'I Seen Her' by Rebecca Lloyd

In his introduction to Uncertainties IV (see below) Timothy J. Jarvis makes the point that 'ghost stories' are often about things other than ghosts in the conventional sense.

This is certainly true of the first story, in which a small, remote English community ponders a haunting. This haunting - or whatever it is - involves two local boys who begin as best friends but are later bitterly estranged. The 'Her' of the  title may be a ghost, or something worse. There are hints - one of boys' parents, before they died, had certain powers, it seems, and may have conjured Her up.

In a conventional ghost story there would be a neat explanation for it all, and a denouement. Here there is a more realistic fumbling for truth while two young people fail to provide it, even to themselves. They don't have the words for anything beyond the commonplace, yet are clearly the focus of something extraordinary. Lloyd evokes the strangeness of closed communities and the way in which the odd becomes almost commonplace in a story with a timeless but essentially historical setting - this is a world where kids don't spend half their gazing at their phones.

This is a fine story, and it reminded me of the poetic, evasive tales of A.E. Coppard (1878-1957), a rural poet who also used the supernatural as a component in a story rather than an end in itself. So, a good start. The running review will continue shortly!