The Horsingdon Transmissions No.243: Inhuman Architecture

This abandoned building offers yet another example of the Brutalist aesthetics informing the architecture of Ministry institutions throughout the borough. Located at the edge of an industrial wasteland where the North Circular Road forms the boundary between Horsingdon and Trentford, the building remains off-limits to the public; it has, nonetheless, attracted its fair share of thrill-seeking urban explorers and spelunkers - indeed, its allure in this regard has been compounded on two accounts: in the first instance it remains unguarded except for the dilapidated signs warning of regular security patrols; and secondly because some of those who have entered its unwelcoming portals have disappeared inexplicably.

That the landscape - both ancient and modern - inhers with praeternatural power appears to be an uncontested truism in Horsingdon, such that it would be surprising if the mysterious Ministry did not employ such power as a result of its investigations into the arcane secrets and occult enigmas of the region; as a case in point, the hard modernist angles of this abandond and now hollow structure speak to an abject and inhuman totalitarianism which seems to have been the Ministry's ultimate goal: marshalling the spectral horrors and alien science unearthed during its delvings throughout the region to produce a new political order - one defined entirely in terms of a cold, uncaring universe of absolute, featureless uniformity, and governed by the absolute mechanism of an vast, indifferent and unwavering bureaucracy whose only purpose is the effacement of difference. One can only begin to imagine the kinds of monstrous transfigurations and deformations of the human essence such a system, instantiated within the very architecture of the place, might have once been inflicted upon the building's occupants - and one can only speculate as to how this might pertain to the disappearance of those lost souls since claimed by the edifice.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.242: Night Witches

In the folklore of Horsingdon, the long history of strange lights observed fltting through the night sky has often been given local colour and expression in tales of 'night witches', whose burning souls streak across the darkened firmament as, nightly, they go about their evil work.

Whatever the actual nature of such luminous aerial phenomena, there can be little doubt that they cluster around those locales within the region traditionally associated with the dire rites of primordial witchcraft - locales at which such rites are said to have scoured the walls of the world membraneously thin, allowing egress into our realm of things which should not be: things whose amorphous protuberances glow treacherously with a captivating radiance; things like great angler fish swimming through the vast abysses of space, enticing their unwitting victims with a wondrous luminosity toward the fanged maw of some unknowably horrible fate; things which whip the darkness with an immortal hunger which can never be satiated.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.241: The Toad King's Throne

This neolithic stone seat - known as the Toad King's Throne - rests on the bank of a wide pond or mere not far from Burn Hill. According to the folklore of the region, the eponymous Toad King was apparently one 'Old Tom', the bactrachian familiar of Mother Jenner who led the Horsingdon Coven during the late 1700s. As the story goes, Old Tom grew so grotequely fat on the blood of its mistress that it was forced to take refuge in the pond from the prying eyes of her inquisitive neighbours, and its so-called throne was constructed by Mother Jenner herself so that, once it had been called forth from the murky depths, she could sit with the enormous toad on her lap and nurse it with her own lifeblood.

However, as already intimated more recent archaeological investigations have revealed the seat to be  older by far than the tale allows; in addition to which, there are darker rumours of something equally ancient which would draw its slimey bulk out of the pond and seat itself on the throne in order to receive bloody sacrifice from its worshippers - perhaps this was the very same entity which Mother Jenner called to her as familiar and treated as if it were her very own child.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.240: The Tower of Silence

1970s Brutalism oversees the Horsingdon landscape in the form of this building, erected on land acquired via compulsory purchase order by the Ministry of Defence and closed to the public (the area within which the structure stands is enclosed by chain-link fencing topped with barbed-wire). Rumour has it that secret tunnels link it to Horsingdon Bunker. No one has ever been seen going into or out of the installation, and it is unclear as to what it's purpose is.

The land around it, however, is stricken by an unnatural silence and appears to be bereft of any animal life whatsoever - except for those figures whic are occasionally encountered looking out from the internal perimeter of the installation: dressed entirely in black military overalls, wearing helmets with reflective visors, always standing stock still, and staring silently and facelessly in a manner that seems to terrify even the most persistant and inquisitive tourists to this strange and unsettling location.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.239: Ultimate Press

One of the reasons for Roland Franklyn's visit to Horsingdon in the late 1960s was to facilitate the relocation of Ultimate Press, from its prior location in the Severn Valley to the premises shown above (located in a rather grubby industrial estate). As well as specialising in the publication of rare occult monographs - including Franklyn's own We Pass From View - Ultimate Press apparently had a very successful sideline in publishing works of fetishistic, sadomasochistic and occult-inflected pornography (it is rumoured that Franklyn himself penned a number of titles for this line).

