Ghost Appreciation Month – The End

[Written by Assistant Editor and Ghost Appreciation Month member, Sharon Ring.]

Ordinarily it would have been Mark Deniz, Beyond Fiction’s Editor-in-Chief, writing the round-up of this past month’s appreciation of all things ghostly. However, Mark has been at an undisclosed location enjoying some pre-birthday celebrations so it has fallen to me to pick up the mantle on this occasion and say a few words on Ghost Appreciation Month (GAM).

We’ve enjoyed thirty-one days of movies at Beyond Fiction. I’ve had the chance to watch some old favourites; The Haunting, Don’t Look Now, Jacob’s Ladder, and The Shining rating highly on that front. I’ve also had the opportunity to see four fantastic films which had previously managed to slip under the radar; The Frighteners, Session 9, Shutter, and Saint Ange (House Of Voices). It’s been great to see how trends in ghost movies have come and gone over the decades: from silent movies to the talkies, black & white to colour, from Hollywood through Europe and Asia. With the exception of a handful of films on the Ghost Appreciation Month’s list, such as Ghostbusters and The Frighteners, the driving force behind any decent ghost movie has always been the power of suggestion. The best films in the genre, from my point of view at least, are often those which play with image and sound in such a way as to render the actual seeing of a ghost almost unnecessary. Asymmetrical cinematography, discordant music and sound effects: these tools all lead the way to making a film’s audience feel uneasy, taking them out of their comfort zones and into the unknown.

GAM contributors reviewed around half the movies on Mark’s film list, with a few extra film reviews thrown in for good measure. It’s always interesting to read another person’s take on a movie you love, even more interesting to read a friend’s review of a movie on which you weren’t so keen. Point in case: The Blair Witch Project. I have seen this movie several times over the years, but never all at once. I’d watch the beginning and fall asleep: I’d get back from the pub and watch the last twenty minutes: never all in one go, however. Now, Mark Deniz loves this movie, positively raves about it. What the heck, I thought; now’s my chance to give it the full attention it apparently deserves. I watched it. It didn’t do for me what it seems to do for Mark and so many other people. Reading Mark’s review and listening to comments over on Facebook when I mentioned having finally seen the movie, I can appreciate that this was a groundbreaking film. I wish I could have seen it when it was released, at a time before spoofs and countless half-watches. I believe the impact it had on people back then is something I may have experienced myself. Never mind. Mark and I will have to agree to disagree on this one. Either that or fight it out at FantasyCon next year in comedy sumo suits (yes, Mark, that is a challenge!).

 

I will be the one in the red mawashi. Victory shall be mine.

 

Aside from my rather bizarre encounter with a ghostly Charles Dickens (man, that is one ghost with serious acceptance issues), GAM had two interviews in the line-up – Gary McMahon and Stephen Volk. Gary and I talked about his own ghost experience; the cultural and historical background of belief in ghosts; a little Mitchell-dissing (check out the Guardian article from David Mitchell to see how that came about); ghosts as metaphor; and finally onto a few words about his new book, which centres on a man who is able to see ghosts. Stephen and Mark discussed Stephen’s current hectic schedule; how and why Ghostwatch came to be; Stephen’s thoughts on the afterlife; some advice for budding screenwriters and a little industry talk; and wrapped things up with a quick question on Stephen’s favourite authors. This second interview along with a review of Ghostwatch the following day could not have been better timed. Halloween 2010 was the eighteenth anniversary of the original screening of the drama and, for reasons Natalie Kingston explains in her review, it has never been shown since.

Throughout the month, dotted between the reviews and interviews, were a series of articles and real-life experiences from our GAM contributors. I should say at this point that I have my own particular thoughts on the subject of ghosts. I’ve seen some – I definitely believe in the existence of them – but I maintain a healthy scepticism when it comes to other people’s stories, as I hope they would do with my own. Reading through this month’s posts I think the one which affected me most was probably Alison Littlewood’s short piece on the Isle of the Dead. No cheap thrills and ghostly apparitions here, just a poignant telling of the trip to a small cemetery island off the shores of Loch Leven.

So, there’s been plenty to read, watch and think about over this past month. There is a dedicated page for all the Ghost Appreciation Month posts for ease of reference.

On Mark’s behalf I would like to thank everyone who took part in the past month’s fun and to everyone who kindly tweeted and shared links on Twitter and Facebook. Now, for those of you who know Mark, you know this is a man who never rests. I think there’s a fairly good chance we’ll see another of these themed months sometime in the future. Perhaps we’ll see you there.

 

It's time for us to say farewell

 

‘Ghostwatch’ review

[written by author, NKKingston]

“WE DON’T WANT TO GIVE ANYONE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS. WE DON’T WANT TO CAUSE A PANIC.”

