The Walsingham Ghosts: An Update

2020 UPDATE: This is an article from a very long time ago. For ten years, it floated about on the internet, containing a very serious error. Originally, I mistakenly attributed the popularisation of the Walsingham Ghost tale to the famous London journalist W.T. Stead, in his 1891 book Real Ghost Stories. I then proceeded to tell various stories about Stead, including his connection to the infamous British Museum 'cursed mummy-case' and his death on the Titanic.

Whether through sloppy research or a genuine mix-up, my younger self was seriously in error. Stead never wrote about this story at all. The first book to reprint this newspaper story was in fact True Ghost Stories, written in 1915 by Hereward Carrington. Getting the names of these two books mixed-up is understandable, and Stead is not an unlikely source for stories like this. He was a prominent spiritualist, and he did after all write collections of 'true' ghost stories. However, not going back to primary sources to check was poor journalism on my part.

Carrington was an interesting character himself - a British-born investigator of the strange who moved to America at the turn of the 20th century. He was an SPR member, maintained an odd balance between skepticism and belief in mediums, and was probably best-known for investigating and writing about the 'Amherst Mystery' poltergeist case - that of the infamous 'Esther Cox, You Are Mine To Kill' quote.

I’ve written before about the Usborne Supernatural Guides. When I read them now, I’m struck by the lack of verification for each story. Some of them are well-known cases of the paranormal, but many are not. So where did these stories come from? How did the writers decide which ones to include? With this in mind, I attempted to track down the origins of one of the most interesting tales in the Ghosts, Spectres & Haunted Houses book: The tale of the Walsingham Ghosts. Boy, did this one scare me as a kid, especially with those patented Nightmare Fuel Usborne oil painting illustrations. One particular image was so terrifying to me that I learned where it was in the book so that I could skip the page whenever I read it. I still loved the book even though I was scared of it, so this was quite necessary. The story starts when a farmer called Walsingham moves into a new house in Georgia in the Deep South. According to the illustrations, it was a damn-creepy Gothic mansion, to boot. He finds a bunch of bones in the house and throws them out. Locals warn that they may be human remains, but Walsingham’s a tough customer and he doesn’t care, not even when hideous moans and groans begin to ring out through the house. Soon, invisible forces begin to cause havok within the house. The artist chose to portray all of these as being the work of an evil-looking blue spectre. Here he breaks the neck of the family dog. The family has a teenage daughter. One night she’s doing her makeup when she feels an icy-cold hand on her shoulder, but can see no reflection of it in the mirror- it’s that horrible blue man again. An invisible bare-footed man follows Dad around in the garden one day. Now things get serious- another family has come over for a dinner party, but the ghosts ruin things once again. A horrible moan is heard from upstairs, then blood starts to drip from the ceiling onto the dinner table, forming a huge pool. The Walsinghams run upstairs, but there is nothing to be found. They rip up the carpet, but there is no explanation for the blood that continues to drip onto the table. Next day, a reputable chemist examines a sample of the blood and declares that it’s human blood. This entire scene should be stolen to add to the best horror movie script ever. The Walsinghams justifiably abandon the house, and according to locals, it sits empty for some time, as more moaning and screaming echoes from within. Then a guy called Horace Gunn agrees to spend a night in the house for a bet. He experiences a number of horrifying things, climaxing with this horrible image (the eyes, the eyes!)- Brr. I’m glad that’s over. Horace runs from the room, but that old blue man is still hanging around, and ‘icy’ hands grip his ankles, knocking him to the ground and then trying to choke him. By the time he escapes, he’s reportedly wound up in an asylum. Poor, brave Horace Gunn. Hope he won some money for that.

Carrington's book cites, as his source, an article in the San Francisco Examiner. Here's the beginning of it, dated to 29th Nov 1891, and locating the haunted house in the town of Oakville, near Savannah Georgia.

Another newspaper version of the story I turned up comes from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, dated Dec 5th 1891.

These seem to be the earliest available versions of the story.

