Episode 58 – The Case of Charles Dexter Ward – Part 5
THE FINAL CHAPTER!!
Thanks to Matt Foyer for bringing it to a swinging close!
And don’t forget to check out the Joshi-annotated Case of Charles Dexter Ward, featuring great photos of featured providence locations by hplovecraft.com mastermind Donovan K. Loucks.
Thanks for sticking with us! We’ll be back soon with The Colour Out of Space!
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Thanks for getting the site back up, guys. It was great to finish CD Ward & I’m looking forward to the next stories…lots of good stuff!
This is great. How many epsiodes will The Colour Out of Space habe? At least 7 I hope 😉
Keep on, guys! The World is listening.
That was excellent, great job guys!
Oh man, the colour out of space, it’s promising to be very very terrifying!
Glad to see the site up again! Whew! I panicked a little this morning when it was down.
Great job on Chucky Dex. Matt Foyer was fantastic! Can’t wait to see him in HPLHS’ The Whisperer in Darkness.
So a hiatus. Well, okay. I’m really looking forward to The Colour Out of Space – or as some pronounce it “Colorado Space.”
Happy Hallowe’en!
Wow, glad you guys are back, saw some ‘site suspended’ nonsense and became about as happy as HPL in New York. But less racist. Can’t wait to listen to episode no. 5, the bit where the doctor drops his new-fangled electrical flashlight down the pit I found genuinely frightening when I first read the story. I really wanted to know who/what was down there! My favourite line in Case of Charles Dexter Ward is at the end of a chapter, when Mister Ward comes back after his European study holiday, ‘…and Charles Dexter Ward had come home.’ Also, really like the way the story bookends with the discovery of ‘Charles’ having escaped and the bluish dust, and completing with the explanation of how it happened. Nice work, Mister Lovecraft! Know you’ll do a great job on ‘The Colour Out of Space’, some really disturbing gear with the family having the life suckedout of them, and cattleand pigs oddly shrivelled and brittle. Yuck. Similarities to ‘The Shunned House’. NICE
Well, let’s not forget that this story STARTED with some guys coming into the hospital room, finding the window open and this weird dust blowing around in the wind. So Tony’s gonna have to go a long way to reconstitute The Master.
The company I work for wants us to do the Halloween thing next Thursday and Friday…time to look into a periwig. I ALREADY have the crummy scar over my eye (accident in apple orchard as a kid); one more reason I adopted “Joseph Curwen” as a pseudonym as a jr.high nerd.
Great finale guys. I’ve done a little looking into who is called up that combats the necromancers & it has been bandied around the net that perhaps it was Merlin and Curwen had intended perhaps to bring up Morgana Le Fey which I kind of doubt. Given that Lovecraft makes a sly mention of “Eliphas Levi”, he could be hinting at said mage being Apollonius of Tyana, who had a reputation as a seer and sorcerer and also has been compared to Jesus of Nazareth by various popular writers in modern times. *Shrugs* I agree the unknown element adds mystery to the story.
Beard and eyes, eight or ninth century…Merlin, maybe? I’d have to read it through again, but that would be awesome.
Oh wow, we’re already up to The Colour Out Of Space? Good times!
Guys, great show, never miss an episode. I like very much the context you provide for the stories and how HP developments as a writer. My question: Are there any documents or speculative works that show where HP might have gone if he had lived longer? Seems a pity he did not try to write for Hollywood, since that might have given him an income that he could live on while writing what he really wanted. Thanks, MT
Excellent! Just finished listening to Episode 5. This is one that I wish you would do as a full narrated story (it has always been one of my favorite stories by Eich-Pee-El).
another delightful serving from our favorite son of Providence!! great job guys! cant wait till next week.
I know it’s a tall order…but is there the slightest chance that Matt could provide a full reading? Or is the project one that might be adapted for a HPLHS radio play? Super voice Foyer, simply shuddersome!
All told, it was an excellent overall look at one of Lovecraft’s best works. For a first draft, it’s really already polished.
The Colour Out of Space is a heck of a followup as well. It really was a remarkable year for Lovecraft.
I loved this whole story, great ending, scared me half to death! You guys are the reason I got into Lovecraft and the whole Cthulu mith, keep on making podcast! God bess ya guys!
Here are the links for the University of Tampa Press version of the story:
Paperback: http://utpress.ut.edu/index.cfm/fuseaction/homeItem/PubId/215
Hardback: http://utpress.ut.edu/index.cfm/fuseaction/homeItem/PubId/216
Donovan K. Loucks
Webmaster, The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
http://www.hplovecraft.com
Sorry about the site being down, but we busted our bandwith! WHOOO!!
However, it means we’re going to have to start paying more. Oh well. No one said success didn’t have it’s costs.
just tell the ISP you were DDOSed and refuse to pay more. and next time make sure the guards are fed!!!
