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Study 145 - The Frontier Guards (Patreon)

Published:
2025-10-16 16:07:03
Imported:
2025-10
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Wake-tober continues with a haunted house of a different kind! Can your hearts stand The Frontier Guards by H.R. Wakefield?!

Special thanks to reader Greig Johnson! Check out his YouTube and Patreon channels to view the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy madness!

Here is Bedfellows, the short film referenced in the show.

Comments

lazyelvis

Marketing idea: Strange Studies Spiritual Defense Door Stops. Maybe Maker Greig Johnson could help with that?

Daniel Weber

The effect you guys talked about at the end of the episode makes me think of being a little kid at the grocery store and going up to mom to beg to be able to buy a toy or candy or whatever and suddenly realizing that woman is NOT MOM! Pure panic!

Daniel Weber

I first heard this story on Jim Moon’s Great Library of Dreams podcast. Fans of this show might also like that and his other show, Hypnogoria. I would love to listen to a crossover or collaboration between you guys (Chris and Chad) and Jim. That said, you guys will always be my favorites! Thanks for another great episode.

Apollo Sitting Up

Hey guys. Between the discussions kind of reminds me of that theory that time is happening all at once past present and future. Are you really talking to a ghost or are you talking to someone who’s existing in the same plane at a different time? Which is creepier? Like Night Meeting in Martian Chronicles. Thanks for the show and Happy Halloween!

Daniel Restione

Cool short film… an elaboration of the scene in Shirley Jackson’s “Hill House “ where Eleanor is holding Theo’s hand during a terrifying interlude…. only to discover later Theo is across the room. Jackson’s touch is (always) light and powerful at the same time.

Patrick W

I thought for sure you were going to say two men one upping each other is how the HP Literary Podcast started

Newk

Been a while since the suit of armor came around

Jason Thompson

Another super deadly Wakefield haunted house (assuming the two guys die). I love this about his stories! I wonder if anyone anywhere has tried to fake a haunted house just by killing anyone who enters with a sniper rifle. You could set up the fake backstory that it’s haunted by a ghostly sniper.

Robby Haentze, a consumer of silliness

My favorite old times slang is "smothering the parrot" which is slang for drinking absinthe - a great drink as long as you don't mind the hallucinations*. *Absinthe doesn't cause hallucinations

Newk

Remember stand up Frankenstein?oh man that was hilarious

Iron Tusk Painting

Greig Johnson Vs Andrew Leman in a READ-OFF! like the Movie "Face-off", but better!

Jamie Brittain

I have my own take on the ending of this one, which is that the 'frontier' that the house stands on is one dividing us from our identities being fixed in time and space. Upon entering, our protagonists are stripped of their individualism and sent hurtling through history. Perhaps one of them arrives back in this world just a few decades later, and upon seeing his startlingly handsome new form, decides to change his name veeeery slightly in order to escape Timecop.

Gigarax

PRAISE GIGARAX!!! Almost fell out of my seat laughing at work when I heard Chad. Glad to know the lads enjoy my screen name.

Jim Cannon

A haunted house and a psychic? I thought we were in for a The Shining. But that made me think, this is way earlier. Even before Shirley Jackson. Who first paired the two? Bulwer-Lytton? "The House and the Brain" had some of that action, I think.

ESTY

Near the 17:00 mark in this episode, both Chad and Chris are acting very familiar with each other, chuckling and hand-waving away the usefulness of ‘being able to sense a hard-to-see cat’. I have to think that surely; this is another dose of “deep sarcasm”, right? Right? Because…. DANDELO

It's a Ghost.

This also reminded me of when Chad and Chris covered "The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood, which included this quote: "Black beetles scurried over the floor, and once, when they knocked against a deal table standing in a corner, ***something about the size of a cat*** jumped down with a rush and fled, scampering across the stone floor into the darkness."

