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Episode 567 - The Hospice - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-14 21:05:44
Edited:
2024-12-12 19:00:30
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Join us as we finish up our conversation with writer/director Jeremy Dyson on Robert Aickman's story The Hospice!

Special thanks to reader and dancer Greig Johnson!

Next up: The School Friend

Comments

Mounty of Madness

The other weird fiction podcast I am listening to is Elder Sign, and I love it when they cover a story you have done or vice versa. They just did The Hospice, Ep. 217/218. You may want to give them a listen.

Hieronymus Tosh

I've been trying all week to find a BBC Radio reading of The Hospice. I remember hearing it a couple of years ago after finding another dramatisation of Ringing The Changes. Anyone else know it or am I indeed living in an Aickman story?

Alan Ricks

You are thinking of the BBC Radio reading by Gideon Coe from 2016. It is in 4 parts but I don’t see it available online in any of the usual places. I did find it adapted for TV in the anthology ‘Night Voices’ which seems pretty fun. https://youtu.be/BLitwlP-m7c

Rob_Hellfire_Graves (Cult organ donor, wrestler, poet & Satanic Reverend)

Chad, in regards to your crying hotel worker I've worked nights on hotel reception for seven years and more often than you'd believe the booking sites will overbook us and take the money for those booking without anyone at the hotel having a say or the power to issue a refund directly. The British public are very quick to anger especially in the early hours of the morning, I've lost count of the number of times people have literally made verbal threats on my life or become violent over a mistake I did not make and can not undo. I'm a big guy and I've been pushed to my metal limits before too, all for minimum wage. Hell, sometime i wish a mysterious hearse would come take me away for enteral peace and quiet.

Markus Lauerer

There's a study by S. T. Joshi I came across a couple of years ago titled "The Modern Weird Tale" where he talks about Robert Aickman among others. Strangely enough, he singles out "Letters to the Postman" for analysis, a rather obscure Aickman piece that isn't found in any of the readily available collections. When I read Joshi's attempt at a plot synopsis I thought that this couldn't possibly be what the story was about. It took me some time to find the story and it is actually as strange as Joshi made it out to be. It is kind of baffling to imagine someone sitting down and meticulously writing a story like that. A critical habit of our times is the description of plot mechanics in books or movies as following some sort of dream logic, but I think Aickman is one of the very few creators I've come across where this statement might actually hold true.

Illegal_Structures

Regarding Aickman and his complicated relationship to intimacy (sexual or otherwise), I think a lot can be traced back to his own unusual upbringing. Famously he described his father as “the strangest man [he] ever met”, and the elder man’s bizarre habits created an extreme level of tension and unease in the Aickman family home. Eventually Robert was abandoned by both of his parents. You don’t have to dig too deeply to understand how this would shape someone’s ability to form attachment with others.

Erick W Mertz

This story reminds me of the 1977 Australian mystery/drama film, The Last Wave starring a pre-Thorn Birds Richard Chamberlain. Director Peter Weir (much like he did with Picnic At Hanging Rock) places his lead characters into a series of weird situations, mostly connected to bizarre weather phenomenon, that they're never quite sure of, but are forced to accept.

Rafe Ball

Here’s another possible reading - it’s a vampire story! The Hospice is a vampire home, staffed by Renfields - everyone rooms in pairs because it’s one vampire, one victim. They’re fed copious amounts to help recover from the blood loss, hence it’s a ‘necessary recuperative’. Some may be willing victims, coming for food or companionship, and be repeat guests, others need more persuasion (hence the fellow shackled to the table) and may be more ‘disposable’ (Cromie is used to ‘bigger jobs’ - operating a backhoe, perhaps?). There’s a somewhat Harker-y feel to Maybury’s frustration with the over the top hospitality that he, in very English fashion, like Harker feels forced to accept. Bannard’s reaction to Maybury’s wound also reminded me of Dracula’s when Harker cuts himself shaving. I think the pyjamas/suits thing in Bannard’s room is another thing that supports this interpretation (as well as the lack of windows). Maybury notes the many pairs of identical pyjamas, but when he sees all the suits in the cupboard he doesn’t make the same observation - because Bannard’s victims leave behind the suits they come in.

Tunguska Event

Weird Studies makes a compelling case for the hospice as a fairy realm or some sort of fairy incursion into our world... But then Weird Studies thinks everything is fairies. Fairies all the way down.

Matt Bustin

Two excellent episodes, great writer and a great guest. More please at some point!

HRPrice

I found myself wondering if the guest with an ankle chain was a sort of fun-house reflection of the protagonist’s ankle injury. Slowing him down, impairing his movement, stranding him at the Hospice… …That’s it, that thought’s not connected to anything. No theory, just one parallel.

Matt Bustin

Chad and Chris should have mentioned Jeremy’s play, Ghost Stories, which I saw twice and was amazing particularly so if you love Amicus/ Hammer’s portmanteau films, M R James, Aickman etc. It was turned into a movie eventually, which is good, but the play was something else, 300-400 terrified all at once!

Levi Krain

I love this story! I have an Aickman collection I’ve had sitting around for years but never cracked. It’s about to be cracked! We may need more on the show. Aickpril?

