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...

The British Library just posted me a book. The Dead of Summer I won’t lie: it makes me feel sort of special to have a large, hard-backed and very handsome book posted to me by Britain’s National Library, the book-branch of the British Museum. And what a gorgeous book! A glowing scarlet with gilt illustrations. As the sub-title says, it’s a collection of, ‘strange tales of May Eve and Midsummer.’ There is something eerie about those days, sunny though they might be. They’re two of the year’s great ‘turning days,’ linked to superstition, magic and myth for centuries beyond memory. The barriers between the worlds grows thin as smoke in mid-summer dusk as much as in mid-winter dark— and the hyacinth scent of massed bluebells is a dangerous thing. Never fall asleep in a bluebell wood, it's said. If you do, you won't wake in your own world or time. The Dead of Summer ’s editor, Johnny Mains, chose the stories from books in the British Library’s collection. The first story is ...