C’Mere to Me, You, I love it.

Niall – yarg! Hideous. Like a dream in a film. My advice is: stop watching horror films. and get a dream catcher!

When I was about 4/5 I read Twinkle magazine, and there were paintbox Blob characters. Mousy Brown was a mouse. One night I dreamed about being in a wood, I can’t rememebr the details, but when I woke up I was lying in the dark, and I could hear Mousy Brown whispering ‘There’s a fight in the woods’, more than once, absolutely clearly. So creepy!

For God’s sake!

I think that some explanation of the historical events in which the events of the story originated and a climax which in which the ghost was not seen but left one with the uneasy feeling that it might or might not have been a supernatural event would have been more effective. Benson almost gets it right in Negotium Perambulans – there is an historical background, there is some uncertainty about the death of one of the characters, which might have been accidental, but then again might not have been. The effect is then somwhat spoiled by the climax, which even though it is a lot scarier than M.R. James’s ghost in a sheet, is so graphically described that the tension is broken. We are left in no doubt about what happened.

I think that what makes a ghost story really successful is that it leaves the reader with a continuing sensation of uncertainty tension and unease after one has finished reading it.

I found the buildup spookier – the figure that followed Parkin and the dream, but there was no explanation of the connection between these and the ghost in the sheet.

While there wasn’t, tis true, any real explanation of said connection I don’t feel the story suffered as a result. I’d actually argue that the inexplicability and confusion serves the horror well – particularly when the “victim” is such a controlled, self-satisfied and sure individual.

In other words, I don’t see the absence of an explanation as a weakness or an oversight.

Aye, they are symptoms of apnea, but I like to think it means I’ll go out fighting. My voice even sounds like McGoohan’s in this dream. It’s awesome. RAR!

The references to Catholicism were interesting – the Benson story I mentioned earlier also features an ancient church and a supernatural being from the pre-Reformation past. I wonder if there isn’t an unconscious collective guilt for the desecration of churches in the 16th and 17th centuries that manifests itself in such stories. The destruction of images must have been very shocking at the time and many must have believed that it would lead to some kind of divine retribution.

I’ll try to make the next meeting live…

“Negotium Perambulans” has been duly added to our growing list. Thanks.

Hope you can make it “live” for the next meeting.

Niall,

That’s bloody horrible. For some reason the fact that it’s a “sitting room” makes it worse. I used to have a recurring childhood dream about a small creature (a cat or mouse) that would scurry nervously alongside me as I walked along a path. Just behind me, out of the corner of my eye, I could see/sense a giant figure of some kind and hear it’s booming voice – which was so booming I couldn’t make out any words, just deep, nasty bass sounds.

It was determined (or so I imagined) to squash and utterly destroy the small anxious creature. This filled me an almost sickening sense of anxiety!

I always wonder what I’d do if faced by a hostile, horror story type ghost. Die of fright, I imagine.

There are a few Japanese horror films that yield the same dreams after viewing. I always dream that I’m in a dark sitting room, surrounded by decidedly corporeal ghosts that press in closer and closer until I can barely move. I roar at them, flailing, fists flying, damning their eyes {note, they have no eyes} like Patrick McGoohan berating a confused charwoman. In the end, they always get me. I’ve had this dream several times.

Benson, who lived in Henry James’s old home, Lamb House in Rye, Sussex is best known for his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels, but he did publish a collection of spooky short stories entitled ‘Visible and Invisible’. There was an old copy of it in my parents’ house when I was growing up and I found ‘Negotium Perambulans’ particularly scary, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) did not find it so when I re-read it recently…

Agreed. It’s probably too easy to focus on the crumpled linen face as the true centre of the story’s horror.

Being pursued by something that remains murky and ill-defined is about as nasty as it gets!

Nope, this is halfway up towards Newtown. The Dark Bit, no lights except where the church is – spoooky!

I wonder, I must have always stayed out after that, as I don’t know how I ever would have walked that bit again!

I agree, the dream was very scary, but the blind groping on top of it actually made me feel sick to my stomach with fear.

I always wonder what I’d do if faced by a hostile, horror story type ghost. Die of fright, I imagine.

His first words were ‘is there something behind me?’ – he was too scared to look back.

Gah! That’s deeply creepy stuff, Jo. ‘Tis just like those lines from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

As for how our stories will work – the plan (as it is) is for them to be submitted to me and put up here for discussion. I know that sounds a bit scary but once we get a few up people will, hopefully, feel more comfortable with the idea (presuming nobody tears one to shreds!).

It’s by no means required to submit a story. People can just join in the story club discussions if they so wish.