His excursions to Wicker Man territory has enthused me to organise my own trip with friends this summer and I will definitely be seeking out M R James’ country retreats, not far from me in the wilds of Norfolk and Suffolk – and for that I am truly thankful. So, would I recommend it? Of course, for the similarities in my own childhood, books I read, TV programmes I raced home to watch and the vivid recounts of locations and background research, which I will undoubtedly go back to again and again. I believe there are two books here one I’m interested in, the lives of my own heroes and childhood viewings, and the autobiographical accounts of family loss – I have enough of my own to deal with, without Parnell’s family history to weigh me down too. I loved the travelogues, especially to film locations and writers’ home towns, but not so much the family reminiscences and the birdwatching recollections, but I can see how Parnell is really trying to exorcise his own demons by writing in this way – does it work? Not for me.

We see him champion M R James and Arthur Machen (and rightly so), and each chapter oozes admiration for supernatural stories and their creators. Parnell is nothing, if not stoic in parts, leaving no stone unturned in his quest to find where and why the heroes of his beloved ghost stories undertook their work. He really does cover the length and breadth of the country, searching for glimpses of the past, sometimes for his own reveries and sometimes, it seems, to really try to get inside the heads of the people involved in bringing ghoulish delight to his younger self. Parnell also travels his ‘Ghostland’, visiting places, both of his childhood and of importance to the novels or films that have stayed with him over time. Parnell digs deeper though, furnishing us with the lives of authors who wrote their stories many, many years before they came into his own, finding that their lives were as normal and mundane as his own, and touching on their own love of the supernatural, making life a little less ordinary. It is cleverly put together, he manages to entwine the stories of his life with the landscape that created them, referring to the films, TV programmes and books that have influenced many during what is now referred to as the ‘folk-horror’ explosion of the 1970s. It carries the reader through Edward Parnell’s childhood memories and spits you out the other end with the death of his loved ones, that clearly haunt him to this day. Part memoir, part literature review, part 70s horror film and TV almanac and part Twitchers’ diary. NB: This review was submitted to The Folklore Podcast for publication by a volunteer reviewer and may not reflect the views of the Folklore Podcast itself.

Ghostland edward parnell