Interview with Jim Moon (Hypnogoria)

The second interview on the blog, is someone who was top of the list when I had the idea to do this section. It would also have been the first one I did if I wasn’t so particular about getting the questions as good as I could get them. Jim Moon is someone who has been a big part of my podcast journey for a very long time now. He is someone who will always reply to messages (and help you out with half remembered book covers or stories from your childhood). On top of that, he’s an overall jolly nice chap too. So read on, as I pick the brains of Mr. Jim Moon.

Thank you for taking time to answer these questions. Your podcast was one of the first I listened to. It was also one of the first I reviewed (all the way back in January 2022). I must say that your podcast has been such an influence on me. In fact, without it, my blog would sound a lot different. When I was writing my first reviews I could actually hear your voice as I was typing. And no, sorry, there are no royalties coming your way! 

You are coming up to the 15th anniversary of the show, with no signs of slowing down. Quite the opposite in fact with all the spin off shows. I bet you didn’t envision this when you started?

Not at all! When I started out doing little ten minute shows on the now defunct Audioboo, I didn’t think many folk would listen and I wouldn’t have enough to talk about! As it turns out the exact opposite was true. Fifteen years later there’s still huge amounts I’ve still not got round to covering! 

What do you think has been the secret of your success? I mean you are now one of “those” podcasts that carry a certain weight with the listenership. It must be more than just the extra shows you do?

I’m not entirely sure to be honest! But being regular and consistent is a big factor I think. If folks know when the next episode is coming and can rely on that, they will keep coming back. The other important factor I think is having a personal approach to what I cover, and that personal touch counts for a lot I think. In my case, one of my listeners said what they liked was that I always went several levels deeper on a subject than what you could find yourself on Wikipedia or IMDB, and I have always strived to do that – give folks something that they won’t find anywhere else! 

What was the impetus to start Hypnogoria? 

Well originally my website was going to be a little artistic project that melded fiction, poetry and art, but just as i started the world moved away from being interesting in individual websites and the net got more platform-based. I started blogging and writing reviews and retrospectives of all things weird and wonderful. 

Around the same time I discovered podcasts and back then in the early days most shows had a regular mailbag segment. So I started sending in feedback by email, but as many hosts often said they preferred audio feedback, I got a cheap mic and gave that a go. Once I found people seemed to enjoy my audio feedback – a surprise to me as like most folks I hate hearing my own voice – I thought I might have a go at doing a podcast of my own. At first I kept them very short as I thought no one would listen… But listen they did, and shows got longer and, well, fifteen years later I’m still here! 

From hearing you talk about your childhood, we seem to have had similar experiences growing up, although you are a few years older than me. Was there a particular book or film that really set you on this path? I can recall three books that were instrumental in honing my interests (and traumatizing me at the same time!) 

I can pin-point the most important book for me I think. When I was about seven or eight, there was a craze in our school for telling each other horror stories, all the old campfire tales that everybody hears about hitchhikers, courting couples, babysitters and so forth. And they used to terrify me. So I decided that I would buy myself a book of ghost stories, reasoning that if I knew more about ghosts and other horrors I wouldn’t be so scared.  

So I got a copy of Alfred Hitchcock’s Ghostly Gallery – a selection of classic ghost stories aimed at younger readers, and actually edited by Robert Arthur. Now that book really didn’t teach me much about ghosts and monsters, but it did introduce me to the world of weird fiction. And as for the school horror stories told in the playground? Well, after reading classic chillers like The Waxwork by AM Burrage and The Upper Berth by F Marion Crawford in Ghostly Gallery I realised how crude and rubbish most of those playground stories were! 

This may be a bit of a long shot. Out of all the multipart series you’ve done on the show, was there one that was extra special for you? What was closest to your heart? 

That’s a tough call! High in my personal ranking are my Search for Santa series I did several Christmases ago, as that has a lot of original research and debunks a whole legion of myths about Christmas history. I’m also still very pleased with the series I did on the Lower Quinton Murder, a still unsolved case deeply associated with witchcraft, black magic and local folklore. And while I couldn’t solve it, again I feel I was able to really sort a lot of fact from fiction in that investigation.

However my current favourite is the one I only recently finished – my History of Universal Horror. It’s easily the longest and most indepth series I’ve done (I should really release it as a podcast series on its own). It was tremendously rewarding to do, as I got to see lots of obscure Universal horrors I’d not seen before and when I began the series I didn;t quite appreciate how much the history of Universal chillers is in fact a history of the development of the horror film itself. 

The whole dark nostalgia/hauntology aesthetic is really taking off with many podcasts devoted to it. Like folk horror, this seems to be a peculiarly British obsession. Why do you think that Americans don’t have the same experience and love of this? 

