Episode 65 – The Story of the Moor Road

A Podcast to the Curious - The M.R. James Podcast

This episode Mike and Will return to the realms of the ‘psychic detective’ in this tale from mother-son writing team Kate and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard. Expect terror on the moors with malevolent earth spirits, coughing ghosts, ominous otters and even a bicycle chase scene!

A big thanks to Rob Douglas, who provided the readings for this episode.

Head over to Friends of Count Magnus to find out more about the M.R. James conference that is taking place in York this September!

Story notes

• Hesketh Hesketh-Pritchard (Wikipedia)
  Wikipedia provides a decent summary of Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard’s eclectic life.
• Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist, Collected Stories (Project Guttenberg Australia)
  You can read this story and a selection of other Flaxman Low tales for free online at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• Flaxman Low: The First Psychic Detective (interestingliterature.com)
  A nice summary of Flaxman Low and other ‘psychic detective’ characters in Victorian and Edwardian fiction.
• Haunted Holidays: The Terrible Occult Detectives (Tor.com)
  This highly entertaining article by Grady Hendrix pulls apart and lampoons the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including examples such as Dr. Hesselius, Dr. John Silence and Flaxman Low.
• Who ya gonna call? Ghost doctor, ghost-finder or ghost-seer? (Skulls in the Stars)
  This blog post also talks about the phenomenon of the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including a Top Trumps-esque breakdown the the more famous psychic detective characters along with their skill-sets and character defects.
• Will-o’-the-wisp (Wikipedia)
  In this episode we discuss whether the haunting could be related to or inspired by the natural (or supernatural?) phenomena of the ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘ghost light’.