'The Elms' also keeps certain causes and reasons for the haunting cautiously hidden which only serves to evoke a great sense of tragedy and sadness as the question 'why?' hangs in the air throughout the narrative. James and Aickman in its quietly persistent phantasm that is all the more disturbing for its implicit threat. Patrick's Chapel' as a brilliant short that evokes M.R.
As to my favourites from the collection, I would pick 'Beyond St. James that such things should be malevolent and, even when sympathetically cast, they remain so here. The tone is modern in that the sites are surburban houses, train station lavatories and half-built 'Phase II' houses but the tone is strictly old school as ghosts emerge that echo the dictum of M.R. The portmanteau is a device more commonly associated with the anthologu films of Amicus and television shows such as The Twilight Zone and The Night Gallery but here Simon Kurt Unsworth uses the linking thread of a private investigator's explorations at sites of reported supernatural phenomena.
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