Herbert
 Russell Wakefield (1888-- 1964), bishop of Birmingham and one-time 
private secretary to Lord Northcliffe, is most noted today for his ghost
 stories. These stories were written in the tradition of M.R. James and 
Algernon Blackwood. Critical response to Wakefield over the years has 
been spotty but generally positive. There are essentially three 
versions of H.R. Wakefield's _The Clock Strikes Twelve_. There was a 
first edition of 14 tales that was published in 1940. There was a later,
 expanded version of the collection published by Arkham House in 1946 
that consisted of 18 stories. The third edition was an abridged version 
of the original, published by Ballantine in 1961 that consisted of a 
dozen tales. I am reviewing the Ballantine paperback edition of 
_The Clock Strikes Twelve_, one of Ballantine's Chamber of Horror series
 of paperbacks with spectacularly spooky-abstract covers by Richard 
Powers. The cover to this book shows against a white background, a 
slightly tilted, purple, demented grandfather clock with monster faces 
protruding from it and several sinister purple shapes floating alongside
 it. Well, what kind of stories have we here? In a review of an 
earlier collection of ghost stories by Wakefield, M.R. James found that 
while the majority of the stories were ingenious, "I would remove one or
 two that leave a nasty taste" (479). In a similar vein, I found that 
three tales in this collection left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. The
 stories are: "The Alley," in which an inoffensive man and his 
companions are slaughtered by spooks, leaving only their dog alive; 
"Lucky's Hill," in which Norse deities massacre a family for the heinous
 crime of chopping down a Christmas tree on the wrong hill; and "In 
Collaboration," the portrait of a madman who commits murder and comes to
 a rotten end. The remaining nine stories strike me as being on 
the ingenious (if often downbeat) side of the fence. "Death of a 
Poacher" involves a hunter who runs afoul of some supernatural forces in
 South Africa. Its portrayal of an unusual kind of were-creature is both
 chilling and original. "Used Car" is about a fellow who buys a car for 
his daughter that turns out to be haunted by a pair of malicious ghosts 
who cause no end of mischief. "The First Sheaf" involves a conflict 
between Christianity and paganism in the English countryside. Paganism 
wins. I believe that several reviewers have noted a similarity between 
this tale and the later movie, _The Wicker Man_. Two stories-- 
"'I Recognized the Voice'" and "Happy Ending?"-- involve telepathy or 
clairvoyance. John W. Campbell might refer to them as stories about 
"psionics". But I believe that Wakefield would cleave to more mystical 
definitions of the two phenomena. In the first tale, the point-of-view 
character recognizes a "bond" between him and another man. They meet. 
Tension cranks up between them until there is a final revelation. The 
second tale involves a young psychologist who is just a bit too 
scientific for his own good. Two stories-- "In Outer Darkness" 
and "Final Performance"-- are smoothly told but fairly predictable 
pieces. The first is a haunted house story, and the second is a 
ventriloquist-and-his-dummy tale that used to be the rage with a number 
of writers Way Back When. The last two stories-- "Jay Walkers" 
and "Ingredient X"-- strike me as more substantial pieces. The first 
involves some gruesome deaths on a stretch of road said to be "haunted".
 The truth turns out to be more complex. The second tale involves a man 
who rents a room that _looks_ attractive-- but which turns out to be a 
really nasty haunt. The last tale reminded me of the real-life room in 
the Reid House in Chattanoga, said to be haunted. (It was the site of an
 old murder.) Nobody has slept in that room for years. But on rare 
occasion, it is opened to the public for part of a "ghost tour". Should
 writers of ghost stories believe in ghosts? Montague Summers (1931) was
 in no doubt that they must. H.P. Lovecraft (1945), on the other hand, 
held that materialists made _better_ writers of the supernatural, since 
they were less likely to take the atmosphere of their story for granted.
 In his introduction to the collection, Wakefield makes it clear that he
 is a believer in both ghosts and haunted houses and that he takes 
_frontier_ things like telepathy fairly seriously. Did these beliefs 
hurt his storytelling ability? I am inclined to think that they did not.

Stories from the Clock Strikes Twelve PDF

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