On October 31st 1992, at 9:25, a seminal piece of drama was aired. For the next two decades it would regularly top ‘scariest ever’ polls. Frequently compared to Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds’, it would not be shown by the BBC again, but it’s been aired by other channels around the world.

Legitimate DVD’s are so hard to get hold of these days even the show’s writer suggests you watch it on YouTube, though personally I think you lose something with all the stops and starts. If you can get hold of a DVD (LoveFilm has it, I don’t know about Netflix) watch it without pausing, rewinding, or otherwise taking advantage of the fact it’s a DVD. If you want to really relive the experience, watch it at 21:25, the original time of broadcast. It’s the 18th anniversary tonight.

Have you done so?

Good.

Are you going to sleep tonight?

I didn’t think so.

But why does it work? Well, if you’re British you’ll understand the kind of weight Michael Parkinson brings to the proceedings. If you’re American, imagine it presented by Oprah Winfrey. They’ve both interviewed Tom Cruise, after all.

Add to this the presence of well known presenters Sarah Greene and Mike Smith, married couple, and comedian Craig Charles (in his Red Dwarf heyday). Bear in mind that all those psychic shows you see now, like ‘Most Haunted’ and ‘Paranormal Investigation: Live’, didn’t exist. That very few people had satellite or cable television and thus no ‘info’ button to explain the premise of the show to them. That since it didn’t start on the hour many people missed those all important writers credits in the first few minutes.

It’s not all good casting and serendipity, of course.

“I felt someone all over me.”

In the first clip claiming to offer evidence of the ghost, you’ll note that the banging of the pipes doesn’t start until one of the girls leaves the room. For the first hour of the show the majority of phenomena can be explained as the actions of one girl or the other (usually Suzanne). There’s some false scares and a lot of larking about amongst the crew, as you’d expect from a live broadcast. Parkinson explains that other shows will come on later and Ghostwatch will offer updates between them until midnight. Except… at the hour mark the show is still running.

“Do you think Mr Pipes wants to hurt you?” “I think he wants to hurt everyone. I think he wants to do bad things.”

It’s around this point that Suzanne is caught fabricating phenomena. Parkinson becomes thoroughly convinced of the hoax while Dr Pascoe tries to explain Suzanne’s behaviour away. Dr Sylvestri (had the Americans done something to offend us recently? That’s the only explanation for such a dud performance in an otherwise sterling show), our out-and-out sceptic, has a field day with it. Meanwhile, even the most unobservant audience member has probably seen Pipes at least once. He’s actually appeared four times now.

“We thought you’d leave us. All we were is noises to you.”

The non-plot ghost stories told by audience members and the taped interviews (and even Sarah Greene’s own) are all true. Sadly, we don’t get to see as many as we’d like because Pipes strikes. The ghost is literally in the machine. Callers are getting hysterical, Parkinson has been wrong footed, and Suzanne is in a trance. Parkinson informs the viewers the next show will be late, as too much is happening.

“We have to stay. Pipes says we have to stay.”

There are three more sightings of Pipes between now and the end of the show (four if you’re being picky, but two are so close I count them together). The ‘onion skin’ element of the haunting is revealed through phone calls. The phenomena in the house extend to bangings, breakings, and Pipes speaking through Suzanne. Even the camera man gets a glimpse of him. Parkinson’s scepticism dissolves, Dr Pascoe looks increasingly distraught, Mike interrupts repeatedly as his concern for Sarah reaches desperate levels, and Craig and the outside crew have no clue there’s anything going on. Anarchy reigns.

“What big eyes you have. What big eyes you have.”

And then all is calm. And then it’s not.

“It’s in the Machine.”

And then it gets worse.

What makes Ghostwatch work so well, I believe, are the unacknowledged appearances of Pipes. The “did you see him? did I see him?” element. That’s what gives theatrical ghost stories an edge over the literary (if you want to see a genuinely theatrical ghost story, get yourself to London and see Ghost Stories. Thank me later). By giving the audience glimpses the characters are denied Ghostwatch ramps up the tension without dissolving the suspension of disbelief.

The phenomena reported and seen can all be tied back to real world hauntings such as the Enfield Poltergeist. Circular patches of liquid, banging sounds, crude images and words, scratches, temperature changes, smells, even the tying up of phone lines…Ghostwatch hits all of them. It’s this level of research that makes it all the more believable. Unlike certain horror films, the more a viewer knows about the subject the more frightening the show become.