The reasons for Ultimate Press' relocation remain unclear, but at there time there was talk of a scandal involving its unnamed owner, who was apparently questioned by the police regarding the disappearance of a number of sex workers in the Severn Valley region - although it seems that no charges were brought against this mysterious individual.

Ultimate Press was finally forced to close its doors in the early 1980s after it moved into video production and distribution - subsequently becoming the focus of the public and media backlash against 'video nasties', even being investigated once again by the police in relation to allegations of its involvement in the distribution of snuff films. According to an unverifiable account, one of these films involved some kind of orgiastic occult ritual, the instigator of which was seen to transform into a bloated, headless entity which subsequently feasted upon the celebrants using leech-like maws which opened in the palms of its hands. Curiously, this account mirrors reports which began to surface in the early 1970s of a bloated, headless figure seen lurking about Horsingdon cemetary at night. More recently have been occasional reports of the silhouette of a bulky, seemingly headless humanoid figure seen framed against the upper floor windows of Ultimate Press' one-time premises.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.238: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 14

Saturday 26th August 2017

A brief glimpse through the Doorway - both figuratively and literally. My camera was only able to capture a portion of the amorphousness of the nethermost blight which had been called up within that chamber - a chamber whose lead-lined walls were thankfully inscribed with the most awful wards and protective sigils to prevent that thing from ever leaving. A portion of nuclear chaos embodied and incarnate. The stench of dead time which has forever stained our souls with its polluting and irradiated dust. Vortical space consuming itself ouroboros-like, leading nowhere and everywhere. The monotonous throb of the universe's lifeforce ebbing away in an unlighted chamber beyond space-time, accompanied by mad, atonal piping. A doorway within a doorway to someplace unimaginable - a doorway which I now believe many of the people who worked on this experiment stepped through, in order to erase any memory of their existence on account of what they had brought into the world: that thing which which lurks still, shuttered only by lead-lined walls and arcane symbols, deep below the Horsingdon landscape.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.237: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 13

Friday 25th August 2017

A closed airlock - and the source of the throbbing sound which suffuses this part of the complex. It is the sound of entropy, the final heat death of the universe, made manifest by means of the arcane technologies employed in this place: weaponised time - or perhaps something worse. Of course the door tells us that it needs to be kept closed. we open it regardless.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.236: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 12

Thursday 24th August 2017

Within a steel-barred enclosure near the airlock stands the militarised ritual regalia of the priests of this place - protection against radiations both corporeal and arcane. It somehow seems eerily mocking of the morphology of the crow mask used by the guardians of the Black Bowers which we encountered at the entrance to this place. It reeks of inhumanity and the end of all things.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.235: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 11

Wednesday 23rd August 2017

Strange machineries surround and airlock in the far wall of the antechamber which the command centre overlooks, and from which the throbbing sound continues to emanate. Nothing seems to power the machines, but they are alive with activity - haunted insistently by the ghosts of their unknown purpose - or perhaps energised by the awful thing which awaits us beyond the airlock...

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.234: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 10

Tuesday 22nd August 2017

Pressing on through the darkness, we encounter a corridor of cramped living spaces which opens into what appears to be the bunker's command centre. Both the living spaces and command centre are habitation to strange, silent, staring mannequins. Why they have been arrayed here seems to be part of the incomprehensible ritual logic of the place. Or were they perhaps once human, but since transformed into their current mindless and empty puppet state on account of what they did here?

In the command centre, lever-arch files and ledgers sprawl across the tables - although none of them seem to deal with anything relating to the operation or bureaucracy of the bunker; rather, they consist of techno-occult schematics and algebraic grimoires composed according to an alien mathematics. The monitors and screens in the command centre are all blank. beyond the command centre stands another door from which the incessant throbbing noise emanates more loudly and insistently.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.233: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 9

Monday 21st August 2017

A metal door denying access to those without authorisation meets us at the bottom of the stairwell; regardless, the door swings open slowly and silently - seemingly impelled by an unseen force - as we approach. Only darkness is visible beyond - a darkness infused with a low, monotonous throbbing sound: one akin to the alien signals which sometimes fill the airwaves in the vicinity of Horsingdon's many transmitter arrays, and which speaks in some visceral but verbally incommunicable way of the terrible thing which happened here. It is reverberates with the tonality of extinction.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.232: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 8

Sunday 20th August 2017

An adjoining door in the map room opens on to a stairwell which leads further into the bowels of the bunker. Vague phantom presences seem to lurk about this area: perhaps the silent ghosts of those who perished within the depths of this place, seeking egress into the human world, but forever denied that possibility on account of how their humanity became distorted by what they did here.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.231: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 7