In many ways, folk horror and hauntology is peculiarly British, and the current interest, and indeed the recognition of it as a subgenre, does come from very British works. And in particular a certain period in British culture from the late 1960 to the mid 1980s, where there was a high degree of weirdness in television, books, film and comics.  And this even extended into food – I think we are the only country to have several different ranges of horror themed snacks and sweets. 

Now America certainly has its own distinct folk horror tradition – for example, folk horror certainly can be found in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Lovecraft stories. And while I don’t think there was quite the same level of weirdness across pop culture that we saw over here, but there was still a lot spooky and unsettling things in the same time period as the British golden dark age – the 1970s was certainly a goldmine for scarifying TV movies and there was a renaissance of horror comics in the US with both Marvel and DC plus Warren and Skywald releasing a legion of terrifying titles. And like the UK there was also a plethora of coverage on TV and in books and magazines of paranormal and mysterious subjects. So there was definitely something spooky in the air on both sides of the Atlantic for a while that slowly disappeared in the late 1980s. 

Podcasts like Hypnogoria are real repositories for nostalgia. Are you worried that young people now are missing out on what we had when we were young? My kids really don’t have time for what I loved, and the media now seems not to cater to anything that may be scary at all. 

At the risk of sounding like an old man shouting at clouds, it was a different world when we grew up. There were far less movies being made, and much fewer TV channels. Hence we grew out with a mixture of new and old content, and now I worry that later generations are only seeing new stuff and not being aware of the gems of yesteryear. Additionally mass media, particularly television, isn’t as interested in pushing boundaries as it was and for a good while everything has been too safe and too sanitised. It’s quite telling that in recent years the cutting edge of television has been the streaming services which weren’t afraid to take chances on the so-called weird stuff. 

However I think the main problem with the mainstream media is that despite the phenomenal success of Game of Thrones, the Marvel cinematic universe, the Walking Dead, the multimedia Star Wars universe, and Stranger Things, there is still a perception that fantasy, scifi and horror are niche subjects for a small demographic of weirdos, despite massive profits from all these fantastical worlds and stories suggesting otherwise. 

And as for old stuff, when I was growing up HP Lovecraft was only really known to quite hardcore weird fiction fans, in fact Lovecraft was out of print for many years here in the UK until the end of the 1980s –  but now everybody knows who Cthulhu is. And Lovecraft isn’t exactly the most accessible author – his literary style was deliberately antiquated when he was writing back in the 1920s and 1930s – and yet there’s not more editions of his works in mainstream bookstores than ever before! So it is much easier to find the old stuff now than it ever was before. The geek may yet still inherit the earth!   

I remember when you originally announced your cancer diagnosis. And I had a sinking feeling when I read the episode description about the new diagnosis too. Was there ever a time that you considered ending the show? (I’m glad you didn’t) 

My first diagnosis of stage 2 lung cancer was very sudden. I’d had some little twinges in my chest, seen my GP and had a couple of tests done in hospital. And so quite by chance they found the cancer, and literally within a month I was in hospital for major surgery to remove most of my right lung and then straight into six months of chemotherapy. So it was quite the rollercoaster! At the time this all kicked off it was the end of November and I already had nearly all my shows ready for the Christmas season, and I had a good few years of Patreon only podcasts in the vaults that I knew I could release with a minimum of re-editing to keep my shows going while I was recovering and in chemo. So the thought of stopping never really crossed my mind.

While the surgery and treatment was a success, unfortunately the cancer has popped up again but as the main treatment for my current unwelcome guest was intensive radiotherapy and chemotherapy, all done in seven weeks last summer I was confident I could keep the show going. I’m now in the second stage of treatment, immunotherapy, and as that is a treatment once a month for a year, I haven’t considered stopping the shows just yet. The current treatment so far isn’t giving me too many side effects, so I will keep on keeping on! 

Is there anything you wished you would have done differently when you started? Apart from technological advancements, is there something you wished you’d thought of to make your life easier? 

If I could go back in time and give myself some advice, there’s definitely two things. Firstly invest in a good microphone and get an audio interface (basically a dedicated external sound card) – as the better your audio input in the first place the less editing and sound processing you need to do! Secondly I would encourage myself to take the plunge and buy a synthesiser years earlier than i did as it turns out I’m not bad at making music, and being able to do your own themes, music, background sounds, effects and whatnot is a huge bonus!

Why should people listen to Hypnogoria? There are many, many people out there who already know and love it, but what is your elevator pitch to a newcomer?

If you are looking for a relaxed and friendly podcast, that is well researched, very fair and very positive that delves into an eclectic mix of all things weird and wonderful, drop by and give us a listen! 

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions. I wish you all the luck in future and hopefully you’ll finally beat your illness. 

Thank you sir, it has been a pleasure and an honour!