As well as the straight forward haunting there’s a strong sexual theme running through the show. Poltergeist activity commonly focuses on pubescent girls, making it somewhat inevitable, but this is deliberately added to with the stories of Mother Seddons taking in the babies of unwed girls, of Raymond Tunstall sexually assaulting children, and Pam Early’s experience in the glory hole. “I felt someone all over me,” she says, and you know from her tone that it wasn’t just the physical presence that was intimidating. Glory hole is, of course, a perfectly common phrase all over England used to describe the cupboard under the stairs. However, it can also mean a hole in the wall of a public toilet cubicle, made for purposes you can probably work out for yourself. Is the entendre intentional? Well, probably not, but it does add another layer to the sexual imagery.

Ghostwatch has its faults, of course. The aforementioned Dr Sylvestri is so over the top I want to apologise on his behalf to any Americans watching it. Some of the acting (especially the children’s) is decidedly ropey, though as the story progresses you notice it less and less, and a lot of viewers find the ending a bit too much.

The show has an almost mythic status in British television history. Rumours such as Sarah Greene exhorting her child-viewers to watch in during Going Live (disproved by the Ghost Watch: Behind the Curtain blog ) give the show a touch of the conspiracy theory about it, though BBC never tried to pretend it was real. Even the pre-programme trail refers to it as a ‘film’ and the presenters as ‘stars’. It’s credited as the first television show to give viewers Post Traumatic Stress.

The BBC have never reshown Ghostwatch. Shortly after its original showing, a teenager committed suicide. His parents blamed the show for his death. Though the BBC take no responsibility for his death, out of tack they have opted not to show it again. It’s a shame, but a reasonable decision.

Ghostwatch was the first film to ever really scare me. Not ‘make me jump, not ‘gross me out’, but to genuinely, seriously scare me. When you place ghosts amongst other supernatural entities they have a massive advantage. Even the toughest vampire with stagger back when hit with a chair, but a ghost can be everywhere and anywhere, untouchable but all too able to touch you. Even through your TV screen.

And make you scared of your own curtains.

“Did you believe the story of Mother Seddons? Did you? Fee Fi Fo Fum.”

‘The Orphanage’ review

[written by reviewer and writer, Harry Markov]

The Orphanage (El Orfanato) is a 2007 Spanish horror film, which I overlooked, based on the fact that its choice to scare is an orphanage, which automatically means ghastly children. Personally, I have tired of demonic children. Yes, Samara (The Ring) was delightfully terrifying, but I can’t say the same about other horror movies such as Dark Water and The Antichrist. However, Mark assured me it was well worth my time and gave it a shot.

Now, what The Orphanage accomplishes is to create a truly atmospheric movie. All recent US attempts at tales of haunting pale compared to The Orphanage. The movie works to create a sense of setting, present compelling characters for me to care about and avoid the cheap scares, such as constant barrages of screeching noises, sudden bursts of movement, screaming and gore. No, the scare here creeps in, much like frost. It’s a descent into grief-induced madness and the results of human wickedness.

The plot follows Laura (Belen Rueda), a woman who returns home, to an orphanage with plans to restore it into a home for disabled children. The days of preparation function as an introduction to Laura’s life, her interaction with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and son Simon (Roger Princep), the concerns she harbors for Simon’s constant use of imaginary friends as a coping mechanism, her dedication as a mother and her altruism. However, it’s not long until a mysterious woman appears and Simon befriends six more children, who, this time, are supposedly real, when things go wrong. On the day of the opening, Simon disappears after a fight with Laura and from here on the movie follows Laura’s desperate search for her son, not to mention unveiling all of the secrets surrounding the orphanage.

What utterly captivated me is how whole The Orphanage is. There is nothing in excess. Every frame, every scene, every item that passes in front of the lens plays a part later on and I’d say that this is a movie for people with a long attention span. The woman with the faked identity, the new game Simon and Laura played, a small brooch and even fallen pipes are of importance as the end nears and all these elements swarm together into an intricate puzzle, which paints a very tragic chain of events.

If I’m to discuss the plot any further, spoilers will be revealed; a big disservice to all potential viewers. Instead, I will move on to the actors’ performances. Rueda’s acting is intense and overpowering. I didn’t just watch a desperate and haunted woman reach the end of her strength, her resources to find her son even after nine months, her sanity. I wanted to help her push through it all. Her acting is all-consuming, raw and believable. Cayo felt stiff and two dimensional, but his role was limited in the first place. Princep is convincing as a sweet and emotional boy, who spends a lot of his time in his own world, which more or less leads him to his death. The surprise for me was Geraldine Chaplin, who plays the medium Aurora. It’s a brief appearance, but the scenes with her séance are some of the more memorable and hair-raising ones.

I’ll conclude with just how unusual this movie is. First, the orphanage itself was never shown as negative, gloomy or foreboding. In fact, to Laura this was home, as shown in the movie’s opening. For Laura, the orphanage is a return to her past as well as a promise for a new beginning. Second, the haunting transcends the characteristic ‘a few days to a few weeks’ time frame. I’m talking about nine months of subtle accumulation of events, which also doubles as the deconstruction of Laura’s psyche. Third, the ending is more than bitter, but sweet in its own way as well.

