Episode 21 Christmas Eve on a Haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper

The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast

Tony Walker

Science Fiction, Fiction, Drama

4.9 • 835 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2019

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Christmas Eve on a haunted hulk by Frank CowperFrank Cowper was born in 1849 and died in 1930. He was an English yachtsman primarily famous for his pioneering work in developing the whole business of modern cruising. He was primarily a sailor but gained fame with his book /Sailing Tours/ which described his voyages in his yachts.He clearly also was an accomplished writer as we see it in this story /Christmas Eve on A Haunted Hulk/ has a very realistic style. The vividness of the description of his foray through the marshes shows he was very familiar with this kind of terrain. One incidental gem of this story is the picture he gives of the provincial life of educated gentlefolk amongst the Victorian peasantry. I have no doubt that this was drawn from Frank Cowper’s actual experience. I suspect that the being stuck under his bed after falling out in the night is also an actual incident from his life.I read this particular story as part of my series of Christmas themed ghost stories leading up to Christmas this year. I have done /The Snow/ by Hugh Walpole and I anticipate doing a couple more Christmas stories before tackling Charles Dickens is /A Christmas Carol/. However there is many a slip twixt cup and lip and it may be that I do not get round to reading a Christmas Carol as I have rather a busy schedule between now and the winter festival itself.I am sitting alone here editing this audio file and trying to get it done before bed. I hope then you will forgive that I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about this story.In some ways it has elements similar to last week’s story /The Kitbag/ by Algernon Blackwood. In both tales, we have the sensory description of something going on that frightens yet does not actually touch the protagonist. Frank Cowper’s description of the cold and damp of the abandoned hulk was very convincing. The only other point I want to make is that it is not particularly Christmassy in tone. For one thing there is no snow! However this dreary cold rainy weather is far more characteristic of an English Christmas than the picture postcard snowman and Santa Claus we would like to believe in.Many things have happened since I last spoke to you however we now have a website. Please check it out. http://www.classicghoststories.com (Www.classicghoststories.com)As always, I beg you to share, rate and love the podcast. Let us grow strong!https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Everybody dies, don't they?
0:10.4	Isn't that certain?
0:14.4	You tried to get into the locked room today, didn't you?
0:17.4	How do that they'd come back, mother?
0:20.0	What's the secret?
0:22.0	Christmas Eve, on a haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper.
0:27.0	I shall never forget that night as long as I live.
0:30.7	It was during the Christmas vacation of 1877.
0:34.6	I was staying with an old college friend
0:36.4	who had lately been appointed the curate of a country parish, and had asked me to come and cheer him up, since he could not get away at that time.
0:44.9	As we drove along the straight country lane from the little wayside station, it forcibly struck me that life in such a place must be dreary indeed.
0:57.0	I have always been much influenced by local colour. Above all things, I am depressed by a dead level, and here was monotony with a vengeance.
1:03.0	On each side of the low hedges, lichen-covered and wind-cropped, stretched bare fields,
1:09.0	the absolute level of the horizon being only broken at
1:12.4	intervals by some mournful tree that pointed like a decrepit towards the east, for all its
1:19.0	western growth was nipped and blasted by the roaring southwest winds. An occasional black spot dotted
1:26.4	against the grey distance marked a hayrick or labourer's cottage,
1:30.3	while some two miles ahead of us the stunted spire of my friend's church stood out against the wintry sky,
1:37.3	amid the withered branches of a few ragged trees.
1:40.3	On our right hands stretched dreary wastes of mud, interspersed here and there with
1:46.3	firmer patches of land, but desolate and forlorn, cut off from all communication with the mainland
1:52.9	by acres of mud and thin streaks of brown water. A few sea birds were piping over the waist,
	...

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