A Groping and Random Fashion: Ghosts in the Harford Hills

Easter Sunday morning skulking in the woods, and I came across the remains of a haphazard campsite / drug den. A thin plastic sheet erected from a few branches, blowing in the wind, put me in mind of a certain M R James bedsheet ghost: "... at once the spectator realised, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion..."

The East Anglian Perambulator: MR James' 'Suffolk and Norfolk'

I live and wander in East Anglia. None of these are new, but these pictures are all of locations visited by ghost story master M R James in his ‘Suffolk and Norfolk: A Perambulation of the Two Counties with Notices of Their History and Their Ancient Buildings.’

Perhaps no overtly supernatural leanings, but hopefully a vibe of the landscape that impacted him so. All captions are taken from James’ wonderful guide.

"Aldeburgh...has a special charm for those who, like myself, have known it since childhood; but I do not find it easy to put that charm into words."

"The good town of Aylsham would make a convenient centre for exploring much of the country with which I have been dealing."

"The vast dead inland flats from Yarmouth are very impressive."

(Castle Acre): "...no finer ruin is to be found in Norfolk."

(Attleborough): "Here legend says that St. Edmund resided for a year, and learnt the Psalter..."

(Dunwich): "How much of this once populous city with ''fifty-two churches' is left at the moment I will not undertake to say."

"Of the many modern attractions of Lowestoft I need not speak."

(Norwich): "...I imagine that both this [panel] and the other at St Peter Mancroft belong to a Last Judgement."

"A merman was caught at Orford in the thirteenth century, and kept for some time."

"Walberswick, a haunt of artists, also had a very large church."

(Watton): "Undistinguished except that near it the death of the Babes in the Wood is located, in Wayland or Wailing Wood."

Dunwich Horrors: Images from the Suffolk Coast

Just spent a few days away in Dunwich, Suffolk. The village's incredible history is no secret - a major East Anglian port, Anglo-Saxon capital, comparable to London in size, almost completely lost to the sea over the centuries. From a population of thousands, a hundred or so people live there today. It is hidden behind marshes, forests, heathland.

For the horror aficionado, Dunwich also holds other appeals. One of the most famous of the fictional New England towns in the writings of HP Lovecraft takes its name from this lost city: the coastal doom and isolation are particularly appropriate for Lovecraft's work. Another earlier twentieth century author, the British scholar MR James, set many of his influential ghost stories along this stretch of the Suffolk coast, visited Dunwich numerous times, and clearly used aspects of the village for his own fictional locales. Due in no small way to the enormous influence of these two authors in particular, film, television, writing, and even role-playing games have turned to lonely Dunwich for further inspiration over the years, and in turn add to the village's sense of hidden, lurking magick.