A Treatise on the Subjectivity of Ghosthood

In this episdoe we talked about Moondial (1987) by Helen Cresswell.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com. Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her work at her website, and music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re talking about the book Moondial by Helen Cresswell. Enjoy!

(intro music plays)

Ren Hi!

Adam Hi — I can hear you rubbing your hands together, are you cold?

Ren No, I’m making some honey-fermented cranberries and I picked up the jar to give them a little scoozle around and there was honey on the jar because they have been fermenting, and expanding outwards. So I have honey on my hands, and that’s why I’m rubbing them together.

Adam So firstly I love that you used the word scoozle, and secondly you are quite into your fermentation, aren’t you?

Ren Yes, this is at least the second time I’ve mentioned it on the podcast.

Adam It seems to be what you’re doing with your thirties, fermenting things.

Ren Yes, kombucha and kefir and sauerkraut when I can be bothered, because grating a whole cabbage is a hassle to be honest.

Adam I’d like to grate a cabbage patch kid. I think that would be quite satisfying.

Ren Yeah, make sauerkraut from a cabbage patch kid. You just need the cabbage patch kid, salt, filtered water, a jar, and then leave it for a week or two.

Adam So listeners if you do that please send in your photos!

Ren (Pictures this) Gosh. I’d hate to see what you create from fermenting a cabbage patch kid.

Adam A taste experience.

Ren So yeah, are you ready to talk about Moondial?

Adam I am ready to talk about Moondial, but I’m not sure how! This is quite a strange impressionistic book from way back in 1987, the year of my birth.

Ren Ah, yes, it’s by Helen Cresswell. Crezwell?

Adam I assumed it was ‘Cress. Well.’ But that’s just because I like cress and want to believe that the cress is well.

Ren Don’t we all. But written in 1987, and it does have some specifically late ‘80s references but it also feels quite timeless, notwithstanding the references to cassette players and digital watches.

But yes, Helen Cresswell, according to Wikipedia wrote over 100 children’s books, and I’ve spent the last three months working on a single 1000 word short story so I’m wildly impressed and very intimidated by that feat.

Adam Yes, that’s remarkable. And I assume that most of them are not of ’Spot the Dog’ brevity.

Ren I don’t think so, I think they are books with a certain number of words. And judging by Moondial they’re not just dashed off either, because this is a very well-written book.

Adam Moondial is quite a literary work, I’d say. If I was to subscribe this book succinctly I’d say impressionistic. It’s a book of tones and atmosphere and strange inbetween-y feelings and places.

Ren Yes. So it was published in 1987, and then was apparently popular enough to be made into a BBC TV series the following year.

Adam Which is remarkable, because it’s not that easy a read!

Ren I was a bit surprised! It’s very good but it’s not… I guess the visual aspect is strong enough that you can imagine the visuals of the TV series and the Moondial looking good in the mist.

Adam I don’t know about yours, but my edition was published in association with the National Trust. The cover is a still from the TV series, so it’s got three child characters staring out at the reader with hard to place expressions. The boy known as Tom looks slightly consumptive, which is the right look for him, to be fair. Minty is cocking her head to one side, questioning the reader and then there’s the other little girl — what’s her name?

Ren Sarah.

Adam Sarah! Sarah looks concerned. And they’re posed around the moondial. What about your cover?

Ren I have quite a lovely illustration by Julia Sardà. It’s of the moondial with the man and the boy who are both winged, holding the moondial. They both have hollow eyes and mournful expressions, and behind them is a graveyard and there are ghosts with similarly hollow-eyed expressions poking their heads up, and there’s a silhouette of a cloaked figure standing in front of the moondial.

Adam So it sounds like your cover focuses on the horror aspects of the book?

Ren It does, yeah!

Adam So this is a tricky question — would you call this children’s horror?

Ren Ehh… um… it’s a slippery one!

Adam Yeah! I really don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot because part of me says no, this is a time travel book that’s about time and loss, and reconciling these things, and love versus time. It’s got these quite broad philosophical themes and it’s an impressionistic dream like novel.

It doesn’t really have outright horror sequences, but on the other hand I keep wondering what I would compare this to and realising that it’s quite M.R. James like. It does seem really indebted to British ghost stories, and surely if anything is horror a ghost story is.

Ren And I think you can definitely draw parallels with Coraline, in the other direction. There’s definitely threads that connect with other things we’ve talked about.

Adam I think in terms of what we’ve talked about before, Marianne Dreams has similarities in terms of the child protagonist, and sticking very close to the child protagonist and their experiences, and occupying a very uncertain space between waking life and dreaming life and keeping that open and ambiguous.

Ren And I thought that the character of Miss Raven could have come right out of Wolves of Willoughby Chase.

But I was wondering if you would read the prologue to set the tone?

Adam Sure!

“It is midnight in that most dark and secret place. If you should chance – and why should you? – to be walking there, you would be blindfolded by the night. You would hear the hooting of a lone owl from the church tower, the scuff of your own steps on the gravel. You would smell the ancient, musty scent of the yews that line the path, and the curious cold green odour of dew on grass. You put out a hand. It gropes to find the ungiving touch of stone. The shock of it brings an uprush of fear so strong that you can almost taste it.

At that moment your fifth sense is restored. A slow silver light yawns over the garden. Shapes make themselves, statues loom. Ahead, the glass of the orangery gleams like water. You notice the shadow the moon has made at your feet as you would never notice a mere daytime shadow.

You stand motionless, with all five senses sharp, alert as a fox.

But if by some chance you should possess another, a sixth sense, what then? First a tingle of the spine, a sudden chill, a shudder. You are standing at a crossroads, looking up at a statue. A huge stone man seems locked in struggle with another, smaller figure, that of a boy. But the presence you feel is all about you now, and with a lifting of the hairs at the nape of your neck you are certain, certain that you are being watched.

You turn slowly, half dreading what you might see. But the path before you is empty. Your gaze moves to the great, moonwashed face of the house itself. The windows are blank and shuttered, though that strange sixth sense is insisting on hints, whispers, secrets.

The scene fades and you realize that the moon is going back behind the clouds, and then you run. And as you run through the disappearing garden you feel that a mighty wind is blowing and voices are clamouring in that empty place.

What you also hear, and what you will remember ever afterwards with a shudder, even in the full light of day, is the lonely sobbing of a child.”

To investigate the lonely sobbing, turn to page 6. To explore the moondial, turn to page 4.

Ren Hehe. Yeah.

Adam And the book doesn’t use second person again, it’s just for this enigmatic prologue.

Ren I really like that starting with the sense and then introducing the sixth sense, it’s really cool.

Adam It is really cool, it really draws you in.

Ren The protagonist is Araminta (known as Minty) Cane — which kind of sounds like a joke name, but that is her name — who has always known that she has senses beyond the ordinary. But the truly strange experiences only start when she gets sent to stay with her Aunt Mary in the shadow of a former manor house.

It’s supposed to just be a holiday, but on the way back from dropping Minty off in the village of Belton, her car is hit and she’s left in a coma. So Minty is left with Aunt Mary, who is not actually her Aunt, but her mother’s Godmother, and essentially a stranger to her.

Adam</