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Randalls Round: Nine Nightmares by Eleanor Scott
BORN OF NIGHTMARES...
Presented within are nine examples of the finest horror and supernatural literature ever written. Inspired by a series of dreams and nightmares, Helen Leys, writing under the pseudonym Eleanor Scott, crafted these stories of suspense and terror, atmosphere and dread, in 1929 - and never again wrote in this genre; Randalls Round has not been available in the UK since that year.
Chilling tales of suspense, antiquity and sacrifice; spine-tingling stories of possession, ancestry, and evil. This collection of deliciously crafted, ghoulish tales are some of the most sought-after by aficionados of the genre and include the superlative 'Celui-la', 'At Simmel Acres Farm' and 'The Twelve Apostles'. Over 80 years have passed since their original publication and the passage of time has left their thrall undiminished; these historic, macabre tales unsettle the modern reader just as effectively as their predecessors.
""An excellent Collection and one that is very welcome back into print."" - Black Static
"5 Stars - "Delightful English ghost stories""
"5 Stars - "undeservedly obscure""
"4 Stars - "A good, solid collection of tales for the ghost story connoisseur.""
"4 Stars - "A tentacle, both slimy and hairy""
OTHER RARE, CLASSIC HORROR LITERATURE FROM OLEANDER TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF GRANTA AND GRAMARYE by Ingulphus (Cut & Paste 9780906672860 to search)
THE HOLE OF THE PIT by Adrian Ross (Cut & Paste 978-0900891861 to search)
STONEGROUND GHOST TALES by EG Swain (Cut & Paste 9780906672433 to search)
Presented within are nine examples of the finest horror and supernatural literature ever written. Inspired by a series of dreams and nightmares, Helen Leys, writing under the pseudonym Eleanor Scott, crafted these stories of suspense and terror, atmosphere and dread, in 1929 - and never again wrote in this genre; Randalls Round has not been available in the UK since that year.
Chilling tales of suspense, antiquity and sacrifice; spine-tingling stories of possession, ancestry, and evil. This collection of deliciously crafted, ghoulish tales are some of the most sought-after by aficionados of the genre and include the superlative 'Celui-la', 'At Simmel Acres Farm' and 'The Twelve Apostles'. Over 80 years have passed since their original publication and the passage of time has left their thrall undiminished; these historic, macabre tales unsettle the modern reader just as effectively as their predecessors.
""An excellent Collection and one that is very welcome back into print."" - Black Static
"5 Stars - "Delightful English ghost stories""
"5 Stars - "undeservedly obscure""
"4 Stars - "A good, solid collection of tales for the ghost story connoisseur.""
"4 Stars - "A tentacle, both slimy and hairy""
OTHER RARE, CLASSIC HORROR LITERATURE FROM OLEANDER TEDIOUS BRIEF TALES OF GRANTA AND GRAMARYE by Ingulphus (Cut & Paste 9780906672860 to search)
THE HOLE OF THE PIT by Adrian Ross (Cut & Paste 978-0900891861 to search)
STONEGROUND GHOST TALES by EG Swain (Cut & Paste 9780906672433 to search)
233 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1929
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1144 people want to read
About the author
Eleanor Scott
42 books11 followersEleanor Scott (1892~1965) was born Helen Madeline Leys in Middlesex, the daughter of John Kirkwood Leys, barrister and novelist. Her early education was provided solely by her mother, Ellen, who prepared both of her daughters for going on to Oxford. After the Great War, Helen Leys became a teacher, later rising to the position of Principal of an Oxford teacher training college. Her first short story to appear in print was ‘The Room’, which appeared in The Cornhill Magazine in October 1923, credited to H. M. Leys. In 1928, the first work bearing the pen name Eleanor Scott appeared: the controversial novel War Among Ladies, which was published by Ernest Benn... Her final novel, Puss in the Corner... was published in November 1934.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
October 24, 2021
As a fan of the English ghost story, I am pleased with any book which makes me think of M.R. James without disappointing me. Such a book is Eleanor Scott’s Randalls Round (1929). True, the conclusions are more open-ended than the Master’s, to the point where they occasionally diminish the overall effect: nevertheless, each of Scott’s stories not only fills the reader with great anxiety followed by pleasure, but manages to haunt him for a couple of hours after. I don’t think you should demand much more from a ghost story than this.
Helen Leys (Eleanor Scott was a pen name) was born in Middlesex in 1892, Her father John Kirkwood Leys was a barrister turned popular novelist, author—among other things—of The Black Terror, a Romance of Russia (1899). After his sudden death his widow Ellen kept the family afloat by writing short fiction for the magazines, and in addition home-schooled her two daughters so ably that both eventually went to Oxford. Helen Leys eventually became an educator, working most of her life as an instructor and administrator at a teacher’s training college in Oxfordshire, and her first novel—published under the nom de plume Eleanor Scott (never revealed in her lifetime)—was a controversial book exposing the hostile atmosphere in a girls’ high school, War Among the Ladies (1928). (Vita Sackville-West, in her review, declared Miss Scott to be “a very able writer”.) Other novels followed in her brief seven year writing career, but none of them was particularly successful. Only her nonfiction works, two collections of brief biographies for young ladies—Adventuous Women (1933) and Heroic Women (1939)—became widely popular.
Randalls Round, her second book, is an anomaly, for after this slim collection of nine pieces, she never published another ghost story. Still, these few deserve to stand on a shelf near the best in the English ghost story tradition. My favorites are the title story (male Oxford undergrad goes to the Cotswolds to witness an ancient folk dance), “The Room” (Six men, each a different type, react variously to their individual nights in a haunted room), “Simnel Acres Farm” (male Oxford undergrad in the Cotswolds recuperating from a Rugger injury becomes fascinated with an ancient garden of bad reputation), and “The Old Lady” (female Oxford undergrad, vacationing at the Bedfordshire home of a friend, is disturbed by the evil presence of her friend’s guardian, a very tiny, blind old lady), but the five other stories are good too, particularly the two most obviously influenced by M.R, James, “The Twelve Apostles” (echoes of James’ “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas”) and “Celui-la” (clearly derived from “Whistle and I’ll Come to You My Lad”).
This is an entertaining book, particularly recommended to fans of the classic English ghost story.
November 14, 2018
That was fun. Although I noticed a few inconsistencies storywise on some of these little tales, overall I couldn't put this book down. I'll write more (yeah, sure you will) soon about it. I pretty much loved each and every story here. Recommended for those who enjoy their supernatural reading a bit on the older side (1929).
July 1, 2021
Randalls Round has generally been a collection cited semi-often in the periphery of my reading habits and I finally decided to pick it up and read it fully. It is a quite good collection and well-recommended to those who read the sort of ghost stories I do (see my past reviews for a sampling of what I mean).
It is obvious, and correct, to suggest this is a Jamesian collection of short stories. Many of the elements border upon near plagiarism of M.R. James' more recognizable tales: a relic found upon a beach while vacationing, a person digging in a mound and experiencing a great horror, a Biblical puzzle that could lead to treasure but mostly terror, children being adopted by a benefactor with sinister intentions. It feels, as it does in the case of several H.R. Wakefield stories, that Scott (real name: H. M. Leys) was someone with a deep appreciation of James but ultimately a different sort of way of telling tales. With slug-like beings inhabiting old houses, you could also toss an appreciation of E.F. Benson into the mix. As well as others...is that a touch of Machen? Chambers? Even maybe a touch of Lovecraft?
It would be incorrect to describe this book as merely pastiche, though. Scott has a number of ideas and tricks that give this collection an overall fresh feel. By having bits of James with bits of other things, you see a certain proto-weird in her plots. In "Oh Whistle," James was unearthing the spectre of the Knights Templar. In "Celui-là", Scott invokes an ancient being that inhabits a certain place and is brought up in a certain way. Several touch upon folk horror as well. "The Cure" fits into this mold, as well as the title story, with rural customs being haunted by repeating evils and tying into some elder, maybe eldritch, principle: every day people playing out a pattern to an unknown god. So while a story like "The Twelve Apostles" might be little more than a James/Benson repeat, however well-crafted, you also get stuff like "At Simnel Acre Farms" that transforms the concept of a haunting to something inexplicable, a full-on brush of the Other that predicts the sort of story that is usually called Aickman-esque, nowadays.