The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley

The plot here is basically the same as in the later movie version: two of Wheatley’s three modern day (by which I mean the 1930s) ‘musketeers’, the aristocratic Duc de Richleau and two-fisted American playboy Rex Van Ryn suspect that their close friend Simon Aron is in a spot of bother. Why? Well, neither of them have seen him for months because he’s been so busy with his new ‘friends’- a dodgy conglomerate of Johnny foreigners and deformed people. Clearly, something is not right. The friends bust Aron right in the middle of an ‘astronomy’ session at his new house, and the Duke forces him to admit that he’s been messing about with ‘black magic.’ Of course, the sacrificial black cockerel and white hen kind of gave the game away.

The rest of the novel details the three chums’ attempts to outwit the grand Epissimus, one Mr. Mocata, and his coven of acolytes. There are some memorable set-pieces, including a car chase through the English countryside, a black Sabbat on Walpurgis Nacht, and a tense night spent within the safety of a specially-prepared pentangle.

I’d sandwich Wheatley somewhere between Iain Flemming and P.G. Wodehouse. He was massively popular in his day for writing page-turning thrillers, but with a very early 20th century British twist. Even though his attitudes have not aged well, his writing certainly has: he uses a very clean, economical style that feels oddly modern, especially compared to other works from this time. In a way, he’s a bit like a 1930s Stephen King- known not only for his gripping books about the supernatural, but also for his smooth, no-nonsense prose style.

Wheatley has been frequently criticized for the racist, elitist elements in his books. In The Devil Rides Out, the Duke and his friends reflect Wheatley’s own sympathetic vision of the European aristocracy that he feels is about to pass into history. In an early chapter, the Duke’s living style is described-

'His forebears had ridden with thirty-two footmen before them, and it caused him considerable regret that modern conditions made it impossible for him to drive in his Hispano with more than one seated beside his chauffeur on the box. Fortunately his resources were considerable and his brain sufficiently astute to make good, in most years, the inroads which the tax collectors made upon them.'

Spoken like a true enemy of socialism (which Wheatley certainly was). We also learn that the Duke-

'-did not subscribe to the canon which has branded ostentation as vulgarity in the last few generations, and robbed nobility of any glamour which it may have possessed in more spacious days.'

All the characters in The Devil Rides Out live in a world that has since passed into memory- a world of footmen, butlers, country houses and private aeroplanes. Of course, for the reader today all this is part of the charm. Wheatley was also an expert on wines, and an inordinate amount of dialogue in the book is spent discussing when and what the characters shall have to drink. When the plot calls for them to fast for a time, one character bitterly laments that he has been denied that most basic and necessary of civilizing things- a fine rose with Morecambe bay prawns.

The racism in the novel is slightly trickier. Non-whites are treated as being inherently different rather than inferior- in fact, it’s mentioned that many Eastern races are formidable in matter of magic because they are more accepting of it.

'Very few white men can really get inside a Negro’s mind and know exactly what he is thinking- and even fewer blacks can appreciate a white’s mentality.'

This is a kind of Orientalism rather than outright racism (though many believe them to be the same). Knowledge of the power of magic is said to be an especially Eastern thing- the Duke learned all he knows of it during his time in the East, and the various magic practitioners have roots in the rituals of Africa, Madagascar and the Deep South. Mocata’s servant is a Malagassy, and he has the power to appear as a terrifying specter in an early chapter.

Over the course of the book, pretty much every supernatural or mystical idea you could think of is mentioned by the Duke, as he’s a shocking know-it-all, and he’s the mouthpiece for Wheatley’s impressive research into the occult. He is liable to bring up any aspect of the paranormal- witches, werewolves, Egyptian mythology- and give it a good airing. I’d imagine this book was the most elaborate and accurate rundown of the occult most people in England at the time were familiar with. Most of these ideas are introduced with astonishing clarity and consistency. Early on, the Duke convinces Rex of the reality of the supernatural using reasoning that is oddly persuasive even today.

The place of religion in The Devil Rides Out is rather unusual- for a novel about ‘satanism’, there’s surprisingly little mention of Christ or God. Wheatley’s characters are up against genuine Dark Forces, and while they do use crucifixes and prayers, the Duke explains that these are merely symbols that have been charged by centuries of powerful spiritual thoughts; had they been in the East, a Hindu swastika or horseshoe symbol would have been just as effective. ‘He who thinks right, lives right,’ he explains to them as they seek sanctuary in the positively charged (if pagan) shrine of Stonehenge, in the absence of any Christian churches. Makes a refreshing change from righteous religious dogma, doesn’t it?

