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Study 106 - The Clock (Patreon)

Published:
2024-09-12 14:17:16
Imported:
2024-09
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It's time for us to cover W.F. Harvey's The Clock - a short story in which the chills don't stop!

Special thanks to reader Evan Van Dreel of Hippocampus Press, purveyor of classic horror and science fiction! You can look for Evan's work in the upcoming issue of Outpost 28 from the Kuhta Gallery!

Next up: Feedback and an extra-credit episode on the Lovecraft adaptation Suitable Flesh!

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Comments

Ross Clark

Great episode as always guys! Chad, I chuckled at your mention of cribbing elements of this story to pass off as your own for tales by the campfire. I've done the same several times with Robert Aickman's "The Fully Conducted Tour", which you may want to cover in the future. Be careful though, if your story is TOO interesting you'll bring on a hell of a lot of follow up questions which, as I now know from personal experience, can end up with you having to come clean in front of some very unimpressed friends!

Rafe Ball

And I can confirm that piece of gossip - you covered M.R. James' "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" in episode 243 of the HPLLP.

ESTY

I can feel the vivid memory of that travel clock like a phantom limb. The way the weight of it would swing into your palm when it shut with a CLOP. I don’t think this story is paranormal though. It was likely just one of “the help” returning something borrowed from the house (without permission), and replacing it before it’s absence was noticed. Winding the clock out of habit. Probably tweaked a gammy knee on the stairs in the dark, and is hopping around, leaning on bannisters and doors.

MonsterTalk

The question of whether the narrator is a girl or a boy is interesting. They are 18 at the time of the story, they carry a pocket watch, and almost all the people they mention are aunts or women friends. It would be absurdly obscure but I could imagine a companion story about someone who for mundane reasons has gone into the house, winds the clock, and accidentally plays a game of cat and mouse with the narrator of this story without meaning to.

Steve

I was always told it was called a Monkey Puzzle tree because the spiky leaves on the trunk and branches made it difficult to climb. That's also what Wikipedia says.

Illegal_Structures

As we learned from the Blair Witch Project: things facing walls are creepy.

Hieronymus Tosh

The 'strange hopping thing' reminded me of the magic lantern slides that Karswell shows the children in M.R. Jame's 'Casting the Runes'. Those that know will know. Strange coincidence that James was also mentioned in the episode. Spooky, no?!

Allison Albright

A good ghost story is hard to pull off and this one genuinely gave me the creeps. One could come up with all sorts of mundane explanations and that could be an interesting exercise. But for me the fun is in being a little creeped out, so I choose to interpret this story as a wonderfully unexplained supernatural event. I think it's so effective because it's the kind of experience we've all had - something strange and inexplicably creepy happens - but in life there's usually a normal explanation and in this story it remains unknown and unresolved. Was it a normal person acting bizarrely for some unusual but mundane reason? Some human psychopath hiding in the house? A ghost? Some kind of ... thing? I would probably jump out the window too. And so much accomplished in such a short story. I'll definitely read more of this author.

Jim Cannon

So obviously someone or some_thing_ was sitting on the covered furniture on the ground floor, just chilling under the sheet until the most opportune time to creep out the letter writer presented itself. Right? Out walking in the darkening evening while listening to this, and Chris and Chad getting creeped out started creeping me out. Like I know I would sense a car but probably not another bear or a coyote or a Michael Myers sneaking up on me. Nice shiver of dread on my walk tonight!

Alan Ricks

Chinese Vampire. Hopping. Long Nails. Jiangshi all the way.

Alan Ricks

Through you introducing Aickman’s works to me, I have discovered that what truly unsettles, disturbs, and even frightens me the most is when things are left ambiguous and up to MY imagination to fill. This short story, where arguably nothing actually happens, had me on the edge of my seat. When the clock was ticking behind the locked door I had my stomach drop to the floor and try to run out of the room. It gave me the same sensation of when I was a kid and I had to go take the trash out across a compleatly dark yard and I could PHYSICALLY feel grasping ghostly claws hovering just behind my back and neck the entire time and no matter what I told myself it would always come down to me chucking the bags into the cans and hightailing it back to the house at a dead run. A++ story!

The Lonely Sand Person

My sense was that the "framed text" was a bible verse or something like that which Mrs. Caleb had put away in order to prevent it from protecting the narrator from what was to come. The whole scenario has the sense of a trap to it. I have no idea whether it was set specifically for the narrator or just for whatever convenient target Mrs. Caleb roped into her fetch quest. I think it's notable that the narrator found the clock at 12:55, and Mrs. Caleb fainted during lunch -- the implication seems to be that she projected her spirit to perform this haunting, even if it was an awkward moment for it. As for the hopping, I can only assume that she chose to manifest her spirit as... a Luxo lamp!

Long time hater

Chris, you stated that 'ghosts are human, or at least were human', only half accurate in the case of the ghost of a werewolf; Chad must be seething...

William Tank

Was it hopping because it was a human chair?

Anne Ominous

Creepy little vignette! Coulda been the beast with 5 fingers clomping up the stairs... The narrators reaction at the end is universal: who hasn't jumped out of a window and run like heck after stealing something from a 'friend's' house?

It's a Ghost.

I went back and checked, and the narrator clearly states that she closed and re-locked the inner doors, but she only mentions that she closed the outer door. Perhaps someone (maybe a 10-year-old neighbor boy) simply followed her into the house and is hopping up the stairs and scratching doors with their fingernails for some reason.

Bjørn Svartalf

Well, Chris and Chad might have never had a chance to shit talk behind a dog's back, but as a playtimer at a pup resort (the guys playing with the dogs 8 hours a do or so), I most certainly have. Like Bonnie the German Shorthaired? She knows her name and that's about it. Snacks the Aussiedoodle? Decides to mount a giant labrador who doesn't even know he's back there, good choice dude.

Ryan Thomas

The hopping and scratching in The Clock connect directly to the existence of the titular alarm clock, thankful exposed by the 1995 film, Babe. A duck and a pig obviously want to rid the house of the mechanical rooster.

Thylacine

This story creeps me out especially because I've had dreams of being in a house, pursued by something, and having to escape for most of my life. Being home alone as a kid creeped me out and I would never go upstairs when I was there by myself.