In this light, you also have stories like "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?," that have no precise definition and cannot be read in the classic ghost story sense. "Come Back" one-ups the Aickman-esque sense by giving us a number of moments that might be thought of in the toolbox of Ramsey Campbell: distorted faces turning out to be your own reflection, strange sounds that are just every day things heard by a disturbed ear. That it comes across as mocking the feminist movement and that its ending is trite is a complication, sure, but it shows (as do the other stories in the latter half of this collection) a movement away from plot as the primary vehicle of horror and instead a more aesthetic approach in which stories purposefully fail to end entirely. While the reader can easily fill in the gaps of plot in a story like "The Tree," there is the sense that the reader can never fully understand the mechanism behind the plot and instead must experience it mostly as a short stint of despair.
"The Room," a story that was anthologized before any of the others and was an early stand-out though now feels perhaps most dated, is an oddity that exemplifies this concept beautifully. It is basically a morality play about the way we judge others while our sins grow large. Its genius, what genius it has under its sappy, conservative trappings, though, is how little the reader is ever let into the behind-the-scenes. There is a room, and men sleep in it and have terrible experiences. It is easy to read it as surface-level story as kind of a Golden Rule parable of little substance and then wholy fail to notice that Scott sneaks the Unknown right past your nose.
Scott does not delve exactly into nastiness, but does broach upon a slightly more visceral horror than James would have used. Her ghosts, when they are ghosts and not some...Thing...out of history with no precise name nor explanation, are not always treated gently. "Randalls Round," the story, might touch upon well-worn tropes such as strange little towns and folk dancing and things-in-burial-mounds, but it does so with a bit of extra-crunch without spoiling the dish by explaining away any of the unknowable things. The horror remains mostly sounds and a dark shape barely witnessed except for its bloody aftermath. While this mixture of moods does somewhat lose Scott's stories in the middle-ground between Jamesian and Lovecraftian horrors, it should be celebrated as one that touched upon the way horror was changing and took advantage of it. It shows the leap from 1920s horror to 1950s horror was not some sudden insight of a few (generally white, generally male) writers but instead was a movement being worked upon by diverse hands.
As said, it is a good collection (maybe not great in that it seems more like an introduction to further greatness had she continued writing in this vein) and it is recommended. One of my favorites, despite some of its flaws.
It is obvious, and correct, to suggest this is a Jamesian collection of short stories. Many of the elements border upon near plagiarism of M.R. James' more recognizable tales: a relic found upon a beach while vacationing, a person digging in a mound and experiencing a great horror, a Biblical puzzle that could lead to treasure but mostly terror, children being adopted by a benefactor with sinister intentions. It feels, as it does in the case of several H.R. Wakefield stories, that Scott (real name: H. M. Leys) was someone with a deep appreciation of James but ultimately a different sort of way of telling tales. With slug-like beings inhabiting old houses, you could also toss an appreciation of E.F. Benson into the mix. As well as others...is that a touch of Machen? Chambers? Even maybe a touch of Lovecraft?
It would be incorrect to describe this book as merely pastiche, though. Scott has a number of ideas and tricks that give this collection an overall fresh feel. By having bits of James with bits of other things, you see a certain proto-weird in her plots. In "Oh Whistle," James was unearthing the spectre of the Knights Templar. In "Celui-là", Scott invokes an ancient being that inhabits a certain place and is brought up in a certain way. Several touch upon folk horror as well. "The Cure" fits into this mold, as well as the title story, with rural customs being haunted by repeating evils and tying into some elder, maybe eldritch, principle: every day people playing out a pattern to an unknown god. So while a story like "The Twelve Apostles" might be little more than a James/Benson repeat, however well-crafted, you also get stuff like "At Simnel Acre Farms" that transforms the concept of a haunting to something inexplicable, a full-on brush of the Other that predicts the sort of story that is usually called Aickman-esque, nowadays.
In this light, you also have stories like "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?," that have no precise definition and cannot be read in the classic ghost story sense. "Come Back" one-ups the Aickman-esque sense by giving us a number of moments that might be thought of in the toolbox of Ramsey Campbell: distorted faces turning out to be your own reflection, strange sounds that are just every day things heard by a disturbed ear. That it comes across as mocking the feminist movement and that its ending is trite is a complication, sure, but it shows (as do the other stories in the latter half of this collection) a movement away from plot as the primary vehicle of horror and instead a more aesthetic approach in which stories purposefully fail to end entirely. While the reader can easily fill in the gaps of plot in a story like "The Tree," there is the sense that the reader can never fully understand the mechanism behind the plot and instead must experience it mostly as a short stint of despair.
"The Room," a story that was anthologized before any of the others and was an early stand-out though now feels perhaps most dated, is an oddity that exemplifies this concept beautifully. It is basically a morality play about the way we judge others while our sins grow large. Its genius, what genius it has under its sappy, conservative trappings, though, is how little the reader is ever let into the behind-the-scenes. There is a room, and men sleep in it and have terrible experiences. It is easy to read it as surface-level story as kind of a Golden Rule parable of little substance and then wholy fail to notice that Scott sneaks the Unknown right past your nose.
Scott does not delve exactly into nastiness, but does broach upon a slightly more visceral horror than James would have used. Her ghosts, when they are ghosts and not some...Thing...out of history with no precise name nor explanation, are not always treated gently. "Randalls Round," the story, might touch upon well-worn tropes such as strange little towns and folk dancing and things-in-burial-mounds, but it does so with a bit of extra-crunch without spoiling the dish by explaining away any of the unknowable things. The horror remains mostly sounds and a dark shape barely witnessed except for its bloody aftermath. While this mixture of moods does somewhat lose Scott's stories in the middle-ground between Jamesian and Lovecraftian horrors, it should be celebrated as one that touched upon the way horror was changing and took advantage of it. It shows the leap from 1920s horror to 1950s horror was not some sudden insight of a few (generally white, generally male) writers but instead was a movement being worked upon by diverse hands.
As said, it is a good collection (maybe not great in that it seems more like an introduction to further greatness had she continued writing in this vein) and it is recommended. One of my favorites, despite some of its flaws.
November 9, 2020
Eleanor Scott’s atmospheric, supernatural tales were first published in the 1920s and it was rapidly clear from reading them that she was heavily influenced by writers like M. R. James. Not a problem for me because I love James’s work and was pleased to find, as in James, that a number of Scott’s stories revolve around sinister events sparked by chance encounters with arcane artefacts or obscure manuscripts. So, even though Scott’s narratives didn’t have the impact of James’s best stories, there was more than enough to entertain and even amuse me here. I particularly enjoyed the depiction of her central characters who reminded me of the kind of hapless men who people the novels of P. G. Wodehouse or Jerome K. Jerome, an array of over-confident Oxford scholars, mild-mannered vicars, unsuspecting travellers, who stray into perilous situations, finding themselves in outwardly-tranquil rural villages unexpectedly steeped in pagan rituals dangerous to outsiders, haunted houses and other eerie settings. Most of the pieces that make up this collection were originally published individually in contemporary papers and magazines, this gives Randalls Round a slightly awkward, unbalanced feel, where the unplanned juxtaposition of some pieces highlights repeating and overlapping themes or patterns - which made me think this would probably work better dipped into rather than read through from cover to cover. But despite some shortcomings this is still an accessible, enjoyable slice of the uncanny with a dash of suitably creepy folk horror.
August 20, 2012
Eleanor Scott’s name is not very frequently mentioned among the practitioners of supernatural fiction. All her stories in this genre had been compiled in this single collection, and for this reason she seems to have been consigned to literary oblivion once the print run had exhausted, much like Amyas Northcote (the author of a single collection of very superior ghost stories). Thanks to Ash Tree Press, now that long-neglected collection is available to all who have a Kindle/PC-with-Kindle.
The contents of this book are:
• Introduction by Richard Dalby
• Foreword: the author describes the origins of the stories (in her dreams), and hopes that they would be able to convey some of the terror that she had experienced in those dreams.
1. Randalls Round
2. The Twelve Apostles
3. Celui-la
4. The Room
5. The Cure
6. The Tree
7. At Simnel Acres farm
8. ‘Will Ye No’ Come Back Again?’
9. The Old Lady
It really astonished me to find that these stories cover almost all the sub-genres that are traditionally associated within the classic supernatural tradition (they truly cover the whole gamut: Jamesian, gently emotional a-la-A.M. Burrage, Wakefield-style, and some of the modern practitioners like C.E. Ward & Peter Bell).
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
The contents of this book are:
• Introduction by Richard Dalby
• Foreword: the author describes the origins of the stories (in her dreams), and hopes that they would be able to convey some of the terror that she had experienced in those dreams.
1. Randalls Round
2. The Twelve Apostles
3. Celui-la
4. The Room
5. The Cure
6. The Tree
7. At Simnel Acres farm
8. ‘Will Ye No’ Come Back Again?’