Jack Saul

There is indeed in US law a ruling that says that you have to reveal if a house is haunted or rather that, from a legal point of view a house can be defined as being haunted. In Stambovsky v Ackley the seller Ackley widely reported that their house was haunted and told the buyer as much after receiving down-payment. Stambovsky tried to withdraw from the sale and sufferd penalties.An appeals court eventually decided that Stambovsky had a right to do so because it is unlikely that a building inspection would throw up evidence of haunting, and also, perhaps more pressingly, that the widespread reputation of a house being haunted is, in effect, from a real estate point of view, the same as it actually being haunted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambovsky_v._Ackley

Daniel Weber

Not related to this episode, but I had an odd opportunity to recommend this podcast to a stranger the other day. I walked into a local tiny bakery downtown and the guy behind the counter was telling the one other customer in the shop “Oh, the book I’m reading is called Carmilla…it’s like a vampire story, but from before Dracula.” So, after buying some cookies, I was like, “I heard you talking and there’s a podcast for you. Write this down…”

Joshua Weiss

This was a fun, spooky story, but I feel the effect was lessened by my reading in on a computer screen rather than a proper book.

Robert Smith

Talking about the dead girl and the entities that guard the doorway to an another world, I assume it's a Narnia situation - only one where Mr. Tumnus sneaks out at night to protect the secret of the wardrobe by throwing Lucy down the stairs. Of course, this story precedes CS Lewis by 20 years. Just goes to show you can take a similar idea in very different directions. I definitely wouldn't want to meet Wakefield's version of Aslan on a dark night.

Runninghead

Cool idea, Jamie Britian 😁

Runninghead

I've been pooping in the usual offices for years- nice to know it's nothing unusual... might also explain why I keep getting passed over for promotion.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

I had a psychic experience in college in the presence of an apartment roommate who, like Landers, identified as someone around whom psychic phenomena tended to occur. I was quite freaked out about it, but the roommate said it was nothing to upend my life over, it was just something that happened from time to time near him. He said he was a conduit, which was my first encounter with that word. Now I use it all the time, as a few years after college, I became an electrician, a move anticipated by no one, psychic or otherwise. Anyway, I really appreciated this story, but it’s giving me the willies to think that Landers, even with his self knowledge, ventured into such a blunder. I’ve told my story many times, but this is the first time I’m wondering if Frank, the roommate, was wrong to be so self assured in his calmness. It was helpful to me in the moment, but how deep did it run for him? Did he ever feel a sense of exposure or danger around his ability? And if he did not, was he wrong to feel safe? I will provide the details of the incident in a separate comment, as they can be a little tedious to unspool. Sort of like explaining a dream to somebody.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

So, what happened was this: I spoke to my dad during a call home on a Sunday evening. He told me a joke which I found funny enough that I told a few people during my travels Monday morning attending my classes and then at work at my part-time job that evening. I came back to the apartment, encountered Frank for the first time in a few days, and began to tell the joke. He stopped me and said that I had told it to him already. I said that I had not. He said yes you did, and he gave me a synopsis of the joke. I insisted that the timeline of events made this impossible. He said, “Remember? Saturday night, you came home drunk, and you walked into my room here and told me?” He gave me a few other details of the encounter and I realized that things had occurred just as he described them. I said “This is crazy. My dad told me that joke on Sunday.” Frank shrugged and that’s when he assured me that this was not a terribly unusual thing to happen around him. He theorized that my dad was really eager to tell me the joke and that my being drunk opened me up somewhat to receiving it, and that being in Frank‘s presence was the catalyst. I no longer have first-hand memories of this event, only the knowledge that I gave it as thorough a going-over as I could in the days that followed. I even called my dad to ask him if it was possible he had told me the joke sometime in the past, and he said that he only heard it for the first time on Friday at work. So, leaving aside the possibility that in the 18 hours in question here, the joke had fanned out across the community through my multiple tellings and made its way to Frank, and that he was misrepresenting himself, I accepted the version of events he presented and I still do to this day.

Bret Kramer

Being able to detect a cat in any room is called Extra-Sensory Purr-ception

Ash Royal

I have a different version of this story with an added line. "Both forms simultaneosly and hauntingly announced,"By the way, my name is Dracula.""

Ash Royal

I can't speak for the whole USA, but when I took my real estate class we were taught that you have to disclose anything that is notorious about the house. Basically, if everyone in the neighborhood calls your house "The Murder House", you need to mention that. Otherwise, it is not neccesary to disclose. As Jack said, doesn't matter if it is haunted, only matters if people think it is haunted because that could possibly affect the value. Also, I am super allergic to cats. Does that make me psychic? In theory, I can also sense Horses of the Invisible.

