Friday Fright Night: Curses! Spoiled Again!

 Curtis @The Passing Tramp (and sponsor of the Vintage Mysteries Group on Facebook) has revived the Friday Fright Night first launched in October 2020. Bloggers will take part in a month-long event sure to prepare us for Halloween. Friday Fright Night will find us serving up spooky, spirited reads at the end of each week throughout October. Curtis put out the call on Facebook but all bloggers are welcome to serve up ghastly delights and if you aren't on Facebook and would like to be included just provide a link to your post in the comments and I'll pass it along to Curtis. 

This week I'm taking a look at spooky curses and the similarities between The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a recent book featured here on the Block, The Curse of the Fleers by Basil Copper. To give you fair warning: there are spoilers ahead. If you have not read either or both of these books, then you may want to give this week a pass. 

Doyle's hound stems from an old curse laid upon the Baskerville family during the 17th Century when Hugo Baskerville, a rake and a hell-raiser in his time, kidnapped a young girl who had caught his fancied and then when she escaped pursued her to her death upon the moors. Sir Hugo was also found dead, killed by a huge hound which was found standing over his body. Because of their evil ancestor, the men in the Baskerville family are cursed and the hound is blamed for their deaths. The last Baskerville to die before Sherlock Holmes enters the case is Sir Charles Baskerville--found dead, purportedly from a heart attack when he ran, terrified away from the gate leading to the moors. Upon the ground was found the footprints of a gigantic hound. Holmes dismissed the idea of a curse, but he and Watson do find that there is a gigantic hound on the moors. A hound that kills a man wearing a cast-off suit from Sir Henry Baskerville, the heir who takes over after Sir Charles' death. And a hound that seems to be after the newest lord of Baskerville Hall

Similarly, in The Curse of the Fleers, we find a curse hanging over the Fleer family. Again, we have the rakehell ancestor who takes advantage of a neighbor's wife--causing her death--and then tortures and is directly responsible for the death of her husband, who falls to his death in an attempt to escape Fleer Manor. As he falls, Darnley curses Redbeard Fleer and all his descendants. And, of course each time a Fleer man dies, there are rumors that a Creeping Man (supposedly Darnley escaping across the battlements) is seen just before the death. Now in the current age (also the Victorian era--as with the Holmes story), we have Sir John Fleer being driven out of his mind with fear because he has begun seeing a Creeping Man crawling across the battlements whenever he looks out his window late at night. 

 Both Doyle and Copper use their curses and the atmosphere of the fog and moors of the Victorian period to great effect in their stories. Sir Henry Baskerville and Holmes may not take the curse seriously, but Sir Charles certainly did and Watson is none too sure--especially when he hears the eerie howls at night. Sir John Fleer doesn't want to believe in the Creeping Man, but with the battlements being locked and nothing but sheer walls below he finds it difficult to believe that a human agent can be at work. The foggy nights provide the perfect setting for a reasonable man to doubt his sanity. 

Of course, in both of these books there is a human agent at work--greedy human agents who are looking to either have Baskerville Hall all for themselves OR to find an ancient treasure hidden somewhere in Fleer Manor. Greed is the driving force that makes the villains of the pieces willing to do great evil in order to have their way--whether all-out murder or just driving a man insane. These stories being what they are good does triumph in the end. But the villains suffer from rather grisly deaths (in keeping with the ghoulish nature of our Friday Fright Night). Death by drowning in the Grimpen Mire for one and terrible blow to the head from a booby trap laid by ancient Fleers for the other--à la traps set in the various Indiana Jones movies for those who would steal treasures. And along the way Doyle and Copper provide a dose of spooky thrills for those of us who like a bit of ghoulish adventure without a heaping helping of horror.