BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Scary Tales and Local Terror
Hollington in Supernatural Tales and Folklore Lowlife Publishing, £9.99 from Bookbuster
Hellebore No.14: ‘The Mirror Issue’ £7.99 from Bookbuster
REVIEW BY TIM BARTON
This time around, we give you another folklore-oriented review!
DON’T BLINK!
First up, Hastings author and artist John D’Anter gives us a fabulous look at the supernatural in Hollington. In an edition of 200, all numbered and signed in silver, this is strikingly illustrated with white text on black paper and numerous appropriately moody period photographs. John has collected ‘a selection of those tales that I heard growing up in the area’, as well as discussing the occult matters raised by these, mostly oral, tales. Herein you will find the Wishing Tree Ghost, the Spectral Schoolboy, Bogeyman and Spring-Heeled Jack, and the Phantom Coach & Carriage. You will find smugglers and witches, and haunted houses!
Naturally, Church in the Woods is given central stage in by the far the longest chapter as it unearths numerous legends focussed there. Here’s Charles Lamb’s description: ‘a small country Church (by whom or when built unknown), standing bare and single in the midst of a grove, with no house or appearance of habitation within a quarter of a mile’, not so different from today. A spooky location births spooky tales, and John has uncovered a fair few.
Amongst these is a modern vampire tale, from the 1970s, perhaps inevitable in the age of Hammer Horror. And for Dr Who fans there is the stone angel, reputedly ‘watching you in the churchyard, and indeed, may even turn its head to monitor your movements as you walk about it’… don’t blink! There would appear to have been a regular coven meeting there at Halloween once upon a time, or at least goth pretenders.
A section is given over to some ‘musings’ under the heading ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’, and gives a good précis of the historical context for some of the esoteric folklore linked to Hollington but also found all over the country. As regards the church, John links its spooky history to one shared by many churches in England, the tradition of siting Christian buildings on ground associated with our old pagan gods.
The final chapter gives us a nice walking tour – choose an appropriately foggy December eve and you too can wander the eldritch corners of Hollington!
LOOK IN THE MIRROR
Our best-selling occult zine, Hellebore, has arrived in its fourteenth edition, and as always it is pretty great! This time the focus is on mirrors, reflections, and doppelgangers. There is a piece by the editor, Maria J Pérez Cuervo, and Helen Cornish on the magical uses of mirrors. This is followed by an article by Elizabeth Dearnley on changelings and fetches, and spirit traps. Did you know that ‘in 1691, Reverend Robert Kirk wrote of the belief that every person has a double in the fairy realm’? Do you have one? Kirk called his The Co-Walker, what is the name of yours?
There are two pieces on mirrors in cinema, one from John Gwatney about the cult film Lucifer Rising, which has a loose connection to Hastings, insofar as its director Kenneth Anger was influenced by our very own demon, Aleister Crowley. Another covers ‘four classic on-screen tales where the mirror shows what is hidden and becomes a portal to another world’, and features ‘The Haunted Mirror’ from the 1945 anthology film ‘Dead of Night’; ‘The Gatecrasher’ from another anthology film, 1975’s ‘From Beyond the Grave’; and a Hammer House of Horror short from 1980, ‘Guardian of the Abyss’.
Katy Soar writes on the ‘connection between mask, ritual and transformation’, and Maria adds a page here on ‘Ritual Masks in Film’. And the inevitable vampire turns up in Sam George’s ‘The Vampire’s Lost Reflection’ – no gags about moonlight being reflected sunlight, please! Last, Tunji Offeyi contributes an interesting essay comparing Yoruba cosmology and British folklore – ‘in the Ifá tradition of West Africa’, too, ‘mirrors, polished to a sacred gleam, function as portals’. As always, Hellebore is also wonderfully illustrated throughout.
As a bonus, this year Hellebore has also published its first short story collection, Tales of Occult Britain, available for £15 at Bookbuster, 39 Queens Road, Hastings TN34 1RE
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