Melancholy Mentor Podcast
Welcome to Melancholy Mentor where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays.
Melancholy Mentor Podcast
Haunted Tales from Yorkshire
Journey with us into the shadowy world of classic radio drama as we unearth "The Ghostly Hand of Spital House," a forgotten gem narrated by the master of horror himself, Vincent Price.
His haunting voice, with its perfect enunciation and sophisticated delivery, transforms this Yorkshire ghost story into an immersive experience that modern productions rarely capture.
We've discovered that this tale was penned by Dorothy Gladys Spicer, an American folklorist born in 1893 whose work has largely faded from popular memory. As a dedicated collector of traditional stories passed down through generations, Spicer published this ghostly account in her 1965 collection "13 Ghosts."
Send us an email to let us know your thoughts or if you have anything to add at ⏬⏬
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You can watch the radio drama episode we are discussing on our YouTube channel :
https://youtube.com/@melancholy_mentor
Hello everyone and welcome to Melancholy Mentor, where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Mythos. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind and embrace curiosity. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:Hello, I'm Fran.
Speaker 2:And I'm Fran, and I'm Evan, and today we're going to highlight the Ghostly Hand of Spital House. Spital House, yeah, spital House, which is a radio drama episode featured on our YouTube channel, melancholy Mentor channel melancholy mentor. So, ghosty hand spy. Spital house is by dorothy gladys spicer and the radio drama that we've got is narrated by vincent price. Yes, dorothy gladys spicer was also known as gladys spicer fraser, possibly during her marriage years.
Speaker 2:She was born in 1893. She was an American folklorist and writer and she died aged 81 in 1975. Now, folklore is the traditional beliefs, customs and stories of a community passed through the generations by word of mouth. So she was actually a folklorist. So by that I'm going to take it that she also gathered stories and possibly like verbal stories, audio stories, and actually wrote them down and collected them. There's not a lot that I found about this particular author, although I did search for her. So there's not a lot that I found about this particular author, although I did search for her. So there's not a lot of background information on her, although I know she did write a lot of books, and this particular radio drama that we've got comes from a book.
Speaker 3:I think it's called 13 Ghosts. 13 Ghosts. Yeah, I found that out. Yeah, 13 Ghosts. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:So the ghostly hand of Spital House, as I've just said, it's a story from the book 13 Ghosts and I've got that as published in 1965. And there was various sources that said that it was published in 1965. As with all of this information that we share, we're researching this ourselves and just trying to find things out because we actually get access in the public domain to the radio dramas. We've made a lovely channel out of it, actually two channels the other one's Mystery Mythos, which is the one that Evan runs, and the point of this, the point and the outcome of this podcast, is to highlight the episodes that we've got, bring them to a new audience and hopefully inspire some creativity in people to, um, create themselves and create the lives that they love and actually go out there and and do these things. You've got all these writers that are kind of, and producers and people doing the radio dramas, and voice actors and all that. They're doing stuff. So we're just doing this with the intention of inspiring people.
Speaker 2:So, vincent Price, I've got a little bit about Vincent Price that I wrote earlier. Vincent Price, with his haunting voice, amazing, his charismatic presence, became the quintessential master of horror, captivating audiences with his performances that blended sophistication and a touch of macabre artistry. He was born in 1911 and he passed away in 1993. He's an American actor, voice actor as well. He did lots of voiceovers, including Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah just amazing, I know, I know, and he's got just the most incredible voice to listen to Amazing voice. So we've actually got a few recordings that are narrated by vincent price and this particular one. It's got a very clear voice because his enunciation and everything is is perfection for audio. It's got a slight background kind of hiss, from the actual original recording and a lot of that when we're not in control of that. So we try and bring quality recordings, but some of them are quite old or they're a little bit grainy, aren't they? Yeah, you've got a bit more about the actual recording that we've got on the channel yeah, I do um this.
Speaker 3:It was published in 1974, um on a graveyard of ghost tales, um so, and it was by cademan records and it was actually like a vinyl record, um with like various stories on um and found a little bit out about cademan records. It was the first company to sell spoken word recordings to the public. It was the first company to sell spoken word recordings to the public and it was founded in 1952. Nice, that's quite interesting. That's a good little fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I wonder if anyone's got one of the original LPs, you know, the vinyl records.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean they are available. I had a quick look when I was trying to find the year and they are available. I think there was like one available on like Discogs and they've sold. They've been sold from Discogs, yeah, so, yeah, so if you're lucky and you wanted one, you could have a little look around, maybe on even on eBay. Yeah, you know, they're still doing the rounds. It's pretty cool so.
Speaker 2:So, um, the book 13 ghost book is, um, it's ghost tales from all around the world, like all over the world, and I'm pretty sure that the ghostly hand of um spital house is set in the uk. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it mentions yorkshire on the recording as well. Yeah, one of the counties further up. I'm based on the south coast of the uk, um, in a county called dorset, so yorkshire, I don't know, maybe about four hours drive from me going up the country. So, yeah, have you got any more? About the actual recording itself?
Speaker 3:um, yeah, the. The video that we've got was filmed in sandbanks, or the sandbanks in paul um and the, and it's just over 20 minutes long story. Um, I had a quick look up about um the 13 ghosts book as well, and I found that if, if anyone was interested and wanted to view it, it's actually available to view on the open library. So, yeah, so if you wanted to go in and have a look, um, I think you have to like, get a login or whatever, but you can look at and you can see all the other books that um Dorothy Gladys Spicer wrote. They're all listed on there.
Speaker 2:So because they've gone over such an age, I guess they're just, they're just available to to view and read yeah, and I know there are actual physical copies of the book available on secondhand book sites and stuff like that. There wasn't a lot else I could actually find out about this author. No, so if anybody has got information that they would like to share with us or anything where they would like to, um, if you'd like to tell us about any factual information, potentially, if any, we've passed on anything that's um wrong information, um, because we're we're just looking this stuff up ourselves. So if you've got any more to add, then please do message us or drop us a comment, and we would love to hear about that.
Speaker 2:The video being filmed at sandbanks what I do with the, with the audio um that we've got from radio dramas, is we've actually got accompanying videos, but I film kind of nature, the woods, the sea and sandbanks. Is also called millionaire's row and it's a peninsula of um paul, which is a town in dorset. So the little peninsula goes out and the sea's on both sides and the actual row itself of the peninsula is called millionaire's row.
Speaker 2:I'll let you guess why it's called million it's a very nice area, so usually I film on either side and it's quite different, because one side's got sandy beaches and the coastline stretches for a few miles and on the other side you've got a view of pool harbour and brown sea island and it's kind of more where they do water sports and stuff. It's not a sandy beach, it's some sludge, yeah. Yeah, when the sea goes that right out it looks like sludge. I'm not going down there. It really does. It really does, yeah. So anyway, thank you for listening. Please do check out the episode of the ghostly hand of spital House on the Melancholy Mental YouTube channel and let us know what you think.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 3:Bye.
