Horror and Handshakes

Witchcraft, Book Signings and BFS Chat

Saturday 25th October 2014 was a fantastic way to start the run up to this year's Samhain celebrations in London. The British Museum currently has a small but perfectly formed art exhibition - Witches and Wicked Bodies - in Room 90, where I spent an hour or so studying the artwork and making notes. With etchings, lithographs, mezzotints, pen and ink and paintings from artists such as Albrecht Dürer and his contemporaries in the 15th century the exhibition takes you right through to 20th century with depictions of witches, demons, and dark, dark beings on display from the likes of Fuseli, Goya, Barry, Delacroix, Odilon Redon, Aubrey Beardsley, Henry Keen and more.

Highly recommended. Find out more about Witches and Wicked Bodies...

Hallowe'en Horror Signing - Forbidden Planet

After the exhibition, and a cheeky French lunch I toddled off to the Hallowe'en Horror Signing event at Shaftesbury Avenue's incredible Forbidden Planet.

There, I met up with the wonderful and inspiring Jan Edwards from Alchemy Press and Theresa Derwin of KnightWatch Press and had brief chats with Simon Marshall-Jones of Spectral Press and Gary McMahon. 

I only bought three books as the budget was cruel despite my desire to stroke and acquire practically everything in sight. So, I chose The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror - 25th Anniversary Edition which was kindly signed by Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Stephen Volk, Thana Niveau, Reggie Oliver, Lynda Rucker, Robert Shearman and the mighty editor Stephen Jones.

I also bought Kim's An English Ghost Story which he signed, and Mark Morris's The Wolves of London - also signed. Can't wait to get my teeth into these.

British Fantasy Society Open Day

Just down the road, The Bloomsbury Tavern was hosting the British Fantasy Society Open Day where I met up and chatted with Jan, Theresa, Peter Coleborn, Mike Chinn, the dashing Tim Dry, the absolutely gorgeously lovely Barbie Wilde, Adrian Cole, John Gilbert and Dean M Drinkel. 

Barbie, Tim, Dean and I - all together in time for Western Legends Publishing launch of PHOBOPHOBIAS on 31st October!

I stole away at around 7pm, on my husband's arm and we swept into London's heaving streets in search of food. We ended up, as always, at a Spaghetti House then ran to Victoria. I fell asleep on the train home with a big smile on my face and was tucked up in bed before midnight.

News

Oh, and I have some exciting news! Hopefully I'll be able to reveal more on that soon.

Matthew Hopkins - would you let him interview your mother?

'Imps' from Malleus Malificarum

Bigot and misogynist? Clever sadist? Or both...

Matthew Hopkins is a vicious yet mysterious figure in English history. No record exists of his birth or death though he is said to have expired from tuberculosis around 1647 in the eerily named village of Mistley in Essex.

Rampantly declaring hundreds of women (as well as a handful of men and children) as witches in the tumultuous years building up to the English Civil War Hopkins granted himself the ominous title of Witchfinder General. And he made it his mission to live up to his own job description. Over 300 women were hanged on Hopkins' dubious findings, and magistrates up and down the East of England paid him a handsome fee to do so.

Hopkins wasn't the only Witchfinder of the time - witchcraft had first been outlawed in 1563 and then established as a far more serious crime in 1604 when a Witchcraft Statute was raised. But Hopkins' dubious methods of skin pricking and ducking, stooling and sleep deprivation - none of which came under the illegal practice of torture - gained him a reputation more feared than the fabricated crimes of those he accused.

I truly believe in the innocence of Hopkins' victims. They were often widowed and elderly, perhaps cantankerous and opinionated. Healers and midwives too, would of course have been at risk.

And so I got to thinking, what if one of Hopkins' 'witches' was more than he anticipated? What if the (unsubstantiated) perverse means of sexual gratification practised by this son of a Puritan evoked a darker power than he really believed in....

HOPKINS' CONFESSION

One long quill to save a life. One signature in ink.
One young wife possessed, accused. One ducking stool to sink.
Bright shillings from the sheriff’s purse weigh heavy in my pouch.
I juggle, jingle, fondle them, my methods for to vouch.

She favours me with pleasures sweet but calls them tortures, sick.
I twist the pen in my fine hand; which signature to pick?
The one to tie her thumb to toe and toe to thumb again?
Or single pricking, clever knife to hide her lying pain?

She mewls, a cat – the evidence, her breast is wrought in sin.
I dip my pen, stroke at the page and scratch her name within.
Goody Blithe forgets herself, reveals her nipples three.
“One for master, one for Pan and lastly one for thee.”

Her voice is of a nether world. It spits fire from dark hell.
Black eyes glow a burning red, “I’ll have this tale to tell.”
From moles and warts a seeping slime erupts and bursts and drips.
“Curse on you, priest of false God.” Her words spill from torn lips.

Wet walls hum with spectral mist, their faces I remember
from hangings at the crossroads tree from May to last December.
Their innocence I did not doubt, no ugly beauty fooled me.
There is no witch in Charles’s fair land but simple neighbours feuding.

Booty stashed and power raised Blithe saw straight through my ruse.
A demon, raiser of the dead she announced my abuse.
Her harridans swept swiftly forth, tore at my black-cloth’d chest.
Froze their breath inside my lungs and laid me down to rest.

Your chronicles bare not my words. No sullied, deviant ink
recorded how she stole this man to Hell, his soul to drink.
But now, my reputation rot, my name a curse ephemeral
I rise once more to seek you out, signed, your... Witchfinder General.

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Dark New Things

The Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle, Cornwall has relaunched its website at www.museumofwitchcraft.com. Both the site and the museum itself are well worth a visit. I've been there several times, danced outside and sung in The Welly round the corner with the lovely museum staff.

They have a massive historical collection with many rare artefacts and books.  Very highly recommended.

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New dark fiction magazine, erm 'Dark Fiction Magazine' launches on 31st October. It will be a collection of audio short stories.

Its press release says "This is a free service designed to promote genre short fiction to an audience of podcast and radio listeners. A cross between an audio book, an anthology and a podcast, Dark Fiction Magazine is designed to take the enjoyment of short genre fiction in a new and exciting direction..." Looking forward to this!

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