The Horsingdon Transmissions: Epilogue

The Horsingdon Transmissions is finally over - but rather let us say it is gone for now, not forgotten.

The germ of the Transmissions has been knocking around for a good few years, taking its initial inspiration from the fictional Severn Valley which formed the setting for Ramsey Campbell's early tales of Lovecraftian horror. My intention was to do something similar with my own enweirded corner of Greater London. Whilst much of so much of Horsingdon lies under the shadow of Lovecraft, the air was also heavy with folk horror when the Transmissions first began, so the many of the posts are infused with the mood and themes of the Folk Horror Revival facebook page, the sci-fi-inflected folk hauntology of Ghostbox, Chris Lambert's Tales of the Black Meadow, and David Southwell's Hookland. Matthew Bartlett's tales of sonic horror - set in the town of Leeds, Massachussetts - also helped shape a key element of the Horsingdon setting. And, of course, one should not forget The League of Gentlemen (so recently returned to our screens) - or the speculative horrors of Nigel Kneale and Quatermass.

However, the blog was never entirely successful in terms of its original aim - which was to maintain an ongoing narrative throughout the daily posts, with the end result being somethin akin to a novel in blog format; unfortunately that ended up falling outside the grasp of my creative powers during the early stages of the project. So, instead, the Transmissions ended up as a series of thematically-interlinked and occasionally-intersecting vignettes.

There are also repetitions by way of style and content throughout, such that some later posts are, in effect, rewritings of earlier missives. In this respect, I now see the Horsingdon Transmissions as a kind of commonplace book: a reservoir of ideas to which I hope to return - perhaps reworking the material into a series of interlinked short stories, or a novella. There were also other aspects of the Horsingdon region intimated early on in the series - the outlier villages of Wychford and Dedham, for example - which I never got around to exploring, but whose mysteries I mean to investigate at a later date.

Despite the ending of the Transmissions, the threads of the tales spun out Horsingdon are ongoing - it is, after all, a very real place. I should know. I live there. I would invite you to come and visit - but I'd be afraid that - like so many of the region's residents - once here, you would never leave.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.365: Just Beginning

After a night of almost gale force winds, the scaffolding around the St. Osmund's Church has collapsed, and the spire has fallen in on itself, causing severe damage to the interior of the building. If there ever was indeed anything imprisoned within the spire, it is certainly now free to wreak its own particular brand of praeternatural havoc upon the Horsingdon populace.

In an equally sinister turn of events, the Boreham family mausoleum within the grounds of St. Osmund's has been broken into, and the corporeal remains of at least three generations of the Boreham line are now inexplicably missing from their final place of rest. The parties responsible for this desecration have also left two sets of unsettling graffiti within the mausoleum: in the lower level of the crypt (where the Boreham family remains used to lie), someone has inscribed in blood an ancient and prehuman formula - one which employs the sign of the Dragon's Head in the ascending node to invoke a monstrous Name of Power, and which is only ever used in the darkest of necromantic rites. Also scrawled in blood on one of the walls of the mausoleum's ground level, in a hand which looks remarkably similar to that of James Boreham, is the following portentous message: 'This is not the End. This is just the Beginning'.

Whatever this means, it surely augurs dire times indeed for Horsingdon. Let us hope at least that that the good folk of the region - and, indeed, all of us - manage to see out the current year in relative peace and safety.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.364: Our Work Here Is Not Yet Done

One of the last photographs of Boreham Mansion: seat to the notorious Boreham family for over two centuries, and birthplace of James Boreham - the last scion of that cursed lineage whose very existence was a blight on the region, and whose legacy remains, even today, one of fear and horror.

The legacy and birthright of an inhuman bloodline whose work, as attested to by so many of the signs and portents revealed throughout Horsingdon over the past twelvemonth, is not yet done.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.363: Lost Documents

The Ministry headquarters in Horsingdon circa the early 1950s, and at the silent outbreak of the Cold War. By the mid-1970s, the Ministry would have moved their base of operations elsewhere, and the building would become the seat of Horsinsingdon Borough Council - later to be renamed as Horsingdon Town Hall.