9. The Old Lady
It really astonished me to find that these stories cover almost all the sub-genres that are traditionally associated within the classic supernatural tradition (they truly cover the whole gamut: Jamesian, gently emotional a-la-A.M. Burrage, Wakefield-style, and some of the modern practitioners like C.E. Ward & Peter Bell).
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
January 9, 2022
Finished this excellent collection of folk horror tales in the vein of M.R. James et al last night.
Took a gamble on this as I had never heard of the author or read anything by her previously. The stories are incredibly readable and compelling, whilst maybe not the most original thematically - they are greatly enjoyable!
This collection also includes two short tales believed to be written by Scott under an alternate pseudonym, which were actually some of my favourite tales in the book. Would highly recommend.
Took a gamble on this as I had never heard of the author or read anything by her previously. The stories are incredibly readable and compelling, whilst maybe not the most original thematically - they are greatly enjoyable!
This collection also includes two short tales believed to be written by Scott under an alternate pseudonym, which were actually some of my favourite tales in the book. Would highly recommend.
June 8, 2023
This is a collection of 11 beautifully written strange and occult horror stories. Atmospheric and creepy.
1. Randalls Round [4/5] - A tourist blunders on a horrifying folk custom.
2. The Twelve Apostles [4/5] - An American wants to buy a Manor house in the UK and specifies that it must have a ghost in residence: "a real good Old English slap-up ghost". Spooky atmosphere, a treasure hunt of sorts and other things.
3. Celui-La [3.5/5 ] - Doctor prescribes some rest and relaxation for an overworked patient, in an isolated spot. Of course, the visitor ignores the advice of the local parish priest not to wander on the beach at night... and things get interesting.
4. The Room [4/5] - A group of men, alternately, spend the night in a haunted room - with devastating, and unexpected, results.
5. The Cure [3/5] - Freda convinces Spud to help cure her brother of his nervous agitation... This is a warning to everyone who ever thought messing around with archaic tombs was a good idea. This one dithered a bit getting to the problem.
6. The Tree [4/5] - An artists has a strange and very personal attraction to an Ash Tree. Short with a nice twist in the end.
7. At Simmel Acres Farm [3.5/5 ] - A particular spot on a farm has an unpleasant reputation... and a statue. This story didn't have a definitive ending, which is frustrating!
8. "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?" [4/5] - A charming ghost story with an unexpected ending.
9. The Old Lady [4/5] - A dare has unexpected and horrifying consequences.
Two stories by N. Dennet [N. Dennet was also (possibly) a pseudonym for Helen Leys/Eleanor Scott]
10. Unburied Bane [4/5] - A terrifying story about a haunted farm and a witch.
11. The Menhir [4/5] - A terrifying tale of a village haunted by a Menhir and the curate who got entangled with it.
1. Randalls Round [4/5] - A tourist blunders on a horrifying folk custom.
2. The Twelve Apostles [4/5] - An American wants to buy a Manor house in the UK and specifies that it must have a ghost in residence: "a real good Old English slap-up ghost". Spooky atmosphere, a treasure hunt of sorts and other things.
3. Celui-La [3.5/5 ] - Doctor prescribes some rest and relaxation for an overworked patient, in an isolated spot. Of course, the visitor ignores the advice of the local parish priest not to wander on the beach at night... and things get interesting.
4. The Room [4/5] - A group of men, alternately, spend the night in a haunted room - with devastating, and unexpected, results.
5. The Cure [3/5] - Freda convinces Spud to help cure her brother of his nervous agitation... This is a warning to everyone who ever thought messing around with archaic tombs was a good idea. This one dithered a bit getting to the problem.
6. The Tree [4/5] - An artists has a strange and very personal attraction to an Ash Tree. Short with a nice twist in the end.
7. At Simmel Acres Farm [3.5/5 ] - A particular spot on a farm has an unpleasant reputation... and a statue. This story didn't have a definitive ending, which is frustrating!
8. "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?" [4/5] - A charming ghost story with an unexpected ending.
9. The Old Lady [4/5] - A dare has unexpected and horrifying consequences.
Two stories by N. Dennet [N. Dennet was also (possibly) a pseudonym for Helen Leys/Eleanor Scott]
10. Unburied Bane [4/5] - A terrifying story about a haunted farm and a witch.
11. The Menhir [4/5] - A terrifying tale of a village haunted by a Menhir and the curate who got entangled with it.
Currently reading
February 15, 2026Folk horror? Devil worship? I am in!
(1) " The family didn't consider it healthy, sir."
Oh yes bring it on!
(2) OMG don't pick things up from the beach. Just don't.😲
(3) The Room: A bunch of guy going into a haunted room one by one at night to meet with ghost or what lot, we all how it will go.😄
(3) The Cure: this story and its setting feels utterly modern to me
(1) " The family didn't consider it healthy, sir."
Oh yes bring it on!
(2) OMG don't pick things up from the beach. Just don't.😲
(3) The Room: A bunch of guy going into a haunted room one by one at night to meet with ghost or what lot, we all how it will go.😄
(3) The Cure: this story and its setting feels utterly modern to me
March 20, 2024
What a tremendous collection of comfy late 19th/early 20thC -style English supernatural stories! One with a definite folk- horror element! These are reminiscent of MR James' style, but not quite, and contrarily, most are left with open endings. That I do find a bit frustrating tbh! Great fun anyway, with just a couple of mediocre ones in the middle.
My faves were The Old Lady' (5/5), 'Randalls Round' (4/5), 'The Twelve Apostles' (4/5)
My faves were The Old Lady' (5/5), 'Randalls Round' (4/5), 'The Twelve Apostles' (4/5)
January 7, 2022
Helen Magdalen Leys (1892 – 1965), an educator who spent most of her life working at a teacher’s training college in Oxfordshire. In 1928 she published her first novel, War Among Ladies, a somewhat controversial novel critiquing the English girls’ high school system. It was, perhaps, the subject-matter and her position as a teacher that led her to adopt the pseudonym Eleanor Scott. She stuck to it for Randalls Round, her second book, a collection of weird tales which came out in 1929 (although this includes the story The Room which had already been previously published by Cornhill Magazine under Leys’ own name). As Scott she also published other novels and two collective biographies for children – Adventurous Women (1933) and Heroic Women (1939). She is also likely the author of two detective novels written by a certain “P.R. Shore”.
Randalls Round was published during what can be considered the heyday of the classic English supernatural tale, at a time when the likes of M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, May Sinclair, E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare were still active. In the light of this fierce competition, it might not be surprising that Scott’s stories, which sometimes come across as rather derivative, failed to make an impact. This is a pity because, even when Scott appears to be following other models, her work is not simply good, but genuinely creepy. Randalls Round has been reissued by a number of small presses in the past years, but is now available as part of British Library’s brilliant Tales of the Weird series, which will surely give Scott’s stories the wider exposure they deserve.
In her foreword, Scott claims that the nine pieces in the collection “had their origin in dreams”, hence why this new edition is subtitled Nine Nightmares. Well, if that was really the case, Scott must have had some pretty restless nights! Whatever the inspiration, however, much authorial work has gone into crafting the “detached incidents and scenes” typical of dreams into taut little chillers.
One of the highlights is the title-piece, a story which, like others in the book, would today be clearly shelved under what is now recognised as the distinct sub-genre of folk horror. A male undergraduate visits the Cotswolds village of Randalls and witnesses what he thinks is a quaint folk dance in the market square. Exploring further, he discovers that the origins of this dance lay in a ceremony, probably sacrificial, which used to be performed around a local long barrow known as Randalls Bank. Against express advice, he decides to explore the barrow on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, never a great idea if you’re the protagonist of a folk horror tale. Similar echoes of Machen haunt Simnel Acres Farm, which also features an Oxford undergraduate who falls prey to ancient influences. The Old Lady also features Oxford undergrads, although girls in this case, and a tale of vampirism and blood sacrifice which recalls Seaton’s Aunt by de la Mare and, possibly, Braddon’s Good Lady Ducayne.
Two other strong stories have a clear M.R. James feel to them. In The Twelve Apostles, a wealthy American who buys an allegedly haunted English manor, seeks a missing treasure linked to the private Catholic chaplain (and supposed alchemist) of the Squire of the Manor in Elizabethan times. In Celui-là the protagonist Maddox spends some days of rest on the Breton coast, staying with the local curate. Despite the curate’s warnings, he becomes uncommonly obsessed with a strange figure he spots during an evening walk and a strange box containing a parchment with a strange invocation written on it. In this story and The Room, about a group of six friends who dare each other to stay the night in a haunted chamber, I distinctly felt a philo-Catholic sensibility. As is my habit, I read Aaron Worth’s informative introduction to the volume after I finished the rest of the book, and was not at all surprised to learn of Scott’s Catholicism and her studies of Medieval mystery plays, both of which could be considered influences which added colour to her stories.
The volume includes two stories by one “N. Dennett” which are now generally attributed to Leys/Scott. Unburied Bane features a decrepit cottage containing a witch’s skull whereas The Menhir takes us back to full-on folk horror territory. I guess there are enough similarities with the rest of the stories to justify the attribution but, whatever their authorship, I felt that these two stories were more over the top than the rest of the volume and, consequently, less to my liking.
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Randalls Round was published during what can be considered the heyday of the classic English supernatural tale, at a time when the likes of M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, May Sinclair, E.F. Benson and Walter de la Mare were still active. In the light of this fierce competition, it might not be surprising that Scott’s stories, which sometimes come across as rather derivative, failed to make an impact. This is a pity because, even when Scott appears to be following other models, her work is not simply good, but genuinely creepy. Randalls Round has been reissued by a number of small presses in the past years, but is now available as part of British Library’s brilliant Tales of the Weird series, which will surely give Scott’s stories the wider exposure they deserve.
In her foreword, Scott claims that the nine pieces in the collection “had their origin in dreams”, hence why this new edition is subtitled Nine Nightmares. Well, if that was really the case, Scott must have had some pretty restless nights! Whatever the inspiration, however, much authorial work has gone into crafting the “detached incidents and scenes” typical of dreams into taut little chillers.
One of the highlights is the title-piece, a story which, like others in the book, would today be clearly shelved under what is now recognised as the distinct sub-genre of folk horror. A male undergraduate visits the Cotswolds village of Randalls and witnesses what he thinks is a quaint folk dance in the market square. Exploring further, he discovers that the origins of this dance lay in a ceremony, probably sacrificial, which used to be performed around a local long barrow known as Randalls Bank. Against express advice, he decides to explore the barrow on the night of All Hallows’ Eve, never a great idea if you’re the protagonist of a folk horror tale. Similar echoes of Machen haunt Simnel Acres Farm, which also features an Oxford undergraduate who falls prey to ancient influences. The Old Lady also features Oxford undergrads, although girls in this case, and a tale of vampirism and blood sacrifice which recalls Seaton’s Aunt by de la Mare and, possibly, Braddon’s Good Lady Ducayne.
Two other strong stories have a clear M.R. James feel to them. In The Twelve Apostles, a wealthy American who buys an allegedly haunted English manor, seeks a missing treasure linked to the private Catholic chaplain (and supposed alchemist) of the Squire of the Manor in Elizabethan times. In Celui-là the protagonist Maddox spends some days of rest on the Breton coast, staying with the local curate. Despite the curate’s warnings, he becomes uncommonly obsessed with a strange figure he spots during an evening walk and a strange box containing a parchment with a strange invocation written on it. In this story and The Room, about a group of six friends who dare each other to stay the night in a haunted chamber, I distinctly felt a philo-Catholic sensibility. As is my habit, I read Aaron Worth’s informative introduction to the volume after I finished the rest of the book, and was not at all surprised to learn of Scott’s Catholicism and her studies of Medieval mystery plays, both of which could be considered influences which added colour to her stories.
The volume includes two stories by one “N. Dennett” which are now generally attributed to Leys/Scott. Unburied Bane features a decrepit cottage containing a witch’s skull whereas The Menhir takes us back to full-on folk horror territory. I guess there are enough similarities with the rest of the stories to justify the attribution but, whatever their authorship, I felt that these two stories were more over the top than the rest of the volume and, consequently, less to my liking.
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January 31, 2019
A very solid collection of old-fashioned but entertaining British ghost and horror tales. The influence of M.R. James is quite clear in a number of the stories but the focus on independent young women in others is unusual and very welcome. Highly recommended to anyone who likes a good tale featuring picturesque countryside, quaint customs, ancestral evil, and restless spirits.
January 26, 2018
Eleanor Scott (1892~1965) was born Helen Madeline Leys in Middlesex, the daughter of John Kirkwood Leys, barrister and novelist. Her early education was provided solely by her mother, Ellen, who prepared both of her daughters for going on to Oxford. After the Great War, Helen Leys became a teacher, later rising to the position of Principal of an Oxford teacher training college. Her first short story to appear in print was ‘The Room’, which appeared in The Cornhill Magazine in October 1923, credited to H. M. Leys. In 1928, the first work bearing the pen name Eleanor Scott appeared: the controversial novel War Among Ladies, which was published by Ernest Benn. None of Leys' books seem to have done terribly well. Her final novel, Puss in the Corner, which was published in November 1934, received favourable reviews, but faded into obscurity like her previous books. I believe that Leys also used the pseudonym Peter Redcliffe Shore, under which she wrote two mystery novels, both published by Methuen & Co., The Bolt (1929), and The Death Film (1932).
Randalls Round was first published in the autumn of 1929 by Ernest Benn, bound in black cloth with gilt lettering and priced at 7/6. A cheaper edition was published in 1931, as part of 'Benn's 3/6 Library', in red cloth with black lettering. They are both so hard to find that I've never seen a copy of either up for sale. Ash-Tree Press issued a limited edition in 1996, and that's the one I've read. According to the author's foreword, all of the stories in the collection were inspired by dreams: 'It may be that simply because these things were so terrifying I have failed to convey the horror I felt. I do not know. But I hope that some readers will at least experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.' Well, I received a fair bit more than an agreeable shudder when reading these tales, I can tell you!
The stories included in this collection are: ‘Randalls Round’, 'The Twelve Apostles', 'Celui-là', 'The Room', 'The Cure', 'The Tree', 'At Simmel Acres Farm', 'Will Ye No' Come Back Again?', 'The Old Lady'.
All of the tales are good and creepy, and this is one of my favourite collections so I like all of them, but I feel that three of the stories really do stand out. The first is ‘Randalls Round’, in which a fellow called Heyling pays a visit to Randalls, a small village in the Cotswolds. On his first night there, he hears children singing a folk song outside the inn where he is staying, then a little later he hears the same tune being played on a flute as people congregate in the market square. In the centre of the square stands a pole, with the shaggy hide of some animal thrown over it, with a heavy head and short horns. Men begin to dance, then they form a ring facing outwards and begin to move widdershins. It turns out that the dance used to be performed around Randalls Bank, a local tumulus formed by a long barrow, the dance’s origin being almost certainly sacrificial. Heyling tries to get permission to explore the Bank, but the owner will not give it. So he decides to dig there without permission... after dark, on All Hallows’ Eve.
Click here to read the rest of the review...
Randalls Round was first published in the autumn of 1929 by Ernest Benn, bound in black cloth with gilt lettering and priced at 7/6. A cheaper edition was published in 1931, as part of 'Benn's 3/6 Library', in red cloth with black lettering. They are both so hard to find that I've never seen a copy of either up for sale. Ash-Tree Press issued a limited edition in 1996, and that's the one I've read. According to the author's foreword, all of the stories in the collection were inspired by dreams: 'It may be that simply because these things were so terrifying I have failed to convey the horror I felt. I do not know. But I hope that some readers will at least experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.' Well, I received a fair bit more than an agreeable shudder when reading these tales, I can tell you!
The stories included in this collection are: ‘Randalls Round’, 'The Twelve Apostles', 'Celui-là', 'The Room', 'The Cure', 'The Tree', 'At Simmel Acres Farm', 'Will Ye No' Come Back Again?', 'The Old Lady'.
All of the tales are good and creepy, and this is one of my favourite collections so I like all of them, but I feel that three of the stories really do stand out. The first is ‘Randalls Round’, in which a fellow called Heyling pays a visit to Randalls, a small village in the Cotswolds. On his first night there, he hears children singing a folk song outside the inn where he is staying, then a little later he hears the same tune being played on a flute as people congregate in the market square. In the centre of the square stands a pole, with the shaggy hide of some animal thrown over it, with a heavy head and short horns. Men begin to dance, then they form a ring facing outwards and begin to move widdershins. It turns out that the dance used to be performed around Randalls Bank, a local tumulus formed by a long barrow, the dance’s origin being almost certainly sacrificial. Heyling tries to get permission to explore the Bank, but the owner will not give it. So he decides to dig there without permission... after dark, on All Hallows’ Eve.
Click here to read the rest of the review...
November 18, 2021
Bedtime reading…
First published in 1929, this was Eleanor Scott’s only collection of weird stories although she wrote several books in other genres. This edition includes all nine of the stories in the original collection, plus two written by “N. Dennett”, now believed to have been a pseudonym of Eleanor Scott, which was itself a pseudonym, the author’s real name being Helen Leys. The introduction is by Aaron Worth, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Boston University, who takes a large part of the credit for inspiring my interest in weird fiction as editor of various collections I’ve read previously, so I’m always pleased to see his name pop up.
