Ghostly Inspirations B is for Bad Night #AtoZChallenge 2018

Welcome to my offering for The A to Z Blogging Challenge 2018. 

My theme this year is Ghostly Inspirations: 

a collection of spirits that have been prompted by my encounters with places and times. Some are spooky, some more about atmosphere. I'll be describing each inspiration and the phantom that came to my mind, and then I will share a drabble, which I hope will entertain. :)

Disclaimer: The places and experienced I have used for my inspiration are real, but my ghosts and drabbles are complete fiction, linked to nothing and no-one, alive or dead. When writing about my inspirations, I may have changed names and obfuscated specific details to 'protect the innocent' :).

~

B is for Bad Night

Inspiration:
I once helped to organise an offsite for work. Our entire department went on a two day team-building event to a rather grand hotel in the middle of the Kent countryside. The place was an old manor house. Most of the accomodation was in converted stable blocks, but, lucky me, as a member of the organising team, I got to stay in one of the rooms inside the big house. It was a very ornate room, with sconces on the high ceiling, heavy curtains and a huge bed.

I should have been very comfortable - only - I wasn’t alone that night. I couldn’t see them, whoever they were, but the atmosphere in the room was such that I barely got a wink of sleep, and when I did, it was with the lights on.

Ghost:

Nanette made the mistake of falling in love with and marrying an English soldier on a French battlefield. When that soldier, a supposed gentleman, abandoned her on his return to England, he left her pregnant with his child and disowned by her family for loving the enemy. With no other recourse, Nanette followed him away from her home and into Kent.. She found the love of her life at his country estate, holding a party to celebrate his engagement to a young society girl.

Nanette threw herself at her husband’s feet, begging him to honour his vows, but unable to speak a word of English, none but her unfaithful spouse knew what she was saying. She only learnt of his callous disregard for her when he ordered his servants to drag her out of his sight. Actions spoke louder than words for Nanette, and, at last understanding the true nature of her lover, she broke away from those who held her and struggled for the stairs.

Distraught, Nanette fought her way to the roof and threw herself and the baby in her belly to their deaths.


It is said her ghost hounded the man, who had ruined her, on his wedding night and every night thereafter until he went insane, leaving his new wife a wealthy widow as he languished in an asylum. Although her revenge was complete, Nanette’s spirit remains at her husband’s house to this day, tied to it by the loss of her baby, but these days she is felt and heard rather than seen.

~

The Corner

This room is too bloody big: the bedside lights don’t reach all the way into the two far corners, so each time I glance across there I’m faced with gloom from floor to ceiling. I can kind of make out the lines of the decorative stucco work that makes this place so grand, but I don’t look too long, because there’s something else there I don’t want to see.

I can’t really see, haven’t seen her all night, but still my eyes are drawn there, to the corner by the window. So, I sit, I shiver, I wait for dawn.

~

Other paranormal and spooky stories by Sophie Duncan.

The Burning
Web

Book of
Darkness

Cursed

The Diablo
Ouija

In The Event
of Death

The Need In Me

Parting the Veil

When Darkness
Beckons

Night Blood

The End of
The Journey

~

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