However, it seems that the Ministry failed to dispose of all their secrets, and on occasion some unfortunate clerk or administrator will stumble across a file or document of doubtful provenance: a sheet of yellowed paper scrawled with a curious sequence of sigils, or a seemingly inscrutable mathematical formula; or perhaps an after-action report detailing a confrontation between Ministry personnel and something which should not be.

Should knowledge of a kind never meant to be contained or comprehended by human minds be transmitted in such an accidental encounter with these pieces of anomalous paperwork, consequences which are both tragic and monstrous in equal measure tend to be the inevitable consequence. And it is rumoured that there yet remains cellars full of secrets lying unread in the vaults beneath Horsingdon Town Hall.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No. 362: Haunted Housing

Coldhill Estate was built at the behest of Horsingdon Borough Council in the late 1960s - one of the experiments in utopian social housing common at the time; yet within a decade of its construction, the estate had fallen into a rapid social and economic decline, with a rising crime rate and many of the apartments left untenanted due to disrepair.

Notably, Coldhill Estate had, by this time, acquired a reputation for being haunted; this was not, however, a straightforward case of spectral figures seen stalking its corridors, but more a feeling - widely expressed by many of the tenants - that there was something 'not quite right' about the place. People moved out as quickly as they moved in, and fewer and fewer families were willing to accept the offer of being housed there on account of rumours that a number of children from the estate had disappeared inexplicably.

Some have claimed that the strangeness which seems to cluster about the place is a by-product of its architecture - an experimental design supposedly produced by the Ministry; local folklorists have, on the other hand, argued that Chalkhill has demonstrable historic associations with the witchlore of the region - the site having long ago been cursed after a mass execution of witches occured there in the mid-16th century; others will tell you that the estate was built above a barrow within which something dark and primal slumbers.

Whatever the case, the place is best avoided at all cost - if not for the sake of your physical wellbeing, then for the sake of your soul.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.361: The Green Man

The Green Man pub and hotel sits near the foot of Horsingdon Hill, and is named after the folkloric figure said to haunt the nearby Horsingdon Woods.

Despite its mythic nature, there are still occasional accounts of casual ramblers encountering the hulking, shapeless figure of the Green Man in the Woods; it is even rumoured that, on the nights of certain festivals, the guardians of the Black Bowers make bloody sacrifice to this monstrous entity, which they consider to be the avatar of one of Those Who Wait - and who remains imprisoned somewhere in the deep geological strata far below Horsingdon Woods; it is, according to their doctrine, the spilling of fresh blood within the bounds of the Woods which can induce the earth to mutter with the consciousness of this unnameable being, revealing the time-worn secrets of things which should not be.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.360: Alien Acoustics

This transmission tower situated within the grounds of a Ministry facility at the edge of lower Harlowe has been broadcasting the same signal over the past few months: a low, pulsing algorithm of atonal sound, 

Rumour has it that the facility has been perfecting new sonic technologies derived from a series of musical scores written by a virtually unknown German composer who mysteriously disappeared during a sojourn in Paris some time around the turn of the 20th Century. These technologies are allegedly concerned with the use of an alien acoustics for the processing and transmission of certain kinds of information into as-yet-unpercieved strata or wavelengths of the harmonics which constitute the foundation of reality.

Whatever the case, the signal continues unabated - and for an as-yet undisclosed purpose.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.359: Yule Horror

The haunted landscape of Horsingdon, stretching off into an indistinct horizon populated by the untenanted Brutalist apartment blocks of Trentford, seen from Horsingdon Hill on Christmas Day. There are occasions when even the awful cosmic vistas sometimes revealed within the region's praeternatural topography fail to compete with the dismal horror revealed within the everyday.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.358: The Swimmers in Darkness

The closure of Horsingdon Bunker eventually led to an overall state of disrepair such that sections of the facility were subject to extensive flooding.

Subsequent tales recount instances of urban explorers encountering monstrous shapes swimming in the black and stagnant waters under which parts of the installation remain submerged. If, indeed, such entities do actually exist, the origin and nature of such subaqueous dwellers remains a matter of pure speculation - although presumably their presence beneath the Bunker is related in some manner to the strange history of the place, and the subsequent reasons for its abandonment.