The Orphanage may not have hostile ghosts erupting into violent acts of bizarre property damage and its ghosts may seem passive, but director Juan Bayona and Fernando Velazquez (the man behind the soundtrack) know how to keep the viewers on the edge of their seats.

‘The Winter Ghosts’ review

[written by writer, reviewer and blogger, Liz de Jager]

Kate Mosse’s writing really does cross genres, managing to be both literary, beautiful, eerie and haunting.

In both her previous novels, Labyrinth and Sepulchre, there had been underlying hints of the paranormal/supernatural.  But what worked so well for me in these novels is how restrained these elements were – they were never in your face or over the top. And that, on a personal level, is something I could get behind.  Yes, there  is a place and time for in your face howling demons, but my type of ghost or horror story is a lot more subtle.

Ms. Mosse has subsequently given us The Winter Ghosts which is an expansion on her The Cave short story she wrote for Quick Reads and is therefore not a full sized novel but nevertheless a fully contained, albeit brief story.

Here then is the write-up:

From the bestselling author of LABYRINTH and SEPULCHRE – a compelling story of ghosts and remembrance. Illustrated throughout by Brian Gallagher. The Great War took much more than lives. It robbed a generation of friends, lovers and futures. In Freddie Watson’s case, it took his beloved brother and, at times, his peace of mind. In the winter of 1928, still seeking resolution, Freddie is travelling through the French Pyrenees. During a snowstorm, his car spins off the mountain road. He stumbles through woods, emerging in a tiny village. There he meets Fabrissa, a beautiful woman also mourning a lost generation. Over the course of one night, Fabrissa and Freddie share their stories. By the time dawn breaks, he will have stumbled across a tragic mystery that goes back through the centuries. By turns thrilling, poignant and haunting, this is a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage. THE WINTER GHOSTS is a gorgeous illustrated novel inspired by The Cave, Kate Mosse’s short story written for the Quick Reads Initiative for adult emergent readers.

Ms. Mosse’s skill lays in placing the reader within her setting, which is important in any kind of spooky/horror/genre novel. When Freddie meets Fabrissa and they settle in to talk about what has gone before, your campfire-gene immediately responds to that. You want somewhere warm and snug to sit quietly and listen to this conversation. Freddie is a deeply thoughtful and unhappy person, haunted by the loss of his brother and his own distancing of himself from friends and family. His isolation leaves him vulnerable and sensitive, allowing Freddie to unwittingly perhaps, pick up on the sensations of long past memories of death, war and destruction in this very old haunted area.

The setting of the winter fete in the old town of Nulle where Freddie and Fabrissa meet is finely detailed and redolent of those beautiful but stark mountain villages you see in old photographs. Wrapped in Cathar history, Fabrissa’s story leads Freddie to realise that maybe he’s not quite where he seems to be and that maybe he has travelled further than he intended to seek solace.

The Winter Ghosts is a beautifully written novel with rich characterisations that contrast with the eeriness of the settings and the stories told. It is not the usual in your face ghost story that we’ve become so inured to, but more a slow acclimatisation and an awakening of the senses, that something is just not right…if only you can figure it out, you just may make it.

Dancing with the Dead: Ghosts in “The Graveyard Book”

[written by author, Louise Morgan]

That Neil Gaiman has written a book for children called The Graveyard Book should come as no surprise. His previous offerings for young readers have included a story which sees a young girl visit a parallel world where people have buttons for eyes (Coraline) and a book in which a family are driven from their home by rambunctious wolves (The Wolves In The Walls), so it’s fair to say that Gaiman is becoming a master of the mini-macabre.

The Graveyard Book opens at night, with a sleeping family–and their brutal murder at the hands of an all-too-real assailant. One of the family, however, escapes: the young son, barely even a toddler, who finds his way out of the house and through the dark to the nearby graveyard. And who should he find waiting for him but a cast of ghostly characters who will become his new family; who will protect, guide and teach him about the world–and more importantly, about life. After all, who knows more about living than someone who has already done all of theirs?

Gaiman was greatly influenced by The Jungle Book in writing this (even the title alludes to it) and, like the world Kipling created for Mowgli, little Bod (full name: Nobody Owens) is furnished with a wealth of friends and neighbours in his new home in the graveyard–from the homely and well-meaning ghosts of Mr and Mrs Owens who never had a child of their own and become his surrogate parents, to the tricky Liza Hempstock who only wants a gravestone of her own.

