Maps of the Lost 20

from where the lone hawthorn stands

Mar 04, 2023

the other station

You might have the radio on one evening and notice a lot of interference, the hiss and fade of static like the sounds of swash and backwash up a shingle beach, distant tones and voices blurring in and out of hearing. Must be some weird atmospherics tonight, you think.

After a short while, everything goes silent, even the station that you were listening to. You’re about to reach to retune when sound comes back. It takes you a few moments to realise it’s not what you were originally listening to, but you leave it as the radio was only on as distant company for you anyway, soft voices in the long night.

It’s broadcasting a phone-in show, and the presenter has a soothing voice, low and kind. The callers are all ringing in with nostalgic memories, childhood games and stories of when they met their loves, their regrets and their triumphs. Many of them sound elderly, and sometimes they struggle to remember the detail, sound a little confused, but the presenter coaxes them on, gentle and kind, helping them tell their stories.

After a time, the static creeps back, until you can hardly tell the difference between it and the voices, and then it is just a long continuous hiss that fades to nothing and the programme you had first listened to stutters back in.

You weren’t meant to hear the other station. Or to hear the callers, who so loved to talk about the things they remember from their life, before it ended.

Notes From the Cartographer

Welcome and thank you to those of you who are new subscribers. If you've found Maps via this newsletter, you might want to check out our hinterland (or perhaps better described as borderlands full of swine-things). The main community (and all of the stories) is on Facebook, there's a plain web version without the community aspect for people who don't do Facebook, there's Maps Twitter and Insta, and I produced one series (27 short episodes) of a Maps podcast. I think that's it. Oh, there’s the Maps portal to several different worlds in which time works differently and in some cases there is no time at all but that's just on the Patreon.

Speaking of the stories, I had an unholy moment of terror this week when, for reasons too tedious and prosaic to explain, I thought I had irretrievably deleted the Pages file with all the Maps stories ever written in it - all of them, plus some new content. Luckily I managed to find it in the void, because my last backup was a stupidly long time ago.

Spooky, eerie stories work really well in theatre. There's something in the feel of being in a live audience all reacting at once, and things happening around you that make it more compelling for me than anything on film (hence the enduring run of The Woman In Black on stage). Many of you will be aware of the radio work of the BBC’s King of Weird, the hugely likeable Danny Robins (Uncanny, Haunted, Battersea Poltergeist, Witch Farm, all on Spotify etc too - and more on this later in the newsletter), but he's also been getting excellent reviews for his stage play, 2:22: A Ghost Story. A play in which 'belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is getting closer. So, they're going to stay up until 2:22...and then they'll know.'

It's only been playing in London so far but now it's going on tour and I am really looking forward to seeing it in September.

Another terrific live experience was watching Arcadia, a film that uses entirely archival footage to explore the British countryside and our connection to the land, seasons and folk traditions, from carnivals to water-divining, 'exploring the beauty, brutality, magic and madness of our changing landscape with both the land and each other...a folk horror wrapped in an archive film, get ready for a very strange trip indeed.'

How was it live when it was a screening of a film? The original movie release has a brilliant soundtrack, co-written by Adrian Utley from Portishead and Will Gregory from Goldfrapp, and this screen was accompanied by the two of them with a group of fantastic musicians on stage below the screen, playing the soundtrack live. Was magical.

behold I give you Equus

If you visit the White Horse of Uffington on a certain spring night, at a particular time when the planets are all just so, and stand within the horse you might hear a faint snuffling, and a whinny. Bend down and pat and stroke the earth for a while, and leave some apples up near the head. This will bring you luck for the next six months.

You can do more if you dare though. After the whinny but before the next minute passes, position yourself on the Horse’s back, and wait. Spend the time you are waiting preparing yourself, for you will have to hang on so, so tight. But oh, what a ride you will have, through the fields and the winds and the clouds and the stars.

If you fail to hang on tight, someone will find you in the next day or two, wherever you have fallen, and people will speculate that you fell from an airplane’s wheel-well like a stowaway but it will be a mystery why you were up there, and you will end up in a book of unexplained things, on page 42, just after the woman who found herself mysteriously pelted with oranges when no one was around.

Maps Traced By Other Hands

A few choice links from elsewhere.

