Orange, Orange, Orange Everywhere laments Griselda Heppel
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| Grinning orange faces... all over till next year. Photo by Toni Cuenca: https://www.pexels.com/photo/two-jack-o-lanterns-619424/ |
Those grinning orange faces, shop window displays full of pointy hats and broomsticks, estate agents advertising haunted shacks (actually, that one’s quite fun), groups of black and orange-clad children roaming the streets for sugar highs – all vanished into thin air on the stroke of midnight last night as the Feast of All Saints began. Much as I love pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie, over the years I greet the arrival of this day with increasing relief.
Why? Well, it’s not for religious reasons. All that dressing up as devils and witches and dancing around on All Hallows’ Eve goes back a long way, signifying the devil’s last grasp at power before being vanquished by the Forces of Good. Rather than being a threat to Christianity, Halloween originated as a confirmation of it (with a few pagan traditions thrown in, no doubt, but ‘twas ever thus with Christian feasts).
I also lament how that thrilling literary genre, the ghost story, can get boxed in to one particular time of year. Yes, dark, stormy nights, blazing bonfires, lonely, dilapidated houses silhouetted against windswept moorland – all these create a spooky background for a bloodcurdling tale mmwahahahahahaha.
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| About to be vanquished by the Forces of Good. Photo by Mike Jones:https://www.pexels.com/ photo/young-girls-in-witch-costumes- covering-faces-with-balloons-9740365/ |
No, my objections to Halloween are entirely aesthetic. I mean, just look around you. This is one of the most beautiful times of the year. Crisp mornings, mist on the grass melting into an airy blue sky. Sun warming red and gold leaves before the wind whisks them off the trees and piles them thick on the ground. Rich, clear colours
everywhere.
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| Rich, clear colours: Exmoor in autumn. |
And what do we do? We turn all that lovely colour scheme into black and orange. With flashes of blood red.
Black witches’ robes and hats. Black bats, cats, spiders, cauldrons. Black vampire capes, matched with luminous plastic teeth dripping scarlet. And orange, orange, orange everywhere, in the form of pumpkins, real and plastic. Shops are full of them. Clothes shops display children’s tee shirts, trousers, sweatshirts, jumpers, only in those colours. When my children were young and happened to need new clothes, I knew there was no point even looking until halfway through November.
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| A dark and stormy night for a bloodcurdling tale. Photo byJoonas Kaariainen:https://www.pexels.com/ photo/clouds-under-full-moon-239107 |
But even more chilling, in my view, is the fear that can creep up on a bright summer’s day, in beautiful countryside, where things are… just not quite right. Trees waving when there’s not a breath of air. A patch of sunlight in the woodland that is cold as ice. Footsteps running ahead of you in the dew-soaked grass that turn back as you turn back.
Think Picnic at Hanging Rock in which the depiction of those young girls in white, Edwardian lace dresses under a deep blue sky alternates with shots of the huge, lowering, strangely marked stones to build up the atmosphere to a terrifying pitch. My scariest recurring nightmare as a child – so scary I had to learn to wake myself up from it – involved nothing more than a dream of paddling in warm, sunlit seawater, knowing that something dreadful was about to happen.
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| Spooky faces loom at Hanging Rock, Victoria, Australia. Picnic at your own risk. |
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| The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel: a chilling ghost story set in early summer. |
That’s why my children’s ghost story, The Fall of a Sparrow, is set, not as the nights draw in and the wind howls around the chimney pots, but among the fresh green leaves and flowers of an early English summer. As 11 year-old Eleanor struggles to find her feet in a new school far from home, she’s pleased yet puzzled to be claimed as a friend by a strange, gawky little boy who follows her around, begging her to play with him ‘like you used to’. Soon puzzlement turns to horror as it’s clear he knows things about her he can’t possibly know, things no one should know… Unravelling the mystery lures her into a dark web of family secrets, drawing her into deadly danger.
See, it’s not just the haunting. It’s what’s behind the haunting that builds the fear.
OUT NOW
The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel
BRONZE WINNER in the Wishing Shelf Awards 2021
By the author of Ante's Inferno
WINNER of the People's Book Prize
Comments
I've never been a great fan of ghost stories but I do like Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The blog also made me think of my grandchildren. We made a halloween lantern with my granddaughter and as you know my grandson has your book. I'll now have to borrow it from him.