The Secret of Horner's Court | A Ghost Story by Allen Upward | A Bitesized Audio Production
Jack Hargreaves and Alwyne Sargent return for another adventure investigating a fine house and estate in the north of England which has remained unsold for ten years. Can Miss Sargent's clairvoyant powers uncover the dark secret which lies behind the property's dubious reputation...?
A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
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There is not a great deal of reliable biographical information available about George Allen Upward (1863–1926). Born of Welsh parentage, he studied law at the Royal University of Ireland in Dublin in the early 1880s. He became a vocal supporter of nationalist causes including Irish Home Rule, composing poetry and journalism for the cause. He attempted to start a political career but was defeated in his attempts to stand for parliament in the Labour interest. Upward was the author of a number of popular but now-forgotten novels, including 'A Crown of Straw' (1896) and 'A Bride's Madness' (1897), and although highly prolific, indeed bestselling, in his day, his work has now fallen into comparative obscurity. (Incidentally he was a cousin of the rather better remembered novelist Edward Upward, 1903–2009.) Allen Upward died of a gunshot wound in November 1926 at the age of 63, apparently self-inflicted, although the exact circumstances are unclear and there has been some speculation as to whether it was suicide or accident, or if any third parties were involved.
Between December 1905 and April 1906, Upward published a series of five short stories in 'The Royal Magazine' under the banner title "The Ghost Hunters", rather grandiosely described as "A New Series of exciting Ghost Stories. They are entirely Different in Conception from Anything of the Kind that has ever been Published before." In fact they are not so very different from many of the ghost stories which were popular in the Edwardian era, but they are of interest inasmuch as they depict a male and female ghost-hunting duo in the shape of the narrator Jack Hargreaves, an estate agent who has ended up specialising in selling haunted houses (making a profit by laying the spirits to rest), and his "lady secretary" Miss Alwyne Sargent, who is a clairvoyant and "sensitive". Hargreaves and Sargent were thus an early example of the Edwardian vogue for "occult detectives", which reached its peak a few years later with the stories of Hope Hodgson's Carnacki and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence. However, although a couple of the individual stories have occasionally appeared in ghost story anthologies in the 20th century this series as a whole never appeared in book form, and the stories have been rather forgotten.
'The Secret of Horner's Court' is the third story in the sequence, and originally appeared in 'The Royal Magazine' in February 1906. Each story is stand-alone, but for those who prefer to listen from the beginning of the series the preceding episodes can be heard here:
The Green House, Wallington: • The Green House, Wallington | A Ghost...
The Tapping on the Wainscot: • The Tapping on the Wainscot | A Ghost...
Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.
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