The scenarios of Darkened Hill & Dale were inspired by and/or make reference to a number of events, places, objects, etc. in the real world.

There are also some things that I learned about after writing the scenarios – sometimes the very next day (which was a disconcerting experience).

As you may have suspected, it turns out that Britain is already pretty weird and spooky. It’s sometimes difficult to make fiction stranger than truth, even when writing unnatural horror.

Anyway, I thought people might enjoy learning about these things, so here are all the ones I could remember:

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Roses Turned Red

• The book depicting the lost plants is a reference to the Voynich manuscript.
• Doors Garden Centre, near Elmham, is very loosely inspired by Gates Garden Centre, near Oakham, which seems to have acquired yet more labyrinthine departments every time I happen to end up there.
  My mother was a keen gardener and I spent a lot of time wandering around the garden centres of the East Midlands as a child.

Death Knell

• Ashby Knell’s fair was inspired by a trip to a village fair in Ryhall, Rutland, which I visited specifically for that inspiration and to take some photos.
  They really did have a dog show, traditional games, and a 1940s-style group singing upbeat covers of things like My Heart Will Go On.
• Stranger Aeons magazine is a reference to the fabulous Fortean Times.
• Norchester Bell Foundry is very loosely inspired by Taylor’s of Loughborough, which I have yet to visit but is the world’s largest working bell foundry.
• The noise/sensation created by the bell is a low-pitched reference to acoustic deterrents such at the Mosquito alarm.
  I’ve had the misfortune to retain my ability to hear very high-pitched noises far longer than is typical, and so can hear these wretched devices when most adults can’t. I would describe the noise as a bit like being kicked in the head with a sound and honestly think they’re inhumane. They also make me seem insane when I start complaining about anything making the noise to other adults, because they can’t hear it.
• Shortly after writing Death Knell, there was a spate of news stories about church bells being restored/replaced, like this one: ‘Medieval church bell replaced after 900 years‘. I’m pretty sure I saw none of these before writing the scenario.

It Takes a Village

• Open Gardens events are alive and well in Britain, and you can find a directory for them here.
• The aside about the three pubs sharing a homonym name (Blue Belle, Bluebell, Blue Bell) is a very niche reference to the fact that there used to be two adjacent villages in the Wreake Valley of Leicestershire which both contained a pub called the Blue Bell. People did not always end up in the same one as the friends they were hoping to meet.

Aurora Temporalis

• Malham Crags draws heavily on Brimham Rocks, although I’m not aware of any plane crashes or spooky goings-on there.
• Malham Crags have no connection to Malham Cove and its crag, which I didn’t know about when I made up the name.
• Also not a reference, but apparently there is some wreckage from a crashed Dragon Rapide up on Kinder Scout.
• The shape of the idol is a vague allusion to the cone-shaped bodies of the Great Race of Yith, from Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time.
• The concept of an idol and its housing evolved from reading about Burmese folk religion, which features deities (nats) residing in spirit houses (nat sin).
  The idol in the scenario, and its housing, is not intended to reflect on these actual religious elements.

Fatstock

• The Fatstock Show and Dinner are real and happens on the first Saturday of every December in Melton Mowbray at the Cattle Market.
  I used to give my Dad a lift to the dinner. He’s never been a farmer. He promises that there are no occult practices associated with the event. Well, none that he remembers.
• Melton Mowbray has a strong association with fox hunting, and in particular the Quorn Hunt – one of the world’s oldest fox hunting packs.
• The Eye Reservoir is loosely based on Rutland Water. Two villages really were demolished and flooded to make the reservoir in the 1970s, and “their wells plugged”. Allegedly.
• It was not a deliberate reference, but red-coloured cows do have some religious significance.
• The draft title for this scenario was ‘Mother in the Ice’ – a reference to the Delta Green Scenario ‘Lover in the Ice‘.

Moonlit Shadow

• This scenario is heavily inspired by the continuing folklore and urban legends around wild big cats in Britain, and particularly the Beast of Exmoor and Beast of Bodmin Moor.
  Now, I’m not saying I’m convinced that there really are big cats loose in Britain, but I did very nearly crash my car on the M1 a couple of years ago when I saw something that looked a lot like a large cat silhouetted against the dusk light crossing a motorway footbridge above me. If only I’d had a dash cam.
• There are some references to the lyrics of Mike Oldfield’s Moonlight Shadow in this scenario.
• Whispering Tor and Hwispertorra are inspired by Hound Tor and Hundatorra on Dartmoor.
• The Beast draws slight inspiration from the angular aspects of Cthulhu mythos creatures the Hounds of Tindalos.
• The names of the thieves in the Annie Haddow poem (which was written for this scenario) are taken from the Devon folk poem, Widecombe Fair.
• Someone commented during the Kickstarter that they’d been hoping Moonlit Shadow would feature “an Angel called Dave”. I definitely didn’t contrive to name the landlord of the pub ‘Dave Angel‘ as a consequence.

Fools’ Fire

• This scenario mashes together a few things, but came together when I read about the church at Snave, which does open precisely once a year for a harvest festival.
• I’d been wanting to include a marsh in this scenario, and was delighted to discover RSPB Minismere, which really is just down the coast from Dunwich (which was famously half-sunk by 13th century storms and is a staple of spooky British stuff, as well as having a Lovecraftian connection). It’s also charmingly quite close to Rendlesham Forest.
• There is a real pub named the Eel’s Foot Inn on the edge of the marshy wetland of Minismere. I saw the name and loved it too much to not use it, but the one in the scenario probably doesn’t bear any resemblance to it.
• I mentally relocated Snave onto a marsh (not realising that it was on Romney Marsh) and started writing before discovering that I had ‘invented’ a real location – and that it’s only a couple of miles from Snave.
  The Church of St Thomas à Becket stands alone in a marshy field, and is quite something. You can’t make up anything in this weird country.
• Old Bedmarsh, with the right accent, might sound quite a lot like Obed Marsh.
• St John’s Eve is a real (if now rare) festival and, alarmingly, I did not make up the bit about the bone fires. It’s also associated with the baptism of children.
  • This is, by the way, how I learnt that the word ‘bonfire’ does not come from – as you probably imagined – ‘good fire’.
    ‘Bonfire’ is a shortening of ‘bone fire’.
• After writing the scenario I read that some Isle of Man folklore claimed that an unbaptised child who died had to ‘carry a light’ in it’s hands for eternity, something like a will-o’-the-wisp, which almost fits too neatly with the setting.
• This article – ‘The beach where people keep finding human bones‘ – was published literally the morning after I finished writing the bone-riddled cave scenes in this scenario. That led me to this article. Cliffs full of bones? Sure, normal British things.

In summary: you can pretty much just go for a nice little walk in rural Britain and stumble into some deeply weird and/or horrible history before you even stop for lunch.

Isn’t it great?