{"id":13384,"date":"2021-06-28T17:48:49","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T17:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/?p=13384"},"modified":"2023-01-03T13:34:53","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T13:34:53","slug":"wildwood-tales-of-terror-transformation-from-the-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/archive\/wildwood-tales-of-terror-transformation-from-the-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"[Review] Wildwood: Tales of Terror & Transformation From the Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Edited by William P. Simmons<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Paul Gorman creeps into the Wildwood<\/em> in this excellent new anthology of late 19th and early 20th century forest-themed weird fiction edited by William P. Simmons.<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Forests, as William P. Simmons writes in the appetite-whetting introduction to this absorbing anthology, are the seat of humanity\u2019s primal fears.<\/strong> Literally or metaphorically, these dark liminal zones are the source of all folk tales and horror: \u2018nature is horrifyingly, deliciously alive in a wild, uncompromising manner that mortals both dread and delight in.\u2019 Simmons focuses on the wood as the locus of Pan, the wild god of the woods, and he appears in many of these tales in his myriad guises. <\/p>

Simmons categorises three types of horror tales set in nature: nature as sinister setting; as the haunt of dark denizens; or as itself possessing independent consciousness. It\u2019s this latter category that is most successfully \u2013 and most terrifyingly \u2013 represented here. Logically, according to Simmons, if nature is alive, there\u2019s no such thing as the \u2018supernatural\u2019 \u2013 just some form of ultra-reality. And isn\u2019t that more terrifying: the prospect that existence itself is a form of cosmic horror?<\/p>

The introductory essay and notes at the start of each tale show that this is a real labour of love for Simmons, whose enthusiasm is evident. Among this collection\u2019s riches are classics of weird and ghost fiction such as \u2018The View From a Hill\u2019<\/em> by MR James, and Arthur Machen\u2019s \u2018The White People\u2019<\/em>. One of the defining pieces of Weird fiction, the latter\u2019s appearance is always welcome, and few stories evoke such a strange, otherworldly atmosphere amidst ostensibly familiar hills and woods.<\/p>

EM Forster, a genuine giant of English-language literature, is perhaps a surprising inclusion here, but his \u2018The Story of a Panic\u2019<\/em> is a great curtain-raiser. A party of English tourists is picnicking in the Italian hills when a sudden stillness falls upon the countryside. In the space of a few lines, Forster conjures a chill from nowhere. It\u2019s a moment that \u2013 only a few pages in \u2013 made the entire anthology worthwhile, by making something as insignificant as a breeze rippling through trees feel utterly terrifying. An adolescent boy is evidently touched by the wild god while his companions flee, and though the distorting lens of the boorish, irritable, and xenophobic narrator portrays the boy as a nuisance, viewed more objectively this is a heartbreakingly poignant tale. As you would expect, many of the other stories here also rely heavily on the evocation of atmosphere, and an eerie stillness is again used to great effect in \u2018Dead Valley\u2019<\/em> by Ralph Adams Cram. <\/p>

RH Benson (cousin of the better-known EF Benson) is a new name to me. \u2018The Watcher\u2019<\/em> unsettles from the start. It begins \u2018the day following\u2019, with no explanation of what happened the day before, and we don\u2019t have any idea who our narrator is, or who this old man is, recounting an episode from his youth. The ambiguity of the framing is highly effective, lifting what is otherwise little more than an anecdote. <\/p>

Some of the stories have a strikingly contemporary resonance. \u2018The Wind in the Woods\u2019<\/em> by little-known female author Bessi Kyffin-Taylor is, at root, a story of betrayal. The narrator, jilted on his wedding day, has subsequently shunned human company, seeking solace in a beloved Welsh countryside. An out-of-season trip upsets his expectations, and we see revealed a sense of proprietorship: a favourite haunt is \u2018his\u2019 little wood, and for there to be a breeze, in a place he has only ever known as a site of utter serenity, is an affront. The attitude towards nature is one of ownership and entitlement.<\/p>

Set in the wilds of South Africa (a proxy for the author\u2019s native Scottish Borders), nature in John Buchan\u2019s \u2018The Grove of Ashtaroth\u2019<\/em> is the source of visionary transcendence: \u2018the calm fact of Nature broke for me into wrinkles of wild knowledge\u2019 is a wonderful, proto-psychedelic image, and the story\u2019s horror lies in the narrator\u2019s self-awareness of what his actions at the climax signify. Like \u2018The Wind in the Woods\u2019<\/em>, we see a reflection of our own parlous relationship with the environment. There\u2019s a similar transcendence in EF Benson\u2019s \u2018The Man Who Went Too Far\u2019<\/em>, which I\u2019ve read before, and which fits perfectly into this collection. It shares with Buchan\u2019s story a visionary communion with nature, at once strikingly modern but also redolent of the Romantic concept of the sublime: that sense of awe engendered by nature, which can \u2013 as Aldous Huxley writes in Heaven and Hell (1956) with reference to psychedelic states \u2013 tip easily from bliss to terror.<\/p>

Some of the stories are less memorable, and a few of the earlier 19th century ones are written in an overwrought Gothic style typical of the time, but my one complaint about this collection is fairly minor. \u2018In every culture there is a sacred borderland between folk tale and written literature,\u2019 writes Simmons, yet the anthology only contains English language tales, and nothing in translation. But it feels churlish to criticise a book for what it isn\u2019t, and I\u2019d recommend Wildwood<\/em> to any reader willing to risk a brush with Pan…<\/p>

Purchase a copy of Wildwood <\/em>by clicking the image below…<\/p>

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPaul Gorman\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Paul has had his short fiction and reviews published in several outlets; most recently Horrified has featured his story \"The Reeds\", as well as a review of the portmanteau horror \"Studio of Screams\". Paul is on Twitter as @PaulG303 and writes at https:\/\/intothegyre.wordpress.com\/<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Tales From The Crypt 1972 \/ Freddie Francis Where does one start with examining arguably Amicus\u2019 greatest portmanteau film? Well, for me, wiping away the<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tThe People That Time Forgot (1977)\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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The People That Time Forgot 1977 \/ Kevin Connor The success of Amicus\u2019 first two Edgar Rice Burroughs-based fantasy adventures in 1975 and 1976 led<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tAt The Earth’s Core (1976)\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t
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AT THE EARTH’S CORE 1976 \/ Kevin Connor Amicus\u2019 first foray into the science fiction adventure, The Land That Time Forgot (UK, Kevin Connor, 1974)<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tRead More \u00bb\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Paul Gorman creeps into the Wildwood in this excellent new anthology of late 19th and early 20th-century forest-themed weird fiction edited by William P. Simmons…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2030],"tags":[524,1868],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/wildwood-1.jpg?fit=304%2C475&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122687,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13384\/revisions\/122687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horrifiedmagazine.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}