L. T. C. Rolt (1910–1974)

I've been down a rabbit hole of Victorian/Edwardian ghost story authors, and I scratch my head wondering why Rolt is not better known. This little volume was, for me, that rare find that lures you in immediately and, as you approach the end, makes you sad that there is no more to look forward to. A railway engineer and foremost engineer on canals, and an antique car enthusiast, one would think Rolt was science-oriented and might dismiss the uncanny. As Susan Hill points out in the introduction, these stories quickly move from normal circumstances to the creepy with little humor and grim results. He has a talent for brevity without skimping on detail. His stories are very visual; I'm surprised there aren't oodles of film adaptations of these tales.
Last comment: There is a passage in the story "Agony of Flame" that sounds too heartfelt to be just the voice of the character. I suspect this is Rolt himself, "We Saxons don't understand the Irish, you know, and I don't suppose we ever shall. We label their mysticism "Celtic Twilight" and dismiss it jokingly as a sort of childish whimsy. But if you were to find yourself alone in the west of Ireland in circumstances such as I'm describing, maybe the joke would begin to lose its point. Brought up in a more bracing climate we don't give ourselves time to stop and think, but burn out our lives in an elaborate world of our own artifice. But out there, in the loneliness and the soft, relaxing, misty air, self-importance quickly dissolves, life seems ephemeral, and you begin to understand the Celt a little better; his sense of the past; his lack of ambition which we call shiftlessness; the melancholy that never leaves him, even in his joy."
Several of the stories take place in desolate landscape where the land itself is steeped with sinister history and energy. According to Susan Hill, Rolt was a fan of M. R. James and that is apparent. "Cwm Garon" could easily blur into "A View from a Hill".
One does not need to be a railway enthusiast to enjoy these stories. While trains are omnipresent and it is clear that Rolt was intimately familiar with railway operations, the stories are readily accessible to the reader. "The Garside Fell Disaster" might make one more apprehensive about train tunnels, though.
I've got two bookshelves of stories by M. R. James, Bierce, Blackwood, Nesbit, Wharton, etc. I am thrilled that there is a renewed interest in Rolt, that this tidy collection is available; it will sit proudly in my collection. Only wish there was another volume of Rolt spookers to look forward to.… (more)

L.T.C. Rolt wrote only one slim anthology of weird tales, Sleep No More: Railway, Canal & Other Stories of the Supernatural, but he has nevertheless achieved a cult following which often elevates him into the lofty company of M.R. James, the grand master of ghost stories. While one can detect occasional similarities of style and effectiveness, it is a bit of a reach to put them in the same class. And it is indeed the high expectations that leave me somewhat disappointed by Sleep No More. Though there are a few stories that are truly top notch with Jamesian qualities, overall it is a decidedly uneven anthology. “Bosworth Summit Pound”, “The Garside Fell Disaster”, and “Music Hath Charms” are very effective ghost stories: expert storytelling with a level of detail that lend an authoritative stamp a la M.R. James. And mention must be made of “World’s End,” a very odd little weird tale that packs a surprisingly powerful punch. But the remainder, not necessarily bad but paying generally lesser dividends, are an assortment of stories in some of the genre’s classic settings such as mysterious valleys, foreboding moors, and inherited manors. And it should also be noted that the subtitle is misleading as it implies multiple stories of railways and canals, but there is actually only one of each: “Garside” and “Bosworth”, respectively.… (more)