The mastery of The Graveyard Book is not in its plot, which follows Bod’s adventures at key points in his journey from infant to adult, nor in the sheer Gothic joy of the graveyard–but in the ghosts themselves. Gaiman knows full well that no two ghosts are the same, just as the people they once were differed. He infuses them with (ironically) life, and energy; wisdom and stubbornness, pity and pathos. Even from the comfort of the graveyard, the echoes of the world outside, the world of the living, seep inside the gates: on the night of Bod’s arrival, the sedate and settled ghosts of the cemetery contrast with the sudden appearance of the shocked ghost of Bod’s newly-dead mother as she appeals to the others to protect her son–a violent death begetting a violent-seeming apparition.

Bod is a boy between the two worlds, between the living and the dead, able to see (rather like Gaiman himself, perhaps) the things that others miss. And it is when the two worlds converge that The Graveyard Book really soars: with the “Macabray”, for instance, the Danse Macabre between the living and the dead–and at the centre of it all, the Lady on the Grey, sinister and smiling at once; one part Gaiman’s own Death of the Endless to one part Terry Pratchett’s mounted Grim Reaper mixed with something strange and new.

Not that being between the two worlds is easy, of course. Bod outgrows his first playmates, all of whom are stranded as children forever. Nor can it be straightforward trying to make friends in a world that you don’t perhaps fully understand–like school, as Bod discovers. While this could be true of a hundred, a thousand, other books about childhood, by invoking ghosts and spectres with which to people his narrative, Gaiman exaggerates the challenges of childhood and makes the real world, the adult world, the living world which must be negotiated even more alien to our hero.

There is, of course, much more to The Graveyard Book than just its ghosts. There are the humans who tumble in and out of Bod’s life; the deliciously awful ghouls who seek to carry him off; the creepy, whispering menace that lurks in the shadows and waits for its master; and Silas–the lonely figure who protects Bod from the corporeal dangers of the world.

With its graveyard that is all things to Bod: shelter, school, playground and battlefield, the message of the book is clear. Ghosts are not the enemy: the living have little to fear from the dead. The dead are dead, and as Silas tells Bod: “they are, for the most part, done with the world”. It is the living who pose the greatest threat to Bod as he grows: the man who killed his family, the school bullies, policemen, unscrupulous antiques dealers… the list goes on.

The Graveyard Book is, in so many ways, a love song to graveyards and their ghosts, separated from the living but not so different from them after all. Midway through the book, Bod is told: “You’re alive Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.” and it is not the living who help him realise this, but the dead.

Through the graveyard–the Egyptian Walk and the unhallowed ground, the Owenses, the Lady on the Grey, the formidable Mother Slaughter and even Silas–through the dead, the ghosts, Gaiman asks us to consider what it really means to be alive… and then, simply, quietly, to go out and live.

Designed by the Devil & Powered by the Dead: The World of Thir13en Ghosts

[written by author, Louise Morgan]

I’m going to let you in on a secret. I hate titles with numbers in them. Not “normal” numbers–you know, Twelve Angry Men, The Thirty-Nine Steps–but titles which feel the need to try and incorporate numbers within the text. Se7en makes my blood boil. Thir13en Ghosts, as you can imagine, should make me very cross indeed.

13 Ghosts, as we’ll call it for the sake of my sanity, if nothing else, is one of two recent remakes of Castle & White films–the other being The House on Haunted Hill. Today, Robb White is best known for his fiction, including books like Deathwatch, while William Castle, a prolific director and producer of B-movies with a near-visionary eye for a gimmick, became the inspiration for Dark Castle Entertainment–originally intended to remake Castle’s own films.

Castle’s pictures were a nightmare for cinema owners: his ambitious and complex marketing tools included hearses parked outside the theatres and nurses stationed at the doors in case patrons should suffer fright-induced heart attacks (Macabre), buzzers attached to seats (The Tingler), skeletons flying over the audience on wires (The House on Haunted Hill) and “fright breaks” (Homicidal). The original Thirteen Ghosts was supposedly filmed in “Illusion-O” and watched through a special two-tone ghost viewer/remover which allowed the audience to “remove” the tinted ghosts superimposed over the film should they find them too disturbing.

Of course the ghosts weren’t disturbing–not to our jaded and cynical eyes, anyway. After all, it was 1960. Another world.

And that’s probably why, come the millennium, the time was ripe for some of Castle’s movies to be remade. There’s a vein of similarity between the new 13 Ghosts and House on Haunted Hill–unsurprisingly, given the same creative team on the originals, and the same production company remaking them–but 13 Ghosts is the more interesting of the two.

The plot deviates slightly from that of the original: here, widower Arthur is contacted by a lawyer and told that his uncle Cyrus has left him a house. However, this is not any old house, and dear old Uncle Cyrus has more than a few skeletons in his closet.

