Ghostly Music for Hallowe'en

     It's Hallowe'en this coming Friday, but as I usually post on

A 'Spirit Photo': public domain

Saturday, I shall miss it. And it's no use posting about Hallowe'en on Saturday, November 1, as that is, of course, All Souls Day, when the bogies and boggarts are all banished away - until sometime around Christmas, when they seem to come back, in time for our tradition of telling Christmas ghost stories.
     All fine by me, as I'm always ready to tell ghost stories.
     I think I've blogged before about my family's stalwart efforts to remain sceptical and hard-headed despite all the yammering from the other world.

Wikipedia: The Fairy Bridge

     There's my cousin, for instance, Alan Hess. Studied chemistry, worked in the computer industry and is a man of science. When he lived on the Isle of Man, and was told that, when crossing the Fairy Bridge, you always have to politely wish 'good morning,' to the fairies - or ill-luck will befall you.
      Naturally, being a man of science, he scoffed. And the next time he drove across the Fairy Bridge, he called out - well, this is a family-friendly blog, so I won't say what he called out. But he was dreadfully rude to the fairies.
       And lost control of the car, skidded across the road and ended up in the ditch. After that, he was always very polite to the fairies. But ask him about it now, and he maintains that it was coincidence. Pure coincidence.

        But my main tale today is unseasonal. Davy and I once went for a walk along the river Teem. It was August, and about as hot as August can be. We walked through pasture and cornfields, climbing stiles and crossing bridges over small streams. It was beautiful, but we became very thirsty.

      It was a long trek back to the pub where we'd left the car, but I saw a church spire rising over the tree-tops. The church was much nearer. "Where's there's a church, there's probably a village," I said. "Maybe a pub - or a least a shop where we could buy a bottle of water."
      So we walked on, and came to a wooden bridge that would take us across the river to the church. The banks were thickly wooded, so we couldn't see anything of the church, or any neighbouring buildings, except the spire.
      Once over the bridge, we came on an oddly desolate scene. There was no village - or any other building at all except the church.
     But there had been a village. We could see the raised, roughly square and oblong platforms where the buildings had stood. You could see the streets that ran between them. Sheep wandered here and there, walking the sunken streets and clambering over what had been houses.
       We wandered around the church, noting the changes to it, the walled up doors and windows. Davy said he'd like to see inside, so we went around to the porch.
        I was struggling with the big iron door handle when Davy said, "Don't!" I looked over my shoulder at him, a bit puzzled. "There's a service going on," he said.

        I was even more puzzled. I didn't think my hearing was that bad. I hadn't, and couldn't, hear anything except the sheep and the river. I put my head close to the door and listened. I could hear nothing from inside the church.
        "No, there's not," I said, and tried again to open the door.
        "There's somebody practicing on the organ then," Davy said. "We shouldn't disturb them."
         I gave him a funny look. Was he having me on? There was no organ playing, and no other sound at all from inside the church. I opened the door - and immediately forgot about everything except investigating the place.
         The church was dim, cool, silent and completely empty. It was a beautiful old place, and plainly dated to before the Reformation, as it had an old rood-screen, and steps that had originally led up to the gallery above it.  We had a good poke around, and then went outside and wandered over the vanished village, speculating about what had happened there, before trudging back to the pub through the heat, and finally getting that drink.
          It was only hours later, when we were home, that I thought back over the day and remembered that conversation in the church porch. I thought it over, remembering Davy's tone and manner. He hadn't been joking: I was certain of that. He had simply been stating something obvious to him: something - a service or an organ practice - had been going on in the church.
          So I asked him about it. "There was someone in the church," he said. "I thought we shouldn't disturb them.But you never listen."
          "But there wasn't anybody in the church," I said. "There wasn't a soul in there."
          "Whoever it was must have gone out by the other door when we went in," he said.
          I thought about that.
         Nah. Not a chance.
         There had been another door, but it had been big, old, heavy and closed. If, on hearing me push open the door, someone had jumped up from the organ and nipped out the other way, it would have been impossible for us not to have heard them. They would have had to scurry across a tiled floor, open a big, heavy door, and close it after them - all in an eye-blink.

          I put this to Davy. "I heard music playing in the church," he said - again, a simple, plain statement of fact.
          Knowing him as well as I do, I am completely convinced that he did hear a service or, at least, music playing. I am equally certain that there was no one in the church, and hadn't been for hours, and that there was no music playing.
          Davy will not countenance any idea of ghosts. As far as he's concerned, he heard someone playing the organ, who then, in a moment, silently left the church as we stepped through the door (since the music apparently continued until we entered.)
          I think I will just mention that although born in Edinburgh and raised in the Lowlands, Davy is of pure Highland descent. Just saying.

