THE HAUNTED HOUSE WHERE I WAS BORN...

          More bedtime stories my family told me…

'Hauntings' by Susan Price

          When I come to think of it, my family were great story-tellers.  There were the stories in books – and then there were stories about our uncles and aunts, our grandparents, and great-grandparents, and even great-great-grandparents.

          I said I’d tell you more about why my Mom hated the house I was born in.  She often told me about an incident that happened a few weeks after I was born.  My Dad was working late, and she was lying in bed, reading, while I slept in my cot beside her.

          She looked over at me and saw me open first one eye - and close it - and then open the other eye.  I was too young, she said, to be able to open one eye at a time like that - and anyway, I was asleep.

          It was more as if someone had lifted up my lids to see what colour my eyes were.  She'd often seen the old ladies in the street do that with new babies.

          Mom jumped out of bed, scooped me up, took me into bed with her, and pulled the blankets over both of us until Dad came home.  Why are blankets such a protection against ghosts?

          My aunt told a ghostly tale about lying in bed too.  She had a terrible time nursing her parents through their final illness, and came near to a nervous breakdown herself.  My grandmother died first, and spent her last hours talking, in the voice of a little girl, to her own, long-dead mother.  My grandfather lived for several more months, enduring great pain.  When he died, my aunt was exhausted, grieving and depressed.

'Nightcomers' by Susan Price

          Two nights after the funeral, she was in bed when she felt the end of it sag as someone sat on it. Propping herself up on one arm, she saw the vague outline of a man in the dark: and knew it was her father.  She knew the way he sat; she smelt his tobacco; and although she heard no words, the words he’d so often said to her came to her in his voice: ‘Don’t be silly: everything’s going to be all right.’  She felt comforted.

          She told no one, not wanting to be told she'd been dreaming, or thought hysterical.  She didn’t mention it at all until about ten years later, when she and my father, who had always been close, were talking about their parents.  Then, hesitantly, she told my dad.  He was astonished.  On that night, he said, two nights after their father’s funeral, he’d been working late in a small engineering works.  He’d been alone in the place when he suddenly had a strong sense of someone standing close behind him.

          He’d whipped round, and had seen a vague shape, and smelt tobacco, while in his head the words formed quite clearly: ‘Tell your sister not to be so daft; everything’s going to be all right.’  But did he pass on the message?  No – because he did not believe in ghosts.
          I should have it put into Latin for our family motto: Despite All: Believe Not In Ghosts.

          I love hearing your ghost stories, so if I've reminded you of any, please share them.
         I'm going to e-publish my two collections of ghost stories, Hauntings and Nightcomers, on Hallowe'en.  It seems appropriate...

           My website is here: www.susanpriceauthor.com

          
 And he-e-e-e-re's Blot

     

A TRUE GHOST STORY

Nightcomers by Susan Price

          Over at Do Authors Dream of Electric Books, the other day, Stuart Hill was talking about true ghost stories.  He collected a few good ones!

          I left a comment there about my family’s long struggle to be rational and not believe in ghosts – a battle fought by generations before me, while my family were beset by ghosts and heavy-footed things that tramp in the night (of which, more later this month).

          In my collection of ghost stories, NIGHTCOMERS -  which I’ll be bringing out as soon as my brother can finish the cover – there’s a story called ‘The Baby’ which I based on one of the flesh-creepers my aunt told me. 

          Doris was my grandmother’s niece; and Emily one of my grandad’s sisters.  They were close neighbours and, as Emily was heavily pregnant, Doris was looking forward to seeing the baby when it was born.

          But Doris contracted pneumonia – pretty much a death-sentence in the early 1930s, especially if you were poor.  She was put to bed and her mother and sisters sat with her.

          Doris was sick for days.  The other women knew that Emily had given birth, but no one told Doris.  The baby wasn’t strong, and they thought it best not to mention it.

          Doris kept asking that the bedroom window be opened, but it wasn’t, because it was cold.  Again and again Doris demanded that the window be opened.  She struggled to sit up, saying, “Open it!  Open it!”

          Obviously, she was delirious.  They tried to calm her.  “Let her in!” she said.  “She wants to come in – she wants to be with me.  Let her in!”

          “Who’s outside?” one of the sisters asked.  “Who wants to come in?”

          Doris said, “Emily’s baby.  She wants to come in and be with me.  Let her in!”