Cyrus was a collector of ghosts, and the house was built as their prison. Arthur’s new family home comes with sitting tenants: twelve of them.

And here’s the thing about this film. It’s deeply flawed, but this dirty dozen includes some of the most interesting, memorable ghosts I’ve seen. What they lack in scares, they make up for in sheer imagination and design. Known by nicknames including “The Torn Prince”, “The Juggernaut”, “The Torso” and “The Bound Woman” collectively they form the Black Zodiac. They are solid, meaty ghosts with a real physical presence–and yet they can only be seen by the human characters through special glasses (a clever in-film update of Castle’s “Illusion-O”). Nor are they simply “ghosts”–each of them has a complete backstory which, while it does not appear in the film, informs their look and behaviour. Take the Torn Princess: a once-beautiful young woman with low self-esteem who mutilated herself trying to perform plastic surgery on her own face. She killed herself by slashing her body with a butcher’s knife in the bath, and so her ghost, naked and wet, wanders the halls clutching her knife, surrounded by blood.

One of the most visually striking of the ghosts is the Jackal: a former asylum inmate who still wears his straightjacket and a shattered metal cage around his head, his violent nature has only been exacerbated by the horror of his death and imprisonment in Cyrus’s cellar. No wonder he is described by psychic Dennis (Matthew Lillard in scenery-chewing mode) as “the Charlie Manson of ghosts”. And if you’re looking for my personal favourite, that would be the Torn Prince: the 1950s high-school letterman who developed a bad case of road rash and never got to take up that college baseball scholarship.

They may not be the subtlest of ghosts, and the film may not be the cleverest of haunted house movies, but something of the fun B-movie spirit of Castle’s pictures remains. The house which acts as the setting for the story: the ghosts’ prison (and which is still more than it seems) is a piece of art–a mix of shining glass and clever CG; its shifting form occasionally reminiscent of Cube. However, it is not the star of the show: that role is reserved for the dozen lunatics–dead, deranged and downright dangerous–hiding in plain sight within.

In Portugal – A real life ghost story

[written by author, Mark West]

I am 41 years old, which is certainly old enough to know better. Also, in keeping with people my age, I’ve lost relatives who, given the option, I’m sure would have come back to check up on me from time to time (thereby, effectively, haunting me). I also have a five year old son who is starting to develop a perfectly rational fear of the dark and, as I keep reassuring him, “there’s nothing there.”

Really?

I love ghost stories and have done since I was a kid. To me, there wasn’t much better – apart from eating Space Dust whilst I watched a girl called Amanda play at lunchtime – when I was nine or ten than losing myself in a Three Investigator book, or a Peter Haining or Mary Danby collection. I formed ghost hunting groups with friends (one day, I might tell you about the ghost at Blue Bridge, who was said to be Old Nick himself), I read as much as I could and I scared myself silly with real-life ghost books from the library. Happy days.

I have had three brushes with what I think are perhaps most accurately described as unidentified phenomena. One was with my childhood friend Nick and he still talks about the incident, over thirty years later. Two were with my friend Craig – one was an unidentified flying object, one was about ghosts.

In 1989, he & I went on holiday to Portugal. He worked for a travel company, we got a reduced rate, we had a great time. Our hotel was a lovely place, run by a bear of an Englishman, with local staff. Beyond the restaurant/club house, there was a patio area, then two blocks of apartments – we were on the ground floor of the first, facing back towards the house. We got on well with fellow guests, there was a good atmosphere in general, it was a cracking holiday.

Towards the end of the week, after having sworn off drink for a few days (we were twenty and didn’t realise that the shots were doubles), we’d had a meal and enjoyed the evening in the club and gone back to our room. It wasn’t a big room – through the front door, the bathroom opened off the hall, then the main room had twin beds, patio doors (which faced out towards the main house) and built in wardrobes across from them (against the back of the bathroom wall). I slept in the bed nearest the wardrobes, Craig had the bed by the window.

On this particular night, nothing spectacular had happened. We had a chat for a while, then went to sleep and that was it.

I woke up and just knew it was the middle of the night, though it wasn’t particularly dark (we tended to keep the curtains open). As my eyes got accustomed to the light, I was very surprised to see someone crouching down beside the bed, staring at me. My over-riding memory of it now is that it looked like one of the guards out of the “Flash Gordon” film – a monks habit, with the hood drawn up and some kind of gas mask/breathing apparatus obscuring the face. I don’t remember reacting to this interloper, but watched as he stood up and walked carefully around my bed and along the back wall. As the thing reached the end of Craig’s bed (with me now up on one elbow, watching it go), Craig sat bolt upright in bed (and that startled me more than my ghost had).

“What time is it?”

I fumbled for my watch. “Ten past three.”