But, as it turns out, thinking and living right are quite conditional. Early on, the Duke twigs that Simon’s new friends are clearly up to no good because they look unsavoury- an Oritental, an albino, etc. Their diabolical celebration of the Sabbat consists of everything any right-thinking 1930s Englishman would consider downright evil- eating and drinking to excess, dancing naked and engaging in a little free love. Wheatley makes much of their unattractiveness when naked- each is bloated or swarthy or just plain old. Compare this to the American Rex, whom the narrator is constantly telling us is tall, strong and totally in tune with Wheatley’s uptight mores.

Despite any such misgivings, it’s a cracking novel, and the abhorrent attitudes remain but a culturally interesting artifact of times gone by. The plot moves quickly, the set-pieces are excellent, and you’re never more than a page or two away from one of De Richleau’s lectures about the occult.

They Had the Appearance of a Man (1)

Christian County, Kentucky, August 1955, 5pm.

The day had gone well: in the morning Jeremiah’s relatives had met him at the train station, and after some shopping, they had escaped the sweltering afternoon heat by ducking in to see a picture at the Alhambra theatre. Maisie had bought the tickets. They were five that day: Jeremiah, his cousin Billy-Glen, his wife Isabel and their little boy Bucky, and old Maisie.

Jeremiah noticed that Maisie hadn’t thought much of the picture.

‘Flying saucers and creatures from outer space-Jesus certainly never mentioned anything about them,’ he had heard her say to Bucky afterwards. ‘Folk from California dream up such things, but they’re a long way from Kentucky. All that sea air must make them soft-headed.’ Bucky had seemed to enjoy the picture, nonetheless.

Now the fields and scattered woodlands of Christian County were spread out before them as they trundled towards home in Billy-Glen’s battered Ford pick-up. The light was fading and the trees on the horizon were just starting to glow with a gold sheen.

Jeremiah was from one of the larger cities in New Jersey; at thirty-two, he was a little younger than his cousin, and had been removed from their branch of the family for many years. His natural home was one where chasms and canyons only existed between skyscrapers, where birds struggled to sing above the sounds of traffic at dawn. The silence here impressed him. His heart lifted, even as the heat smothered him like a closed fist. He tried to alleviate the stuffiness of the truck by opening the window, but the scorching breath that passed for wind in late-summer Kentucky quickly caused him to close it again.

‘Damn, Maisie. This is the life,’ he said, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Folk in Christian County don’t know what they have goin’ for themselves. When you were queuing for tickets this afternoon, I stood around in front of the post office. Just waitin’. And good God, every one of the customers who came in during that time knew the stewardess by name. And she knew them too, like as not.’

Maisie smiled. ‘Ain’t nobody in Christian County who doesn’t know everybody else, Jeremiah. And everybody else’s business, too- ‘specially in the case of Irene from the post office.’ She laughed, and then her face tightened. ‘And I’ll thank you not to use the Lord’s name in vain, dear.’

Jeremiah’s spirits fell slightly; he was certainly on a different plane to his rustic relatives. He made a mental note to watch his words more carefully in future. Before he had time to ponder this matter any further, Billy-Glen halted the truck with a jolt.

‘Cattle-gate!’ he yelled. ‘Whose turn is it?’

Seeing an opportunity to prove that he was no soft city-boy, Jeremiah jumped out of the truck before any of the others had an occasion to volunteer. He approached the gate; it was no more than a bunch of logs tied together with barbed wire, but he could see no obvious way to untangle the mess. Fumbling with the latch, he yelled as a blunt blade of wire sank into his skin.

Isabel leapt from the cab and brushed Jeremiah aside. She lifted one of the smaller logs, tracing it around a vertical stump to release the gate.

‘Isabel! Who is that with you?’ An elderly farmer, his face browned and leathery, approached from the field beyond the gate.

‘Nice to see you, Thomas,’ said Isabel. ‘This here’s my relative, Jeremiah.’

