A to Z Challenge 2014 - Ghosts - A is For Apparition, Gertrude Atherton and Anne Griffiths a.k.a. Owd Nance

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So, welcome to my first post for the A to Z Challenge 2014. As you can see from my banner, my theme for this month is Ghosts, and in the next 26 posts, I'm going to be sharing with you my thoughts about spooks, ghoulies and everything that goes bump in the night! :)

Each post will contain my musings about the components of a good ghost story, because this wouldn't be a writer's blog otherwise, now would it? I'll also be sharing my serialised ghost story, The Burning Web, which I've written just for the A to Z. I'm a big fan of reading ghost stories as well (I have a library full of ghost books), so I'll be recommending some well known authors of ghostly fiction and non-fiction, and some not so well known ones that I've come across in my reading time. And finally, I live in the UK, we are surrounded by ghosts, there must be at least one per living person, if not more, so I'll be sharing some of my favourite ghosts and haunted places from the British Isles.

A is for Apparition | The Burning Web | Author Info | British Hauntings

A is for Apparition

I'm going to declare myself - I believe in ghosts. I've never seen one, but I know what I'd do it I did, I'd run a mile in the other direction :). I love being spooked by a good ghost story and I enjoy watching them as well, but I can scare myself stiff sometimes too, especially if I'm home alone. The human mind and the human eye are very good at playing tricks on us. I've caught lots of movement out of the corner of my eye, or in the mirror with a quick glance. Do I think they were caused by ghosts - well, no, but I have shared a house with a ghost. I'll go into that story in more detail in a later post. Today, I'm talking about apparitions, the unequivocal sighting of a ghost that is (usually) the pivotal part of any good ghost story.

As I mentioned before, if every story of haunting in the British Isles is to be believed, we are surrounded by phantoms, and, so too, is our literature. From Banquo's ghost in Shakespeare's Macbeth, through to the spirits visiting Scrooge in  Dickens' A Christmas Carol, classic literature is flooded with such appearances. They can be messengers, harbingers of doom, vindictive wraiths, revealers of secrets - anything the writer wants them to be, in fact. The visual impact is fantastic on film and stage, and the presence can be wonderfully eerie on the page.

No gothic horror is complete without an ethereal grey lady, or a headless horseman, but what of these spectres in our more modern, scientific age of literature? I think they still have their place. Our Victorian forebears, kings and queens of the gothic horror, maintained a good dose of scepticism in their stories, which we can carry through to our modern-day ghostly tales. The Sixth Sense uses disbelief to brilliant effect when ghosts are standing right there before us. In fact, I think that the rabid scepticism of our age can add to the terror of a ghost story, because the chances of a haunted protagonist being believed are so low.

When I was thinking about The Burning Web, I considered this type of witness isolation and how I could use it. When someone claims to be seeing things that aren't there in our modern world, what do we attribute that to? Delusion. Hallucinogenic compounds. Trick of the light. And that is where I started from.

The Burning Web
Part 1

by Sophie Duncan

Next Part

Tris blinked into the bright afternoon light and shielded his eyes with one hand as the natural shine was joined by dozens of flash bulbs. He'd tried to prepare himself for the glare he knew would be outside, but his head was thumping, had been since he'd been called back into the courtroom to hear the verdict. He was so tired he just wanted to get home and collapse next to Xander on the sofa. Yet, from the way Xander was gripping his hand and pulling him towards the top of the court building steps, Tris knew it wasn't to be, and he meekly followed his husband in front of the melee of reporters.

Each burst of camera light was like pins poking into his retina, so Tris watched the back of Xander's left ear, even though all he could really see was a dark patch of hair and his husband's chocolate skin rather than any detail, since his eyesight was shifting in and out of focus. He had no more words, no comments for the horde that had been dogging him since this whole sorry business had begun, so he let Xander speak for him.

People were yelling questions from all directions and calling for them to turn this way and that, but Xander held up one hand in what to most would have looked like a very confident gesture for silence. Since the other one was clasped around Tris' hand like a vice, Tris knew better. It worked though, and the crowd rumbled into mostly silence.

"Tristan and I," Xander began, since it had been a long time since anyone reporting on the case had called him DC McCall, "would firstly like to thank everyone who has stood by us through the last eighteen months. It has been a difficult time, when Tris has been tried both by the media and by the law, and finally, justice has been done: as has always been maintained by Tris and I, he is innocent of any crime."

"He still shot an innocent boy!" someone yelled from the back of the crowd and more flashes went off.

Tris kept his attention on Xander, forcing his face to stay straight, despite the knot of sickness that knowledge kept in the bottom of his stomach. Xander had to have felt him tremble though, because he squeezed his fingers reassuringly.

"As Tris has stated on many occasions, he wholeheartedly regrets the awful sequence of events that led to this terrible incident, but Abdi San ran at him holding a gun during a night of terrible violence on the New Cross estate," Xander added, tone firm, authoritative. "A jury has now agreed with us that under those conditions, Tris had no chance of telling that gun was a replica and he reacted lawfully while defending his own life, those of his fellow officers and other members of the public."

