Reading List
The Haunted Landscape
This is it, that thing we do. The Reading List really started as a way to try and communicate what I meant by Landweird, a certain unmappable place between the rural, the psychedelic, the haunted and the weird - things half-forgotten, things dug up from the soil.
A Warning to the Curious (1972)
★★★
Serial | My favourite of the Ghost Stories for Christmas series so far; Landweirdy, gentle, well constructed - and very, very scary.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004)
★★★★
Book | I initially categorised this, wrongly, as children's - because I think these are the books with which it best fits. Fantasy and adventure stories, that are fiction and have a certain strange something about them. JS&MN is particularly tied in with a mythos of the north and has some excellent fairy content, as well as being something of an outlier in the historical fiction genre in making a proper protagonist of a working class black character of the Regency era. Anyway, it's not priority reading, but it's something a bit more grown up than the children's selections and very good. And spooky! Such a foggy book. It's worked its way into my mythology, and will surely do the same to yours.
Worzel Gummidge (2019)
★★★★
Serial | I love this with all my heart. Crook is a passionate environmentalist; and Steve Pemberton, surely, as a British horror afficianado, knows this source material and knows what it means. This is a conneusseur's Gummidge, less viscerally disturbing than the original - but aware that it was frightening, and this needs to skirt the edge of fear as well. But it tempers it with a fairytale whimsy. Its so beautiful, and the second serial - the Green Man - is especially lovely. Suitable for older children. Its soundtrack is a masterpiece in its own right - performed by the Unthanks
✪ On Vanishing Land (2019)
★★★★★
Album | Wonderful. Spoken word over ambient, the record of a day's walk along an evocative coastline: following in the path of musicians, filmmakers, and historians. Extremely us, essential listening. The right kind of trippy. Recommended for people who are not yet sure what "Stellar" is.
Old Weird Albion (2016)
Book | Unread. Text from this book is used for my beloved Chanctonbury Rings, which everybody should listen to. Hopper also has a podcast - Uncanny Landscapes - which I've enjoyed as an easy pick-me-up-and-refocus.
✪ Chanctonbury Rings (2019)
★★★★★
Album | Wonderful. Spoken word and 70s sounds, about the mingling past and personal at an eerie stone circle at Chanctonbury. Essential listening. And still available on vinyl everywhere, goodness knows why. Text exerpts from Old Weird Albion
Journey to Avebury (1971)
Film | Unseen. Short film by the artist. I've seen Jarman's Blue, which is horrifying. This is shots of his journey to Avebury, and is relevant to the themes of British eerie, but you won't get much from it unless you are - say - trying to fill out a film program, or want something to loop at your moot.
✪ The Eeriness of the English Countryside (2015)
★★★★★
Article | Overview of media in our area of interest; recommended. Link
The Hill of Dreams (1907)
★★★★
Book | Transparently autobiographical, this book veers between awkwardly written observations of the daily life of an over-sensitive aspiring writer (whose name is DEFINITELY not Arthur) - and weird happenings in the countryside, cast in luminous, frightening prose. When that happens, it definitely rivals The Great God Pan for intensity and awe. Read, and copy out the best passages into your Commonplace Book.
Let England Shake (2011)
★★
Album | Fantastic album, loosely linked stories about the landscape and war; probably not spiritually essential, but part of our trend and really good music.
✪ Penda's Fen (1974)
★★★★★
Film | I found this very moving, and it helped me solidify a lot of what I wanted to do (especially the theme of the Solar vs Lunar, the outsider and the establishment; the ancient truth coming up from the fen; the importance of a heretical christianity to the pagan tradition in Britain) and plus, it's just Great. Love that this stuff was just put on the telly in the 1970s.
Children of the Stones (1977)
★★★★
Serial | I've got to say, I'm not fond of Stones, but it's probably essential viewing regardless. Its THE definitional example of a particular kind of 1970s kids weird and pagan-scientific vibes. By the standards of the time, it's stagey and slow - and it really benefits from you watching it **one episode at a time every week as it originally aired**. It was NOT made to be bingewatched. But its imagery is spooky and memorable. And it's changed how I felt about Avebury too, which is no longer merely a stones experience for me; but one which includes the surrounding village and churchyard, not merely a strangeness of stones but how odd it must be to have a village inside them.
A Field In England (2013)
★★★
Film | CW: strobing/flashing imagery throughout. Trippy, tiny-budget movie about a group of Civil War soldiers who get lost on their way to the pub, literally (and metaphorically) fall through a hedge, and then spend time in a field. Worth seeing on a big screen and soundsystem and getting thoroughly lost in. I didn't love it, but Wheatley is worth looking out for since he's been on rural weird themes for a While now.
✪ Arcadia (2015)
★★★★★
Film | If they ask you what it is we do, show them this. A collage-film made up of old fragments from the BFI archive, assembled to tell a story of the haunted land, with a new soundtrack and spoken word segments. Very good. And useable not just as reading list, but as part of ritual - I've watched it on a loop, more times than I can count, and sort of tripping into it; after five or six nonstop hours of Arcadia, weird things happen.