THe Horsingdon Transmissions No.357: Mock Tudor Miasma

A wave of building throughout Horsingdon in the 1930s produced a significant number of houses in the then-popular mock Tudor style - many of which remain standing today. But this being Horsingdon, a history of horror and tragedy lurks behind the kitsch-yet-endearing exteriors of some of these buildings - notably those owned by James Boreham.

A strange, ectoplasmic miasma was recently captured hovering about one such property in the photograph above: a house located on Welbury Avenue, whose cellar Boreham utilised as the site of certain occult experiments.

Whilst the house on Welbury Avenue has a history of paranormal activity, the locale appears to have remained psychically inactive and free from praeternatural intrusions for the past three decades, raising the question as to why there has been an apparent resurgence of such activity, and whether this is due to the spectral architecture of the place having retained some kind of sympathetic link with its previous owner - in whatever speculative realm or state of being that notorious individual might currently exist...

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.356: A Voice from the Past

Festive jingles broadcast by Horsingdon's local radio station have been constantly interrupted for most of the week by bursts of howling black static, interspersed with the muted chanting of hymns to alien gods composed in some inhuman tongue. Some who are old enough to remember claim that, behind this atonal cacophany, the voice of James Boreham can be heard sonorously incanting some monstrous psalm. 

This all began soon after the above transmitter array - located atop a Ministry facility built upon the site where Boreham Manor once stood - went live.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.355: Faceless Witch

Older residents of the region know that Horsingdon Hill is best avoided at this season. Not only are the guardians of the Black Bowers engaged in their dubious ritual preparations during this time, but the infamous Faceless Witch of Horsingdon Woods is particularly active in the lead up to the celebration of the Yule festival.

Little is known about this strange and mysterious entity, other than the fact that, for at least two centuries, the witch has figured heavily as a sinister portent of doom in the Yuletide folklore of the borough.

Needless to say, any reported manifestation of the Faceless Witch predicates some terrible misfortune - at least for those unlucky enough to encounter this entity's spectral presence. No doubt the above photograph - which appears to have captured the Witch on film - will likewise precipitate the notification of the Horsingdon constabulary of the disappeaance of one or more casual ramblers in the vicinity of the Hill. Inevitably, such reports will be forgotten, purposefully misfiled, or even destroyed - for over the years, too many of the local police force have gone missing during the festive season, often after having been asked to investigate a similarly alleged crime - one with no clearly defined victim, perpertrator, or motive.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.354: Pallid Masks

As the Yule festivities draw towards their climax, the guardians of the Black Bowers are more likely to be seen in and around those parts of Horsingdon where the region's praeternatural topography grinds hideously against the walls which separate our world from the monstrous Outside. Typically, one will encounter them at such locales around the hours of dusk, engaging in their ritual preparations whilst wearing the sinister, pallid masks which they deem the appropriate ceremonial garb during this particular season.

If thus encountered, one is advised to depart the area quickly and quietly. In such circumstances, it is likely that they will leave you be; however, for those overly-curious souls who take it on themselves to pry too deeply into the work of the guardians at this time of year, a less certain - and far less pleasant - fate awaits: as is likely the case of whoever took the above photo, whose camera was found a few days ago - perhaps left as a warning to others - abandoned and bloodied on the side of Horsingdon Hill.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.353: The Whispering Well

A curious locale known as 'The Whispering Well' can be found in a forgotten corner of Horsingdon Bunker. Since the ominous events which overtook the facility, what was once just the opening to an access tunnel running beneath one of the Bunker's lower levels has acquired a sinister reputation: it is said that those who encounter this particular locale, if they linger too long, will be drawn to the apperture in the floor on account of the faint chorus of whispers they hear emanating from below; that they will be both enraptured and horrified by the secrets revealed to them the closer and longer they listen; that they will eventually be compelled to seek the source of those whispers, ultimately leading those unfortunate souls to venture into the lower depths of the Bunker - a journey, it is said, from which no one has ever returned.

