I’m going to disagree with your assertion that mentioning another story in the same genre is always a bad idea. In most cases you are correct but when a genre of story is really popular it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend that nobody in your world has heard of the phenomenon your story is dealing with. I am thinking of the current zombie craze that is finally dying out. All of these shows and movies pretend that no one has heard of zombies before, to the point it becomes a constant criticism of the show/film. A character asking another how they ended up in Night of the Living Dead would have been refreshing change in the zombie genre. In the current story it seems poorly done, which makes it into a sad me too kind of reference. If handled well it could really connect the story to the larger genre. I wonder how many of these haunted house stories were being published at the time? It seems like quite a few, unless Elder Sign by some fluke has covered them all already. Enjoyed the podcast and the analysis of how the story was constructed.
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Lovecraftian Fiction
Literary Podcasts
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Cram was a massively important architect in the United States -- he reshaped the urban and particularly the suburban landscape for the twentieth century. But I know very little about him. It might be fun to do something biographical about Cram some day. Perhaps even some of our other writers as well.
@Daniel Falch, you're right. But I wondered if I did this thing myself in my own short story collection in the wrong way, like Glenn meant. I went through it, but luckily couldn't find this error. Phew... But next time I'm writing I keep your discussion in mind.
By the way, I was interested in the raised question in the discussion of this tale, wether Cram had the same sort of fear for 'returning paganism' as did Machen and Lovecraft. A quick search on the internet brought up this line (at https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000305):
'A deeply religious man following a conversion experience, he [Cram] believed that churches should be in authentic English Gothic architectural style as an indication and promoter of religious faith amid the troubles of an industrial and material age.'
I think this supports the idea of Glen and Brandon at least as regards to the fear of the dangers of cultural change in society and his holding on to Christian authenticity. Maybe some further 'research' can answer the question of Cram also believed in the 'old pagan cults period' in Europe. It surely would be interesting.
Yes, I don't think I should have laid that down as an inviolable rule, and I really like your comparison with zombie stuff (we're looking at you Walking Dead) -- the reference here didn't strike me as a pop-culture reference but of course it would have been at the time, and so it would have felt more natural and perhaps even funny to the contemporary audience.
I just invoked this deal with setting zombie stories in a parallel universe that is exactly like our own except that they don't have zombie movies in something we recorded. It may be the Caitlin Kiernan story we're doing next month? Quarantine binge-recording has fried my memory.