have amounted to a sale of $35 - which is absurd - so, using a Christmas gift card, I just bought it from a U.S. Dealer for about the same amount. And, of course, decided to read the whole thing, because why not?
Mary Williams seems to operate in at least two modes. Her Cornwall stories tend to feature well-sketched characters running into elemental, folkloric & pagan forces - which allows her to showcase her evocative abilities at describing landscapes (while often featuring underwhelming, expected climaxes). But she also tends towards a story type I'd label (in a sub-genre of the "Classic English Ghost Story") as the "Cozy Ghost Story" - which occasionally gesture towards eeriness or atmosphere - and generally winds up with an emotional ending (although not saccharine enough to be called "sentimental"). The St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers refers to her work as "undistinguished", "unoriginal" and says it is "never shocking or even surprising", which seems a tiny bit harsh. While not likely to be rediscovered as an "overlooked talent," Williams is consistently solid in what she sets out to do (which is a mix of supernatural fiction and psychological character sketches that venture into Gothic and Romance territory), and occasionally exceeds those goals.
But quite a bit of it is weakish, in all truth - or at least, as I said, is not interested in being "scary". In "Unseen Footsteps," an average librarian settles into her spinsterhood with aplomb, although she starts to find that her fuzzy slippers are not where she leaves them every night, and seem to move about on their own... This is one of those "cozy ghost stories" I mentioned earlier - with a nice bit of eeriness at the start, and some excellent character work, but perhaps not the strongest of stories. Williams really does have a great hand at rainy, dreary atmospheres, however. A couple live in a small Welsh village (she is an amiable sort, he a reclusive invalid who is never seen except at the window), and 15 years later a young man who has grown up in the town begins to wonder just what is going on with "Mrs. Throstle" and why no one has ever met her husband, until he sees him while out walking one evening... This is, much like "Unseen Footsteps", a bit of a "cozy ghost story" - with the central "mystery" easily solved before the slight ghostly climax. Ultimately, a sad if familiar tale, with some fine writing that captures small-town and familial gossip habits. In "Perce And Charlie," a divorced Spiritualist Medium agrees to allow her ex-husband to live in the basement of the house she dwells in with her current husband, who is not happy about the arrangement. Yet another "cozy ghost story", here not even worried about eeriness and more comedic in approach, this is most notable for the voice, which captures a certain type of wife's mindset. But as a story, it's a trifle. The young & writerly Jane, in "The Other House", is vacationing with her twin older siblings in a forest cottage, and finds herself lonely and ignored, until she befriends a mysterious girl named Rosalynne who lives somewhere in the forest and would like to show Jane her home... Well, this is exactly what you expect (which is one of Williams' weaknesses) with more of a focus on the romance-style psychological writing of lonely young girls. The descriptions of the water pool and what it contains are nice. Finally, in "Fear" - as a girl, Antonia has a horrifying vision when looking in the mirror of an old woman being attacked and so spends her life avoiding mirrors as sometimes (but not always) when she glances at one, the vision begins again. And so she grows into a neurotic, troubled woman... well, this is (again) something like an H.R. Wakefield tale of psychic sensitivity with a pretty obvious ending as it goes along. The only thing of note was the ambiguous detail (of "intent") in that expected ending.
