Hypnogoria

This Christmas we are are hosting four nights of ghost stories from the Great Library of Dreams. Tonight we begin with Mr Jim Moon reading a festive ghost story about festive ghost stories, Jerry Bundler by WW Jacobs.  

In the second of this year's Christmas specials, Mr Jim Moon mounts an assault on the north face of the drinks cabinet and explores the world of festive music. We unwrap the history of the Christmas carol, do a spot of wassailing, discover strange forgotten festive cash-in singles and indulge in all manner of off beat versions of Yuletide favourites.  

In the first of our festive shows this year, Mr Jim Moon searches the Great Library of Dreams for books given as gifts on many a Christmas Past, and uncovers the history and wonders of the British Christmas Annual!

In this episode Odile and Jim explore the strange world of Landfall, a realm of crumbling castles, strange mutations, sinister scheming and swordplay galore! Yes, we are discussing The Boy With the Porcelain Blade by Den Patrick, the first book in the Erebus Sequence.

In this episode of the Zombi Zombi series, Mr Jim Moon heads to 1970s Spain to explore one of the legendary Eurohorror franchises. Created by director Amando de Ossorio, The Blind Dead saga is a quartet of movies featuring blood drinking, horse riding, sword wielding undead Knights Templar, who hunt by the sense of sound! We discuss in depth all four movies in the sequence Tombs of the Blind Dead...

On the 21st of November in 1984, BBC One screened the first episode of a lavish television adaptation of John Masefield's children's book The Box of Delights - a series that has gone on to be become a beloved classic and part of many folks' Christmas traditions. To the mark the 30th anniversary of its showing, Mr Jim Moon revisits the series with some new thoughts on this old favourite.  

Mr Jim Moon takes a trip into the Vinyl Vault at the Great Library of Dreams to tell the tale of a most seminal spooky record beloved of the monster kids of the '60s which paid homage to the Universal horrors and was hosted by Mr Boris Karloff himself!

In this inaugural show, our hosts take their chairs by the fireside to discuss the recently released tome The Girl With All The Gifts - a highly impressive post apocalypse novel actually penned by famed famed Mike Carey under the pseudonym MR Carey. WARNING - this is a highly spoilerific discussion of this book, proceed with caution!  

In an epic length show, Mr Jim Moon traverses the centuries in search of the origins of Halloween. Along the way we'll investigate the festival of All Hallows, the pagan rites of the Celts at Samhain, uncover the truth about trick or treating, the genesis of the jack o'lantern, and discover all manner of folk charms and rituals for Halloween night!

Mr Jim Moon once more finds a childhood favourite lurking on the shelves in the Great Library of Dreams - a tome by one Sean Richards who turned out to be none other than legendary editor and anthologist Peter Haining. Flipping through this vintage paperback from Armada, we indeed find much fun in knowing all about ghosts!

In the third and final part of our series of double features in horror, Mr Jim Moon examines the history of the late night horror double bill on TV, discussing the likes of Shock Theater, horror hosts, Creature Features and the legendary BBC 2 horror double bills.

BONUS EPISODE!!!! In the latest episode of WITLESS FOR THE DEFENCE – Case 16 – Michael Bay's Transformers films are in the dock. And Mr Jim Moon somewhat foolishly decided to watch all four… in a single day. The following audio logs have been recovered from the wreckage…

Time travelling once more on the black batwings of nostalgia, Mr Jim Moon enthusiastically rambles about  World of the Unknown: All About Monsters  published by Usborne back in 1978. Swearing, over-excitement and a feast of monsterdom results!

Dipping once again into his battered copy of The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales , Mr Jim Moon unearths a ghostly tale that first aired on Radio 4. Exactly what did Mr Eric Roberts encounter in the dead of night in a lonely Cornish cottage? Find out in this bite-sized serving of audio spookery which tells of how he went in search of a ghost!  

In the second part of our investigations of horror double bills, Mr Jim Moon details the second wave of the Universal Monsters, the chillers from RKO conjured up by Val Lewton, charts the building of the Hammer house of horrors, takes a spin through the history of the drive-in, and examines the double trouble that was AIP and Roger Corman!

In this episode, Mr Jim Moon reminisces about a favourite old anthology of ghost stories  The House of the Nightmare and Other Eerie Tales  edited by Kathleen Lines (Puffin 1970) and explores a real life haunting found in its pages – a frightening encounter with the legendary Wish-hounds of Dartmoor.

In the first episode of our new show HYPNOGORIA, Mr Jim Moon delves through the cinema archives of the Great Library of the Dreams to unearth the history of everyone's favourite two for one – the horror double bill!    

To celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the great HP Lovecraft, Mr Jim Moon delves into the Cthulhu Mythos section of the Great Library of Dreams to bring you the prose poem  Nyarlathotep .  

It's a balmy summer's night in the gardens of the Great Library of Dreams, and the spirit of the season moves Mr Jim Moon read a highly appropriate tale from the great MR James. Afterwards we discuss this curious story and try and unravel its mysteries before true midnight arrives… 

In this mini-cast, Mr Jim Moon braves undead postmen to visit the Dead Letter Office in the Great Library of Dreams and finally get round to catching up with some listener feedback! 

In the second half of this musical marathon, an even drunker Mr Jim Moon continues his journey through the dark side of rock, charting the influence of  horror, death and the Devil through a variety of genres such as   punk, electronica, metal and goth and exploring the darker musical legends such as cursed songs and satanic backmasking.  

To mark the 150th episode of Hypnobobs, Mr Jim Moon embarks on an epic journey through rock and pop, tracing the history of horror, the occult, voodoo, and Old Nick Himself in popular music. And all while doing untold damage to the drinks cabinet!

In this minicast, Mr Jim Moon once again dusts off a spooky childhood favourite. This time we talking about a volume in Usborne's late 1970s series World of the Unknown, the haunting volume  All About Ghosts .

In this edition of Microbobs, Mr Jim Moon waxes lyrical about an old beloved paperback tome of spectres, phantoms and other things that go bump in the night, Ghosts, Ghouls & Other Horrors by Bernhardt J. Hurwood, published by Target Books back in 1974.  

Mr Moon once again explores the world of the big bugs, examining classic giant insect rampages from the '50s such as  Them!,  Jack Arnold's  Tarantula  (1956), Bert I Gordon's  Earth Vs The Spider  (1958) and Nathan Juran's  The Deadly Mantis  (1957).