The big farmer practically crushed every bone in Jeremiah’s hand with his shake, but his smile was warm and genuine. “Pleased to welcome you to Christian County, friend,’ he said. Then, addressing Maisie in the truck’s cabin, he hollered ‘Hey May! Any news?’

Maisie’s head appeared from the window. ‘Well, Tom, next week’s the county fair. Are your strawberries gonna beat mine this year?’

‘It’s never happened yet.’

‘Then there ain’t no news around here. I’ll see you and your clan this week at church?’

‘As always, Maisie.’

‘Then all’s right with the world. Come on you two, get in the truck. It’s another ways ‘till we get to the farm. So long, Tom.’

As he climbed back inside, it struck Jeremiah that Maisie probably did meet Tom’s clan every week at church. He had a vision of them: two children, clean and polite and wholesome. He’d be willing to bet that Maisie’s strawberries beat Tom’s every year at the county fair, too.

Maisie seemed to know what he was thinking. ‘This family’s been my responsibility for nearly forty years, Jeremiah,’ she said. ‘I see to it that the little ones- little Bucky here, that is- get to grow up in a world where people know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t see why we need any change, when we’ve already got God and the Ten Commandments to live by. So, as far as I’m concerned, no news is good news.’

The truck rumbled on. Cornfields, bleached brown and gold by the merciless sun, gave way to a thick forest of oak where each tree seemed to grasp for its neighbour across the road. The road itself soon became little more than a dirt-track. Jeremiah was trying to work out how long it had been since they had passed another vehicle (certainly an hour at least) when the farmhouse came into view.

***

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

The things that scared us as children tend to stick with us all our lives; just ask the good people at Kindertrauma. Many adults retain a fascination for things such as the Daleks and Pennywise the clown, to name two common examples.

But there are other, more subtle terrors. I read The Kraken Wakes when I was about 12 (in a lovely 1950’s penguin edition, too), and didn’t think it was too scary. Aliens, end of the world- I’d heard it all many times before. In this case, the unseen creatures cause mankind trouble on a scale that is simply geographic- they melt the ice-caps and flood the world.

But shortly after reading it I fell into a strong flu, during which I experienced intense, Kraken Wakes- influenced fever dreams. To anyone who’s never had a fever dream, it’s something like having dreams when you’re awake, and also something like an unpredictable bad-trip. My dreams revolved around floods and earthquakes, and they were horribly real. So, even though I thought the book was none too scary, it obviously resonated with me subconsciously on some level. Ever since, I’ve associated that terrible time with Wyndham’s book, perhaps affording it a gravitas far above its actual content.

Returning to the book many years later, how does it hold up?

Let’s have a little background on Wyndham first. He’s kind of like a very 1950’s version of H. G. Wells: an Englishman, he wrote some great high-concept science-fiction, and he wasn’t shy about the kind of destruction he wreaked on the world in his stories. Like Wells, Wyndham’s novels feel like big-budget summer blockbusters. His most famous novel, Day of the Triffids, is a classic that’s right up there with anything Wells wrote.

Even though Wells was writing fifty years earlier, during the prudish Victorian era, today it’s Wyndham who comes across as more of a stereotypical stiff-upper-lipped Englishman. Wells was originally working class, and had lots of politically radical ideas (he was a thumping great socialist, and was in favour of a world government). Wynhdam, on the other hand, never lets us forget his middle-class origins in his books, and is frequently criticized for this.

The most common dismissal of Wyndham is that his plots are ‘cozy catastrophes’. As far as I can see, this accusation results largely from two (broadly similar) books- Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. In both books, terrible circumstances cause London (read: society) to break down, and though death, destruction and horror are all around (and Wyndham is not stingy with these themes), a decidedly middle-class hero will survive the catastrophe without much physical or emotional trauma. He will pick up a pretty girl somewhere along the way, and they will eventually make a new life for themselves in some quiet part of the country- a sort of simple-life pastoral paradise.

While this is broadly accurate for both books, and while they may be read as a kind of simplistic middle-class wish-fulfillment fantasy, this view really ignores many of the novels’ unsavoury elements.

