Tag: Spooky

Odd, this week’s writing prompt.

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The Lykewake Dirge.

Chorus: This ae neet, this ae neet

                Every neet and all

                Fire and fleet and candleleet

                And Christ receive thy soul….

We were learning odd old songs last night at choir, appropriate to the season.

Verse:    When thou from heme away art part.

                Every neet and all,

                To Whinny moor thou comst at last.

                 And Christ receive thy soul.

The song talks about if you ever gave someone shoes and hose, you can sit down and put them on, but if you didn’t the ‘whins’ (winds?) shall pick your bare bones. It goes on along these thoughts. The figures in it, carrying a dead body, proceed from Whinny Moor, to Brig o’ Dread at last.

If you gave Meat and Drink to anyone the fires of Purgatory won’t touch you, but if you have naught, the fire will burn you to your bare bones.

Thus this old Yorkshire Dirge gives it’s message that if you treat people well and with kindness you shall be saved from the fires of Purgatory, but if you were mean spirited, that is your loss.

It’s interesting to find out about songs like this in our modern age. Spooky and frightening images of people striding out across a dark, windswept moor. High above towns and cities. Perhaps men wrapped in dark clothes and cowled or hooded cloaks….

Carrying a body to its last resting place? Maybe a bog grave where the body will be preserved in acid peat. Their skin turning to leather over the centuries. Held in a peaty stasis whilst their life’s works are weighed in the balance. Bones turning brown and black.

The cloaked figures striding off into the distance, like figures in the latter day ‘Traitors’ TV programme.

Next week we will be learning Carols, ready for Christmas……..

              

        

              

Summerhouse

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Could only find a shed in free pictures…

This is my second short story on a spooky theme to be read out with my writers group at Halloween x

I’ve been watching the summerhouse for a few days. I thought I saw someone inside it. I can see it from the kitchen window, the one on the side of the house, a small square piece of glass. 

It overlooks the main garden and is where I have my cctv camera. Last night the camera beeped. I looked at the recording, but it was just a moth, fluttering in front of the camera. 

This morning I went out to look at the Summerhouse, but it was still padlocked, the windows are OK and apart from some ivy growing up the side everything seems fine. 

I’m loathe to walk in the garden. I have to use a stick and I’m a bit unsteady on my feet. There’s a wobbly step to negotiate and it makes me nervous. 

Anyway that was a few weeks ago. I’ve not seen anything recently. But the cctv has been quiet, apart from recording falling leaves. It’s almost autumn and the nights are getting colder. 

I still look out at the summerhouse, it’s more visible now the branches are losing their firey burden. Sometimes I see shadows, but I think it’s the way the sunlight filters through the undergrowth. 

2am, the milkman just delivered my milk, he always moves my bin to put it over the gate. It’s too late to go out now and it’s a bit frosty so I’ll wait till morning. 

I woke up a few minutes ago, there was another noise, I think the bin was moved again? It sits in front of my gate which has the basket for the milk bottles on the back… I’m not going out…. 

Now it’s morning. The milk was still there – gate still padlocked – but could someone have climbed over? 

I put my shoes on. It’s frosty out here 

I’m recording this on my phone – I want to take photos if I need to. Don’t trip over, I’ve got my walking stick…. I should be OK…. 

There IS something in the summerhouse! 

A dark shape. I can see eyes glinting in the dawn light. My chest feels tight, my pulse is racing. What the HELL IS THAT? 

Mrs Smiths phone was found by her corpse Sir. She seems to have come out looking for something or someone. She seems to have had a seizure, could be hypothermia? The Summerhouse is empty and there is no sign of forced entry. The backdoor of her house was locked from the outside we think, she had the key. The death was recorded as unexplained

Moonlight

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A short story.

I joined a writing group recently and this is one of my first stories.

Moonlight 

In the past the shadow of Earth would gradually spread across the Moon. Time for mayhem, time for fear. 

But these days people don’t consider the changes that could happen during full moons, or even more so – a lunar eclipse. 

Blood red Moon due. The TV news channels were full of it. The weather man explained when you could see it. Start at 2.32am, mid eclipse 4.17am, and the end at 6.23am. If there was a clear sky people would go out and look. In the dark of the night they would dress up warmly ad try and watch the marvellous sky borne event. 