In the slightly better arena: In "The Pit," a librarian moves to Cornwall and buys an abandoned, isolated manor house and grounds, which include a Victorian gazebo, open "quarry" and a decrepit, crotchety old groundskeeper who lived in a shack there since the death of the previous owner. But she also discovers that there is a malignant force in residence, a phosphorescent, Buddha-like thing that squats and watches... this story builds up some great atmosphere and tension, until it suddenly comes to an abrupt (and not very compelling) ending. The descriptions of the grounds and the malignant force (which seems to be the ghost of the previous, spinster owner - who still has the groundskeeper in her thrall) are quite good. "Green Man" has a photographer doing promotional shoots of a famous actress follow her to a remote Cornwall village where she has come for a rest. She decides to enjoy herself by participating in the annual, local Green Man parade (which involves pagan costumes, wild dancing, and a processional led to the local standing stone) but this ends disastrously. Well, this is only kinda okay - the plot is overly familiar (nothing happens that you don't expect already is going to happen) and, again, the story seems so short as to lack much of the local atmosphere (or descriptions of local people) that would have livened it up a bit, which is a shame. In "I'll Walk Beside You," Clare reminisces about Sean, a man who she once had an affair with (the revelation of which caused Sean's wife to commit suicide and sent Sean off to an asylum) because a song he used to sing to her has begun haunting her.... Well, this is a mixed bag - I liked, again, Williams' ability with bringing across the psychology of her characters (Clare never seems to take shared blame for the affair) and the oddly abrupt (and somewhat unfulfilling - while still having a few moments that work) ending is becoming a Williams staple. "Rain" has Laura, an invalid after having recently lost a baby in childbirth, contending with a spiteful, poisonous relationship with Judith (who her husband chose as her nurse because he's having an affair with her - which Laura knows) and a strange effect she perceives through the kitchen window when it rains - visions of strangeness and threat. This is an odd mixture of Williams' deep psychological/relationship writing and something akin to an H.R. Wakefield tale of psychic "sensitivity". I'm not sure it totally balances itself, but if you're willing to go along, it does build up a somewhat creepy climax (although the shifting POV is off-putting).
In "The Wall" a man scouts locations for a film in a dreary, remote, industrial British town, but finds a street that leads to a stream and a hamlet of cottages, populated with some singular people. But on returning, instead of the path he finds a brick wall, which he discovers was built after a series of disappearances decades ago. One of the things that occurs with Williams stories is that, since she switches up between "gentle" weird tales and macabre horror stories, you're not sure where any example is going. Here, following the strong set-up, is a rather wistful updating of the "taken by the fairies" folktale, like a light, British TWILIGHT ZONE story. In a very short (flash length) piece - "Birth Of A Ghost" - with Williams in full-on sentimental ghost story form, as a dying woman worries about meeting her beloved in the great beyond. Moving, and effective, but not what most genre readers are looking for. "The Rock" has a man, with his wife out at a cursed seaside rock in Cornwall, finding himself pursued after he pushes her into the drink - but that's not all of the story. Not a bad little flash piece, as an examination of "and what if you did?" type thinking, with an emphasis on the idea that there are forces that one shouldn't feed with one's worst thoughts. Still, at flash-length, a trifle.
Three stories here are solid reads - "Nemesis" has a wife discover she is the victim of a serial bigamist and exacts her revenge on her husband from beyond the grave - and further. Flash-length, but quite a nice little piece of black horror comedy. Two boys are vacationing in Cornwall when they come across the isolated "Pookan" Bay, which houses a colony of seals and an old shack in which lives an odd old lady. But one boy begins to sense that his friend has been bewitched by this woman as they return near sundown to see the seals comes ashore. An effective little folk horror tale, this is NOT a selkie story but more along the lines of a witch or enchantress piece. As always, strong atmosphere. "The Dark Thing" has Jenny (unhappy second wife of architect Julian Crane) insecure and suffering from an inferiority complex due to her smug, abrasive husband (and a childhood haunted by a "dark thing" she occasionally has visions of). But their move to Cornwall, for Julian's career, revitalizes her a bit, as the rugged and raw countryside seems to bring her in touch with something larger, and more powerful, than herself - an ancient force that she eventually feels can truly love her. This is an interesting story - not amazing (although others have spun the rather familiar plot out into whole novels), but well-written with an eye for the psychology of the emotionally (and physically) unfulfilled wife, jealous of her husband's attention to his first wife, and a good descriptive sense of the countryside. It reads a bit longer than it needs to (considering the, as I said, simple plot) but Williams really does write engaging main characters with interesting internal lives - so this is a good example of a folkloric "weird tale" that also somewhat overlaps with a Romance/Gothic genre feel.
Probably the best story here is "The Other Side". Following a nervous breakdown from the stress of a mystery ailment, Wayne Cartwright find himself obsessed with the view from his recovery bed - a steep hill and the mystery of what lies over it (which everyone tells him is just a barren moor sloping down to a desolate village). But he needs to see it for himself... This is a quite excellent story, partially due to Williams' psychological understanding of the bittersweet, dissolving relationship between the invalid and his fiancee, and partially because even though it's obvious that we should read Cartwright's obsession with "the other side" symbolically, and the final revelation is essentially what we might have expected - it's all handled so starkly and bluntly that you can't but find it engaging. Well done!
Mary Williams seems to operate in at least two modes. Her Cornwall stories tend to feature well-sketched characters running into elemental, folkloric & pagan forces - which allows her to showcase her evocative abilities at describing landscapes (while often featuring underwhelming, expected climaxes). But she also tends towards a story type I'd label (in a sub-genre of the "Classic English Ghost Story") as the "Cozy Ghost Story" - which occasionally gesture towards eeriness or atmosphere - and generally winds up with an emotional ending (although not saccharine enough to be called "sentimental"). The St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers refers to her work as "undistinguished", "unoriginal" and says it is "never shocking or even surprising", which seems a tiny bit harsh. While not likely to be rediscovered as an "overlooked talent," Williams is consistently solid in what she sets out to do (which is a mix of supernatural fiction and psychological character sketches that venture into Gothic and Romance territory), and occasionally exceeds those goals.
But quite a bit of it is weakish, in all truth - or at least, as I said, is not interested in being "scary". In "Unseen Footsteps," an average librarian settles into her spinsterhood with aplomb, although she starts to find that her fuzzy slippers are not where she leaves them every night, and seem to move about on their own... This is one of those "cozy ghost stories" I mentioned earlier - with a nice bit of eeriness at the start, and some excellent character work, but perhaps not the strongest of stories. Williams really does have a great hand at rainy, dreary atmospheres, however. A couple live in a small Welsh village (she is an amiable sort, he a reclusive invalid who is never seen except at the window), and 15 years later a young man who has grown up in the town begins to wonder just what is going on with "Mrs. Throstle" and why no one has ever met her husband, until he sees him while out walking one evening... This is, much like "Unseen Footsteps", a bit of a "cozy ghost story" - with the central "mystery" easily solved before the slight ghostly climax. Ultimately, a sad if familiar tale, with some fine writing that captures small-town and familial gossip habits. In "Perce And Charlie," a divorced Spiritualist Medium agrees to allow her ex-husband to live in the basement of the house she dwells in with her current husband, who is not happy about the arrangement. Yet another "cozy ghost story", here not even worried about eeriness and more comedic in approach, this is most notable for the voice, which captures a certain type of wife's mindset. But as a story, it's a trifle. The young & writerly Jane, in "The Other House", is vacationing with her twin older siblings in a forest cottage, and finds herself lonely and ignored, until she befriends a mysterious girl named Rosalynne who lives somewhere in the forest and would like to show Jane her home... Well, this is exactly what you expect (which is one of Williams' weaknesses) with more of a focus on the romance-style psychological writing of lonely young girls. The descriptions of the water pool and what it contains are nice. Finally, in "Fear" - as a girl, Antonia has a horrifying vision when looking in the mirror of an old woman being attacked and so spends her life avoiding mirrors as sometimes (but not always) when she glances at one, the vision begins again. And so she grows into a neurotic, troubled woman... well, this is (again) something like an H.R. Wakefield tale of psychic sensitivity with a pretty obvious ending as it goes along. The only thing of note was the ambiguous detail (of "intent") in that expected ending.
In the slightly better arena: In "The Pit," a librarian moves to Cornwall and buys an abandoned, isolated manor house and grounds, which include a Victorian gazebo, open "quarry" and a decrepit, crotchety old groundskeeper who lived in a shack there since the death of the previous owner. But she also discovers that there is a malignant force in residence, a phosphorescent, Buddha-like thing that squats and watches... this story builds up some great atmosphere and tension, until it suddenly comes to an abrupt (and not very compelling) ending. The descriptions of the grounds and the malignant force (which seems to be the ghost of the previous, spinster owner - who still has the groundskeeper in her thrall) are quite good. "Green Man" has a photographer doing promotional shoots of a famous actress follow her to a remote Cornwall village where she has come for a rest. She decides to enjoy herself by participating in the annual, local Green Man parade (which involves pagan costumes, wild dancing, and a processional led to the local standing stone) but this ends disastrously. Well, this is only kinda okay - the plot is overly familiar (nothing happens that you don't expect already is going to happen) and, again, the story seems so short as to lack much of the local atmosphere (or descriptions of local people) that would have livened it up a bit, which is a shame. In "I'll Walk Beside You," Clare reminisces about Sean, a man who she once had an affair with (the revelation of which caused Sean's wife to commit suicide and sent Sean off to an asylum) because a song he used to sing to her has begun haunting her.... Well, this is a mixed bag - I liked, again, Williams' ability with bringing across the psychology of her characters (Clare never seems to take shared blame for the affair) and the oddly abrupt (and somewhat unfulfilling - while still having a few moments that work) ending is becoming a Williams staple. "Rain" has Laura, an invalid after having recently lost a baby in childbirth, contending with a spiteful, poisonous relationship with Judith (who her husband chose as her nurse because he's having an affair with her - which Laura knows) and a strange effect she perceives through the kitchen window when it rains - visions of strangeness and threat. This is an odd mixture of Williams' deep psychological/relationship writing and something akin to an H.R. Wakefield tale of psychic "sensitivity". I'm not sure it totally balances itself, but if you're willing to go along, it does build up a somewhat creepy climax (although the shifting POV is off-putting).
