@@BitesizedAudio Of course I enjoyed it. How could I not? Can't help but wonder why anyone would search for a treasure or relic, whatever, when they are warned of a guardian protecting it. That would be a big clue for me to get real comfortable doing without. Love the way you show the different characters with change of tone/accent. Your portrayals paint the scenes in my mind. Great work 👏👏👏👏🙌👌
Thank you for the consistently professional quality, frequent, reliable postings without a shadow of inferior or rushed results, and keeping these gorgeous tales so very alive!
Not gonna lie, but I have played this a few times at bedtime and I fell asleep every time. But hey, I let the ads play for our dear friend Simon (I love the new intro style, by the way, where he shows his handsome face, thereby making it clear once again to RU-vid that he is the actual creator of this wonderful content). When I was a teenager in the 80’s, I was kind of sad they didn’t teach Latin in Canadian schools anymore because I wanted to be an English teacher one day and had also studied the classics. I loved researching the etymology of words. I actually bought a Latin/English dictionary in the hopes I could find a class, but sadly never did, so it never got used. But I am sure his Latin pronunciation is accurate because it sounds good to me! Now if I could just stay awake long enough tonight to find out what this story is actually about…
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Simon, you are a one man oral theatre! I loved the way you did the vocal fade out and in at the beginning. So very effective! Another perfect performance! ❤
Simon, M. R. James's stories are so well suited to your voice. Or is it that your voice is so well suited to M. R. James's stories? Either way, I'm correct. You're an absolute master.
Bravo! 👏👏👏 As always. You are my absolute favorite! Seeing that you've added to your repertoire makes my heart leap and is well worth the wait. Thank you Simon!
A marvelously creepy tale! I am an aspiring writer and your stories have inspired me to write again! Love your readings and I hope for some good tales in October! Also friendly reminder that Ghost stories for Xmas is getting a blu ray release in December, a worthwhile purchase indeed :)
Beautiful narration, thank you Simon. M.R. James's stories really crawl under your skin as he presents in great detail, but so calmly, he doesn't appear to use creeping horror as a lot of ghost writers are apt to do, and that's what makes his art all the more terrifying...x
M.R. James wrote a number of stories that are canon in supernatural literature. He put his academic career first and foremost, so that limited his output. Originally, he wrote for friends till a friend convinced him to put out a collection.
He also was a brilliant linguist and expert in ancient churches - he did a fantastic translation of Homs Christian Andersen’s tales, and also visitors guides to abbeys and churches of Great Britain - he was quite a prolific academic. Merry Christmas 🎄❤️
A fine reading of this especially antiquarian story. You dealt nimbly with the decryption section, and it was a good idea to "fade out" from the first paragraph in Latin. Thanks for the pleasure!
Thanks beluch. Yes, I did consider doing the whole of the introductory section, but thought it might try the patience of listeners! Glad to know you enjoyed it
Bless you, Simon. I'm cold, tired, shivery, and going back to bed feeling rather sorry for myself - and being able to close my eyes and listen to you performing an M R James story makes it better.
@@sams5963 Oh yes, thank you. Just one of those normal flus. Rest, plenty of tea and paracetamol, and I was fine after 2 days. (Took a couple of covid texts, both -ve.)
Reading that lot precisely and correctly and maintaining the interest of your listeners - I wouldn’t dream of trying! I think the author wrote it to foil any attempt at trying! You’ve done it! First class!
Yes, he made me nostalgic for my Catholic upbringing. I went on a tour here of the Candler mansion and they had a stained glass window with Latin passages. . The guide asked could anybody translate, I did. Astonished my Baptist friends.
I listen to these stories at night while I'm asleep and so I'm not fully conscious of the stories but my dreams surely are! I dreamt of Cthulhu, must have been those tentacles round the protagonist's neck.
