I’m feeling Gothic this week. Must be the weather.

In lieu of a new episode, I searched the vault and found this cracker from January 2021, in which Laura Purcell — doyenne of the contemporary British Gothic — talked me through her Victorian spookshow of mesmerism and haunted silhouettes, The Shape of Darkness.

We also get into the social nightmare of Victorian England – when life was even more gothic than it is now, believe it or not!

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

The Residence (2020), by Andrew Pyper
The Haunting of Alma Fielding (2020), by Andrew Pyper
Shadowland, or Light From the Other Side (1897), by Elizabeth d’Esperance
“The Blue Lenses,” in The Breaking Point (1959), by Daphne du Maurier
“The Mezzotint”, “A View From A Hill” and “Oh Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad”, found in The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James

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[From the Vault] Laura Purcell & The Art of Darkness