Monday 18 March 2024

ST 55 - Opening 5


The Invisible Boy

Reggie Chamberlain-King

They’re playing The Invisible Boy again. It’s obvious from their keen attention. They’re too quiet. They’re not listening to me, but for the tell-tale noise that will give him away: a scuff, a shuffle, a sneeze... a sneeze would do for him. I can see it in their bastarding little faces, their eyes fixed on me as though they’re listening, but their ears are cocked, alert to something else... a pin drops. I could follow the twitch of Quinn’s red, flexed lobe or the subtle twist of McKiernan’s neck and I could sniff out The Invisible Boy. But I don’t.

Sunday 17 March 2024

ST55 - Opening 4


The Lord is my Shepherd

Tom Johnstone



‘CARNIVOROUS’. That was all it said. At the time, Sarah Dyson didn’t connect it with the Grey Lady or the River Wellsbourne. Just now, her preoccupations were more mundane: finding some way of removing the graffito from the sign outside the church near Preston Manor. The gardeners would have a solution for removing it. There was one of them who was always flirting with her. Bernard, his name was. Once, he complimented the coat that matched her orange-red lipstick. He wasn’t the only one. Her manager Geoff had the tiresome habit of saying, “You look like vermilion dollars,” in a mock-gumshoe voice, whenever she wore it.

Saturday 16 March 2024

ST 55 - Opening 3


Mrs Crace

Cliff McNish

In Memoriam: Robert Aickman


“When a garden flower is crushed it cannot simply be put back together; why do you never grasp such matters?”

Such was Father’s typically irritated response to a minor breakage by his own small, motherless children. Gilly and I learned to make a show of listening attentively whenever Father lectured us. He was very much a man to enlarge upon our innocent faults during this period.

“Can you repair the stem, mm? Will the tulip’s stamen miraculously return to life?”

“No, Father.” Our faces duly bowed.

This was during the worst of the austerity era following the war, 1946–47. Scarcity was a watchword everywhere, even in a well-to-do family such as ours with its own servants and grounds.

Friday 15 March 2024

ST 55 - Opening 2


Porcupines

Carole Tyrrell 

I needed a pen and stationery cupboards aren’t what they used to be. First day as Head of Finance and Brewsters wanted figures quickly. But the laptop wasn’t ready yet according to IT. So, I had to enter the sarcophagus-like silence of Head Office. I collected a temporary ID at the front desk from a security guard and took the lift to the fifth floor. The lift doors automatically opened and ahead of me were two double doors. A sign attached to the wall beside one of them helpfully announced that this was the Finance Department. I pushed one of the doors open and emerged into a room devoid of life. Instead, it was tenanted by desks, chairs, coat stands and on top of a low filing cabinet was a dusty coffee machine surrounded by a cluster of ill-assorted mugs. But no people, just flashing lights indicating long unanswered voicemails on the desk phones.

Thursday 14 March 2024

ST 55 - Opening 1

The Rock Statue

Mark Falkin

“What does any individual, terrestrial life or death matter when seen from a galactic perspective? Yet, we still throb.” —Marilyn Nelson

On the way there, they each notice the hawks perched on the expressway lights. Sabrina thinks they look like finials. She wrist-drives as she talks to her mother loudly on hands-free. Morgan is at ten and two listening to an audiobook with an annoying narrator. Janice steers with her right hand low on the wheel, left hand out the window ruddering her car’s wake. Karen grips the steering wheel’s middle bar and listens to NPR. War in Eastern Europe. The latest virus variant making its move across oceans. The signal is lost once beyond the exurbs.

Sunday 11 February 2024

Read an AI generated ghost story

I gave MS Copilot the following prompt, which is not complex and you can see where problems arose..

Please write a ghost story in the style of M.R. James set in Edwardian England at Cambridge University. It should be 3,000 words long and feature a mysterious book with a Latin title, a professor in his mid-forties who wears glasses, and a young woman reporter. The book tells how to contact spirits of the dead. The professor wants to use it to discover buried treasure somewhere in the grounds of the university.


The Book of Shadows

Professor Arthur Langdon was a respected scholar of ancient languages and literature at Cambridge University. He had a passion for collecting rare and obscure books, especially those related to the occult and the supernatural. He had amassed a large library of such volumes in his office at the university, where he spent most of his time studying and translating them.

One day, he received a letter from a colleague in Italy, who claimed to have found a remarkable book in an old monastery. The book was written in Latin, but with a strange and unfamiliar script. The title was "Liber Umbrarum", or "The Book of Shadows". The colleague said that the book contained secrets of contacting the spirits of the dead, and that he had managed to decipher some of the rituals and spells. He also said that the book hinted at a hidden treasure buried somewhere in the grounds of Cambridge University, and that he was willing to share the information with Langdon, if he agreed to help him with the translation and the exploration.

Saturday 10 February 2024

'The Crucifix'

The penultimate story in Peter Bell's new Hauntings, 'Portrait', was first published in Supernatural Tales back in 2014 as '|The Refurbishment'. It seems an eternity ago, and I hardly need to add that my opinion of the story is at least as high as it was when I accepted it. So, moving along, we come to the final tale. And we also come full circle, as we began in The Cairngorms with 'The Bothy' and now we head north of the border again. On which note:

'Pamela was sure there was more to Scotland, a wilderness to experience.'

Perfectly valid in context, but not ideal from a tourist information viewpoint. 


'The Crucifix' is superficially quite simple as to plot. Pamela, an unscrupulous book dealer, finds herself out of work and takes a job in Scotland, cataloguing a country house library on a behalf of a widow who just wants to sell her late husband's books'. (As a minor aside, isn't it surprising that - in all those Lovecraftian knock-offs - nobody ever seems to consider how staggeringly rich they could become by simply selling the Necronomicon and all those other arcane volumes?) The family were hardcore Covenanters who killed 'witches' and Catholics with grim enthusiasm. Pamela happens to be wearing a crucifix bequeathed by her grandmother, but takes trouble to hide it.

Things go quite well, not least when Pamela discovers that the late laird's collection includes some immensely rare and valuable items. This is a story that only a true bibliophile could have written, especially the scene in which Pamela discovers and immensely rare copy of Dracula. In some old-fashioned ghost stories, Pamela might take a hint and play it straight, just brushing up against terror before doing the right thing. Here, however, greed takes charge and our anti-heroine finds herself facing a judgement on her morals that, while harsh, is not entirely unwarranted. 

And so we reach the end of Hauntings by Peter Bell. I think this is the author's best collection, harking back to the classics and paying homage to the greats of the field, but offering much that is new and interesting. This volume is a worthy addition to any library, haunted or otherwise.

ST 55 - Opening 5

The Invisible Boy Reggie Chamberlain-King They’re playing The Invisible Boy again. It’s obvious from their keen attention. They’re too quiet...