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Episode 596 - The Horror at Chilton Castle (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-20 14:08:22
Imported:
2026-06
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Join us as we investigate The Horror at Chilton Castle by Joseph Payne Brennan!

Special thanks to our wizardly reader Scott Dorward, co-host of The Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast!

Next up: The Necromancer by Arthur Gray

Comments

Aaron Cox

Frederic Chilton, in a horror crowd, no one recognize the name of the man who ran the asylum in Silence of the Lambs. I think I’m being trolled.

Daniel Onions

Your conversations about "faggot" this time and last (Colossus of Ylourgne - Part 1, BTW. Weirdly I was halfway through relistening to it when I listened to today's episode) reminded me of this Kids in the Hall classic: https://youtu.be/0C5iBsaa5Co

Steve

Can you win by eating the witch first?

Jonathon Alvis

I’m pretty certain this story is a distillation of the various legends surrounding Glamis Castle in Scotland, considered by many to be the “most haunted” castle in UK. Although the current stewards of the castle really downplay it’s spooky history, the legends are so well known that there’s even a Wikipedia entry for them. Chief amongst them is that there is a secret, sealed chamber, containing either an immortal witch/vampire woman, the bodies of a rival Scottish clan, or a hideously deformed monster (possibly the true family heir). The secret of whatever the chamber contains is only known by the Earl of Strathmore, and allegedly passed down to his male heir upon reaching adulthood. Claude Bowes-Lyon, the 13th Earl of Strathmore, is famously quoted as saying: “If you could even guess the nature of this castle’s secret, you would get down on your knees and thank God it was not yours.”

HRPrice

In retrospect the smear of red on her mouth was probably blood from the newest corpse, but when it was described my first thought was “… it’s wearing lipstick? That’s a pretty clumsy way to telegraph that it’s a female monster.” Turns out the clumsiness was in me all along.

Sanjay Mathew

Factor in the sense of an agent responsible for handling business was also a term used beyond Scotland. In the 18th century colonial trading posts in India were referred to as factories since the East India Company would conduct trade in these demarcated zones under the supervision of a factor.

Eldritch Scerry

I was impressed with the beats this story shared with Robert Bloch’s “The Secret in the Tomb” (ep 326), which Bloch published almost 30 years earlier at the tender age of 17.

Adequately Excellent Entertainment

Clearly y’all have either never seen Rob Roy (a movie staring Liam Neeson), or you went to see it and slept through it, because in that movie John Hurt says, “My Factor will call upon Your Grace’s Factor.” Several times (at least twice) and every time his delivery of the line is just great because he’s saying so much more than “one of us owes the other money and our servants will handle that”. (He was so good. May his memory be a blessing.)

Falconhoof

I enjoyed the anecdote about Brits telling Chris about their holidays in Florida. Most of us seem to have an embarrassing, pathological need to impress Americans. On the flipside, the protagonist of this story reminded me of every American tourist I've ever met. You can often find them in country pubs, boring the barman with stories about how they traced their ancestry back to the local nobility. There's a successful sub genre of low budget films on Netflix, which cater to the wish-fulfillment fantasy, of Americans finding out they're the long-forgotten heir to a European monarchy. In a lot of ways, this story was like a darker version of 'The Princess Diaries'

Karlandos

i have not read the story so i don’t know if more details on the arrangement were made known but seeing as there are penalties for refusing to turn over the family head’s body post mortem what if getting eaten prevents them from going to Heaven? In that case the head of the family has to take one for the team to protect the rest of them and the world perhaps. Also the factors who have to do this must all be total bad asses knowing they may have to go down there with the prospective heir themselves and know how to deal with the witch.

Elizabeth Holbrook

Something about this title reminded me of Nancy Drew, I know of at least two that take place on the British Isles: the Haunting of Castle Malloy and Curse of Blackmoor Manor. Though in Nancy Drews case most of the cases are found to be people using legends and whatnot to scare and kill people for money, land or what have you. So its really interesting to see how the author in this case got out of dodge as fast as possible.

Michael-Paul Schallmo

Children by the millions sing for Alex Chilton, when he comes round...

Liana

Excellent episode! Is this a good place to make a recommendation? Well I'll do it anyway! "There Are More Things" is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1975. The story tells of the encounter the narrator has with a monstrous entity inhabiting an equally monstrous house. As someone who absolutely loves South American magical realism and being a big fan of Borges, it was a surprise to me when I discovered he wrote a short story dedicated to Lovecraft. What's funny is that Borges himself was quite skeptical about his memorial to Lovecraft, whom he in fact considered "an involuntary parodist of Poe." I'd love to hear you discuss the story if you find it interesting.

Phil Jensen

Oooo, recommendation time! There is a book of humorous science fiction stories by Stanislaw Lem... "The Cyberiad", which I think you guys would really like, if you haven't read them already. The stories center around two crazy "constructors" (Trurl and Klapaucius), their one-upmanship, and their fantastical creations.

Michael Cunliffe

What a crazy small world it is! Illustrating the First edition (the really tiny one) of Dead of Night was my first professional art gig when I left Uni. This was a great story and so refreshing to have a protagonist sensibly and safely leave the scene of horror and put an ocean between him and the monster, without suffering from ocean madness, setting himself on fire, or writing… out.. his… final… words….

Jim Cannon

"Chilton" comes up an not one of you mentions Gilmour Girls? I want you to know I am not angry, but I am disappointed. Eternal life without eternal youth is a rum deal. There's a whole island of such people in Gulliver's Travels, and that's horrifying in its own way, albeit differently from this story. You guys should totally cover Gulliver's Travels, by the by, especially since you've already done Candide.

Ethan Cordray

Surprised you guys didn't discuss parallels between this story and HPL's "The Rats in the Walls." American visits England, gets involved in the ancient dwelling place of his aristocratic ancestors, goes down into the basement, finds something bad. There's a more specific parallel, too, with the Delapore secret passed down between fathers and sons. Both stories, of course, are employing the same classic Gothic trope of the discovery of historical ancestral guilt. It's interesting that in both cases, the evil is specifically related to the family's status in the British nobility -- from an American perspective, perhaps there's an uneasiness about being too closely connected to the "Old World corruption" of the noble class. After all, for white Anglo-Saxon Americans, they wouldn't *be* Americans unless someone in their lineage had decided that Britain sucked enough to make them run away to America.

Ben A

So happy that you two covered another Brennan tale. After you covered Slime a few years back, I retrieved my copy of The Shapes of Midnight and read through all the stories. This one stood out as one of his best Lovecraft/Poe pastiches. Like Wagner’s Sticks, this tale has the rotting undead horror underground, and it is as chillingly effective here as in any similar work. At least Brennan had the sense to put an ocean between the horror and (fictional) him, like the family at the end of the Red Lodge or the protagonist in The Upper Berth. So seldom do the protagonists make sensible decisions in these kinds of weird tales and horror stories. (It would be interesting to do a tally among all the tales you have covered—who leaves well enough alone?) I also agree with your statement, Chad, about the existential horror that is thinking of the tens of thousands of years (and hundreds of generations) humans wandered the globe with little record to tell us what they were doing. So many people lived and died without even dust by which to remember them. Professionally, I subconsciously confront that every day in my line of work. It gives one pause and some perspective. Who knows what ancient evils lurked in myth and stories for people all those millennia ago?

Z.A. Kahan

Being a Floridian, I’m surprised the Sunshine State itself doesn’t have more crazy grandmas eating their families.