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It was Angie – or ‘Angelique’ as she now styled herself – who first figured out that the old watch house on the Spit would make a great venue for a Christmas party. An early adapter to acid house, she loved beach parties in the summer and warehouse parties in the winter. This year, she… Continue reading The Watch House: A Ghost Story for Christmas
It was with great pleasure, not to say humility, that I was asked to judge the 2021 Olga Sinclair Prize for Short Fiction, the results of which were announced this evening. The theme of this year’s competition was ‘Lost’, to be interpreted in any way by the submitting authors, the only limit being the number… Continue reading The 2021 Olga Sinclair Prize for Short Fiction – Judge’s Comments
A ghost story for Halloween... ‘If there is an afterlife,’ I remember my mother saying one day, ‘then how come people always look so sad when they die?’ Back then, I wasn’t in a position to answer. To be honest, I didn’t want to know. I was already regretting raising the issue with her at… Continue reading A little place just outside Diss
My latest for the Wordsworth Blog, on writing tips from M.R. James... ‘There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas,’ wrote Jerome K. Jerome in the introduction to his darkly comic collection Told After Supper (1891), ‘something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer… Continue reading How to Write the Perfect Christmas Ghost Story
Before I stepped down from my role as Head of Online Courses at The Unthank School of Writing to focus on my own writing, my final project was a very pleasant one indeed. With my old friend and colleague Ashley Stokes, Head of School, I jointly edited Unveiled: The First Unthank School Anthology. Having canvassed… Continue reading Unveiled: The First Unthank School Anthology
A ghost story for Christmas... When I was a kid, I made a list of things that scared me. Like a Desert Island Disks list, I got it down to seven: Spiders, especially the really big sod in the attic that my dad insisted on referring to as ‘Sam’. Velociraptor hide and seek. Ghosts Nuclear… Continue reading The Museum of Everything
Guest post for Wordsworth Editions... During a visit in the winter of 1918, Rider Haggard – who believed in reincarnation – asked Rudyard Kipling if he thought the earth was one of the hells. His old friend replied that he did not think this, he was certain of it (qtd. in Wilson: 1994, 306). And… Continue reading Looking into Hell: Kipling and the Great War
The Final Entry in the Journal of the Late Leviticus Lovecraft October 31, 18— My reason fails me this night. Already, I have seen the shadows moving in the darkness beyond the glass. And yet, they tell me that I am ill. Ill I am, but I know that I be not mad. 0 curs’d… Continue reading A Short Story for Halloween
Despite several theories to the contrary, the priapic spirit that has in the last few years been seen at Stone Henge during the winter solstice is not, in fact, a druid. Accounts of the apparition vary, but common features suggest a tall, emaciated male figure, naked from the waist down and usually described as somewhat… Continue reading Blue Christmas – A Winter Solstice Ghost Story
Many years ago, the wife of an honourable counsellor took great pride in the completion of a lavish family vault in a fashionable cemetery. It was important to enjoy one’s monuments before occupation, and here, she felt, was a burial chamber in which the couple and their descendants could be laid to rest in a… Continue reading The Wife of an Honourable Counsellor
Stephen Carver 