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Handful_ofdust having mentioned M.R. James and A Podcast to the Curious, I listened to a couple. The podcast for 'A Disappearance and an Appearance' reminded me that there is a ghost story, 'Christmas Reunion,' which is directly inspired by an idea tossed out by James in an essay. So I had to go look up the author of 'Christmas Reunion,' which turned out to be one Sir Andrew Caldecott, a former colonial civil servant. His collection, Not Exactly Ghosts is up in part on Google Books, and thus I was able to read 'A Room In a Rectory,' in which young Rev. Nigel Tylethorpe, newly-appointed to the Rectorate of Tilchington, will open up that room that's been disused since one of his predecessors died suddenly while practicing Satanic rites, and has it renovated as his new study....
It's the type of story where there is a possible non-supernatural explanation for everything -- which doesn't make the demons not-real, it makes them the classic type of demons that have no power over the physical world, but work entirely by tempting humans. I like that the effect of the room on Rev. Tylethorpe is not to turn him to the practice of black magic, but to make him into a fire-and-brimstone type (in a humorous aside, his new style of sermon briefly lures the local Evangelicals away from their own preacher, who rants that he always preached an honest Protestant devil and that these fallen angels are crypto-Papist imposters), utterly paranoid that he's done... something to damn himself, even if he's not quite sure what.
The other stories readable on Google Books are 'Branch Line to Beneston,' and 'Sonata In D Minor,' either of which might be considered dark SF as much as supernatural fiction. Not Exactly Ghosts is an accurate title.
It's the type of story where there is a possible non-supernatural explanation for everything -- which doesn't make the demons not-real, it makes them the classic type of demons that have no power over the physical world, but work entirely by tempting humans. I like that the effect of the room on Rev. Tylethorpe is not to turn him to the practice of black magic, but to make him into a fire-and-brimstone type (in a humorous aside, his new style of sermon briefly lures the local Evangelicals away from their own preacher, who rants that he always preached an honest Protestant devil and that these fallen angels are crypto-Papist imposters), utterly paranoid that he's done... something to damn himself, even if he's not quite sure what.
The other stories readable on Google Books are 'Branch Line to Beneston,' and 'Sonata In D Minor,' either of which might be considered dark SF as much as supernatural fiction. Not Exactly Ghosts is an accurate title.