A whole wave of more yelled questions started at that and Tris cringed. He rubbed his face, eyes half closed and chill sweat running down his back under the smart suit that was becoming unbearably tight at the collar. He didn't want to think about this now, not any more. What had happened had been dissected every which way by two enquiries and, finally, thanks to public pressure, his trial for manslaughter. Yet, then one question cut over all the others, a shrill, young voice demanding, "McCall, would you still have shot Abdi San if he'd been white?"

Tris couldn't help it then, he reacted to the shock of that accusation and glanced around, wide-eyed, for its source.

"One thing my husband is not is racist!" Xander barked back defensively, sounding a lot less in control this time.

People were yelling at him again, but Tris needed to find that one accuser, to meet his eye and tell him exactly where he could shove his stereotypes. He winced at the daggers of light exploding in his face as he scanned the crowd, but most of the pain was inside and it had to come out. Everything was pretty much a blur, a mess of pinks and greys and brilliant white, but, suddenly, Tris' world clarified on a face that still haunted his dreams. Tris froze as, between the ranks of the unknown reporters, his gaze fell upon a frozen, cold stare. Abdi San, paler than that fateful evening when the Asian teenager had charged him, no scream on those thin lips now, but the boy needed no voice to challenge Tris right then. Conscience did a much better job than any reporter and all his grief and fear hit Tris at once. Heart hammering, body shaking, the rest of Tris' world exploded in brilliance a hundred times worse than any flashbulb and he was left with that flat, lifeless, denunciatory scrutiny boring into his soul. Nothing could take away the pain then, sharp and clear as it was, and the worse part of it was Tris knew he deserved it. He had taken a life, a young life that stood before him, phantom accuser, and there was only one price. Tris surrendered to the agony and everything went black.

Next Part

Author Info: Gertrude Atherton

When it comes to ghost stories, I am a big fan of anthologies of short pieces that I can dive into and out of at will. Gertrude Atherton is an American author (1857 - 1948), whom I must admit to only knowing through two such short stories, The Dead & The Countess and The Bell in the Fog. And thanks to doing some research on Mrs Atherton, I have now also read Dead & The Woman.

The Bell In The Fog is a tragedy, an American writer in England, who buys an estate and becomes obsessed with a little girl from America, who is very like a child in a painting in his gallery. I hesitate to call it a ghost story, for the haunting is all in the writer's head. He is haunted by his own imagination and his care for the little girl as he clings to the idea of her. The story infers ideas about reincarnation and the purpose of a soul on earth. Not a scary ghost story, more a study in character, but I found it charming.

The Dead & The Countess is also not a traditional haunted house tale, but it does involve the restless dead. They are woken in their graves because of a modern monster thundering past their graveyard, the railway. The noise and modernity awaken the old dead, and their conversations are sometimes sad, sometimes laughable as the poor priest tries his best to quieten them. I found the most poignant to be the dead baby crying restlessly in the night.

Dead & The Woman is a much more gothic tale, frightening in its suspense as a woman watches over her dying husband, waiting for the spectre to take his soul away from her. It's a truly artful tale, building slowly and terrifyingly to its climax.

Mrs Atherton was a prolific novelist, not much of of which relates to ghost stories, but if you are interested in her short stories, they are available online at the Short Story Archive. Plus her ghost stories are available in paperback, The Bell In The Fog and Other Stories, or I discovered the Bell in the Fog and The Countess & The Dead, on Kindle through The Third Ghost Story Megapack.

British Hauntings: Anne Griffiths of Burton Agnes Hall a.k.a. Owd Nance

Burton Agnes Hall, Yorkshire

I've been lucky enough to visit Burton Agnes Hall, a large manor house in Yorkshire with enough gothic finery for a dozen ghosts to haunt its halls. However, the story I am sharing with you today is that of Anne Griffiths, who became one of the many screaming skulls that possess old houses around Great Britain.

Anne Griffiths was one of three sisters, who built the Tudor mansion, but she was mortally wounded during a skirmish with robbers while returning from visiting friends only shortly after the hall was finished. She was returned to the hall and, as she lay dying, she made her sisters promise to remove her head from her body, so that part of her would remain in the house she had so much pride in. Her sisters agreed, but then broke their promise, burying her instead. Soon afterwards, loud crashes, bangs and stamping footsteps were heard throughout the house, and deathly screams echoed all through the hall as well. The servants left, the sisters were at their wits end as night after night this cacophony continued until, finally, they raised Anne's coffin once more.

On opening the coffin, only a few short weeks after she had been buried, they found Anne's head detached from her body with all flesh and hair having gone, leaving only her skull. The sisters took the skull and returned it to the house. All was thus calm and Owd Nance, as she became known, rested. There have been several attempts to remove the skull from the house over the years, and, each time Owd Nance is disturbed, she too causes spectral disruption.

Anne Griffiths (from Burton Agnes Website)

To find out more about Burton Agnes, check out their website. (They even have details of ghost hunts ;) ).

I'd love to hear your own spooky stories, add them to the blog comments. :)

A few of us discovered that we all had supernatural themes for the AtoZ so we got together and did a mini list. If you also have a supernatural theme (ghosts, monsters, witches, spells etc), please feel free to add yourself to the list.

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