Saturday 19th August 2017

Beyond the hollow void of scientists' quarters stands some kind of control room with a map of the southern parts of England etched upon perspex and illuminated by a strange green light: it delineates the contours of an occult topography, littered with incomprehensible mathematical equations and arcane symbols - a cartographomantic simulacra of some kind of tectonic and psychogeographic summoning grid.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.230: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 6

Friday 18th August 2017

This sign hangs over a door which opens on to a large, empty and unlit room - one giving no clue as to whether it was the sleeping quarters or workspace of the scientists in question; regardless, it is a space suffused with a chill aura of utter, haunting absence - as if something thing truely, abominably terrible happened here: an event so terrible that it could not be countenanced at some fundamental level of things, forcing its erasure - and those involved in it - from the fabric of reality entirely, leaving inly a void where their ghosts should be.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.229: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 5

Thursday 17th August 2017

The sinister hum of archaic (yet still functional) technologies forms the ubiquitous sonic background to the aura of praeternatural dread that suffuses Horsingdon Bunker. The question as to who is operating these machines - and for what purpose - is one which the guardians of the Black Bowers who have led me to this place refuse to answer.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.228: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 4

Wednesday 16th August 2017

One of the guardians of the Black Bowers leads silently and solemnly down an immense corridor - a signifier of what Roger Luckhurst refers to as 'institutional dread' - into the abyssal core of Horsingdon Bunker, where supposedly there await terrible secrets whose disclosure threatens to unravel the very fabric of reality...

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.227: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 3

Tuesday 15th August 2017

A house in the woods: overgrown, deteriorating, partially-hidden by trees and untenanted - or is it? For this long-neglected building hides Horsingdon Bunker: a site haunted by many sinister secrets, and overshadowed by its proximity to absolute alterity: those terrifying, prenumbral realms of unknown entity, supposedly unlocked by the military scientists once deployed here, and who accidentally stumbled across a monstrous physics whilst fumbling blindly about unfathomable occult technologies extracted from the epistemological, cryptological and ideological detritus of post-war Europe; men and women who sought to excavate to the furthest foundations of reality, only to find it teetering on the edge of a  black abyss; men and women who did so at the behest of concepts - 'god', 'queen', and 'country' - which the knowledge they acquired must have surely rendered hollow and meaningless; men and women about whose existence no record now remains.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.226: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 2

Monday 14th August 2017

The approach to Horsingdon Bunker leads through a thickly-wooded area dotted with rusting and heavily-overgrown coorugated outbuildings, overseen by an old watchtower. In a shed which stands just outside the bunker's entrance, there sits an abandoned military transport, upon which rests what appears to be an old plague doctor's mask: a piece of ritual apparel which, in the symbolic language of Horsingdon's folklore, represents the crow: both a harbinger of the transition from the realm of the living to that of the dead - thus a totem presaging the point of separation between our world and the world of the Dead Gods -  and as a ward against the pestilence and ontological corruption which infects our world when it comes into contact with the inhabitants of that zone: Those Who Wait.

In any case, the placement of such a ceremonial device speaks clearly as to the presence of the guardians of the Black Bowers at this location.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.225: Horsingdon Bunker Field Report 1

Sunday 13th August 2017

The map co-ordinates provided to me by Frater X led me to a dirt track on the very outskirts of Horsingdon, close to the boundary which separates that borough from Trentford. Looming above me was yet another of those transmitter arrays which cast their weird sonic shadow over the region.

Frater X had already informed me that others of his Order would meet me at this location which, he also intimated, was also the site of the almost-mythic Horsingdon Bunker: a post-Cold War installation built by the MoD as a control centre from which to continue government and military operations in the event of the Cold War going hot - but repurposed (as rumour has it in conspiracy circles) by the mysterious Ministry in light of something supposedly referred to in top secret briefing documents as 'The Event'. Exactly what this is remains unclear, but apparently most of the evidence points towards the occurrance of a catastrophe of extinction-level magnitude - most likely as an outcome of an even more clandestine aspect of the Cold War: an arms race involving the attempted weaponization of inscrutable alien and occult technologies which, it is alleged, began at the tail-end of World War II.