“Okay,” he said and laid back down. I couldn’t see my ghost any more, so I too laid down and went back to sleep.

The next morning, he was up bright and early and went to reception to make a call. When he got back, he explained that he’d wanted to ring his parents, as he was really worried. I asked why. He explained that he’d woken up that night to see two people sitting on the end of his bed, watching him. His first thought was that it must be his parents, checking that he was okay, but when he rang home, they were fine and healthy (and still are, thankfully, to this day).

As we sat there, on our beds in the early morning Portugese sunshine, I told him about the thing that I’d seen. As we talked, it came to me that maybe my ghost had been moving slowly because he was threading his way between things I couldn’t see, perhaps guests at a party. Guests that might, conceivably, be sitting at the end of Craig’s bed saying “look at that, a ghost person in bed.”

Completely stumped as to what was going on, but convinced the party angle was the one to go for, we trooped off to reception (I don’t know that we expected to find out that a party had been going on years before, until a fire broke out and killed everyone, but it would have been a start). The girl behind the counter was very nice, we’d spoken in the past and even tried to learn a few words of Portugese with her. Haltingly, we explained ourselves.

“We were just wondering if there’d been a party in our room.” We gave our room number and she went to check the pigeon hole and came back with our passports. “No, we’re in there, we just wondered if there’d been a party in there before.”

She looked at us and frowned. So we told her the story. About halfway through, she started to hyperventilate. Towards the end, she looked genuinely upset. When we got to the time part, she was very agitated. So much so that she went to get the manager’s wife (a fearsome, if friendly, lady – when I got sunstroke just after arriving, she made sure that I got grilled chicken for dinner to help me, even though it wasn’t on the menu). We re-told our story, conscious of the poor receptionist who was, by now, sitting in the backroom being comforted by her colleagues.

The manager’s wife listened to our story, looking at us to make sure we weren’t pulling her leg. She tried the obvious – were monks on my mind, there was a brand of drink that had as its logo a man in a cape, all manner of stuff – and realised that our story wasn’t going to change. She took us to one side and said, “If you promise not to mention this again, whilst you’re here, you can have free meals for the rest of your stay.”

Did my years of wanting to be a ghost-hunter kick in? Was my drive to discover the paranormal world enough that I would refuse? No, I’m now ashamed to admit that Craig & I thought with our bellies and went for the free meal option.

So, story ended right? We saw something we couldn’t explain, we freaked out a receptionist (who might have been prone to over-react, who knows?) and we were then offered hush money. I’d love to report that we experienced more phenomena but we didn’t – I was wary about being in the room on my own for the duration of our stay, but neither of us ever saw anything untoward in that room again.

It was all finished, except for something we overhead that night at dinner. Sharing our floor in the block were ex-employees of BOAC. Friendly, chatty and very funny, we got on well with them (bearing in mind they were perhaps fifty years older than us) and our little table was next to the large one they occupied.

Obviously, part of our deal was to tell no-one and we adhered to that. So imagine our surprise when the BOAC table started to talk about their previous night. Every one of them had woken up – either from hearing something or through a bad dream – and all of them were tired. We couldn’t resist and leaned back.

“What time was this then?” we asked.

There was general murmuring from the table, as people thought back about it.

So what time did five or six couples – a total of seven separate rooms – all wake up, on the same night, when nothing untoward was happening?

“Ten past three,” they said.

And you think you have scary children…

For tonight it is the wonderful French ghost story:

I highly recommend this one – full of atmosphere and very chilling!

An Unusual Ghost Story: ‘The Fountain’

[written by author, Mana Hotton]

I am a very spiritual person by nature. I believe in the power of the human mind. Our every thought, our every feeling, from ‘what do I want for supper tonight?’ to ‘ouch, I just stubbed my toe’ is a series of electrical charges running up and down our nervous system like lightning in a bottle. There are people in life where just being in the same room with them winds you up or brings you down. We normally label it charisma. You can walk into a place and feel at peace or scared. It’s all about the energy. If you have energy that’s strong enough, it can leave an impression, like the negative of a photograph. We can wave it away with science now if you want, but it’s that afterimage that we call “ghosts”.

As a child, I was always seeing ghosts, or having prophetic dreams, or other such things that freaked out my superstitious Grandmother, among my other family members. That said, I don’t believe that spirituality really has anything to do with our human fascination with ghost stories. Ghost stories fascinate so many of us for so many different reasons, but most ghosts stories in media share a common theme, and I believe it’s that theme that inspires our interest. Spirits become for us not only the answer to the question “What comes after this life?,” but more importantly the question of “Will I be remembered?”.

