Shownotes
About this episode
You can listen and download the New Ghost Stories Podcast from a number of platforms. And if you enjoy this ghost story podcast, please take a moment to leave a review. It really helps the show. Arthur Machen is one of those authors whose fame is far outstripped by his influence. A pioneer of weird fiction, he’s been cited as a key influence on everyone from Lovecraft to Stephen King. Born in the latter half of the 18th century, Machen came of age in a time when science and rationalism were challenging the established influence of the church to explain life’s big questions, sometimes directly challenging them. The son of a Church of England clergyman, Machen held Christian beliefs but held a fascination with mysticism and the occult. Though sceptical enough to see through many of the supernatural scams of the Victorian period, he nevertheless believed firmly in the need for a mystical understanding of the world beyond what the new science could provide. His stories often focus on the idea of a secret world that exists beyond our own. Access to this world can sometimes be achieved by magic, sometimes by accident, but to enter usually means madness or death. Stories like The Great God Pan , The White People , and The Hill of Dreams , were stranger and more decadent than the popular genre fiction of the time, and he often struggled to find a publisher for his work. He gave up fiction writing at the turn of the century, and increasingly made his living from acting and journalism. But his fascination for magic and myth remained a major preoccupation. He conducted investigations into the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail and began work on a new fiction, The Secret Glory. It was one of the first fictions to feature the idea of the Holy Grail surviving into modern times, an idea much used since. He was writing for London’s The Evening News when the first world war broke out. He gained his first major success with his story, The Bowman, a tale in which soldiers, out-gunned and trapped in the trenches of the first world war, are rescued by ghosts from the Battle of Agincourt. The story quickly passed from fiction into legend, with real veterans of the war claiming to have actually seen the Angels of Mon themselves. The 1920s saw Machen finally receive wider recognition for his work. The Secret Glory was finally published to good sales and many of his early works were brought back into print, simultaneously creating a collector’s market for early editions of his books. In a self-deprecating move, he also published Precious Balms, a collection of negative reviews of his work. If you’d like to support this UK horror podcast, please consider becoming a patron at Patreon.com/newghoststories This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit newghoststories.substack.com