In "The Wall" a man scouts locations for a film in a dreary, remote, industrial British town, but finds a street that leads to a stream and a hamlet of cottages, populated with some singular people. But on returning, instead of the path he finds a brick wall, which he discovers was built after a series of disappearances decades ago. One of the things that occurs with Williams stories is that, since she switches up between "gentle" weird tales and macabre horror stories, you're not sure where any example is going. Here, following the strong set-up, is a rather wistful updating of the "taken by the fairies" folktale, like a light, British TWILIGHT ZONE story. In a very short (flash length) piece - "Birth Of A Ghost" - with Williams in full-on sentimental ghost story form, as a dying woman worries about meeting her beloved in the great beyond. Moving, and effective, but not what most genre readers are looking for. "The Rock" has a man, with his wife out at a cursed seaside rock in Cornwall, finding himself pursued after he pushes her into the drink - but that's not all of the story. Not a bad little flash piece, as an examination of "and what if you did?" type thinking, with an emphasis on the idea that there are forces that one shouldn't feed with one's worst thoughts. Still, at flash-length, a trifle.
Three stories here are solid reads - "Nemesis" has a wife discover she is the victim of a serial bigamist and exacts her revenge on her husband from beyond the grave - and further. Flash-length, but quite a nice little piece of black horror comedy. Two boys are vacationing in Cornwall when they come across the isolated "Pookan" Bay, which houses a colony of seals and an old shack in which lives an odd old lady. But one boy begins to sense that his friend has been bewitched by this woman as they return near sundown to see the seals comes ashore. An effective little folk horror tale, this is NOT a selkie story but more along the lines of a witch or enchantress piece. As always, strong atmosphere. "The Dark Thing" has Jenny (unhappy second wife of architect Julian Crane) insecure and suffering from an inferiority complex due to her smug, abrasive husband (and a childhood haunted by a "dark thing" she occasionally has visions of). But their move to Cornwall, for Julian's career, revitalizes her a bit, as the rugged and raw countryside seems to bring her in touch with something larger, and more powerful, than herself - an ancient force that she eventually feels can truly love her. This is an interesting story - not amazing (although others have spun the rather familiar plot out into whole novels), but well-written with an eye for the psychology of the emotionally (and physically) unfulfilled wife, jealous of her husband's attention to his first wife, and a good descriptive sense of the countryside. It reads a bit longer than it needs to (considering the, as I said, simple plot) but Williams really does write engaging main characters with interesting internal lives - so this is a good example of a folkloric "weird tale" that also somewhat overlaps with a Romance/Gothic genre feel.
Probably the best story here is "The Other Side". Following a nervous breakdown from the stress of a mystery ailment, Wayne Cartwright find himself obsessed with the view from his recovery bed - a steep hill and the mystery of what lies over it (which everyone tells him is just a barren moor sloping down to a desolate village). But he needs to see it for himself... This is a quite excellent story, partially due to Williams' psychological understanding of the bittersweet, dissolving relationship between the invalid and his fiancee, and partially because even though it's obvious that we should read Cartwright's obsession with "the other side" symbolically, and the final revelation is essentially what we might have expected - it's all handled so starkly and bluntly that you can't but find it engaging. Well done!
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