It is also said that, in the aftermath of such a terminal excursion, a new voice will have been added to that uncanny ensemble of whisperers, whose terrible, murmured pronouncements issue from unseen voids below.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.352: Monstrous Effluvia

A vast luminous cloud hangs over Horsingdon at the start of the Yule festivities, bathing the region in its sickly green glow: the monstrous effluvia, perhaps, of those Outside forces which the guardians of the Black Bowers seek to evoke during this season; yet the world remains - for now - suggesting that their evocations were, at best, only partially successful.

Even so, at a time such as this when the door between worlds remains ajar, more than one of Horsingdon's residents is likely to meet a singular, perplexing and highly unconventional fate before daybreak signals a cessation of the night's horrors.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.351: Black Bowers

Boreham Park Station has recently acquired a Black Bower. It is positioned in front of a wall marking the threshold of the station's bounds. Behind this wall grows a small copse - an outlier of Horsingdon Wood, and fraught with dire rumour: of strange chanting heard on the night of certain festivals, and of grotesquely-inhuman shapes glimpsed at its centre. Reports of such phenomena seem to have intensified since the appearance of the Black Bower - although none of the station staff seem to be able to specify exactly when the curious structure appeared. Nor do they have any notion of what, if anything, it portends...

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.350: The Infinite Stair

The architect who designed this exterior stairwell - part of a Ministry installation near Horsingdon Hill - was sectioned due to a psychotic episode not long after the building's completion, disappearing in mysterious circumstances a few weeks later. This individual, it is rumoured, had long been in the employ of the Ministry, during which time he had been exposed to many of the strange and inhuman secrets which were the currency his employers dealt in - including certain texts said to reveal within their pages the alien principles underlying a hitherto unknown body of non-Euclidean and hyperdimensional geometry.

Within a week of the building having been open for use, three people were known to have disappeared inexplicably whilst travesing the stairwell - only one of whom was discovered, cowering at the top of the stairs, a few days later. This unfortunate was soon after declared irreparably insane.

The points of ingress to and egress from the stairwell have since been concreted over - although it is said that one might occasionally discern unearthly sounds emanating from the other side of these sealed portals.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.349: Windowless Prisons

A secluded wood on the boundary of Trentford hides yet more monolithic Brutalism in the form of this Ministry building. With but one entrance, and no windows visible, this structure might represent an ideal type of the architectural inscrutability which Ministry installations seem to strive for. All the better to hide its secrets from casual observers or overly curious eyes.

All the better to prevent access to its interior.

All the better to ensure that there is no means of egress for whatever lurks within.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.348: Ash Circles

Wide, indented circles of grass inexplicable blasted into white ash - like this one near the crown of Burn Hill - have been appearing throughout Horsingdon. Local ufologists cite them as evidence of the landing of extraterrestrial craft; conspiracy theorists claim them as the aftermath of the testing of some powerful Ministry weapon - a sonic beam, perhaps, projected from one of the nearby transmitter arrays; the more esoterically-minded of the region's paranormal investigators argue, for their part, that they are products of votices of praeturnatural energy, released at the apex of one of the black magical conjurations they believe occur regularly at the summit of the hill.

Only the guardians of the Black Bowers know the truth of the matter, and they are so terrified by what the phenomenon portends that they prefer not to speak of it.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.347: A Stronghold Full Of Secrets

The Ministry's one-time stronghold, situated in the hinterlands of Northwich, and abandoned since the end of the Cold War - yet still stalked by the ghosts of apocalyptic equasions, impossible secrets, and praeternatural technologies stolen from the sky or pryed from the Horsingdon landscape.

Yet even the proto-Brutalism of the bastion's architecture has not proven prison enough for what is contained within, such that it rumoured - by those who once walked its corridors - that some day a world-ending secret may escape from within the building's confines

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.346: The Horsingdon Coven

One of the few extant images of a member of the infamous Horsingdon Coven - whose present-day participants are supposedly the matrilineal descendants of the order's original founders. Whilst a few other photographs do exist of the Coven's activity in and around Horsingdon Woods, none of these have captured the group unmasked or uncowled.

