Hypnogoria: THE OLDTIME YULETIDE ADVENT CALENDAR

Welcome dear friends back to the Hypnogoria Old-time Yuletide Advent Calendar! Today we are opening Door 11, and making a festive visit to a very special location. For K stands for King’s College, Cambridge.

Cambridge University began life back in 1231, and it is the third oldest university in the entire world. Now this venerable seat of learning is made up of various different colleges, which all take in students individually. Now King’s College was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI, and traditionally would take in students from the equally famous school Eton. Five years after opening, the college began work on its famous chapel, which boasts the largest fan vault ceiling in the world, with construction starting in 1446 and finally finishing in 1515.

Now King’s College has two very famous associations with the festive season. Firstly there are the ghost stories of MR James, and secondly there is the famous Christmas Eve service, Carols from King’s, which is broadcast all around the world. However what is not so well known, is the fact that these two very different parts of Christmas are in fact intimately linked. Allow me to explain…

Firstly Montague Rhodes James was a gifted scholar as a child, studying first at the prep school Temple Grove, and then Eton College. He became an undergraduate at King’s College in 1882, and after gaining his degree, remained there first as a scholar and later as part of the staff. He became a Fellow in 1887, a Dean of the college in 1889, a Tutor in 1900 and finally Provost in 1905, a position which he held until 1918, after which he returned to his old school of Eton to become Provost here.

In 1892, James had a whimsical supernatural tale printed in the college magazine The Cambridge Review, entitled A Night in King’s College Chapel, which had the famous stained glass windows coming to life.

However it was the following year, on the night of October 28th 1893, that James turned up at a meeting of the Chit Chat Club with two stories to read aloud to his companions. And these were to be the first of his famous ghost stories, with the Chit Chat Club hearing the first reading of Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book and Lost Hearts.

The stories went down so well that James penned further ghostly tales to be read aloud, and it became something of a Christmas tradition for Monty, as he was known to his friends, to read a brand new tale at a festive gathering at King’s. And aside from eventually having his eerie tales published in a series of books, James also inspired several other fellows at King’s to pen some ghostly tales of their own. EG Swain, who was chaplain at King’s produced a volume called The Stoneground Ghost Tales, AC Benson would regularly pen ghost tales, mostly collected in two volumes The Hill of Trouble and Other Stories (1903) and The Isles of Sunset (1904), while his brother was the prolific EF Benson, creator of the Mapp and Lucia comic novels, but was also a master of the ghost story to rival James himself. And indeed future alumni of King’s College such as ANL Munby and RH Malden, went on to pen ghostly tales in a Jamesian vein too.

Furthermore the BBC picked up on the tradition of telling ghost stories for Christmas, and over the decades, the ghostly tales of MR James, many of which were written to be read to friends upon a Christmas night, have been firm favourites for readings and adapting into dramas on both radio and television.

Now secondly, there is the world famous Christmas Eve service Carols from King’s. And this famous Christmas carol service is based on a traditional Yuletide format called Nine Lessons and Carols. Now this classic template for a carol service originated in Truro, Cornwall in 1880, and soon gained popularity across England, even finding favour with other denominations outside the Church of England. And in 1918, the Rev. Eric Milner-White, the new dean of King's College, Cambridge, introduced the service to the college. It proved highly popular, thanks to extra magic brought by the King’s College choristers, and soon became an annual tradition.

In 1928, the BBC began to broadcast the service on the radio, and from 1954 onwards on television. And now watching the annual broadcast at tea-time on Christmas Eve is a firm part of many people’s Christmas traditions.

However the fascinating thing that few people are aware of, is that these two Yuletide traditions have a special link. For the Bishop of Truro who designed the Nine Lessons and Carols service back in 1880 was the Right Reverend Edward White Benson, who was the father of the Benson brothers, EF and AC who were both great friends of MR James, and ghost story writers too.

However, while I could round off today’s offering on that bombshell, I can’t resist including a ghost story from King’s College itself. Close to the chapel, stands the Gibbs Building. And at some point in the 1800s it was home to a student called Barrett. Now Mr Barrett was something of a character, interested in the occult and dark arts, and even allegedly sleeping in a coffin. Furthermore, often there were wild screams heard coming from his rooms in the dead of night.

However, one night, all was quiet. Too quiet, in fact. And so his fellows broke down the door and found him dead in his coffin bed. However that wasn’t the end of the matter. For on the anniversary of his death, it was reported that one could still hear unearthly screams coming from Barrett's former rooms. MR James himself actually lived in rooms in the Gibbs Building for some time, but he never heard the ghostly cries. However, he attested that he knew other residents of the edifice who had…