In any case, Horsingdon Bunker has, over the past two decades, been the nucleus of a great deal of contemporary folklore, wherein it figures as the site of manifestation of any number of strange and outlandish paranormal occurances.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.224: Boreham's Folly (Part 2)

Saturday 12th August 2017

One of the guardians of the Black Bowers, lurking furtively about the gothic archway of Boreham’s Folly – a rare instance of members of this highly secretive community allowing someone who is not of their order to photograph them. This was also, in part an initiation and invitation: for reasons best known to themselves, this encounter with one of their number led to my inclusion in a psychogeographical exploration of the long abandoned and rumour-haunted Horsingdon bunker: a locale of such sinister repute that many of the region’s inhabitants refuse to acknowledge its existence. In any case, my meeting with the mysteriously named ‘Frater X’ at Boreham’s Folly led to a brief exchange, during which a time, date, and set of map coordinates were communicated to me.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.223: Boreham's Folly (Part 1)

Friday 11th August 2017

A view of Boreham's Folly in Horsingdon Wood: a mock ruin built in the form of a partially collapsed and dilapidated gothic archway, the folly is surrounded by rumour of the sinister occult geometries employed by James Boreham in its construction - and the even more sinister purposes for which it was commissioned. In any case, this proved to be the starting point for a curious series of events - constituting the Horsingdon Transmissions' first field report - which I will detail over the coming weeks.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.222: Alien Intrusions

I took the above photo of the transmitter array near Northwich Park whilst travelling home earlier this evening; only later did I notice the almost-perfect sphere which can be sen in the top left-hand corner of the image. I didn't observe the object at the time, so its appearance on the photo remains something baffling; its proximity, however, to one of the region's ubiquitous transmitters does raise disturbing questions regarding who - or what - is being called forth from out of the gulfs of space by the uncanny signals which, for unknown reasons, the arrays appear to continually broadcast with an almost religious fervour.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.221: Stairway to the Abyss

As spaces of transition, stairways are also thresholds and boundary markers. They reaffirm the wider classificatory order and system of categorical distinctions, in part by reminding us of their own exclusion and anomalous status in relation to these orders: they are necessary partitions which reinforce the conceptual boundaries we purposely erect to hide the disarray of meaninglessness and the tumultous chaos which forms the ultimate lattice upon which reality is constructed. As such, stairways are uncertain and inchoate places and - as is the case with the above example, commissioned by James Boreham in the early 1900s, and which leads too-and-from nowhere -  are often haunted by the shifting forms of those indeterminate entities which inhabit the lawless Outside.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.220: Star Spawn

Witnesses to the object shown hovering over Horsingdon Wood in tne above photo claim that it had an organc quality: less like the saucers or black triangles more commonly seen occupying the skies above Horsingdon and more akin to a globular mass, with a tadpole-like tail which moved from side-to-side as if the thing were swimming through some unseen medium. Shortly after the poto was taken, the object slowly faded from sight, as if transitioning into some other, unknown mode of being.

During his stay in the Horsingdon region, Roland Franklyn notes that he had the opportunity to consult a number of manuscripts written by James Boreham, one of which described in detail occult experiments conducted on the crest of Horsingdon Hill, during which Boreham apparently called forth from some benighted abyss something he refered to as 'the grave-looting spawn of the stars' - something which Frankly describes, albeit at second hand, as resembling what the witnesses to the above object claimed to have seen.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.219: The Sign in the Underpass

This underpass is where Horsingdon Lane crosses the Grand Union Canal at the foot of Horsingdon Hill. Just visible on the wall of the underpass is what appears to be a curious piece of graffiti, delineating a series of interlocking symbols in an unknown language or as-yet-undecipherable system of signification.

There is nothing else remarkable about the underpass - other than the curious fact that the publicly-available records of Horsingdon Council's Department of Highways and Infrastructure have rigorously documented the existence of this piece of graffiti since the late 1960s, noting that it has consistently resisted multiple attempts at removal. Exactly why this fact has been recurrently noted in the archives is unclear - but it is certainly the case that, throughout the decades, employees on the Highways and Infrastructure team have received regular complaints regarding the unsightly scrawl, and have, for some reason, treated its erasure as a priority.

Whether this has anything to do with rumours concerning the not-insignificant number of people who, over the years, have apparently gone unaccountably missing in the vicinity of the underpass, the archives fail to record.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.218: A Saucer Full Of Secrets

The above photo claims to depict the sideview of a large, saucer-like object which apparently appeared above the rooftops of Horsingdon last night. Such visitations - if indeed they are genuine intrusions from other worlds and not the result of misidentification - are invariably brief, and rarely leave any clue as to their purpose. Witnesses to such manifestations typically infer a meaningful agency behind them - yet the behaviour of these phenomena rarely conforms to comprehensible standards of human intentionality.