The plotline of almost any ghost story has an aspect of it. Ghost is about a man dying, but staying to protect his lover and avenge his murder. Flatliners is about a group try to study the afterlife and bringing back their personal demons. Sixth Sense is about a boy learning why the ghosts come to him, ultimately to solve their problems so they can rest. The Ring, The Grudge, and so many other films like them, are about getting justice and revenge. The common thread, the common theme, is justice, redemption, setting things right. They aren’t about the dead as much as they are about wish-fulfillment. In that way, that wish fulfillment, highlights the fact that people can be haunted by memories the way their character avatars get haunted by spirits. No movie, I think, plays that as poignantly as The Fountain, with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz.

The Fountain is a movie with three plots set in three different time periods. The oldest plot is about Tomas, a Conquistador searching for the Tree of Life for his Queen Isabel, who is under siege. The “present day” plot is about Dr. Tommy, an oncologist researching desperately searching for a cure to the same type of cancer his wife, Izzy, has. The third shows a biosphere space ship travelling to a nebula with Tom and a tree, whom he talks to, with the ‘ghost’ of Izzy haunting him. Haunting or hunting, one way or another, each version of Tom, is ever searching for the secret of life over death, while Izzy or Isabel seeks simply life.

It’s the search for redemption, to make the wrong things right, be they in war, or against disease, or personal failure, that drives the main male character in each of the plots. The female protagonist in each of the plots doesn’t seek to run from but toward the inevitability of the end. A few arc words in the movie, spoken over and over, “Death is the road to awe,”. It becomes the ultimate message. Death as creation. However, it’s also that the past can haunt us so much that no matter how long we live or how far we go to avoid it, it will make itself known until we put everything right within ourselves.

In the strictest sense, the The Fountain isn’t a traditional ghost story. However, since it shares with traditional ghost stories that theme of the near-eternal search for redemption until all the wrong things are made right, it makes you forget that it’s not. It may not, in essence, but about a haunting, but the effect is that it haunts you far beyond. You may need to watch it twice or three times to catch all the subtly of it, but each time you are brought closer to closure and, perhaps, closer to awe.

‘The Booth’ review

[written by author, editor and reviewer, Robert Hood]

With a running time of just over 70 minutes, The Booth is a small J-Horror gem — though without “dead wet girls” or any of the other post-Ring stereotypes. Set almost entirely inside an old, disused radio broadcast studio, it uses its closed environment and bleak settings to full advantage, focusing attention not on startling (or otherwise) SFX, but on the main character and his struggle with guilt. As a ghost story, it has the occasional scare, but more to the point it is an unsettling supernatural drama that uses its fantasy elements to focus our attention on the emotional realities it explores rather than to overwhelm our imaginations through violence or creepy spectacle. The one time it does seem to draw on the “spectral woman” trope, it ends up undermining our expectations to good, and somehow even more creepy, effect.

Shogo (Ryuta Sato) is a personable but emotionally selfish and arrogant DJ, host of a late-night call-in radio program called “Love Lines”. On this particular night the show has been moved to a disused studio — a studio with a reputation (it turns out) for being haunted. A DJ from decades before had hanged himself in the studio — in an incident that begins the film and sets the groundwork for what is to come — though that is not to say the dead man is responsible for the haunting. Now, in the midst of his broadcast, Shogo finds himself having flashes of memory, memory of culpable behaviour — and being interrupted by odd noises and a female voice saying: “Liar!” As callers ring in to tell him embarrassing or humiliating things that have been said to them by loved ones (the show’s theme for the night), and he dishes out somewhat fatuous advice in response, we become aware that one way or another all the examples of humiliating put-downs or ill-treatment that he hears can be laid at his own door. It all seems to be about him. Worse, lying behind it all is the possibility that he has been responsible for the death of a female co-worker. As his fear and guilt grows, Shogo begins to face the reality that his past may be catching up with him in more ways than one …

The Booth is tightly and elegantly written, with back-story well integrated into on-screen events, and perfectly structured to draw us inexorably through the experience. Ryuto Sato is engaging as Shogo, skirting around the edge of the “arrogant star” stereotype without ever becoming a caricature or making him hopelessly unsympathetic. As we learn more about Shogo’s past behaviour, we find ourselves approving of him less and less, but it is always against a background of personability set up in the initial scenes — so we “stay” with him during his dilemma. Meanwhile, director Nakamura proves expert at deflecting us, of leading us artfully astray. Truth becomes elastic, and Shogo’s interpretation of events more and more subjective, reflecting his basic self-loathing. In the end, reality becomes so internalised that there is really only one path open for the emotionally bankrupt DJ to take …

In a not-insignificant way, the power of the film lies in the fact that we are never quite sure who or what is haunting the studio. In fact, it is as though it is not haunted in the ordinary sense at all, but rather draws to the surface the ghosts that those entering it bring with them.