Drix

Well, I've been using that slang wrong all this time. Oh well, off to smother the parrot again

Blake Precythe

Hey guys, this has absolutely nothing to do with this episode but, I couldn’t wait until March (which is for Dracula’s of course) to share this with you. Whilst looking for something on YouTube, a video caught my eye entitled, “Dracula’s Paprika Hendl from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.” I couldn’t believe it! Dracula’s chicken! I think about your comments that Dracula has to be cooking Harker’s chicken every time I watch an adaptation of; or start discussing the story. Well thanks to the YouTube channel Tasting History with Max Miller we now have the most faithful adaptation ever put to screen. Link: https://youtu.be/SMNFERb-7Hw?si=Ry1Z3rL6A31rzJ9m

It's a Ghost.

At first, I too thought they had gotten separated as they entered the house and ended up with their own guardsman. However, reading the story again, I don’t think they ever even entered the house, at least not in a traditional sense. The story ends with the lines: “’What's the matter, Willie?’ asked Brinton, ‘can't you find the keyhole?’ The figure in front of him remained motionless.” “‘Can’t you find the keyhole?’ asked Brinton more urgently.” I think this is Brinton standing outside the house, never having set foot inside. It’s like as soon as Lander put the key in the keyhole, he was psychically whooshed into the house, while a guardsman took his place on the outside, or I think more likely, Lander was simply changed in some way to be unrecognizable to Brinton. I say this because earlier in the story, Lander says, “I never quite know how these places are going to affect me. Before now, I have gone off into a kind of trance and been decidedly weird, my dear Jim,” and “When I touch that front door to-morrow I may become in a sense a stranger to you; once inside we shall cross a frontier into a region with its own laws of time and space, and where the seemingly impossible can happen.” Which makes me think Lander entered the house psychically, but the frontier guards never actually let them in physically!

Ben A

I think this is one of Wakefield’s best. It’s true weird horror in a compact, efficient 3 1/2 pages. The subtle snark of Brinton, the indication of growing dread by the short passage about the golf game the day of the exploration, and that WTH ending. Wakefield makes a very clear nod to Bierce here—this story bears similarity to The Spook House and Can Such Things Be?—that one might call it Bierce with a British veneer. You half expect Lander to have said, “I happen to be a little bit psychic” to start the story. If you guys want a great look at the PTSD these characters must experience after their encounters, read Wakefield’s “Look Up There!” On an unrelated note, I was sorry to find out the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (of “It was a dark and stormy night…” fame) is now no more. See the announcement on their website: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com

Artemis

Okay. I didn't read this so maybe a dumb question, but- why did they have to go at night??? Especially if people keep dying there? Personally if I wanted to hit a middle ground between prudence and wanting to see cool supernatural friend talents, I would have tried going during the day. Seems like it would be harder for a friend (if they were not psychic) to make shit up to scare me, and easier to be impressed (but also leave) if the haunting/psychic powers were real.

Jeremey Guttilla

I think it’s also called just being allergic to cats.

Bret Kramer

That’s how cats pick whose lap to sit on, from my experience.

Eldritch Scerry

I like that Wakefield name drops Bierce in this story, as I had got the vibe that Blind Man's Buff was first-person Spook House (Ep 209 of HPP) of the person inside the trapped room. All these Wakefield stories have been so great that I'm building a pocket universe where there exists HRWakecast.com hosted by Chad Fafhrd and the Gray Mackey.

Dan Bollen

They've also read a few stories where this exact thing comes up. I believe The Cyprian Cat, or maybe King of the Cats?

Dan Bollen

It seems like Chad likes to show affection by claiming that people have committed crimes. There's of course the infamous Chris Mackey, and I think he has made similar comments about Matt Burriesci and Anthony Tedesco, and now Grieg. Heather has probably been tried at The Hague by this point.

James Duffy

I have fallen a bit behind, so only just listening to this. When my wife and I were looking to buy a house we viewed a lot of them. Met an estate agent at a local property and he was utterly disinterested, gave us the briefest hello, then told us to look around while he lurked on his phone. We noticed a weird decorative feature, almost like a doorframe on a blank wall. We pondered how great it would be to buy a house for cheaper then discover a bricked off room that had been forgotten about and would put the house value up. At this, the estate burst out laughing, then told us that they had indeed recently sold another property where the new owners then did some internal works and discovered a very old body bricked up in a small room/large cupboard. He guffawed some more about this, then went back to his phone. We left and never looked at any properties from that agency again.