In Triffids, suicide and depression surround the hero. He genuinely needs to find the strength within himself to survive this nightmare world. He learns constantly that in this new world, the morals and scruples of the old one are the first casualty. Is it right to smash a shop window to steal food? He does it. Is it right to help a blind person to commit suicide? He does it. Is it right to live in a society where everyone gets to impregnate your girlfriend for the continuation of the human race? Now wait just a minute…

Triffids was published in 1951, and was a huge hit. Wyndham decided that he was onto a good thing, so as early as 1953 he released the broadly similar Kraken Wakes.

Kraken begins as the narrator and his wife are among the first humans to notice the falling of unexplained ‘fireballs’ into the sea. It’s treated as a kind of anomalous phenomenon, similar to the then-current flying saucer craze. Later, characters theorize that it’s in fact the beginning of an invasion by some intelligence from a high-pressure world (Neptune and Jupiter are posited, but we never find out for sure). Over the course of several months and years, it becomes clear that something has taken up residence in the deeps of the world’s oceans. First deep-sea scientific expeditions, and then commercial ships become targeted by these intelligences. Worldwide sea travel ceases (in a move eerily similar to the Europe-wide lack of air travel that’s happening now as a result of that Iceland volcano business). And after that, things really get strange…

When Kraken works, it’s really creepy. I think that part of the reason I’ve always been fascinated by it is that we never find out a damn thing about those underwater critters. They might not even be aliens, they might just be Earth intelligences that have lain dormant until the 1950s. All we do know about them is that they like to screw with us. Some of the violence of the sea-disasters in the first half of the book is quite astonishing- hundreds and hundreds of people perish horribly (and off-screen, too). The horror is rarely in the protagonists’ faces the way it is in Triffids- it’s more of a paranoia thing: the thought that mankind has lost his method of long-term travel is oddly creepy.

And when the creatures do begin to show up on our beaches, they do so in a manner that answers no questions about their nature.

There are problems with the book, mostly linked to the ‘humour’. There’s loads of running jokes about how the narrator’s wife wears the trousers in the marriage, and they feel even more out of place than the bizarre joke about Josella’s book in Triffids. There’s also a joke about people confusing the narrator’s company, the fictional EBC, with the real-life BBC. In case you’re wondering, EBC stands for ‘English Broadcasting Company’.

There are tonnes of 1950s artifacts in the book- aside from the obligatory Red Scare scenes, both Britain and the US seem to lob nuclear bombs about quite cheerfully in an attempt to wipe out the undersea menace. And of course, it wouldn’t be Wyndham without his trademark 1950s British-ness; it’s almost impossible to read his prose without hearing someone with the received pronunciation speak it- and you know that’s worth something.

Pro.

Centurion

The howl rang out twice again that night, so that even the most battle-hardened legionaries began to fear what lay beyond the confines of the camp, where the forest grew thick and gnarled and brooding.

***

Dawn found Tacitus standing red-eyed before his tent. He pulled his wolfskin tunic closer about his body; the weak morning rays did little to dispel the chill.

'Did you sleep, domine?' The use of the title for addressing a superior indicated formality, but there was no disguising the warmth of the voice. Tacitus turned to see the squat form of Jerius, the lieutenant. His metal armour winked in the sun as he walked from his tent.

'In this place? No. Not for these three nights past. My eyes grow sunken and my mind is clouded. It is as if this excursion is but some kind of dream- I feel as though at any moment I will wake to find that I am in Nimes, or Carthage, or even in my villa in distant Rome… Anywhere but in this strange place.'

Jerius' eyes widened. His mouth struggled to express an appropriate sentiment.

'You are surprised at my frankness, Jerius?'

'Domine- yes, domine. That is, I mean-'

'There is no need, old friend.' Tacitus smiled. 'You and I have been through too much together for that. If I cannot confide in you, then I have no friend within several thousand miles of here, save those insolent tacticians in Brittania who sent me here, surely plotting my demise. If that be the case, I might add, then Jupiter help me.'