          Doris begged for the window to be opened until, eventually, someone did open it, despite the cold.  They left it open after she died too, for a whole day, for fear of what they might shut inside if they closed it too soon.

          The women sitting with Doris knew that Emily’s sickly baby had been a girl.  And two days after Doris’ death, the baby that had wanted to be with her, died too.

          My Aunt told me this, but, a true Price, ended it by saying, “It’s easily explained – Emily never had a baby that lived longer than a couple of days.  And it would have been on Doris’ mind.”

          Somehow, these sensible remarks never stopped that cold grue going down my back.

          I think I might tell true ghost stories all this month – and if anyone wants to leave theirs as comments, I'd love to read them, and we can build up quite a collection by Hallowe’en!

         But before any more ghost stories, here's Blot - 

GHOSTS AND HAUNTINGS

Hauntings by Susan Price

          One of the jobs keeping me from house-work is turning my two collections of ghost stories, Hauntings and Nightcomers, into e-books.

          This started me thinking about ghost stories and their appeal in general.

          I know I’m not alone in considering M. R. James one of the greatest writers of ghost stories ever.  I remember reading several of his stories, one after another, one dark winter’s afternoon, while alone in the house.  I was in the kitchen, making a snack, when I heard a quiet, stealthy scratching from inside a cupboard…  After I’d dropped down from the light-fitting, I discovered that the noise had been made by a bundle of crumpled plastic bags expanding.  Ever since I’ve thought James’ stories should carry a health warning: ‘One story a day.  Do not exceed dosage.’

M. R. James

          Something I hadn’t appreciated until recently was that James is considered ‘the father of the modern ghost story’ because he did away with Gothic trappings of dungeons and ruins, and set it in what was – for him – the modern world.  He thought this necessary because he wanted his reader to feel : '”If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!'"  His modernity is easy to overlook now, because James’ antiquarians in bath-chairs seem so quaint and old-fashioned to us.

         I have nothing against the Gothic, but I largely agree with James on this.  I have set ghost stories in the past – 'Davy', in Hauntings, is one – but most of mine take place in the present, or what was the present when I wrote them.

          The world is a very strange place. The very fact that each of us is alive and self-aware is strange beyond all understanding.  One thing that a story of the supernatural can do is show this ever-present strangeness, to throw a spotlight on the strangeness that exists alongside, or hidden underneath, the everyday.  That’s why ‘Beautiful’, in Nightcomers, is set in a huge shopping mall – I wrote it after hearing my brother, who worked in one, describe what the place was like after-hours, as he made his way through it to the bus-stop.

          It’s why ‘The Landing Window’ is set on a modern housing estate (even if in an old house); and why ‘Coming Home Late’ is set in a block of council flats.  (And consider that there is more than one meaning to ‘late’.)

          Like James, I want my readers to think this might happen to them!

Nightcomers by Susan Price

          I’m also with James when he says: ‘Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view, I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it…’  Somewhere he comments that he could  make a reader physically sick, if he chose, but he scorns to do so, because it’s too easy.  It’s far more difficult, he says, to write something that is eerie, unsettling – or haunting, which is why I gave my collection that title.  Don’t come to my stories for all-out, gross-out horror.  No – I don’t want to sicken  you.  I want to get under your skin, to stay with you.

          In short, to haunt you.  It’s for you to say whether I succeed, but that’s my intent.
         Find my e-books for download here.

         And I know you're waiting for Blot - 

   

CREATIVE HEADACHES

A 'ghost drum'

           I’m in the process of turning the third Ghost World book, Ghost Dance, into a kindle.

          This has involved me closely reading all three books again, some 20 years after writing them, an odd experience.  I’m relieved to find that they haven’t made me flinch with embarrassment, or want to entirely rewrite them (though I have changed the odd word.)  In fact, immodest though it may be, I think they’re good.  If you like tales of shamans in dark, frozen Czardoms, of shape-shifting, wolves, witchcraft, spirit-travelling, and barking mad czars – these are your bag.

          But the books puzzle me.  I’m an atheist (I tell myself.)  I’m hard-headed and sceptical, me.  I don’t believe in gods, or other worlds, or witches, or ghosts, or any such nonsense.

          And yet I wrote these stories, which are all about spirit-travelling and following the Ghost Road to the Ghost World.  I may have taken some of the ideas from myth and folklore, but I chose to inhabit these characters and these worlds.  I could have written a story set in the solid, hard-headed world around me. But I didn’t.