          When I told my brother about this, he said, "Davy must have tinnitus." Typical Price.
 
          I invite all my readers to contribute their spooky stories below, in honur of the season. Winter is coming.


           And if you're looking for some suitably ghostly reading...
 

Overheard In A            Hauntings                 Nightcomers
Graveyard

        

REVAMP! - Down with Vapid Vampires!

          Revamp is an on-line horror fest, the idea of two writers, Die Booth and L C Hu, aka the Mad Doctors of Literature.

          Tired of modern horror clichés, such as the swoony, teenage, angst-ridden vampire, Hu and Booth wanted to encourage a return to the older, folk-lore rooted horror story, and they posted their stories on-line and invited others to submit tales of vampires, were-wolves, ghosts and zombies.

          For a whole year, from Hallowe’en 2010 to Hallowe’en 2011, lovers of spooks and things that snarl in the night were able to dip into the site, sure of finding a good story.

          Now an anthology of the Revamp stories is available, both as a paper book and as an e-book.  I haven’t space to mention every story, but I was struck by the vivid exactness of detail that characterises all of them.  The writers understand that a monster of any kind is far more frightening if it’s present as part of a time and place we can picture ourselves in, and for that, precise observation is needed.

          This exactness, this clarity of imagination can be seen, for instance, in Die Booth’s Found – a lovely take on the classic Jacob’s story The Monkey’s Paw, and one which doesn’t suffer by comparison.  Anyone who has been in a Northern English city, with sooty, rainy streets, and poky little houses, can walk inside this story (and be chilled by it.)

          Tessa Brown, with exact detail, sets a scary ghost story on a train, and an equally scary zombie story in a biodome.  This last may not be a place most people are acquainted with, but the writer’s casual allusion to the office, the plants, show that she has imagined herself squarely inside it – and that clarity of the writer’s vision enables the reader to step inside it too.

          I very much enjoyed Booth’s Tangled Thread, for its contrasting voices.  It begins as a Victorian ghost story, and I read it while holding my breath and waiting for the false note.  It never came: Booth is pitch perfect.  If I had read this story without knowing anything about it, I would have taken it for a period story reprinted from an old magazine.  The second half of the story is told by an American street kid, in a voice that couldn’t be more different.

          Strong narrative voices appear elsewhere.  I enjoyed Michele Rimmer’s The Maggot, and loved her cool Brummie narrator (an undertaker), who addresses her one-night stand as ‘Bab’.  (I come from near Birmingham and have been called ‘bab’ a few times!)

          In L C Hu’s Natural Beast, we have an icily correct aristocratic narrator who plans to murder his brother in rather the same tone he might plan the redecoration of his rooms.  (And which is the greater beast, this story asks, the wolf or the man?)  Hu also has a chilling tale of a nascent serial killer, narrated by the killer’s mother.  The subtle glimpses of the family’s life, and the mother’s detached tone, tell us more than the words themselves.

          Many of the best stories take the horror themes and spin them, taking a sidelong, unexpected view – and the desire to reconnect with folklore is surely present in Booth’s Fourth Ape, which echoes with the tale of Bluebeard, but has its own originality.



Liebster Blog Award

            Other readers will choose other favourites from among the stories, but this is an excellent collection, with skill, wit, originality and quite a few shocks, scares and creeps!

          And you may have noticed that the blog has won an award!  Of which, more next week.

      And Blot, you ask, where is Blot?
Blot is missing.  He may be shut in a garage somewhere.  I am searching the virtual neighbourhood and banging cans of tuna with a spoon.  I hope he'll be back by next week.

THINGS THAT STAMP ABOUT IN THE NIGHT

Hauntings by Susan Price

          It was the Christmas when I was 15.  I usually shared a bedroom with my sister, but she was staying with relatives, so I had my bedroom to myself.  I went to bed last, and lay awake reading, my bedroom door closed.  Lying there, I heard my brother walk from his room to the bathroom.

          Then he walked from his room to the bathroom again - only without first returning to his bedroom.  After that he went up and down the stairs several times – sometimes without bothering to come back up before going down again.  Sometimes he started down the stairs without having walked across the landing to get there.