The release of Arcadia was somewhat overshadowed by a glowing review by noted friend-of-fascists Paul Kingsnorth, who floats around British intellectual culture like a nasty smell; and that, in turn, has cast doubts on the politics of the film. Does Arcadia endorse a sort of blood-and-soil patriotic mysticism that creates space for the worst of people to organise and myth-make? But look, ultimately I think it's fine to be weird around your own history and culture and folklore (I wouldn't be doing what I do otherwise), and it's merely the interpretations put upon it - like Kingsnorth's interpretation - that must be rejected. We need to keep claiming this space for interpretations of our own. It's a 90 minute music video, and so abstract as to invite personal interpretation, reflection and experience. As Oscar Wilde says - "he who has found it, has brought it". So, with that disclaimer out of the way, you should definitely still watch Arcadia; just be thoughtful, and open to the complexity of operating in this space.
Hookland
★★★
Website | Twitter microfiction about the strange little town of Hookland. Short but sweet and very us; and some of the writing, especially by Nolan, is just gorgeous. My Comminplance Book is filled with quotes. Southwell uses his position in the twitter folk horror scene to set a very strong line about racist and classist behaviour in the space, which is also very cool. Link
The Bells of Astercote (1980)
★★★
Serial | The Christmas ghost tradition for the under 12s. This film has a nice focus on the human tension between the villagers who have been there for generations, and the people from the city who have moved from the city. Astercote is a mythic missing village, like Dunwich. I can see why this hasn't come to the iconic stature of Owl Service or Children of the Stones, but at the same time, I thought it was reallly rather good. Review available. Based on a book, which I haven't read. Unlike a lot of our children's media, this one is actually suitable for older children (8 - 12)
Raven (1977)
Serial | Unwatched. Sounds promising, television series about an archeologist stumbling on King Arthur mysteries - blended with nuclear and environmentalist fears.
Hidden Valleys: Haunted by the Future (2015)
Book | Unread. Barton collaborated on On Vanishing Land, which is a masterpiece. "Hidden Valleys starts from the perception that the human world is an eerie place, particularly in relation to its stories and dreams. It also starts from events that took place in North Yorkshire, in 1978. A work of philosophy, an account of experiences, and a biography of a year, "
The Man Whom The Trees Loved (1912)
★★★★
Book | Fantastic eerie short about what happens when the woods love you back. (Misogynist? Kinda, yeah; Blackwood made some overt and implicit choices about the female protagonist of this one, but it's still a very readable story)
✪ The Willows (1907)
★★★★★
Book | I am wild about the Willows, which is as fabulous as could possibly be hoped for. An unsettling trip down a river plain and something strange in the trees. Originally published as part of 'The Listener and Other Stories'; I listend to the BBC audio version, read by Roger Allam, and I really recommend it.
All Systems Go! (1973)
★★★
Serial | Documentary piece - a bit of an odd one, filmed in symbolic style exploring Garner's creative process. Garner is a key author for us, and the documentary is abstract and strange. Aside from a bit of biographical stuff, I think it constitutes a Garner text in its own right - and is thus rather interesting. Around on youtube, for anybody focusing on Garner.
✪ The Owl Service (1967)
★★★★★
Book | It's this, the thing that we do; it's this. Everybody should read it.
The Owl Service (1969-1970)
★★★★
Serial | Very unsettling Haunted Generation serial, about a group of children in the Welsh hills in the holidays going slowly strange in the land and the folklore. Dark, adult, artsy and odd. Contains some spooky ceramic. Not really for children. I didn't love it, but its a key text in this tradition of British pastoral weird. Based on a book, which I haven't read.
Preternatural Investigations
★★
Podcast | Meditative, ambient, Kraus' soothing voice washes over her haunting flutes and twinkling guitars, meditating on place, art and magic. You can tell that Kraus is sort of, borderlands Pagan but a little embarassed by it and still wrestling with what it means, but I'd recommend it for beginners in a similar place, still trying to put together the spiritual and scientific. Link
✪ The Great God Pan (1890)
★★★★★
Book | Rural weird fiction,inspired by a strange experience Machen had in the countryside as a child. Extremely good. What we do. Read as much Machen as you can get your hands on.
In the Earth (2021)
★★★★★
Film | CW: Flashing/Strobing; gore and threat. This is 90 minutes of uninterrupted "that thing that I like" - psychedelic pastoralism and people going mad in the wilderness. It's actual horror, so skip it if you struggle with this but it's extremely recommended otherwise. Trippy forest gestalt minds, emanations from mysterious stones, the proufound disabling that comes with the loss of your shoes, and mushroom spores.
A Year in the Country
★★
Webpage | A blog that sort of does rural eerie/hauntological things. Good to dip into for ideas of where to go next, though I confess finding the blog's style a little disorienting; and uhh you know, it feels a bit like it's been set up to sell things - to draw in people who like this sort of thing, and then provide them with content. That puts me a little on edge. It's not the undercurrent of the strange and the forgotten once it's able to be bought. But I do look at it, when I need new paths. Link
Wuthering Heights (1947)
★★
Book | I really want to pull more, and unexpected texts into our lineage of landweirdy fiction. So, consider, Wuthering Heights: in many ways more of a family saga, than the horror-romance Hollywood has made of it - and yet, perfect to cuddle up with in the autumn and listening to the wuthering out-of-doors. Worth reading, if for no other reason than its final page. I'm a huge fan of the Andrea Arnold film (which, among other things, has no music: just the oppressive sound of the wind) and, like all sensible folk, the Kate Bush song.