          It wasn’t just a case of ‘making up a story’ either.  I remember, quite clearly, the compulsion I felt to write these books.  ‘Ghost Drum’ took me three years, and exhausted me, but I couldn’t give it up.  And as soon as it was finished, I wrote Ghost Song, which is Ghost Drum’s mirror-image.  In ‘Drum’, on midwinter night, a female shaman demands a baby-girl from her mother, and is given her. In ‘Song’, on midsummer night, a male shaman demands a baby boy from his father, and is refused.

As soon as Song was finished, I had to write Ghost Dance, driven by a nagging feeling of unfinished business.  I had wanted the barking mad Czar to be a central character in Drum – but he was pushed aside by other characters.  I felt I still had to write his book – and, in Dance, Czar Grozni is truly mad, bad and dangerous even if you don’t know him.

          I’ve long been drawn to the theory that the two walnut-like halves of our brains operate as individual personalities.  I think the one we’re less aware of – which has more time to put its feet up and day-dream – supplies all the best and most original of our ideas.  It knows what we really want.  It’s the ‘muse’ which whispers in artists’ ears.  (I’ve written more about my ‘muse’ here.)

          Some day I must blog about what I learned from Lucy Coats about ‘creative napping’, otherwise known as ‘a guided spirit-journey.’  One half of me finds it deeply intriguing and useful.  The other half is absolutely furious that it works; and the two halves end up scrapping like cats.

          One half of me is hard-headed and sceptical, all right.  Wants a reason and an explanation for everything.  It makes a great editor.

          The other half, the one that dreams up the ideas and images – well, that half is, and has always been, drawn towards the ghostly, the strange, the fantastic, the inexplicable, the numinous.

          There’s the ‘creative dynamic’ for you.  Pass the aspirin.

BLOT

Search Amazon.com Electronics for kindle 3 
                            

WRITING BY LOAFING

          Years ago – no, decades ago – a friend, learning that I was a writer, looked at me, amazed, and said, “But I thought writers  lived in big white houses on hilltops, dressed all in white, and lay on a white sofa, drinking white wine…  And now and then they’d go to a white typewriter on a glass table, and tap out a few words.”

          I laughed so hard I dropped me chips.

Ghost Dance by Susan Price

          This week a friend asked for a favour, and I explained that I'd find it hard to help because I was so busy: publishing on kindle, blogging, doing admin and trying to finish my third Sterkarm book before University starts again in September.  “Oh,” she said, “I didn’t realise you were busy.  I thought you were probably lying in the sun, with Davy passing you chocolates, and keeping your glass filled with red.”

         Something like 30 years separates these remarks, yet the idea remains – writers live a life of ease, loafing about, never besmirching their white robes – except with red wine and chocolate.
          Where does this idea come from?
           Both my friends, when asked to write essays or reports, considered they were working hard - doing research, making arguments, revising.  Yet, obviously, they don't think I've done anything like that to write the 60 books I've published. My writing isn't work.
          Possibly my books are written by Elves.  Or Blot.

          Whereas, in fact, a recent day of mine went like this:-

           Got up about 8-00, went straight into room next to bedroom, switched on computer and spent next two hours tediously scanning pages of my OOP book, Ghost Dance, converting it to editable text and correcting.  Ate breakfast at computer.

£1-71 Kindle Store

           Went downstairs about ten, switched on laptop, made coffee.
          Put in load of laundry.
         Spent next two hours updating my website with details of my newly published kindle book, Ghost Song.  Also checked emails, did admin for the Kindle Authors UK Blog (and checked to see whether Speilberg had been in touch.)

          Attended to laundry.

          Took exercise books and a pen to a quiet pub, where I wrote for three and half hours. 2,500 words that I almost certainly wouldn’t have got written at home. Lots of concentrating, thinking, crossing out, rewriting, making notes to self.

          Home about 5pm, attended to laundry, did washing up, switched on laptop and carried on working – websites, emails, admin, editing - until after 9pm.

           This is pretty typical - a 13 hour day - though the mix of writing, emails, admin and so forth varies.

          I’m lucky, I know.  I don’t have to wait for buses in the rain or snow, or walk through riots.  I can go and work in a pub if I like.
          I don't think I work harder than anybody else. I don't think the work I do is more valuable than that of others - in fact, I know that neither is the case.
          But, y'know - I do work.  I'd just like people to recognise that. I work hard, I work long - and I don't even own a white sofa.

         And, after that long gripe - here's Blot.