          At first I explained these gaps in the footsteps as my inattention, but soon I started to be annoyed.  Sometimes the footsteps started inside a bedroom, sometimes outside the door.  They made circuits of the house – across the landing, down the stairs, back up the stairs and back along the landing.  They’d do this several times in a few minutes, sometimes walking up the stairs without going down them, or vice versa.

          What were my family up to?  Were they tramping heavily one way, and then creeping the other?  And why?

          They were real footsteps.  At 15 I knew the difference between a creaky floorboard and a real, heavy footstep.  I called out to ask what the game was, but was unheard or ignored.  I didn’t get up – it was too cold.

          I heard my baby brother start to cry, and my parents wake.  I clearly heard my father get out of bed, walk round it, leave his room, cross the landing and start down the stairs.  Then my mother called, “Oh – the powder’s here.”  My father walked back into his room.

          And soon after that I turned off the lamp and went to sleep.

          Next morning every one slept in, except my mother.  I asked her why everyone had been tramping about in the night.  She was mystified.  She’d heard nothing, and swore that neither she nor my father had left their beds after turning in.

          I told her that I’d heard Dad get out of bed and go part way down the stairs when the baby had started crying.  “He never got out of bed,” my mother said.

Nightcomers by Susan Price

          I couldn’t believe her.  She insisted that when the baby had cried, she had asked my Dad to fetch the powder, and he’d started to get out of bed – but then she’d found the powder, and Dad had lain down again.  He’d never left his bed, let alone walked out of his room, along the landing and down the stairs.

          I didn’t know what to think.  I had heard the footsteps.  I’d been awake and reading.  When my brother got up, I cross-examined him, but he swore that, not only had he heard no footsteps, but had never left his bed.

          But my Dad, when he got up, said yes, he’d heard the footsteps.  “I got up about four and went round the house, I was so sure somebody had got in.”  There was no break-in, but even after he’d returned to bed, he’d heard the footsteps for a while.  He’d eventually dismissed it as some kind of dream or imagination and gone to sleep.

          But we both heard the footsteps.  It made me uneasy to remember that I’d called out, demanding to know what was going on.  There’d been no answer – but what had ignored me?  I was glad I’d stayed in bed.

          I wasn’t scared at the time, as I had no doubt that the footsteps were being made by some member of my family – though I was puzzled by their continual roaming of the house, and the odd gaps in them.  If my father hadn’t heard them too, I would probably have dismissed them as imagination.

          Happy Hallowe’en – and please leave an account of any ghostly experiences you’ve had.

          If you'd like to read one of the stories from NIGHTCOMERS, click on the links below.  One will take you to the story.
           The others will take you somewhere else.
           You click at your own risk.  This blog accepts no responsibility for any offence taken.

           Will you choose to click on  RAT or
                                                                      WITCH or
                                                                                           GHOST?
           IMP or
                                  BROOMSTICK?

          My new ghost story collections, NIGHTCOMERS and HAUNTINGS will be published as e-books, available for download from Amazon, on Hallowe'en.
          My website: www.susanpriceauthor.com

          And here's Blot, trick and treating...

And if you enjoyed this cartoon, you may enjoy this post, over at Awfully Big Blog Adventure

CATS AND GHOSTS

          More ghostly tales then…

          Close the curtains against the dark, and draw your computer chairs closer to the virtual fire...

          Tales of cats this week…

          My aunt (she of the spooky tales) moved back into her parents’ house, to care for them as they died. She brought with her a black cat, named Charny.

          My grandad had always been fond of cats, and Charny soon learned that he was sure of a welcome, and much stroking and ear-rubbing, if he jumped up on the bed in the front room. All the months my grandad lay dying, the cat hardly left the bed. He would jump down to eat or use his tray, perhaps take a quick stroll up and down the garden, and then immediately return to my grandad’s side where he lay, night and day.

          Until two days before grandad’s death, when Charny jumped down, left the room, and wouldn’t go back into it again.  If picked up and carried inside, he struggled, and ran away as soon as put down.

          After grandad died, my aunt had to move, and Charny went with her again – but would not stay in the new house.  He ‘went mad’, running to every door and every window, crying and scratching, not resting until let out into the yard. If carried back inside, he panicked and ran about in fright until the door was opened.

          After a time of sleeping rough, Charney settled happily with a neighbour, and would come back to visit my aunt – but would not set paw in the house.

          I can personally vouch for the fact that almost every cat my aunt has kept in that house developed a habit of freezing and staring fixedly at a spot about half-way up the stairs.  I also heard heavy footsteps climbing the stairs one night when I was house-minding the place.