In his introduction, Worth tells us that the collection didn’t sell well on its original publication, which he suggests was more to do with poor marketing than the quality of the work. While he points out that many of the stories and the general style are rather derivative of other writers of the period, especially MR James, he suggests that Scott took the weird genre in her own direction towards what would later, quite recently in fact, come to be called “folk horror”. He also says that despite the somewhat derivative quality of some of the stories she makes them her own, and describes them as “intrinsically excellent”.
Even with my limited knowledge of weird and horror fiction, I did indeed find that many of the stories felt quite derivative, not just of James but especially of Arthur Machen, and being forced into this comparison didn’t work to Scott’s benefit, since I feel Machen is significantly better at “folk horror”, even if it didn’t exist as a genre when he was writing. On reading over my notes on each story it appears I also had some issues with her endings, being annoyed sometimes by them being left too ambiguous to be satisfying, and then with other stories lamenting that the ending was too obvious, or too neat, or too well explained. Maybe I was just in a picky, Goldilocks kind of mood! There was only one story where I felt the ending had been exactly the bowl of porridge I’d been looking for.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I enjoyed the collection overall, and there were a few stories that I thought were excellent. Scott was very good at creating an atmosphere of unease and some parts of the stories are genuinely scary, with a nightmarish quality to them. In fact, Scott claimed the stories were based on her own nightmares (although Worth amused me by commenting that “one wonders how much these were influenced by her bedtime reading”). I gave three of the stories 5 stars, one 3 stars, and all the rest either 4 or 4½, so a consistently high standard throughout with no real failures. A good collection rather than a great one for me, but an interesting addition to the BL’s always intriguing Tales of the Weird series.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
First published in 1929, this was Eleanor Scott’s only collection of weird stories although she wrote several books in other genres. This edition includes all nine of the stories in the original collection, plus two written by “N. Dennett”, now believed to have been a pseudonym of Eleanor Scott, which was itself a pseudonym, the author’s real name being Helen Leys. The introduction is by Aaron Worth, Associate Professor of Rhetoric at Boston University, who takes a large part of the credit for inspiring my interest in weird fiction as editor of various collections I’ve read previously, so I’m always pleased to see his name pop up.
In his introduction, Worth tells us that the collection didn’t sell well on its original publication, which he suggests was more to do with poor marketing than the quality of the work. While he points out that many of the stories and the general style are rather derivative of other writers of the period, especially MR James, he suggests that Scott took the weird genre in her own direction towards what would later, quite recently in fact, come to be called “folk horror”. He also says that despite the somewhat derivative quality of some of the stories she makes them her own, and describes them as “intrinsically excellent”.
Even with my limited knowledge of weird and horror fiction, I did indeed find that many of the stories felt quite derivative, not just of James but especially of Arthur Machen, and being forced into this comparison didn’t work to Scott’s benefit, since I feel Machen is significantly better at “folk horror”, even if it didn’t exist as a genre when he was writing. On reading over my notes on each story it appears I also had some issues with her endings, being annoyed sometimes by them being left too ambiguous to be satisfying, and then with other stories lamenting that the ending was too obvious, or too neat, or too well explained. Maybe I was just in a picky, Goldilocks kind of mood! There was only one story where I felt the ending had been exactly the bowl of porridge I’d been looking for.
These criticisms notwithstanding, I enjoyed the collection overall, and there were a few stories that I thought were excellent. Scott was very good at creating an atmosphere of unease and some parts of the stories are genuinely scary, with a nightmarish quality to them. In fact, Scott claimed the stories were based on her own nightmares (although Worth amused me by commenting that “one wonders how much these were influenced by her bedtime reading”). I gave three of the stories 5 stars, one 3 stars, and all the rest either 4 or 4½, so a consistently high standard throughout with no real failures. A good collection rather than a great one for me, but an interesting addition to the BL’s always intriguing Tales of the Weird series.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
July 26, 2022
If you are into folk and antiquarian horror, you should definitely read this collection. The stories of the original collection Randall’s Round are really good examples of the genre, often giving it an interesting gender dimension. If you read MR. James and Machen, you see where Scott is coming from, but I find here approach to the genre’s formulas very convincing and creative. Scott is very good at describing atmospheres and rural nature, and a good deal of the weirdness of the tales is located there, and how the protagonists are sensing and perceiving them. Some of the stories, especially those where a female protagonists is witness to or cannot protect her partner from falling into the hands of evil spirits and demons, are probing the idea of folklore and folk horror as a sort of common unconsciousness or as a pre-modern or pre-psychological way of describing phenomena we today call manias, neurosis, paranoia etc. The two added short stories Unburied Bane and The Menhir, that may or may not have been written by Scott, are not quite of the quality of the original Randall’s Round stories. They are a bit to blunt and sensationalist to really give you the creeps. You know what’s coming after the first pages, which spoils the fun, even if it’s quite interesting how Scott develops themes of corporeal abjection and slimy, oozing gore.
Bonus: The introduction to the author and her work is really good.
Bonus: The introduction to the author and her work is really good.
Want to read
December 1, 2023PLACEHOLDER REVIEWS
"The Cure": A man agrees to help an old friend by giving her imaginative, visionary brother a place to recover and calm his nerves after from some unknown shock that occurred while he was pursuing the folkloric rites and practices of Scandinavia and Iceland. But the brother, Erik Storm, settles quite well into rural life on a Sussex farm (after an initial nervous incident) until his host slowly realizes that dark, folkloric beliefs are part of his own countryside and peoples as well, and they seem to be leading to some ritualistic action at the yearly bonfire. Well, I'll say that while the story "Randalls Round" may get all the attention (and is quite good, don't get me wrong), I found this story superior in its ability to hit the "folk horror" grace notes. It's a combination of the misdirection ("Stop messing about with those wind-blasted barrows in inhospitable climes and come live with good rural folk.... who follow a yearly harvest with a big bonfire... where someone accidentally dies every seven years.... huh...." to essentially paraphrase) and the brutal climax (which is stronger than "Randalls Round" ending), along with some truly exquisite natural countryside descriptions and a nicely written exchange with a local that really captures the Sussex voice. Also, the story doesn't require - and so doesn't feature - a "cabal" amongst the locals, so much as a half-considered decision to not examine things too closely. Really well done, the story should be better known.
"The Tree": A young artist couple move into a nondescript workspace in London, a warehouse like building with a courtyard housing a big tree. At first, the painter husband wants it removed but after a visionary dream demands that it stay - and the wife, who initially wanted the tree to remain, begins to dread its malignant influence on her husband and his work, leading her desperately to try poisoning it... Well, not bad but nothing you haven't see before, either. I give Scott credit for not having the tree fall on somebody.
"The Room": A group of gentlemen, gathered at one member's country estate, have agreed that the notoriously evil/cursed/haunted room upstairs should be tested, with each sleeping there a night in turn. But almost immediately, after the first night and continuing, each one's experience is so spiritually wrenching and disturbing (yet seemingly different) that they find themselves warning the next member not to proceed - a call which falls on deaf ears. And what of the last participant, the younger, less experienced and seemingly more innocent, Reese? Well, what can you do? The "disbeliever's test a haunted room/house" narrative set-up has been around for quite some time (see H.G. Wells' "The Red Room," Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The House And The Brain", et. al). And Scott does a very good job setting it up, never allowing the narrative to actually enter the room with the participants, only supplying their shocked and blasted responses afterwards, which leads to deep and serious discussions about the soul and God while gesturing vaguely towards their experiences.... And then, she flubs the ending. It may have either been intended as simply a cute "pin pricking of the balloon of expectation," or maybe hoped to contain larger, spiritual resonances/lessons through the innocent character of Reese (attested to, but never shown or illustrated, which also counts as a weakness, if so) but, regardless, it just doesn't work.
"The Old Lady": Honor, a gregarious Irish undergraduate, makes a bet with her schoolmate that she can befriend the rather lackluster, skittish wallflower at the school, Adela Young. But in doing so, she eventually gets invited back to Adela's home and meets her creepily intense, blind Guardian, who secretly shares that she would like Adela to be married, while taking a rather focused interest on Honor... Well, this is a very interesting story for the time - not so much the plot (which I've tried to elide here, but let's just say it's familiar and owes a little to M.R. James)' "Lost Hearts,") but in its focusing on female characters - which kind of makes Honor's brother Conal's non-appearance in the story, despite his fulfilling an important plot role, feel awkward but perhaps understandable as an authorial choice. Still, it's an interesting read.