Hey guys, great job on this long story!
By the way, the How Stuff Works podcast is stealing your act! They did a reading of The Tomb this week, which doesn’t have the production value as your ‘casts, but maybe it will turn on more readers to HPL. Also, Josh and Chuck are big HPL fans (they even did a podcast on the Necronomican a few years ago).
Happy Hallowe’en everybody!
Great show, listened to it Halloween as I fell asleep. Looking forward to your next episode with your wit, immense charm, persipacity, and humour.
I like the new audio player!
“Once, though, during a discourse in an unknown tongue, a shadow was seen on the curtain which startled Weeden exceedingly; reminding him of one of the puppets in a show he had seen in the autumn of 1764 in Hacher’s Hall, when a man from Germantown, Pennsylvania, had given a clever mechanical spectacle advertised as a “View of the Famous City of Jerusalem, in which are represented Jerusalem, the Temple of Solomon, his Royal Throne, the noted Towers, and Hills, likewise the Sufferings of Our Saviour from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross on the Hill of Golgotha; an artful pirce of Statuary, Worthy to be seen by the Curious.”
(II, 3)
“A second flaming thing appeared, and a shriek of human origin was plainly distinguished. Fenner wrote that he could even gather a few words belched in frenzy: ‘Almighty, protect thy lamb!’ The there were more shots, and the second flaming thing fell.”
(II, 5)
but did it stay down this time?
I bet an informal poll would indicate a fair number of people who listen to this podcast as a “storytelling” before they crash at lights out.
Glad to see improvements to the site regardless of disruption. Growth comes at a cost.
We are interested in the “promotionals” mentioned at the end of one of the latest podcasts.
Great job. Us folks out here in Afghanistan love hearing it and you have a fair amount of episodes that we can pick any one at random and be entertained.
Keep the laughter going.
I still laugh at Chad’s, “MEOW!” a-la Predator during Dream-Quest.
Sorry to see you’re wrapping things up guys.
Great shows, well conceived and well done.
Podfade is a bitch, but I suppose until these things can be monetised it’s gonna happen 🙂
What the hell are you talking about, Bob? We’ll be back next week with THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE!!!
Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob.
Come back, Bob.
I found A great site full of H.P.lovecraft pics. It’s called elfwood.com. Go to sifi & fantasy art then by category and dun.
Really looking forward to next week’s episode, The Colour out of Space was the first Lovecraft story I ever heard. Good stuff.
Really loving this series, keep up the good work!
Looking forward to “The Colour out of Space.” Keep up the good work guys!
On who I would ressurect:
For some reason, i think about this often (not from a raising the dead standpoint, but more like a visitation). I always imagine myself showing some great mind of the past some films or demonstration of what their research or discoveries led to. Primarily as a way to show gratitude, but also because I think they would get a real kick out of the advances others have made in the field since their death. Maybe finally resolving some burning questions that they only had a partial answer to. Imagine how much of a blast it would be to have an evening with Galileo, showing him a summary of discoveries and theories about the cosmos, the moon landing, images from Hubble. kickimg back and watching some Carl Sagan.
On Curwen’s unmarked grave:
I don’t know how often it’s been used as a device in literature and film, but this always makes me think of Arch Stanton’s grave in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
“Un- unnk- Unkno- …There’s no name on it!”
CHRIS O. – to some extent the “visitation” thing is done in Kim Stanley Robinson’s book “Galileo’s Dream.” I really liked the book and it is fascinating.
CHRIS O. – P.S. It’s not very Lovecraftian, however! 🙂
I would ressurect Arthur Fleming, the inventor of antibioticum, just to horrify him with the American health care systems of prescribing them pills to viral infections. What a day it will be!
And then I’d ressurect Muhammed, prophet of the Islam, just to screw with everyone’s mind.
Reber – I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the book tip and the great music.
I agree that religion and HPL don’t typically mix, but when I see a pentagram, church, or other religious or symbols in HPL’s stories, my interpretation is that those are expressions or instantiations of the “real” gods, demons, etc., of HPL’s universe. In other words, in Dunwich, Wilbur’s appearance (goatish face, cloven hooves), would be described as satanic or demonic, but he’s obviously much bigger than the Bible or Earthly religion. If he evokes Satan or demons in the minds of New England rustics, it’s just because they’re using the limited images and mythology they’re equipped with. It’s not that pentagrams work in Satanism as well as Cthulhu magic, it’s that Satanists thought they were using pentagrams to call up demons or whatever, but what they were really doing is using magic of an infinitely older and more cosmic type.
And I’d resurrect Phil Hartman.
I’m pretty sure it’s Merlin. The time period is right, and who else can trash three immortal sorcerers without breaking a sweat?
John Dee. Everything written about him can’t be true but at least the person really existed. I think he was also less morally ambiguous than Merlin.