BleakChesneyWold

                            Uncanny Tales of the Railways edited by Mike Ashley-Review                                   The arrival of the railway network fundamentally changed the landscape, stimulated regional economies, and was a huge technological breakthrough. Time had to be standardised across the country so that rail timetables made sense. With the fate of dozens of passengers relying on the expertise of signalmen,train drivers and other railway employees, there was a mixture of technological achievement and vulnerability.  The introduction mentions that by 1860 there had been over thirteen hundred rail accidents including the death in 1830 of MP William Huskisson. The first  known account of a  railway ghost  ASHLEY .  There were further disasters such as Staplehurst in 1861, when a train deraile...

                  Enter Mr Podgers and the awful meaning of Doom                                                                               A strange sense of fatalism surrounds Oscar Wilde's short story Lord Arthur Savile's Crime . A dark humour murder tale with a sort of Guy de Monpaussent type twist at the end. Centred round salon hostess Lady Windermere, seemingly infatuated by cheiromancers (palmreaders ) and fortune tellers generally. Amongst her guests is a young aristocrat by the name of Lord Arthur Savile, who is recently engaged. The hired Cheiromancer is Mr Podgers. There are plenty of Wilden type witticims in play, but the old age problem emerges. What happens if a psychic happens to detect some quite unpleasant destiny? Do th...