My parents' wedding

          My mother, too, told a tale of a sensitive cat. When my parents were first married, they lived in the old house where my father had been born.  Mom always disliked it.  It was creepy, she said.

          It was gas-lit, and you had to put money in the meter.  If the gas ran out and you didn’t have any sixpences or shillings, you had to sit in the dark.

          Mom was often alone in the evening, when Dad worked late.  She would sit reading on the sofa, with her cat, Tiny, who lay on her lap for hours, purring.  But when the gas sputtered out, Mom said, and it was  instantly dark, Tiny jumped from her lap and ran under the sideboard, squeezing herself right to the back, cowering against the wall.

          A cat, scared of the dark? You can imagine how my mother felt, as she groped for her purse and scrabbled for a sixpence.  Quite often she didn’t have a sixpence, and had to sit in the dark, wondering what had frightened the cat…

          Other things happened in that house that made her like it even less… but that’s for another blog.

         Have you any good creepy tales of ghost and animals, or ghostly animals?  Or beastly ghosts.  Come on, come to the virtual fire and share them…

www.susanpriceauthor.com

          My new ghost story collections, NIGHTCOMERS and HAUNTINGS will be published as e-books, on Hallowe’en.

And here's Blot, with Hallowe'en games...

 

   Bobbing for ideas can certainly be like that....

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 - 

CEILIDH!

‘Harken!’ cried the bard, and struck the strings of his lyre.  The mead-hall fell silent and listened.

          ‘With a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you,’ said Philip Sidney, in surprise, ‘ with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.’

          It wasn’t only in the halls of the rich that people fell silent to hear a story.  In small towns and villages people gathered together in one house, to save on fuel and candles, as they sewed, knitted, repaired or made tools. The visitors brought food and drink with them, and to pass the time they told stories.  The Scots called such a gathering a ceilidh.  Growing up in the industrial Midlands, I never knew the word, but knew the concept: “Dad – tell us how you gave Gran’s best sheets to the rag-and-bone-man… Mum, tell us about the shop with the parrot…”

          The storytellers knew their audience, because they were part of it.  They picked up from the air whether the company wanted – even needed – a merry tale, an encouraging tale, an eerie tale, or a sad one, to let the tears flow.

          Words have power – I found myself writing about their power in my Ghost World books.

Some people believe this is only true of the past.  People now don’t want story-tellers, they think – now people have television and YouTube.

          I often go into schools and tell stories, and I can tell you authoritatively that this isn’t so.

          I have told stories to crammed rooms of 60 children, all of them sitting open-mouthed and round-eyed, holding their breaths.  You can feel the story buzzing in the air.

          I’ve told ‘Mr. Fox’ and had a group of technicians stop work to listen, and applaud at the end.

          I’ve watched as children with unfocussed eyes, unconsciously acted out the story, lost in their own heads.

          Words, and stories, have power.  When I describe Ambrosi’s listeners in Ghost Song helplessly acting out his stories, I described what I’d seen.

Cruikshank's storyteller

          A story springs to life when you tell it.  I’ve several times told what I thought was a mildly scary tale to a class, only to find that somewhere in the space between us, the tale took on ferocious strength.  I think: I can’t tell anymore of this!  It’s too scary! – But I can’t stop either, because of all those avid, listening faces.  A story has the onward power of a train.

          Story-tellers and listeners – story-tellers and readers – it’s a tight bond.

          Increasingly, publishers have been intervening, saying, 'this writer’s  last book only sold X amount.  We won’t publish any more.'

          Saying, 'Your central character’s a woman, so you must have pink and sparkly marketing.'

          Saying, 'Love the book, but you must make the gay character straight – readers don’t want short stories – don’t want novellas don’t want to mix sci-fi and romance – don’t want heroines over 20.'

          Story-tellers know what their audience wants because they are part of that audience.  The Marketing Department doesn’t, because they aren’t, and only read spread-sheets.

          One of the many things I love about the internet is that it’s putting story-tellers and story-lovers in touch again, with comments flying back and forth.

          Try ReVamp

          Try Authors Electric!

          Try ABBA

          The publisher is being shoved out the door, while storytellers and listeners crowd round the fire again – albeit a virtual fire on a computer screen.

          Ceilidh!  Pass the scones and whisky.

Website - www.susanpriceauthor.com 

          I'm afraid Blot is still asleep from last week...

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 -