Authors Electric

  No Artificial Intelligence Was Used In the Creating of These Books. Just Saying...  Hauntings Overheard in a Graveyard Nightcomers In a week's time, it's Hallowe'en. The night before All Saints' Day, when all the bogles, ghouls, boggarts, ghosts, night-walkers, bargeists, phantom ladies of many colours, not to mention the long-leggety beasties, come out for a big celebration before the Christmas season begins. Because, famously, at Christmas the bird of dawning kicks up a tiresome racket all night long and no spirit dares stir abroad, no fairy takes and no witch hath power to charm. So the Supernatural Community has to get all its jollies before then.  Hallowe'en, seemingly, is the office Christmas party for the undead. M. R. James (wikimedia) But remember: Ghosts aren't just for Christmas. I've always been ready for a ghost story at any time of the year. The great M. R. James wrote a particuarly chilling one, The Wailing Well , set on Midsummer Day, in br...

A That sort of thing Photo by  cottonbro  from  Pexels ged 11, I went through a (very brief) interest in horror stories. Tales of travellers arriving at lonely hostelries on Dark and Stormy Nights, maggots crawling over skulls, baths full of blood, that sort of thing.   I stopped reading the genre pretty quickly, not so much out of fear – though that may have played a part – as out of physical revulsion. There must be better ways of giving readers the shivers than all that dismemberment and bodily fluids, I thought.  Instead, I moved on to ghost stories, finding them to be a completely different kettle of fish, or bath of – never mind. Because the best kind of ghost story doesn’t hit you with horrific images from page 1; in fact, there will be no horrific images at all. Just a couple of things that don’t feel right.  A rocking chair in a empty room Photo by  Mateusz Dach  from  Pexels A breeze down a windowless corridor. Footsteps in an empty...