"The Twelve Apostles": Mr. Matthews, American, wants to purchase a 16th Century manor in England... but only if it has a ghost. A visit with the local vicar, Mr. Molyneux, turn up the story that the house was once occupied by the private chaplain of the owner, a Jeremy Lindell (aka Sir Jerome) who was looked on with suspicions by the local as a possible alchemist, gold hoarder and practitioner of black magic - and following his death, there was another mysterious death of someone looking for his secret treasure. But as Matthews opens the house, he discovers one room which seems permeated with a cold damp, as well as possibly containing clues to the whereabouts to the gold - so he and Molyneux attempt to solve the riddle.... Again, very Jamesian (clues hidden in misquotes from old and sometime apocryphal scripture, hidden historical gold, dark deeds of the past), with some fun writing ("Mr. Matthews was the type of man who likes such phrases, especially when written with capital letters. They made him feel profound.") and a really cracking end with an appearance by... but that would be telling. Well done (although Scott's wariness at having "fatal" endings can be a little disappointing)
“Will Ye No' Come Back Again?”: Annis Breck, great social organizer in a town, buys the old Queen's Garth building with a plan to make it a home for wayward girls. But while refurbishing it alone she experiences a number of events which indicate it may be haunted... or is it simply her psychological state, triggered by her memories of her past? This is a delicate tale, more of a "sad, maybe-ghost story" than spooky, possibly about regret. Effective, if slight.
"Randalls Round": Heyling travels to a rural village in the Cotswolds for a rest and looks into a traditional dance for a friend of his. This titular dance is thought to be a pagan holdover and Heyling finds evidence that it tied to a local barrow, and possibly a missing person from hundreds of years ago. But deciding to excavate the barrow on Halloween evening turns out to be a bad idea. This story is a quintessential example of "folk horror," a form that's received more attention in film form recently, but which has a vein running through turn of the century (19th-20th) weird fiction as well. It also has some charming, casual slang of the time ("going for an easy?" "lounged across to the bay window"), some marvelously atmospheric nature description, and a predictable but effective ending (if it was written 50-odd years later, no doubt the central character would have meant a different fate).
"Celui-là": Maddox is ordered by his doctor to take a month's rest somewhere quiet, where he can get some exercise, and the physician suggests the home of an acquaintance, a religious curé in an isolated, rural Breton seaside town. But while walking on the beach at dusk, Maddox spies a disturbing, hooded, scarecrow-like figure scrabbling in the sand, and later uncovers a strange parchment which disturbs the curé when he reads it aloud... Again, very much like a "less formal" M.R. James - here the touch-points very specifically being "O Whistle, And I'll Come To You My Lad" and "A Warning To The Curious" - this is a very creepy, atmospheric story with a good scare or two.
"At Simmel Acres Farm" - Norton and Markhan, two mismatched school chums, decide to vacation in the Cotswolds so Markham can rest from a sport's injury to his back. They find an isolated cottage to rent, which features a walled-in garden which, once they move the couch outside, will be a good recovery spot for Markham. But it also features a well and a strange stone bust with a barely discernible Latin motto and, having said it out loud, Markham finds himself becoming obsessed with the thing, even as Norton sees nightly indications of something malignant happening to his bed-ridden pal. This is interesting, in that Eleanor Scott seems to be working in the same field of "antiquary horror" that was perfected by M.R. James, but with a little less stuffiness and more thought towards entertaining the readers. There's a cracking good scene of "night-time possession" (almost cinematic in its deployment) but the story, despite a good set-up and tone, suffers somewhat from an anticlimactic ending (preceded by a bit of desperate rushing around). Still, not bad at all.
"The Cure": A man agrees to help an old friend by giving her imaginative, visionary brother a place to recover and calm his nerves after from some unknown shock that occurred while he was pursuing the folkloric rites and practices of Scandinavia and Iceland. But the brother, Erik Storm, settles quite well into rural life on a Sussex farm (after an initial nervous incident) until his host slowly realizes that dark, folkloric beliefs are part of his own countryside and peoples as well, and they seem to be leading to some ritualistic action at the yearly bonfire. Well, I'll say that while the story "Randalls Round" may get all the attention (and is quite good, don't get me wrong), I found this story superior in its ability to hit the "folk horror" grace notes. It's a combination of the misdirection ("Stop messing about with those wind-blasted barrows in inhospitable climes and come live with good rural folk.... who follow a yearly harvest with a big bonfire... where someone accidentally dies every seven years.... huh...." to essentially paraphrase) and the brutal climax (which is stronger than "Randalls Round" ending), along with some truly exquisite natural countryside descriptions and a nicely written exchange with a local that really captures the Sussex voice. Also, the story doesn't require - and so doesn't feature - a "cabal" amongst the locals, so much as a half-considered decision to not examine things too closely. Really well done, the story should be better known.
"The Tree": A young artist couple move into a nondescript workspace in London, a warehouse like building with a courtyard housing a big tree. At first, the painter husband wants it removed but after a visionary dream demands that it stay - and the wife, who initially wanted the tree to remain, begins to dread its malignant influence on her husband and his work, leading her desperately to try poisoning it... Well, not bad but nothing you haven't see before, either. I give Scott credit for not having the tree fall on somebody.
"The Room": A group of gentlemen, gathered at one member's country estate, have agreed that the notoriously evil/cursed/haunted room upstairs should be tested, with each sleeping there a night in turn. But almost immediately, after the first night and continuing, each one's experience is so spiritually wrenching and disturbing (yet seemingly different) that they find themselves warning the next member not to proceed - a call which falls on deaf ears. And what of the last participant, the younger, less experienced and seemingly more innocent, Reese? Well, what can you do? The "disbeliever's test a haunted room/house" narrative set-up has been around for quite some time (see H.G. Wells' "The Red Room," Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "The House And The Brain", et. al). And Scott does a very good job setting it up, never allowing the narrative to actually enter the room with the participants, only supplying their shocked and blasted responses afterwards, which leads to deep and serious discussions about the soul and God while gesturing vaguely towards their experiences.... And then, she flubs the ending. It may have either been intended as simply a cute "pin pricking of the balloon of expectation," or maybe hoped to contain larger, spiritual resonances/lessons through the innocent character of Reese (attested to, but never shown or illustrated, which also counts as a weakness, if so) but, regardless, it just doesn't work.
"The Old Lady": Honor, a gregarious Irish undergraduate, makes a bet with her schoolmate that she can befriend the rather lackluster, skittish wallflower at the school, Adela Young. But in doing so, she eventually gets invited back to Adela's home and meets her creepily intense, blind Guardian, who secretly shares that she would like Adela to be married, while taking a rather focused interest on Honor... Well, this is a very interesting story for the time - not so much the plot (which I've tried to elide here, but let's just say it's familiar and owes a little to M.R. James)' "Lost Hearts,") but in its focusing on female characters - which kind of makes Honor's brother Conal's non-appearance in the story, despite his fulfilling an important plot role, feel awkward but perhaps understandable as an authorial choice. Still, it's an interesting read.
"The Twelve Apostles": Mr. Matthews, American, wants to purchase a 16th Century manor in England... but only if it has a ghost. A visit with the local vicar, Mr. Molyneux, turn up the story that the house was once occupied by the private chaplain of the owner, a Jeremy Lindell (aka Sir Jerome) who was looked on with suspicions by the local as a possible alchemist, gold hoarder and practitioner of black magic - and following his death, there was another mysterious death of someone looking for his secret treasure. But as Matthews opens the house, he discovers one room which seems permeated with a cold damp, as well as possibly containing clues to the whereabouts to the gold - so he and Molyneux attempt to solve the riddle.... Again, very Jamesian (clues hidden in misquotes from old and sometime apocryphal scripture, hidden historical gold, dark deeds of the past), with some fun writing ("Mr. Matthews was the type of man who likes such phrases, especially when written with capital letters. They made him feel profound.") and a really cracking end with an appearance by... but that would be telling. Well done (although Scott's wariness at having "fatal" endings can be a little disappointing)
“Will Ye No' Come Back Again?”: Annis Breck, great social organizer in a town, buys the old Queen's Garth building with a plan to make it a home for wayward girls. But while refurbishing it alone she experiences a number of events which indicate it may be haunted... or is it simply her psychological state, triggered by her memories of her past? This is a delicate tale, more of a "sad, maybe-ghost story" than spooky, possibly about regret. Effective, if slight.
"Randalls Round": Heyling travels to a rural village in the Cotswolds for a rest and looks into a traditional dance for a friend of his. This titular dance is thought to be a pagan holdover and Heyling finds evidence that it tied to a local barrow, and possibly a missing person from hundreds of years ago. But deciding to excavate the barrow on Halloween evening turns out to be a bad idea. This story is a quintessential example of "folk horror," a form that's received more attention in film form recently, but which has a vein running through turn of the century (19th-20th) weird fiction as well. It also has some charming, casual slang of the time ("going for an easy?" "lounged across to the bay window"), some marvelously atmospheric nature description, and a predictable but effective ending (if it was written 50-odd years later, no doubt the central character would have meant a different fate).