There are, however, things about Horsingdon which will always persist in their unknown and unknowable status, some truths which by necessity must remain unutterable - and some secrets which will forever resist disclosure. And or the sake and sanity of the region's inhabitants, that may befor the best.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.217: The Fungi from Hufford

A scant few acres distant from Horsingdon Wood, strange fungi sprout from the rich, loamy earth of Hufford Copse. Much like its larger, more heavily-forested neighbour, Hufford Copse has long been haunted by reports of strange lights hovering over its arboreal canopy, and of curious, unforseen mists which suddenly envelop wayfarers who, after the mist disperses as suddenly as it has appeared, are never seen again.

When encountering the fungi on a casual stroll through the Copse, local residents know that they are best left well alone - for the fungi are cultivated by the guardians of the Black Bowers and, whilst highly poisonous, supposedly possess remarkable properties. Thus it is said that, if prepared according to the proper rites and by following certain esoteric formulae, the fungi can be breweed into a potent wine which, once supped, will produce in the imbiber the most fantastic and vivid dreams - dreams which seem to transport the percipient to strange worlds: fabulous realms of alien wonder which lie far beyond the speculated boundaries of the space-time continuum which we currently inhabit.

It is also said that a profound danger resides in the consumption of this fungal wine: that it not only opens the doorways of perception to the Outer Spheres, but also doorways of another kind - portals which enable the monstrous denizens of those zones of phantasmagoric wonder and horror to gain purchase into our world. Needless to say, the lore of the guardians of the Black Bowers is replete with the terrible fates and monstrous transfigurations effecting those who have drunken of the fungal wine too readily, too greedily, and too frequently.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.216: Tales from the Riverbank

The River Colne follows the Ebury Way out of Trentford, feeding the Grand Union Canal on its journey. Never sounding more than two feet at its deepest as it meanders lazily through the district, as the intersection of so many points of the region's praeternatural topography, the river has nevertheless given rise to many curious tales regarding what lurks around its banks and within its waters: of writhing, oblong shapes seen swimming in the darkness; of strange faces staring evilly out of the waters at unsuspecting ramblers; of webbed hands - and worse - reaching up from the shallows to grasp at the ankles of passers-by; of casual wayfarers dragged suddenly and unexpectedly into the watercourse whose bodies are never recovered; of scaly, horse-like heads seen rising slowly from the river, surmounted on long, sinuous necks...

None of these tales could possibly have any substance too them, as the river is too narrow and to shallow to support such a diverse and monstrous bestiary; nonetheless, One would be hard pressed to find a resident of Horsingdon, Northwich or Trentford willing to spend a day fishing from the banks of this otherwise calm and sedately-flowing rivulet.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.215: Beacons

Many of the churches and houses in Horsingdon – especially those built before the 1950s – sport slatted cupolas. It was once traditional for households to place a lantern or candle in these cupolas on the night of certain festivals (typically May Eve and All Hallows).

According to the folklore of the region, the purpose of this common practice was apotropaic: a light meant to protect against the hours of darkness  – specifically against those Powers of Night believed to inhabit its abyssal depths. The guardians of the Black Bowers, however, entertain a widely different interpretation of the custom, claiming that the lights were meant as beacons, the intention of which was to call forth that which lurks within the devouring darkness - hence the frequency with which at least one unfortunate resident (if not an entire household) would be found to be missing from their home on the morning following one of these ancient festivals…

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.214: Ungathered Dust

This somewhat unremarkable stone marks a site once sacred to Those Who Wait, and in times past the Horsingdon coven celebrated many wild and bloody rites about its fulcrum. It is said that the stone once gave shape to the monstrous form of one of those terrible Powers; but the universe grinds unceasingly on, operating to fixed algorithms wholly indifferent to anything which exists outside their sphere of pure, mathematical abstraction, such that whatever abyssal form was once enrobed in the stone’s ancient granite has since been reduced to a lonely ghost of ungathered dust - the inevitable fate of humanity and all its works - by the erosions of time.

The Horsington Transmissions No.213: The Last Church

The Church of St. John has long been abandoned by its congregation, whose numbers were never sizeable in any case. Attempts at renovating or demolishing the building have thusfar resulted in failure - primarily on account of Horsingdon Council refusing planning permission for any projects involving the church. It is said that on entering the church, one does not encounter that sense of peaceful quietude, tinged with a hint of incense, which one typically associates with such sacred spaces; instead, an aura of malignancy is said to hang about its pews and pillars - and it is this which was responsible for the church's eventual dessertion.

According to the guardians of the Black Bowers, the reason for this pervasive aura of dread and lurking evil lies in the fact of the church having been built on a site long sacred to Those Who Wait; in addition to which, the guardians claim it will also become the last church - indeed, the very last church on Earth - when those monstrous Powers return to resume their ministry