Jerius visibly relaxed. 'Sir, if I may also be frank, I had noticed that this place has been affecting you. I mean, how could it not? The isolation; the cold; and now these terrifying sounds during the hours of darkness…' A moment of silence, as the portly lieutenant debated the merits of revealing more. 'To me… it is as if we have wandered into the realm of myth- as if this island of Hibernia were in truth one of the fabled isles- Hy-Brasil, or the Ultima Thule spoken of by the Greek, Pytheas.'

Tacitus idled the grass with his foot. The standard soldier's sandal was certainly not adequate this far in the temperate north, he thought. 'The Greek is known to have lied about his travels, Jerius. Do not be tempted to compare his flights of fancy with… our situation here.' It was the standard dismissal of Greek achievements that Tacitus had been taught since childhood, but on this particular morning his voice lacked conviction. Perhaps this wind-swept isle was getting to him.

Looking back at the ranks of tents that comprised his century's castra, or temporary camp, Tacitus' mind drifted back to the larger camp in Brittania where his fate had been sealed. That camp had been large and well provisioned, with over one hundred centuries of legionaries being drilled every day in anticipation of the campaign to come…

***

It had been warm inside the tent. The smell of tanned hide mingled with the aroma of sweat as three men perspired, secretly deciding the fate of this remote outpost of the empire.

'We simply cannot tolerate any further excursions by the Celts into our affairs here. Trade with the local tribes will go to Hades if we cannot guarantee the safe passage of goods through our territories. An armed mission to Hibernia is the only answer.' That was Lupus, his small piggy eyes glinting in the darkness of the tent.

'Of course, we cannot spare more than a single century for this outing. But eighty men should be enough to make our presence felt on that forsaken island. After all, what are those savages next to our highly-trained soldiers?' Thus spoke Maximus, his bony fingers twitching incessantly as he did so.

Lupus appeared so uncomfortable in the stifling heat that Tacitus wondered how he ever had tolerated the weather in their native Italy. 'It occurs to me,' he spoke, his face shiny with sweat, 'that we have but one man present who could do justice to such a task- the hero of Carthage, Gregorius Tacitus.'

Tacitus' blood ran cold. His fame since his North African heroics had caused him trouble on occasion in the past, but this mission to Hibernia struck him as some kind of plot. 'With all due respect, domines,' he began, 'a single century seems a trifle meager for the task at hand. The Celts-'

'The Celts are savages, and will be planned against as such,' said Maximus irritably. Tacitus growled beneath his breath- Maximus had not been present at the ambushes in north Alba, where the Hibernian Celts had wiped out entire garrisons. He remembered all too well the stark, terrifying figures emerging from the night as though they were part of it, tall and hairy maniacs who butchered trained soldiers as expertly as would a gladiator in the coliseum. But the moment had passed- Maximus and Lupus were already planning his next brush with the Hibernian hordes, and any further protesting would be interpreted as insubordination.

***

'It will be glorious, don't you think?' Tacitus' reminiscing was broken by the sudden appearance of Julius Agricola. 'When we have tamed this place as we have done with Brittania, the entire Northern Isles will stand as a testament to the power of Rome.' Agricola, a centurion himself, was as dark and intense as Tacitus was open and fair. His intrusion threw Jerius into a brief confusion; the short lieutenent became embarrassed and left, returning to his tent mumbling an excuse about starting breakfast.

'Imagine it, Tacitus,' continued Agricola, 'forests cleared, straight roads running the length of the island, and planned towns- all in territory which previously only nature had claimed as her own.' His tanned face flashed a smile in which there was no joy.

But by now the sun was high in the sky, and it was becoming more difficult to hide the particulars of their true situation. The castra, settled uneasily between the sea and the forest, was but a fly on the lion's lip of this impenetrable, unknown land. Besides the vague records of the Greek travelers from centuries ago, no civilized men had ever come this far northwest, and Tacitus was becoming painfully aware of their isolation. Now, looking at the green hell that lay before him, he felt as though the forest would swallow him up.

Jupiter, he thought, no empire will again try to tame this heathen land.

Our Lady's Hospital.

I went up the Lee Road a friend for to see,
They call it the mad house in Cork by the Lee.
But when I got up there the truth I do tell
They had the poor bugger locked up in a cell.
Johnny Jump Up, Cork folk song.