"Celui-là": Maddox is ordered by his doctor to take a month's rest somewhere quiet, where he can get some exercise, and the physician suggests the home of an acquaintance, a religious curé in an isolated, rural Breton seaside town. But while walking on the beach at dusk, Maddox spies a disturbing, hooded, scarecrow-like figure scrabbling in the sand, and later uncovers a strange parchment which disturbs the curé when he reads it aloud... Again, very much like a "less formal" M.R. James - here the touch-points very specifically being "O Whistle, And I'll Come To You My Lad" and "A Warning To The Curious" - this is a very creepy, atmospheric story with a good scare or two.
"At Simmel Acres Farm" - Norton and Markhan, two mismatched school chums, decide to vacation in the Cotswolds so Markham can rest from a sport's injury to his back. They find an isolated cottage to rent, which features a walled-in garden which, once they move the couch outside, will be a good recovery spot for Markham. But it also features a well and a strange stone bust with a barely discernible Latin motto and, having said it out loud, Markham finds himself becoming obsessed with the thing, even as Norton sees nightly indications of something malignant happening to his bed-ridden pal. This is interesting, in that Eleanor Scott seems to be working in the same field of "antiquary horror" that was perfected by M.R. James, but with a little less stuffiness and more thought towards entertaining the readers. There's a cracking good scene of "night-time possession" (almost cinematic in its deployment) but the story, despite a good set-up and tone, suffers somewhat from an anticlimactic ending (preceded by a bit of desperate rushing around). Still, not bad at all.
November 26, 2021
So I read the first half of this book on a train journey across the West Country and the hillfort studded ridges and scattered villages out the window were a perfect companion to the sort of earthy, ancient folk horror that this collection is full of. The first three stories (Randalls Round, The Twelve Apostles, and Celui-Là) were probably my favourites, fully capitalising on the sense of archaic dread you can get from invoking the mysterious past. Sure, it can be a bit sub-M.R. James at times, but it's really good sub-M.R. James.
Some of the stories from the middle of the collection hew a bit closer to the traditional ghost story, but are still good, and the last pair of stories in the book by N. Dennet (speculated to be one of Scott's pseudonyms by the editor) are nice and folky, and slightly more pulpy than the more antiquarian stories earlier on.
If I was feeling miserly it'd be a 4/5, but for something so stuffed with barrows, menhirs, Elizabethan alchemists and cursed Icelandic treasure you can't expect me not to be generous.
Some of the stories from the middle of the collection hew a bit closer to the traditional ghost story, but are still good, and the last pair of stories in the book by N. Dennet (speculated to be one of Scott's pseudonyms by the editor) are nice and folky, and slightly more pulpy than the more antiquarian stories earlier on.
If I was feeling miserly it'd be a 4/5, but for something so stuffed with barrows, menhirs, Elizabethan alchemists and cursed Icelandic treasure you can't expect me not to be generous.
September 1, 2016
This is a more obscure collection of classic horror stories. It is a must read for fans of the genre but it lacks the punch or staying power of other classics like M.R. James, explaining its relative obscurity.
3 1/2 STARS
3 1/2 STARS
January 2, 2026
Overall a serviceable collection of folk horror before the movies invented the genre. Definitely overlooked--as I'd not heard of it before--but not, I don't think, a lost masterpiece. Still, perfect winter solstice reading was much enjoyed. See below for a note on each individual tale.
"Randalls Round" pretty deliberate and straightforward--about what you'd expect now that film has made folk horror a genre. It's a shame one can't go back in time and experience the creation of a genre in chronological order. Still, effective.
"The 12 Apostles" Nice one! A haunted house, a treasure hunt, a Renaissance alchemist, and lost of mysterious slime...very creepy. No Lovecraftian language but a practical straightforward approach.
"Celui-la" Again: quality, serviceable prose, not quite the "lost classic" it's touted to be--but I'm enjoying the tales so far.
"The Room." Ah, this is my favorite so far. A nice Victorian-ish melding of Christian catabasis (a journey to hell to confront one's morality via God's judgement) and the "spending a night in a haunted house/room" trope. Philosophical yet quite simple. Still, a new take on the old tropes I very much appreciated.
"The Cure" a bit of a redux of the title story, but I think much better handled. For the first time in the collection we have a first person narrator and both this character and the fellow he's entrusted to "cure" are both convincing and, I thought, brought the thing home much better than in "Randall's Round." A great tale! Seems like they're getting better as the collection advances.
"The Tree" An ok idea, a bit of a variation on Poe's "The Oval Portrait," with a dose of sympathetic magic, but the denouement was kind of clumsy.
"At Simmel Acres Farm" Was oddly familiar--perhaps I'd read it in an anthology at some point. Predictable but generally fine.
"Will Ye no Come Back Again?" Interestingly the only tale so far (only one left) to deal with the world of women at all--and seems perhaps a tad hostile, or maybe rightly critical of men and the male world. At any rate it worked well for the this tale--one of the better ones, mostly for this modern touch on an age-old haunting story.
"The Old Lady" Another believable and welcome first person narrator, adding some color. Still not a great ending--seems the weak spot of Scott's tales: the set-ups are engrossing and fun but sometimes the end is either predictable or a shade rushed, without the impact a good scary tale demands. On to the two addended tales presumed to be by the same author under a different pseudonym.
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"Unburied Bane" doesn't feel to me like the same writer--although people will change over time. Anyway, this was far less subtle than the previous tales. More fun than actually scary, verging on self-parody to me.
"The Menhir" Like the other N. Dennett tale, "Unburied Bane," a creeping curse overtaking a terrified victim. Too sensationalistic, to me, to belong with the E. Scott tales. This one is better than the other, IMHO, mostly because a malevolent menhir across the street is a tad more believable than the witch's screaming skull of the other tale.
Such plots work better in the long form, though, when there's downtime between the threatening events in which protagonists can doubt their sanity and spectators can try and talk some sense into them, etc. The threatening events go so fast in a short story they become rather silly and over dramatic. Either subtlety or pure gross-out terror works best in a work of horror, I think, or an interesting, well-paced combination of the two.
"Randalls Round" pretty deliberate and straightforward--about what you'd expect now that film has made folk horror a genre. It's a shame one can't go back in time and experience the creation of a genre in chronological order. Still, effective.
"The 12 Apostles" Nice one! A haunted house, a treasure hunt, a Renaissance alchemist, and lost of mysterious slime...very creepy. No Lovecraftian language but a practical straightforward approach.
"Celui-la" Again: quality, serviceable prose, not quite the "lost classic" it's touted to be--but I'm enjoying the tales so far.
"The Room." Ah, this is my favorite so far. A nice Victorian-ish melding of Christian catabasis (a journey to hell to confront one's morality via God's judgement) and the "spending a night in a haunted house/room" trope. Philosophical yet quite simple. Still, a new take on the old tropes I very much appreciated.
"The Cure" a bit of a redux of the title story, but I think much better handled. For the first time in the collection we have a first person narrator and both this character and the fellow he's entrusted to "cure" are both convincing and, I thought, brought the thing home much better than in "Randall's Round." A great tale! Seems like they're getting better as the collection advances.
"The Tree" An ok idea, a bit of a variation on Poe's "The Oval Portrait," with a dose of sympathetic magic, but the denouement was kind of clumsy.
"At Simmel Acres Farm" Was oddly familiar--perhaps I'd read it in an anthology at some point. Predictable but generally fine.
"Will Ye no Come Back Again?" Interestingly the only tale so far (only one left) to deal with the world of women at all--and seems perhaps a tad hostile, or maybe rightly critical of men and the male world. At any rate it worked well for the this tale--one of the better ones, mostly for this modern touch on an age-old haunting story.
"The Old Lady" Another believable and welcome first person narrator, adding some color. Still not a great ending--seems the weak spot of Scott's tales: the set-ups are engrossing and fun but sometimes the end is either predictable or a shade rushed, without the impact a good scary tale demands. On to the two addended tales presumed to be by the same author under a different pseudonym.
-------------------------
"Unburied Bane" doesn't feel to me like the same writer--although people will change over time. Anyway, this was far less subtle than the previous tales. More fun than actually scary, verging on self-parody to me.
