Ghost Writers: 20 spooky tales for dark evenings

By Hastings Writers' Group

As you flit through these pages, you will begin to wonder if you are ever truly alone: there are unexplicable presences in bedrooms, extra passengers on buses; even your own car isn't safe. There are spectres who haunt either to hinder or to help, phantoms invited back by the living and those the living had best avoid.
As the web of words is woven, you will see swirling mists, smell rancid water, hear the pitter-patter of tiny, long-dead feet, taste revenge and feel the chill of loss, despair and terror. While some tales are scary, others are sad and a few just plain funny, but all authors have risen to the challenge of conjuring up a riveting range of souls stranded in that haunting hinterland between life and death - with a myriad of mixed motives.
So dip in and prepare to shiver, laugh or even cry, but remember it's all in a good cause. Proceeds from this book will be shared between The Association of Carers: Young Carers and Hastings Writers'Group.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hastings Writers Group
• Release date: Feb 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476374468

Hastings Writers' Group

Hastings Writers' Group was established in 1947 so is one of the longest-running writers' groups in the UK. The well-loved Catherine Cookson was a founder member.

Book preview

Ghost Writers: 20 Spooky Tales for Dark Nights

Hastings Writers’ Group

Copyright 2011: individual members of Hastings Writers’ Group as shown in Contents list.

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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Contents

Foreword

Faniel Roz Balp

Rest Assured Angela Everitt

Shadows and Fog Jill Fricker

House of Cats Rosemary Bartholomew

The Absent-Minded Ghost Charlie Menzinger

Be Careful Who You Talk To Renwot

Anniversary Mike Walsh

The Haunted Marsh Stephen Martin

Pimpernelled Alex Willis

A Long Shadow Monica Percy

Little Girl Running Richard Holdsworth

The House John Vallender

More Haste Less Speed Pauline Piper

Ticket to Nowhere Anne Hooker

Marked Ezzie Gleeson-Ward

The Visitor Carol Pullen

83 Pembroke Gardens Vivien Jones

In-Comers by Amanda Giles

White Walls Laura O’Brien

The Marie Celeste Janet Kates

Foreword

Hastings Writers’ Group from East Sussex, England, has been going strong since 1947, so it is hardly surprising that there are a few stray souls drifting around among us. Perhaps they were there encouraging the spirits to float out of the cobwebby woodwork of our members’ minds, so they could take part if this volume of short, short, ghost stories, As you flit through these pages, you will begin the wonder if you are ever truly alone: there are inexplicable presences in bedrooms, extra passengers on buses; even your own car isn’t safe. There are spectres who haunt either to hinder of help, phantoms invited back by the living and those the living had best avoid.

As the web of words is woven, you will see swirling mists, smell rancid water, hear the pitter-patter of tiny, long-dead feet, taste revenge and feel the chill of loss, despair and terror. While some tales are scary, others are sad and a few just plain funny, but all authors have risen to the challenge of conjuring up a riveting range of souls stranded in that haunting hinterland between life and death – with a myriad of mixed motives.

So dip in and prepare to shiver, laugh and even cry, but remember it’s all in a good cause.

Proceeds from this book will be shared between local charity The Association of Carers: Young Carers and Hastings Writers’ Group.

Roz Balp

Faniel

‘Well, if we have spirits in this house, then they’re benign,’ I always say when people visit and comment on the ‘lovely atmosphere’.

Yet spirits there are – and always have been. We moved here when Jamie, our son, was one – all chubby and solemn, his bicci-peg safety-pinned to his dungarees.

At three he announces over his Marmite soldiers, ‘I couldn’t sleep last night ’cos Faniel came again.’

It is disconcerting when you discover your toddler has nocturnal visitors, but he is imaginative; old ladies always say he has the eyes of an old soul.

‘Who’s Nathaniel?’ I ask.

‘A boy. He wants me to go ratting.’

Ratting? Perhaps he’s watched a documentary.

‘What does he look like?’ I expect a flight of fancy, but receive instead:

‘He’s taller than me with the same colour hair. He has a bag around his waist for the rats.’

I don’t feel a chill, just curiosity, and – as I say – the spirits are benign in our house.

I check with Francis Patmore, a local historian, if boys went ratting near our Edwardian house, built in 1904. Apparently, they did. I remember Wordsworth’s ‘Ode to Immortality’ and wonder if Jamie’s just ‘trailing clouds of glory’, but worry he might be one of those Jungian children, not quite fully born, still attached to the spirit world. I watch him like a hawk, but he sails through childhood with barely an illness.

His hypochondria is, therefore, all the more hilarious: at four, he has tummy ache and asks for some paper and a pen.

‘What’s that for?’ we ask.

‘I need to write my will,’ he replies stoically.

However, it’s a strain when he develops a fear of death at seven. He is hysterical for an entire afternoon: he doesn’t believe there is an afterlife and dreads the ‘just nothing’.

‘What if they’re lying? What if there isn’t any Heaven? Nobody knows, do they?’

I dredge up my meagre knowledge of Buddhism; he likes the idea of our life essence being reborn. This makes sense, but he still doesn’t want to be alone. I find myself promising to kill myself to be with him if he goes first. That does it, and we have buttery crumpets with lemon curd to celebrate. He never talks of death again. I speak to Miss Thompson, his teacher; she confirms it is ‘unusual’ to be worrying about mortality at seven.

Nathaniel is long-forgotten when we leave to go to Dubai for five years to pay off the mortgage, but Jamie, then eleven, dreams that the ghosts are unhappy and want us to go back. He reminds me of the time he came into our room and saw a woman sewing on the bed. I have forgotten; perhaps, along with Nathaniel, the memory has faded.

When Jamie reaches fifteen, I say to my husband, ‘I can’t understand why more girls don’t fancy him. He’s handsome, funny, sensitive, with good hair and beautiful eyes.’

What had someone said? ‘Like stones under water. Spiritual: the eyes of an old soul.’

‘Hm…,’ replies his father disloyally, ‘but a little odd.’

‘Odd is good,’ I think. ‘Better odd than boring any day.’

It turns out that I am right and my husband is wrong. The following year, all the girls fall in love with Jamie; he has a fan club and goes to the prom with the prettiest. That is the year we return to the UK – and the house.

Now we all feel