Oh this is great Simon. A tale from the masterful M R James I haven't heard before read by you a masterful narrator. Also very gratified I still understood some of the Latin 50 years after doing it for O Level🤣
A treasure tale with a ghost guardian! I think about the ghost pirates guarding their treasures in the movies... and how greed can lead us to unpleasant places. Thank you dear Simon for your masterful narrations! 🎩
SPOILER ALERT! Please note, dear reader, that this comment contains some musings which may constitute a partial 'plot spoiler' connected with this story. By all means, enjoy Simon's splendid reading before continuing...🙂 I've often wondered at the use of darkness and night in ghost stories. Naturally it taps into our earliest fears of the unseen and the unknown, but why should rational adults - who have seen and know - continue to be upset by childhood superstitions? We know now about lots of hitherto unexplained or unseen things. We can amplify, magnify and rationalise almost everything. From ebola to eclipses and from epilepsy to earthquakes, we've gradually robbed the unknown of its power to hold our reason to ransom. (Do you suppose that the traditional ghost stories of the lost Aztecs and Incas, of the Australian Aboriginal people, and of India, China and Africa also rely on our fear of the dark? 🤔) Infra-red sensitive cameras have shown us that darkness is largely meaningless to many creatures - cats can see as well at night as we can by day. This is obviously why moggies don't write ghost stories 🤭. But they're not evil or touched by the claw of Satan - they're just adapted to be nocturnal. And we now know exactly why bats don't crash into things in the dark. So... darkness falls as the planet revolves. And, as Shakespeare said, "Night's dark agents to their preys do rouse...". But then the darkness goes away again. Um. So? I must be missing something. In this story, we are told that the mysterious 'guardian' is a creature of the night, and thus can only do its duty in the Earth's cosier latitudes. Would it be rendered powerless in northern Norway or at the extreme south of the planet? How would it guard its treasure in lands where there isn't any night? I imagine that if people lived their whole lives in sunlight they'd just have to find something else to scare their children with. It's odd that we should still be ruled by instincts from a time when we didn't know much about celestial mechanics. The idea of 'Light is good, dark is bad' is as old as we are, but we've known for a long time that the thing that went bump in the night was actually Tiddles the cat jumping off the fridge to catch a spider at 3 in the morning. No wonder modern 'scares' eschew mere darkness and seek their thrills elsewhere. Mood-altering plagues, genetic engineering gone wrong, and hordes of indestructible brain-eating zombies - all three things being conspicuously diurnal - have taken over from a night full of bats and unseen squidgy monsters conveniently concealed by the gloom. You may be wondering why I make 'spoilsport' comments like this, so perhaps I should say that I'm not just a grumpy so-and-so out to spoil everyone's fun; I get tremendous enjoyment from listening to Simon's wonderful storytelling and find these old tales fascinating for what they reveal about human nature. I'm interested in what makes people 'tick'. When I watch a puppet show, I first of all enjoy the action, but I also like to see the rods and strings moving. In literature as in life, it's intriguing seeing how changes in society affect our hopes and fears; wholesome (fundamentally Christian) ghost stories of good versus evil were very much in vogue in Edwardian and Victorian times. After the Great War people had other things to worry about besides hauntings and spectres, and after WW2 we were scaring ourselves with science, aliens, and alien ideology (which for some people is even scarier!) instead of simple spooks. Yep. Life was easier when we couldn't see what was pulling our strings.😁
I enjoyed your cogitation on this and its ancillary topics -- the kind of conversations I used to have with my late husband about movies, about books, about events, history, music, etc. It's nearly impossible for me to just "read (or listen to) a story." I have to consider it, muse over what it means in the grand scheme. I don't want to stop feeling that way about everything. It makes life more interesting, and helps shave the sharp edges off of the trials of just existing as a human.
I have heard this story before! It reminded me of another story I have viewed on RU-vid, where there is a slimy black ooze that comes out of a wall, protecting some treasure or something like that. Does anyone know the one to which I am referring?
Hello Liz, as David says, I think it sounds like you're referring to the BBC TV adaptation of this story from 1974 - it varied from the original in several aspects, including making Somerton a clergyman, eliminating some characters and adding in others, but the overall story line is the same and the climatic moment in the well is indeed rather dramatic...
@@BitesizedAudio That was it! I thought I remembered the adaptation as being different from another audiobook version of the same story I had heard previously, too. "Artistic license", I suppose. 🙂 Thanks!