"The Menhir" Like the other N. Dennett tale, "Unburied Bane," a creeping curse overtaking a terrified victim. Too sensationalistic, to me, to belong with the E. Scott tales. This one is better than the other, IMHO, mostly because a malevolent menhir across the street is a tad more believable than the witch's screaming skull of the other tale.
Such plots work better in the long form, though, when there's downtime between the threatening events in which protagonists can doubt their sanity and spectators can try and talk some sense into them, etc. The threatening events go so fast in a short story they become rather silly and over dramatic. Either subtlety or pure gross-out terror works best in a work of horror, I think, or an interesting, well-paced combination of the two.
November 7, 2024
Follows the folk horror formula closely in pretty much every story (naive professor/intellectual visits isolated rural village, discovers strange artifact or witnesses occult ritual, doubts the local legends about it, then faces The Consequences for his hubris) but when the formula is this good and every story is like 20 pages I can’t help but be having the time of my life. Not a single dud in the bunch!! Fun as hell and very autumnal.
January 2, 2022
Eleanor Scott's stories are a kind of fusion between James and Machen and it's a shame that she never gained the reputation that those men did.
I'd probably recommend all of the stories in this collection, even the weaker ones. My ranking:
1. Unburied Bane
2. The Old Lady
3. The Room
4. Celui-La
5. Randalls Round
6. The Twelve Apostles
7. The Cure
8. At Simmel Acres Farm
9. The Menhir
10. The Tree
11. "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?"
My only (minor) criticism is that some of the endings are slightly too vague. I like it when an author leaves a certain amount to the imagination, but with a couple of stories I felt mostly confusion - The Old Lady and At Simmel Acres Farm in particular. This ultimately didn't affect my enjoyment, however.
I'd probably recommend all of the stories in this collection, even the weaker ones. My ranking:
1. Unburied Bane
2. The Old Lady
3. The Room
4. Celui-La
5. Randalls Round
6. The Twelve Apostles
7. The Cure
8. At Simmel Acres Farm
9. The Menhir
10. The Tree
11. "Will Ye No' Come Back Again?"
My only (minor) criticism is that some of the endings are slightly too vague. I like it when an author leaves a certain amount to the imagination, but with a couple of stories I felt mostly confusion - The Old Lady and At Simmel Acres Farm in particular. This ultimately didn't affect my enjoyment, however.
March 13, 2016
Incredibly derivative (of M.R. James and most contemporary ghost stories--and even of itself: there are two stories about ennuied people sent away to the creepy countryside under recommendation of a professional) but I'm a sucker for the themes, so still a very enjoyable read. Eleanor Scott also has a knack for distinctive characters, which helps the stories seem much less recursive.
February 14, 2022
Taut, grim and propelling English ghost stories. Scott takes the quaffed-doom of M.R. James and adds a shot of adrenaline to it. Early examples of folk horror here. Small hamlets with ancient practices crop up regularly.
My first of the British Weird Library. Thinking “Weird Woods” next.
My first of the British Weird Library. Thinking “Weird Woods” next.
December 26, 2019
Solid collection of horror in the vein of James and Gaskell. A couple of meh stories, but the good ones more than make up for them.
June 8, 2021
I was fortunate to borrow (from the U of Minnesota Wilson Library) copy 481 of 500 of the Ash-Tree Press printing. Scott’s slim collection of ghost stories was an absolute joy to read.
August 28, 2023
(3.5) i forgot i had this book until i got a notification from the library that it was due soon, so i had to finish it lol. The stories were fun and easy reads, but it was the kinda book that I had to make myself pick up because I wasnt dying for more. Still entertaining, and I always enjoy older horror stories. I'm sure i'll pick this up again in the future
August 9, 2025
Well written and really quite scary at some points.
February 13, 2023
The stories aren't "bad", per se. But they're certainly nothing special. And they're *all* so clearly trying to replicate the same eeriness of M.R. James's tales, but *consistently* coming up short.
January 19, 2023
These stories are clearly modeled after M. R. James and featuring many of the same elements: curates, artifacts, ancient inscriptions and village superstitions that turn out to have a basis in sinister (to the author) pagan rites. There is, however, a modern touch to many of them, an immediacy that cuts through James's dusty archivism and gets straight to the chilling details. If this sometimes makes the stories too straightforward and predictable--after all, the layers of boring research in an M. R. James story make the glimmers of terror feel even stranger by contrast--it also makes more room for the weird and wicked imaginings we come to such stories for. Though at first I was annoyed by the last-minute happy endings and 20s' magazine-style punchlines, I came to appreciate the accessibility and modernity of Eleanor Scott's lighter touch. Her sparkle and wit also, in their way, create a nice contrast for the horror.
The two stories by N. Dennett that round out the collection don't seem to me very likely to have been written by the same author under a different pseudonym. They just aren't written in with that same lightness and deftness. They're darker; the prose is morose and purple at times; and they lack the last-minute saves that Scott clearly favors. This makes them a lot of fun in their way, and I'm glad they were included, but I just don't see the resemblance.
The two stories by N. Dennett that round out the collection don't seem to me very likely to have been written by the same author under a different pseudonym. They just aren't written in with that same lightness and deftness. They're darker; the prose is morose and purple at times; and they lack the last-minute saves that Scott clearly favors. This makes them a lot of fun in their way, and I'm glad they were included, but I just don't see the resemblance.
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October 25, 2019
Eleanor Scott remains one of the most unjustly obscure writers in the folk horror genre. Her work is superior to many of the other early Jamesian writers (R. H. Benson and Arthur Gray, for example); but her stories are little anthologized (I don't think I have ever come across her in an anthology), and she is rarely mentioned when discussing early 20th century horror writers (I learned about her from a brief mention in a listing of the year's books in one of the Year's Best Fantasy And Horror books, the mention was enough to make me look up her work, and, discovering that it was in print, read it). I would rank her work fourth in my listing of pre-1950s jamesian writers, after James, E. F. Benson, and L. T. C. Rolt; which puts her ahead of Gray, Malden, Wakefield, and Swain (I have not yet read the complete stories of all of them, so this ranking may change). As for the stories:
Randalls Round
A scholar visiting a village in the British countryside witnesses a strange ritual being performed. He then decides to visit a local burial mound and finds something sinister there. Quite atmospheric.
The Twelve Apostles
A man searches for a treasure in an old house, but finds something else. Although the religious elements were meaningless to me (I come from a non-religious family, and have never had any interest in the subject), this story has a great atmosphere and some unnerving details (the trail of slime leading from the room, for example).
Celui-la
A man visiting a seaside resort sees a tall figure on the beach. His investigation into the being leads him to a mysterious ruin with an apparent connection to a cult that once inhabited the area. Exactly what I like in my horror.
The Room
This story (no relation to the infamous film of the same name) concerns a room that induces nightmares in its residents. Nothing particularly unusual about this one.
The Cure
An archeologist is sent to the country on orders from his physician, and falls afoul of some sort of vaguely defined supernatural weirdness. This one was intriguing, but felt incomplete.
The Tree
An artist develops an increasing fixation on a tree, which affects his art. Again, quite interesting, but somewhat vague as to what exactly happened.
At Simmel Acres Farm
At a supposedly cursed farm, a man drinks from a well and ends up suffering from an unusual condition. One of the best in the book.
Randalls Round
A scholar visiting a village in the British countryside witnesses a strange ritual being performed. He then decides to visit a local burial mound and finds something sinister there. Quite atmospheric.
The Twelve Apostles
A man searches for a treasure in an old house, but finds something else. Although the religious elements were meaningless to me (I come from a non-religious family, and have never had any interest in the subject), this story has a great atmosphere and some unnerving details (the trail of slime leading from the room, for example).
Celui-la
A man visiting a seaside resort sees a tall figure on the beach. His investigation into the being leads him to a mysterious ruin with an apparent connection to a cult that once inhabited the area. Exactly what I like in my horror.
The Room
This story (no relation to the infamous film of the same name) concerns a room that induces nightmares in its residents. Nothing particularly unusual about this one.
The Cure
An archeologist is sent to the country on orders from his physician, and falls afoul of some sort of vaguely defined supernatural weirdness. This one was intriguing, but felt incomplete.
The Tree
An artist develops an increasing fixation on a tree, which affects his art. Again, quite interesting, but somewhat vague as to what exactly happened.
At Simmel Acres Farm
At a supposedly cursed farm, a man drinks from a well and ends up suffering from an unusual condition. One of the best in the book.
January 8, 2023
Received this book for Christmas and read it quick like a bunny. I love discovering the forgotten women ghosty writers. Draws very much on M.R. James. I would be interested to do a little detecting and see when certain stories of his were published vs. when some of these stories were published. The title story is the best in my opinion because it strays the farthest from James territory and you here a bit more of a unique voice.
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