Some say that the Coven's secrecy in this respect is less about maintaining the anonymity of its members who, perhaps, hold high office in the Horsingdon community; rather, it is about concealing from the world visages which evidence an awful and alien heritage: the by-product of their ancestors' couplings with an entity conjured forth from the ranks of Those Who Wait - an unnameable thing which, to this day, the Coven worships in the form of a monstrous, three-eyed goat.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.345: Praeternatural Nodes

The spire of the church on Harlow Hill is overshadowed by a strange aerial vistant. Not only do Horsingdon's transmitter arrays attract these uncanny intrusions, but it seems that the region's sacred sites follow suit. Such locales have long been recognised as places of power: nodes in the landscape where this world intersects with those unknown zones of being and entity which endure just beyond the horizon of perception. 

And whilst such nodes sometimes allow us a horrifying glimpse of infinite spheres otherwise outside the scope of our perceptual spectrum, they also occasionally permit the many terrible shapes which lurk in the abysmal depths of those nameless and numberless dimensions the opportunity for ingress into our world....

The Horsingdon Transmissions 344: Sticks

The guardians of the Black Bowers mark certain ritual sites and places of power with cryptic symbols and effigies - crafting out of sticks, bits of rotting wood, and other detritus provided by the Horsingdon landscape an inscrutably occult language of entropy: an ideographic system which instantiates homologously within its grammar of conjuration the eventual return of Those Who Wait. In doing so, these strange hieroglyphs are not so much signalling but - in a way we cannot even begin to comprehend - are causative of the heat death of the universe, and that final (one might say terminal) nullification of all things.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.343: Monstrous Portents

The inscrutable 'Cold' has forwarded (via e-mail) this image - allegedly of a monstrous entity encountered in the darkest part of Horsingdon Wood by one of his 'proxies'. What this portends, I am unsure: the image is certainly remarkable in the annals of (supposed) genuine photographs of cryto-hominids, given that it manifests an approximation of the human, yet at the same time demonstrating some very alien and inhuman qualities - especially with regard to the seeming lack of facial features,  and the partial appendage shown protuding from the wrist of the thing's right arm.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.342: Soon They Will Be Here

On the evening of October 31st 1999, Horsingdon residents had their viewing of a popular BBC soap opera unexpectedly disrupted by what can only be described as a rogue transmission, which lasted no more than half a minute. Extant video recordings of the event show a design of three pulsing circles of light against a dark background, accompanied by a heavily modulated voice with a disturbing timbre - a voice which announced three times (and three times only) the following: 'There is no more time. Soon they will be here'; after which, normal service was resumed. A number of people contacted to the BBC regarding this unanticipated and unpleasant interruption of their evening's viewing, complaining of migraines and nausea in the aftermath of this strange intermission.

The BBC was unable of offer anything close to a coherent explanation regarding the incident; nor were they able to ascertain the source of the strange and unsettling broadcast. The mystery of the transmission's origin and meaning remains unsolved to this day. Of note, however, is the fact that, scant days after the occurance of this televisual intrusion, the very first of those transmitter arrays which have increasingly come to colonise the Horsingdon landcsape was erected.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.341: The Recluse

This dilapidated, tin-roofed apartment was once the habitation of one of Horsingdon's stranger residents: an individual of reclusive habits who rented the rooms for over a decade; rarely venturing forth, this nameless person was often observed staring mindlessly out of one of the apartment's windows for the better part of the night, seemingly only retiring from his vigil at dawn.

After more than ten years of this inexplicable behaviour, the flat was found to have been suddenly and unexpectedly vacated by its odd tenant, who left behind one curious item: a mask of some rubbery material which perfectly replicated, in the minutest detail, the facial features of the recently departed occupant.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.340: Witch Marks

This witch mark appears in the nave of St. Osmund's Church - perhaps further evidence of the fundamentally cursed character of that locale. According to the guardians of the Black Bowers, this particular mark is a crude approximation of a sigil which represents the True Unspeakable Name of a particularly frightful entity - one which inhabits he same interstitial zone as Those Who Wait, and which partially shares in Their essence.