Christ, and people sometimes ask why I'm fascinated by Victorian shit- growing up in a town where this Gothic monstrosity glowers down upon all and sundry from atop its gloomy hill! If ever there was a place that was haunted, it's Our Lady's Hospital on the Lee Road. It's a (partly abandoned) real-life Victorian asylum complete with sinister towers, belfries and circling ravens. Even on a bright cheerful morning, this place oozes a delicious malevolence. It's positively eldritch, as Lovecraft would say (ever notice how the word eldritch is only ever used when talking about Lovecraft?). Our Lady's is famously the longest building in Ireland, at nearly a mile in length. Cork people often refer to the entire structure as St. Anne's, and they also tend not to diffrentiate between the grey section, Our Lady's (which is today partly renovated as apartments) and the red section, St. Kevin's, which is out-and-out abandoned.

The grey part of the building (the long part) was built in 1852 as Eglinton Lunatic Asylum, a Gothic-style building. It is situated atop the steep hill that runs alongside the Lee Road. From the asylum, there is a great view of the south side of the city. It continued to operate as an asylum under several different names before closing following almost a century of damning reports regarding the care of its patients. Today, about two thirds of it have been renovated as Atkins Hall.


You can see here where the disused wing begins...







This is St. Kevin's, the completely abandoned building. This is as close as I got on this occasion...

Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean

Who did you want to be when you were ten years old?

It isn’t a trivial question- you can tell much about someone based on who they admire. (For example, if it’s Jeremy Clarkson, then we’ve learned that this conversation is over). But there are different levels of ‘heroes’. I mean, in a very superficial way, most people wouldn’t mind being a rich heir(ess), and most guys have though at times that being Hugh Hefner would be pretty decent. But these fantasies satisfy merely the most shallow of our needs- they do not answer our burning needs to prove our worth or live meaningful lives- and what people find ‘meaningful’ will of course vary.

Some of my heroes include writers like Arthur Conan Doyle- those who created characters and ideas that have become a part of the public consciousness. But while I would be thrilled to be as talented as them, it isn’t their lives particularly that I would wish to emulate…

That lofty rank would be filled by characters like Percy Fawcett, Harry Price, Richard Burton, Tom Crean and David Livingstone- regardless of personal fame or success, they lived extraordinary lives, each endeavoring in his own way to push back the boundaries of knowledge. Whether they explored the forgotten corners of the world’s jungles or the borders of belief, they reminded us ordinary plebs that the world was a place that was still full of adventure; a place where fantastic things can still happen. Lost civilizations, haunted houses, cannibal tribes and giant anacondas- these are the things that make life worth living (or at least worth reading about).

My recent reading of the book Eastern Approaches has immediately catapulted its authur, Fitzroy Maclean, into this exclusive club. Good God, the man’s credentials are absolutely impeccable; it’s almost obscene that he hadn’t come to my attention previously. If even ten percent of what Maclean wrote about is true, the man was the greatest legend who ever blagged his way through a Soviet checkpoint- a real-life Flashman who seemed always to blunder onto the scene whenever epoch-making historical events were getting underway.

Eastern Approaches begins by chronicling Maclean’s exploits in the years immediately preceding World War 2. A member of the early 20th Century British aristocracy, he was already moving in notable circles (Winston Churchill and Evelyn Waugh were good friends of his) when his diplomatic career begun in Paris. Maclean immediately works his way into my good books by decrying his enviable lifestyle there as ‘boring’. Easy work, good pay, lots of high society champagne parties and warm summer nights on the Champs Elysee do become so tiresome, after all. So, to the amazement and delight of his supervisors, Maclean opts to be reposted to Moscow- something no British diplomat has ever willingly done. No real reason is given for this, except that he fancies a bit of adventure, and wants to find out a bit about the mysterious land of Uncle Joe.

