The Lost Valley is an Irish podcast about ‘Lost Worlds’ in Life and Literature. Join me here at the Explorer’s Club for a drink and some tall tales about hidden prehistoric valleys, lost underground civilisations, smokey Edwardian seances, haunted house stakeouts. We love cryptozoology, weird science, and old adventure novels.
Look – it’s a pterodactyl!
Halloween Special: Hell House by Richard Matheson (1971)
In 1971, Richard Matheson decided to one-up Shirley Jackson's Hill House with a much, much nastier haunted house tale. And despite appearing at the heart of the 60s-70s occult revival, Matheson's Hell House is rarely mentioned today in the same breath as The Exorcist, Amityville, or The Omen.
In this Halloween special, join the Explorer's Club on a haunted house stakeout to find out why. Instead of dealing with the then-fashionable tropes of demonic possession and black magic (despite what it says on the cover of the book), Matheson's deep interest in Spiritualism led him to populate Hell House with the supernatural elements of a creakier, more Victorian era.
12 Oct 2026
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea: Dennis Wheatley's 'They Found Atlantis' (1936)
It's two-thirds pulp gangsterism and one-third utopian Lost Race shenanigans when the Dutchess Camilla and her cadre of 1930s socialite hangers-on are thrust to the bottom of the Atlantic in a bathysphere by the unscrupulous (but well-dressed) mobster Oxford Kate.
Beneath the waves, the Dutchess' entourage discover lost races of mermen, brutish 'sub-humans,' and free-love endorsing Atlanteans.
But will there be any mention of Imperial Tokay wine, or Hoyo de Monterrey cigars?
Only true Wheatley-ites will guess!
25 Sept 2026
Atlantis Shrugged: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Maracot Deep' (1929)
If you prefer your lost race Atlantis yarn with a side order of Theosophy, and a dollop of 1920s street-talking Yanks, you've come to the right place as we down the submersible to check out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's last novel, 'The Maracot Deep.' Is this an attempt to provide some bang-up-to-date pulp lit from Sir Arthur, or is it the last gasp of HG Wells-style 1890s Victorian sci-f?
We're not sure, but we're darn sure that Ignatius Donnelly is mixed up in this somehow!
12 Sept 2026
FROM THE VAULTS: Thun'da (Frank Frazetta, 1952)
During a particularly busy time in the Tiny Assistant's internship, Cian digs out an old episode from the vaults to fill the silence.
Revisit the first iteration of the Lost Valley, and check out the 1950s lost world comic Thun'da, drawn by none other than the legendary Frank Frazetta!
30 Aug 2026
The Very Biggest Thing In The World: The Lost World Part 1 (Arthur Conan Doyle, 1912)
Join an Explorers' Club expedition into the murky depths of the lost world that is turn-of-the-century London, as we finally begin tackling the greatest of all lost worlds, and the trope namer itself! With asides into the history of Congo colonialism, Irish nationalism, the Piltdown hoax, and more.
13 Aug 2026
The Schmidt Encounter: An Amazon Dinosaur from 1911
Join our host, once again on the track of unknown animals ... Taking a break from the search for mystery big cats, Cian stops to read newspapers reports from 1911 featuring a possible 'neodinosaur' sighting from South America in 1911.
Could this story have influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World? Was Percy Fawcett nothing but a bombastic blowhard? Can creationists be good cryptozoologists?
We can't answer any of these questions properly. But we're camping, there's still a heatwave on, and we've got some nice beer and monster stories. So come join the Explorer's Club, and enter ... The Lost Valley.
2 Aug 2026
A Line In The Sand: King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard (1885)
Along with Journey To The Centre Of The Earth and The Lost World, King Solomon's Mines is another 'line in the sand' watershed moment for lost race fiction. Often credited with reinventing the adventure fiction genre and creating the 'lost race' subgenera, Haggard fused centuries-old storytelling archetypes with contemporary Imperial anxieties and exotic locations.
But is it any good?
Note: do check out my visit to Pirates Don't Eat The Tourists to talk about Jules Verne here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2488343/episodes/19495520 (https://www.buzzsprout.com/2488343/episodes/19495520)
10 Jul 2026
Ripping Yarns: Annual for Boys 1936
A chance car boot sale find prompts an unexpected episode!
You ineffable cad - it's the Annual for Boys, 1936!
Join daring young British chums as they venture into the Congo to find an Ancient Egyptian lost city, foil the dastardly plans of a Japanese secret society while on their summer break from school, and get one over on an untrustworthy Kurdish warlord using a loaf of bread.
Ripping yards, indeed!
3 Jul 2026
The Origins of African 'Living Dinosaurs': The Great Beast of Kafue
Better pack your elephant gun for this one.
I didn't intend to get into the history of Mokele-Mbembe, the infamous African living sauropod (I really, really didn't) but this short story 'The Great Beast of Kafue' by Anglo-Irish writer Clotilde Graves (from Cork no less!) sucked me into the murky stories of inter-war Germans sending strange tales back to Europe from the Congo, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and other parts.
Cryptozoologists have, over the years, muddied the waters by combining tales from different parts of the continent, mixing and matching Mokele-Mbembes, Chipekwes, and other lesser-known mystery African animals to create a more homogenous idea of an African Jurassic Park creature.
In this episode, we look at the influence of Carl Hagenbeck's 'real-life' dinosaur stories on Graves' short story, and attempt to bring this story back to its origins.
