Welcome to Sudapod, the weekly horror podcast, beneath the surface is a world of gliding monsters,

one you can choose not to step into or leave at any time.

Sudapod Episode 800

March 4th 2022, this week's story, The Paraside's Tale, by Charles Maturin,

narrated by Kurt Kirstiner, hosted by Alice Distuit, and with audio production by Chelsea Davis.

Hello everyone, welcome to the show. I'm Alice De, your host, and we are Sudapod, the weekly horror

podcast, and this week we turn 800, we don't look a day over 700. Our story, The Paraside's Tale,

is actually an excerpt from a larger work, the notorious Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer,

published in 1820. And speaking of notorious, Charles Robert Maturin, also known as CR Maturin,

born 1780, died 1824, was an Irish Protestant clergyman and a writer of Gothic plays and novels.

He was married to the acclaimed singer of the time, Henrietta Kingsbury, and is best known for

Melmoth the Wanderer, of which this is part. His first three novels all crashed,

but when they caught the attention of Sir Walter Scott, he recommended them to Lord Byron and with

their help, Maturin's play Bertram was staged in 1816, at the Drury Lane Theatre, for 22 nights.

Samuel Taylor Colouridge, no less, publicly denounced to the play as dull and loathsome,

and this is a quote, melancholy proof of the deprivation of the public mind,

and if that isn't a pull quote, I don't know what is.

The Church of Ireland banned Maturin from advancing in the clergy?

Yes, I'm thinking of every joke you are, and so he was forced to support his wife and four

children by writing. He switched back to novels, and thus, eventually, Melmoth was born.

A writer in the University magazine was later to sum up his character as eccentric,

almost insanity, and compounded of opposites, an insatiable reader of novels, an elegant

...