After some time in Moscow, he decides to travel through the forbidden territories of Central Asia, which few Europeans had ever seen (especially since the birth of the USSR). Just for a bit of a laugh. Samarkand and Buhkara sound like exotic, difficult-to-get-to places, and this more than than justifies to him the dangerous journey he intends to take. I agree. This he achieves with an astonishing mix of bravado and luck. The NKVD (precursors to the KGB) follow him everywhere, but because he’s such a legend, their agents often become friendly with him (usually over a bottle of vodka, too). Maclean moves through the various ‘stans, avoiding the usual Soviet red tape by simply not informing the NKVD where his next destination is going to be, and by spoofing to border guards when necessary. This entire section of the book reads very like a real life version of Flashman at the Charge.

Maclean provides an absolutely fascinating document of Soviet life during the 1930’s. Though he deplores the Soviet system, he is never jingoistic or partronising. In fact, he pretty much never has to say a bad word about the Soviets, as the facts of the case speak for themselves- everywhere he goes, movement is restricted for both locals and foreigners, NKVD are an oppressive presence, peasants are relocated en masse and treated like prisoners, and shops are empty as food shortages are standard. He enjoys the company of pretty much every nationality he meets, having good things to say about Afghans, Tajiks, Uzbecs and other unfortunate citizens of the great Soviet experiment. And for an upper-class Brit, Maclean appears to have been remarkably laid-back, especially considering the time. Not a page goes by that he isn’t cheerfully slumming it over a bottle of vodka with a couple of Kyrg peasants in the back of a truck or train.

One other thing needs to be mentioned- Maclean occasionally notes the presence of attractive ladies he meets along the way. After noting them in the text however, they shortly fade form the narrative, seemingly without function. Is there something here that needs to be read between the lines? Something that the author couldn’t make overtly clear when the book was published? At these times I tend to turn to the only picture of Maclean included, at the front of the book-



-and then I just know he tapped that.

My absolute sole criticism of this portion of the book is that it contains one chapter so gripping and terrifying, it stops the narrative dead in its tracks- a detailed description of Stalin’s show trials. After much light-hearted bouncing about Central Asia, this chapter comes as a bit of a shocker. Maclean finally lets a more serious tone creep into his writing, which is fair enough given that he's dealing with one of the most blood-chilling aspects of Stalin's reign. Given a ringside seat, as it were, Maclean reports the trials lucidly and without colour. Former high-ranking Party officials are hauled bleary-eyed into the court to testisfy to absurd (and often impossible) crimes. According to this testiomony of the damned, the Soviet Party was riddled, almost from before its conception, with traitors and conspiracies. Any citizen who was ever known to have dealings with foreigners was a spy; every food shortage was deliberately caused by malicious inside jobs, not government mismanagement. Maclean's narrative deepens considerably here as he leaves high-spirited hijinks to one side and instead delivers a fascinating physocological deconstruction of the Soviet regime. He tries to explain how living in a state of constant terror and misinformation has made it possible that, in some horrible doublethink manner, the audience (and even the accused) actually do believe the absurd deceit they are constructing. Positively chilling.

After this exercise in real-life horror, the madcap central Asian backpacking that Maclean indulges in over the next few chapters seem a trifle thin.

Strangely, the other 2/3rds of the book didn't strike me as being quite as interesting. Perhaps if they had been published separately, they might have had more impact. Anyway, when World War 2 begins, Maclean turns down his position as a local politician, and sign up for the army. Despite his privileged background, he willingly joins as a private and gets sent to North Africa to fight against Rommel's troops. Cue lots of strangely repetitive missions sneaking into desert cities and bluffing past German and Italian troops.

After this, in a truly Flashman-esque move, Churchill himself asks Maclean to parachute into Bosnia to meet the mysterious Tito. Tito is the leader of the Partisans, a guerilla movement who are fighting the Nazi occupation. Trouble is, nobody outside Yugoslavia knows who Tito really is. When Maclean finally meets him, he is impressed by Tito's leadership skills and independent streak. Maclean hides out in the Yugoslav hills for several months, fighting with the Partisans and trying to talk Tito out of his Communist ideals. Again, Maclean does not come across as a condescending, jingoistic Brit- he really does respect Tito, and his fear of Communism is based on experience, not xenophobia.

Even if his WW2 adventures were less interesting to me than his Central Asian odyssey, Fitzroy Maclean is never less than entertaining, and he has solidified his position as one of the great characters of the 20th century.