Links:
Sharon Hill's Evolution of the Kasai Rex (https://moderncryptozoology.wordpress.com/2026/06/07/the-messy-embellished-history-of-kasai-rex/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)
Markus Hemmler's Kassaisaurus from Congo (https://globsterblobsandmore.com/more/kassaisaurus/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)
7 Jun 2026
The Ancestral Trail? 'Neanderthal' by John Darnton (1996)
A project that was almost certainly greenlit following the immense success of the novel and movie Jurassic Park, John Darnton’s 1996 novel ‘Neanderthal’ is a relatively rare 1990s example of a literal ‘lost world’ tale. Two paleontologists travel to the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan to follow up on a rumour that a surviving band of Neanderthals is hiding out there. Frontloaded by lots of ‘real’ cryptozoological nuggets from the work of investigators Myra Shackley and Boris Porshnev, Neanderthal gets off to a good start. But will things stay positive as our heroes go native in this particular lost world and follow their ancestral trail?
2 May 2026
Stop Eating My Sesame Cake: Congo (1995)
Described recently by one of its stars as 'one of the great bad movies of our time,' the widely-panned 1995 cinema outing for Michael Crichton's Congo is given a hearing at the Explorer's Club. A somewhat out-of-time 'jungle movie,' Congo is sometimes a competent if silly B-grade Indiana Jones adventure, with odd nuggets of social commentary on the genre itself. And some of it is, in fairness, a mess.
But it's got lost cities and mystery animals, so it's squarely within our territory.
We might not win over any hearts or minds on this one, but we'll damn well try! Bring coffee and sesame cake for this trip to the Club.
24 Apr 2026
Gorillas In Our Midst: Michael Crichton's Congo (1980)
Michael Crichton takes an unlikely band of explorers into central Africa to recreate the classic 'lost city' narrative, almost one hundred years after H. Rider Haggard invented this literary form. But is Crichton too interested in ape language research and red-hot 1970s tech to focus on the lost city story?
Fortunately, there's an unknown species of cryptozoological gorillas menacing our team to keep things interesting.
Join Cian (who is more fond of this book than 99% of the earth's population are) for a drink at the Explorers' Club to chat about Michael Crichton's Congo. And there's some bonus material from friend-of-the-show Eddie Guimont!
2 Apr 2026
The Fragility of Belief: Where Bigfoot Walks by Robert Michael Pyle
With the Bigfoot world consumed by debate over a documentary supposedly proving the Patterson-Gimlin film to be a hoax, we at the Explorer's Club retire to a gentler place: a look back at one of my favourite Bigfoot books, and the one that makes your host keep the door of belief open just a crack: it's the natural history book that just happens to feature the big guy: Where Bigfoot Walks.
Get ready to bro out with Peter Byrne and sigh at Ray Wallace in this back-to-the-90s classic.
*Oh, and there is a film version of this book from 2020, but as far as I can tell, Bigfoot is completely excised from it!
25 Mar 2026
No One Would Have Believed: The Cryptozoology of H.G. Wells
In this episode, we cover several of H.G. Wells' stories which contain mysterious animals, or other links to the world of cryptozoology.
These stories include underwater civilisations of fish-people, murderous octopus species of octopus, extinct elephant birds, and highly-evolved ants!
Wells' fertile brain and immense talents often used science fiction ideas to comment on social issues, but he was equally capable of creating convincing fictional wonders purely as an exercise in imagination - grounded by his training in zoology.
The stories covered are:
-In The Abyss (1896)
-The Sea Raiders (1896)
-Aepyornis Island (1894)
-The Empire Of The Ants (1905)
8 Mar 2026
Heartless in Atlantis: Dennis Wheatley's 'The Man Who Missed The War'
Dennis Wheatley is better known for his occult novels. But he wrote several 'lost race' novels as well. 'The Man Who Missed The War' from 1946 is by far the daftest of them all, though of course it has that Wheatley charm. Take a seat at the Explorer's Club for a tale of Atlanteans and leprechauns (with extra giant crabs).
27 Feb 2026
The Road To The Lost World: The Cryptozoology of Arthur Conan Doyle
'There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them ...'
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a few stories, other than The Lost World , which might be considered important to the history of Cryptozoology. In this episode, we examine 'The Terror of Blue John Gap' and 'The Horror Of The Heights.'
19 Feb 2026
Telling Tales: King Kong's Spider-Pit Sequence
The lost 'Spider-Pit Sequence' from the original 1933 King Kong has long been the subject of much lore and myth-making. Was it truly a scene so disturbing it had to be cut? Were audiences terrified by the sight of stop-motion spiders, crabs and octopus-armed critters devouring the crew of the Venture?
Was this scene even filmed around all?
You're invited to the Explorer's Club as Cian seeks out varying versions of the tale from his many books on King Kong.
ERRATA: I mistakenly state that the Arsinotherium was an Ice Age mammal - it is, of course, much much older - 30 to 60 million years, in fact. Apologies to my better-informed listeners.
17 Feb 2026
All The Time In The World: Lost Horizon (James Hilton, 1933)
For your first trip to the Explorer's Club, crack open a copy of James Hilton's 1933 classic 'Lost Horizon.' Journey to Shangri-La, where sensitive types from many countries wait out the turbulent 1930s, recovering from the last War and hiding out from the inevitable Next War. And just what does 'Glory' Conway and his visitors think of the place? And just what do they think of the colonial powers? Surprises abound in this somewhat ambiguous example of Lost World / Lost Race fiction.
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