FB

Ok, as someone whose very elderly mother has been in care facilities for over a decade, when I read this story, I immediately thought..he’s got dementia and he’s in a nursing home, and close to death. (I mean his name “May bury”?) It might be possible that he had an accident, had to stay there, recovered and then was released, but I definitely think it’s a nursing home. Everything that happens mirrors the experience of old people with dementia in nursing homes: They are unsure exactly how they got there, they are unsure exactly what kind of a place it is. It’s decorated in a sort of “fake luxury hotel” style. They have regimented lives, they can’t leave, they get roommates who disappear and are replaced, and are sometimes unsure of who exactly they live with. At mealtimes, they eat in a common room and are always encouraged to eat more even though their appetite is low. They have erotic dreams and fantasies about the staff and others, and they often think terrible crimes are happening. They forget how to do ordinary things, and get frustrated when they can’t do them. Concerns about how they are going to pay for it all are common. They often believe they are going home soon, and are worried because they believe their (late) spouses are waiting for them there, and try everyday to return home, often asking visitors to help them. This is a really unsettling story for anyone who has spent time in care facilities. I think the author spent time in an old folks’ home visiting loved ones. It’s just too dead on to be anything else. (Before I get showered with well meaning messages of sympathy and concern, my mom has been lucky enough to avoid almost all of these disturbing symptoms, is quite happy and secure, and knows who everyone is. But having talked with lots of other residents in the places she’s lived, this really rang some very unsettling bells.)

Jim Cannon

So the word "Hospice" has certain connotations, mentioned already by you guys in the first episode. Are the guests there ill in some way and trying to get well? For some reason I assumed the roommate was the one screaming, strapped in to some Princess Bride contraption that sucked out his life force, and so he is changed and older when he returns. Or maybe Maybury was the one screaming, which would explain why he just lay there and did nothing? And why he's let out in the hearse at the end, i.e. the body in the coffin like Chris suggested? Man, this one got <i>weird</i> in ways I was not expecting at the end of the last episode.

Carter Stepper

Gotta say this gave me real Hotel California vibes. That’s it, that’s all I have to say 😅

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

I got a Spirited Away vibe from the story. Rather than Chihiro's young girl's fertile imagination coupled with traditional Japanese creatures, we've a middle-aged Englishman's skew and off-putting faery tale.

Alan Ricks

I went and bought all his Faber Short Story Collections and just finished Dark Entries. Lets do this!

Ethan Cordray

Gosh, how have I never read any Robert Aickman?? This story is so completely in my wheelhouse, I can't believe it. Okay, everybody tell their weird hotel stories in the comments. Here's mine: I was on a school tour trip in England, and we went to Tintagel in Cornwall to see some Arthurian legendary sites. Half of us stayed in a tiny sea-side hostel, and half of us stayed in a local hotel. I was in the hotel group. When we arrived at the hotel, every single wall was covered in oil paintings. Abstract things, big splashes of bright colors -- and not very good ones. They were somehow...a little too cheerful? Sort of Jackson Pollock meets Thomas Kincade. How can a totally abstract painting be vapid? Yet that's what they were. After we checked in, we all went over to the hostel for a little party. On our way back to the hotel, we encountered a black cat that walked across our path, and then as we rounded to corner up to the hotel we saw the full moon hovering over the Irish Sea, shining blood red. We all joked that it must be a portent of something. It wasn't quite bed time, so we went to the hotel lobby. There (again surrounded on all sides by those insipid oil paintings) we encountered the hotel's owner, lounging around in a red crushed-velvet smoking jacket and yellow slacks. He proceeded to ask us a great number of questions about our trip, in a very excited and intense manner. And then, he began to explain to us how every person was 300 trillion years old, and how with the proper training we could learn to recall every instant of our past existences, by learning to control how our memories are stored in the physical spaces surrounding our bodies. In the course of this lecture, he explained that he and his business partner -- who had painted all the oil paintings, and whom our host called the World's Greatest Living Artist -- had created their hotel to carry on the traditions of "King Arthur's Round Table, the Sultanate of Haroun Al Rashid, and the American Founding Fathers," and that he had learned how to choose his next reincarnation so that he could leave all of his wealth to his future self, and a number of other very interesting theories regarding magical springs, labyrinths, Hollywood movie financing, and the like. They were both very proud Scientologists. After about an hour and a half of this, we decided to politely retire to bed. Later on that night, one of my friends (roused from sleep by intense cigarette smoke drifting up into her room from the hotel lounge) strolled out onto the back lawn, where she beheld a human figure draped in a white sheet walking along the edge of the cliffs above the sea. She felt it best to go back to bed. When the morning came, we piled onto the tour bus and got the fuck out of there.

Erik Gordon

Holy moly I'm going deep on Aikman thanks gents.

Peter Larsen

Chad, the way to remember "unheimlich" is to recall that the Unheimlich Maneuver is when you you help someone dislodge the thing they were choking on, but, afterwards, you both find the thing extremely inconvenient to describe.

Peter Larsen

Also... I have brain damage that affects my vision, specifically parts of my visual field are... distorted. It waxes and wanes a bit, depending on the day, but, when I look at a person head on, parts of their faces are missing and parts are distorted. One thing this means for me is that a) it takes me a while for me to learn to identify people (less time if I can see them move around rather than just look at their faces) and b) people who I know, but not super-well (like someone in my institution I only see every 6 months or so, for example) sometimes look so unlike my image of them that I just don't know who they are. And yes, it's incredibly embarrassing to say "excuse me, but who are you?" and have them respond "we've worked together for 15 years." The pandemic has been a godsend, because I don't have to look at people's faces, just identify them by their masks.

Artemis

This genuinely got me reading Ackman for the first time and....it's good so far. One of my earliest introductions to "strange stories" was Murakami, so the weirdness, unexplained events, and even frequent portrayal of men at a loss or a little apart or searching for some woman - it all feels normal and a little refreshing to me! Thanks for finding me a new author to read!

Lincoln Brown

Love Aickman's work so, so much. The Trains and The Inner Room are two more I'd recommend. Jeremy's collection The Haunted Book is also highly recommened.