Are there ghosts in the British Museum? Does that question even really need to be asked? (Mind, if there are, chances are that we've nicked them from another country - and perhaps they are insurgent spirits).

Could Beowulf, Grendel and friends really have been living in...Kent? (Mind, I did for the first 20 years of my life and thinking about the Isle of Sheppey anything is possible.)

Langley Bush - how a hawthorn tree marks the spot of a bronze age grave, then Roman shrine, then outdoor court, place of execution, parish marker, gypsy haunt, and muse to the poet John Clare.

The Ooser Speaks

(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')

One William Jabez of Willingham in Cambridgeshire caused a bit of a stir before his death in the 1920s.

The villagers of Willingham accused Jabez of being a witch, on account of the white mice he kept, but which they thought were his imps. They said that one day he put one of his mice into the bedroom of a woman, who to get rid of it acquired a burly tom cat.

Alas though, after much screeching, the mouse was untouched and the cat was missing half its fur and clinging to the curtains in terror.

The house owner had to resort to fighting fire with fire. He collected the clippings of a horse's hoof and the legs from a poor toad, and boiled them in a stone jar. This worked, and Jabez came running to the house, let out a loud whistle, and the mouse left with him.

When Jabez died, his nephew who inherited the house could only get rid of the mice by holding them over running water, which induced them to squeak and run off for ever.

(And no, it was not a typo, this was in the early twentieth century.)

brick by brick by brick

You may enjoy wandering around Covent Garden, early in the morning, when the pavements are still shiny wet from washing, the shops are shut, and not so many people are around. The sun is up, the air is cold, but there’s a cleanness to it that makes you breathe it in deep. As you wander, you often look up, because there’s more to be seen up there sometimes than down at street level.

You watch a TV crew setting up, the satellite dish nearly as big as the van it sits on. A couple of young tourists, out early, chase a pigeon and then leave it when they see your frown.

There must be a lot of construction going on, because you pass a couple of side streets, and in each one you notice a construction worker, rigger boots and hi-viz jacket, just standing, waiting for their colleagues. You smile to yourself and wonder whether one of them has the wrong street, and they’re both standing there waiting for the other, not knowing how close they are.

But then you pass another, and another, and then another.

Just standing. Waiting. Staring out as you as you pass.

You turn on to the main road, spooked by this, seeking comfort in more of a crowd, but although there are more people there, there are more of them. Standing on a corner, as if waiting for a lorry. Standing in a shop doorway. Standing down a narrow lane. None of them are doing anything. Just standing. Staring.

Look away. They are starting to think you know, and that is not a terribly good thing for you.

They are building something, something tall and terrible, but our eyes cannot see it, and they do not have to move to build it. Just stand, and stare into nothing, and think very hard, and invisible floor by invisible floor the place that overlays this little part of our world is built. When it is finished, the men will all turn and walk away and people will walk past them or stand next to them on the Tube, and will not even know what they are, but their dreams will be fractured and uneasy, and so will yours, for quite some time.

Secrets The Wind Whispers

Will talk about a couple of spooky things I've listened to recently, but before that some excellent news. As regular readers of this newsletter will know, I am a big fan of Julian Simpson's adaptations/reimagining of Lovecraft stories in his Lovecraft Investigations podcast, which takes the essence of the stories, modernises it, and throws in a cornucopia of conspiracy theories, myths, local legends, and Simpson's own mythos. Well, the fourth series is on the way. (Julian’s also just launched a Substack newsletter on the process of writing and making things).

The Danny Robins takeover of the UK spooky economy gathers pace even further with a new series of Uncanny on the way, and a TV adaptation of it. I prefer the episodic nature of Uncanny to the extended single story of his recent Witch Farm, entertaining though that was. All well worth a listen, though for some strange reason that I can't put my finger on, I'm a bit apprehensive about the TV adaptation just not being as compelling. Maybe because I love audio so much.

Beyond This Point There May Be Dragons

You’ve been reading Maps of the Lost. Or have you? It’s hard to tell. Maybe this is all just a dream. Or a prophecy, or a forewarning. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always welcome, as I’d really like to shape this newsletter to be what you’d like to read and hear. So, ideas, suggestions and comments welcome. You can just reply to this email if you like.

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Thanks for reading, and watch for the builders and what they build.

CREDITS
Langley Bush photo: Simon Ingram

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