Footsteps in an Empty Room - Griselda Heppel considers the best way of giving readers the shivers
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...