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Dan Jones on The Wolves of Winter “The Dogs are in a mud-wrestling match with history and they bring some moves all of their own to the party” Now that it’s October, what scary stories are you reading?? I hope you’ll add The Silent Companions to your TBR list this month. Because it NEEDS to be there.
In some instances, dummy boards were used as props in elaborate practical jokes. The 18th-century Dutch artist and writer, Arnold Houbraken, describes a social gathering where a dummy board was placed at the door to greet the company. Some guests, mistaking the wooden figure for a maidservant, attempted to give it a tip, a source of great amusement to those watching. All these different elements combine to make an eerie story where everything creeps along, I thought it might have been too slow but honestly it was perfect to build up this feeling of dread. When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .The Remains of the Day follows the journey of Stevens, a lifelong butler in the service of Lord Darlington, who has recently passed. His new employer, a modern American, encourages Stevens to take a holiday and so Stevens seeks to reconnect with Miss Kenton, a former friend and colleague. If you’re looking for an excellent scare, I highly recommend The Silent Companions. It’s an insidiously creepy Victorian Gothic tale, as well as great historical fiction. If you’re into stories about witchcraft, you’ll also appreciate this one. It’s got a little bit of everything, for everyone. This novel has officially made it onto my list of recommended scaryAF stories. And, oh, did I find out. Let me tell you: There are definitely times I now get up in the middle of the night and look askance at the wooden furniture in my room, too. It begins with Elsie in an asylum, with a creepy attendant and a young doctor who exclaims, “I am here to decide your fate.” He wasn’t joking. Cheyne, J.A. (2011). Sensed presences. In J.D. Blom & I.E.C. Sommer (Eds.) Hallucinations (pp.219–234). New York: Springer.
Unusual feelings of presence have always been associated with similarly unusual or unorthodox interpretations. Some presence experiences appear to share qualities with the feeling (and subsequent discovery) of being stared at; a phenomenon argued to be a real faculty of perception by some (Sheldrake, 2005), but without any strong empirical basis (e.g. Colwell et al., 2000). Persinger and colleagues (e.g. Booth et al., 2005) have argued that felt presences can occur as a result of changes to the earth’s magnetic field, although such effects seem likely to arise from participant suggestibility (Granqvist et al., 2005). Finally, some psychotherapists and spiritual healers consider presences to be evidence of an entity that must be persuaded to depart its host; a controversial approach known as ‘spirit release’ therapy (Powell, 2006). It’s a powerful story written with more sharp wit and wisdom than most other English novels of the 20 th century.
“I had a few nightmares about finding silent companions standing outside my house!”
Unfortunately, things started to fizzle out for me the more I kept reading. It felt like a slow burn at first that I was hoping would pay off over time but that wasn’t the case. There are some decent creepy moments here and there but my goodness, this novel has way too much dialogue. The three alternating timelines with the super past, past, and current aspects of this novel just didn’t work out at all for me. If only the Silent Companion would stay in the attic. Of course, it starts to move. First just the eyes, but then it soon starts popping up in different rooms of the house. Another figurine appears, and then another, and soon the figurines are multiplying like Tribbles throughout the entire house until you can’t get away from them. Sawdust constantly covers the floor, no matter how much the maids sweep, and each night Elsie hears the low, scraping sounds of their inanimate wooden feet moving across the floor. On their own. That’s when the shit really starts to hit the fan. This one is a bit spooky! Not horrific really - it would not keep me awake at night- but it is definitely on the creepy side. Layering on the dark and creepy, this intriguingly plotted novel is the full-blown Gothic, maintaining throughout an unsettling claustrophobic atmosphere mixed with some unusual historical detail That said, the second half of the book was pretty compelling and readable, so at least it had that going for it, even if I didn’t like the answer to where the evil was coming from, or how everything turned out.
A perfect read for a winter night . . . An intriguing, nuanced, and genuinely eerie slice of Victorian gothic.”Loved every moment spent with this novel as this is the book I needed to pull me out of my recent reading slump. A sound, a noise. The creaking floor, the rustling of leaves, the whirling wind. Or maybe something else. Blanke, O., Arzy, S. & Landis, T. (2008). Illusory perceptions of the human body and self. In G. Goldenberg & B. Miller (Eds.) Handbook of clinical neurology (3rd series, Vol. 88, pp.429–458). Edinburgh: Elsevier. It’s a tale of love and class divide, a scathing commentary on the biases and prejudices between classes which were prevalent in Austen’s time. If you’re looking for books like Downton Abbey, Mansfield Park is your first call, without a doubt. The book takes enough time to fully explore class divides and the dramas of the gentry while also being a successful gothic horror. The Court Dancer by Kyung-sook Shin
While it might come from a place far removed from the upper-class world of Downton Abbey English, it’s very much one of the best modern books like Downton Abbey you’re likely to read. The most common interpretation of presence experiences is that they represent some kind of disruption to the internal mapping of one’s own body. Along with presence experiences, survival scenarios are associated with a variety of autoscopic phenomena, such as out-of-body experiences or seeing one’s own doppelganger. Given that felt presences in such situations often feel like they are linked to the person having the experience, it has been suggested that they may be a projection of one’s own body-map, prompted by extreme conditions and stress (Brugger et al., 1997).Laura Purcell interview “I had a few nightmares about finding silent companions standing outside my house!” This was a sisters read and many of us had questions at the end. Trying to figure out exactly what happened, but I often think a book that causes one to question what they just read, is the mark of an interesting and worthy read.
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