Rather curiously, the guardians have thusfar refused to comment on whether the ancient witch mark is in any way related to those reports of a strange headless figure seen lurking about St. Osmund's burying ground I have documented elsewhere - but those strange folk have never been the most garrulous of Horsingdon's inhabitants.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.339: Sonic Conjurations

Another transmitter array - this time close to Horsingdon Hill - is subject to a strange visitation. What attracts these curious aerial phenomena to the arrays is unclear, although it seems reasonable to presume that they are responding to the inhuman signals which the transmitters broadcast ceaselesly. 

The region's more occulturally-inclined conspiracy theorists have speculated that the arrays constitute some kind of techno-qabbalistic summoning grid, and that visitations such as those captured in the photo above are less extraterrestrial than they are praeternatural, conjured forth from some unknown abyss for some unthinkable purpose. If this hypothesis proves correct, then one would hope that whoever or whaever is calling these things forth heeds the words by which all cautious practitioners of the esoteric arts abide: 'do not call up that which you cannot put down'.

The Horsingdon Transmission No.338: Research Facility

Partially hidden behind a copse of trees in one of the more rural parts of Trentford, this abandoned Ministry research facility is haunted by more than just the memories of a time when its rooms and corridors teemed with human activity: a strange, purple-tinged mist has on occasion been seen to envelope the area around the building, within which inhuman shapes lurk - the aftermath of monstrous experiments said to have been conducted using occult technologies in cavernous laboratories deep below the building.

The truth of such rumours is difficult to ascertain, given that those few brave souls who have sought entry into the installation with a view to excavating its subterranean secrets have, thus far, never returned to report on their findings.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.337: The Last Broadcast

The strange signals being broadcast from the many transmitter arrays found throughout Horsingdon and adjacent parts have a tendency to call forth equally curious phenomenon: the blurry globe or sphere which appeared over this MoD installation near Croxley Moor a decade or so ago being a case in point.

There are no official reports regarding this incident, but one of the region's conspiracy theorists has claimed insider knowledge, stating that three of the installation's key personnel - scientist working respectively in cryptolinguistics, xenogeometry, and the physics of Eistein-Rosen bridges - were found to be inexplicably missing from their posts minutes after the appearance of this object above the facility; apparently their current whereabouts remains unknown to this day and, shortly after this perplexing episode the faculty ceased transmitting whatever signal it had been seemingly relaying into some absolute elsewhere.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.336: Urban Monoliths

The municipal wastelands of Horsingdon are dotted with squat, concrete monoliths. One never encounters these structures in any of the region's metropolitan hubs - they are only ever affixed to those zones of derelict, suburban liminality which edge on to the borough's rural topography, and where almost no one lives.

New monoliths appear periodically: of a variety of shapes and sizes, but nonetheless so monotonously uniform in their worn and everyday concrete stolidity that they blend into the built environment almost seamlessly. But no one ever speaks about why they are built.

It is almost certain, however, that these edifices are constructed to seal up and hide away within concrete those things which occasionally seep out into the Horsingdon landscape. Things which no human eye should countenance.

Thus they are prisons both literally and conceptually: confining from sight that which should not be seen, concurrently excluding from thought any reminder that beyond the pedestrian boundaries of Horsingdon life lurk monstrous realms beyond measure and without number.

The Horsingdon Transmissions No.335: The House on the Borderland

Whilst it has remained untenanted for several decades, this Art Deco building - which stands on a piece of wasteland aside the North Circular Road as it edges along the boundary between Horsingdon and Trentford - is nonetheless maintained (by persons or agencies unknown) in pristine condition.

Rumour has it that the original architect designed the building according to a set of hitherto-unknown and utterly alien geometric principles, allowing its structure to intersect with other, less-reputable, metaphysical realms; this unknown individual, who was also owner of the property, disappeared inexplicably from within a locked room mere days after taking up habitation within its bounds.

The disappearances of every subsequent owner in equally mysterious circumstances has, since then, understandably rendered the premises unsaleable.