EnCrypted: The Classic Horror Podcast

  For Episode 21 we have a rollicking tale of demonic sorcery from 1887 - one that starts, mundanely enough, as a story of friendships forged in the corridors of Cambridge University and ends as full-blown gothic horror in the wilds of Scotland (with a telegram from India along the way); all in under thirty pages. By One, By Two and By Three first appeared, uncredited, in the pages of Temple Bar magazine, somehow became attached to the name of Stephen Hall (it was attributed thus in The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories ), and resurfaced in the 1970s as an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery before it was established as the work of one Adrian Ross (itself a pseudonym of Alfred Reed Ropes). Ross/Ropes was a contemporary of M.R. James at Kings' College and a celebrated academic and librettist in his own right. Indeed, while he wrote lyrics for a string of West End smashes over the course of four decades (and was a founder of the Performing Rights Society), he does not appear ...