But in the dark things were scampering, hiding close by, hidden in trees and bushes and tall grassland. Things that changed at the full moon, ready to capture and ensnare. The blackness of night was increased during the full eclipse, when the brilliant moon was dimmed. 

It was 3am and she decided to view this lunar delight. A flask of tea, a warm coat and scarf. Strong shoes to stop her turning an ankle in the tussocky grass….. A good torch with new batteries. Out of the back door-

Out the gate and into the alleyway…. She moved through the misty air. Feet slipping on the frosty ground. 

Down the path into the feild edges. She was watching where her feet fell but chanced a quick glance up. The moon was pinkish, a darker shadow on one side.

As she walked she heard shuffling sounds in the grass. But she took no notice, probably a cat? Out into the main feild. 

Quietness. The eclipse was doing it’s thing, gradually reddening. A blush on the lunar surface. Moonlight but crimson. Like blood.

She sat on a wooden bench and poured herself a cup of tea, strong no sugar. Sipping it she tried to sit comfortably, head up, neck cranking to get a good view through the entangled tree branches. SNAP! atwig crunched. Turning her she saw a glimpse. A Werewolfs smile….. 

(I’m going to read this out at a local event. Wish me luck!)

Esther Chiltons weekly prompt “Halloween”?

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Halloween in the Southern Hemisphere?
It’s getting sunnier in the global south. Spring is in the air. Are there  spooky ghosts frolicking in the daffodils or their equivalent… The shadows are lifting. Witches must be wearing smart floral dresses… Vampires? No fruit bats. Werewolves. Or Tasmanian devils. Even dragons are different, wise and peaceful. But there are places that celebrate the day of the dead. So the question is how spooky is the South?

Eyeballing you

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I found a toy eyeball ball, a very bouncy ball that I must have bought years ago. I jazzed it up with a few gold stripes on its iris. Then I put it on top of my sequined makeup bag… I tried various filters to bring out the details. That’s the second photo. Again it’s just me playing with images to make something slightly spooky this time.

Muralling.

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I put months of work into the murals at the Leopard Hotel in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. I did around twelve, but then it closed down a few years ago and eventually burnt down. The shell of the building is still there.

I used to paint in the evenings after work and most of the time on my own, and the Arnold Bennett suite that I painted in was right at the back of the hotel. The room was sometimes quite spooky! You heard odd creaks and noises, but I never felt scared although the Leopard Hotel appeared in Britain’s Most Haunted. It was semi derelict upstairs and there had been plans to restore it. Painting there was a great experience.

Spooky Stonehenge

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I did a digital drawing of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plane ages ago and I’ve tried to add a misty, foggy, mysterious effect over the top of the original drawing. Because I drew it in layers, the image in the bottom layer shows the stones and this stayed in place so I could distort the upper two layers of black that I had added and then a blueish grey with a smudging tool. The overall effect is slightly spooky, I could imagine shadowy figures or spooky silhouettes detaching themselves from the stones and moving towards anyone visiting the ancient site. What ghosts of druids reside there?

Ghost stories….

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I couldn’t sleep last night and watched a few short adaptations of some M. R. James ghost stories, including one called the Mezzotint. The writer who adapted them is called Mike Gatiss and is well known for his involvement in the Sherlock series of detective mystery TV shows and other clever stories.

I realised that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story! Sounds strange but I think of it as a Christmas story and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside rather than the slight weirded out shudder I get from ghost stories at this time of year. But then I prefer a taut, spooky, tension building story any day to a horror film, all lumbering zombies and nightmarish vampires. The ones where people Always run upstairs towards the danger instead of out the front door and to the safety of the police station (I mean a British police station, no guns, no odd sheriff who arrests you instead of looking for the real culprit, no hidden secret). No I prefer the subtle horror of a tap that continues to drip even after the lead piping connecting it to the mains water has been severed by a hacksaw… Or the gradual encroachment of a garden full of roses with sharp thorns and a deadly scent that can envelope an unwary new tenant attempting to cut back the thorny undergrowth.

And why do they put on these spooky little horrors at this time of year? Is it the lengthening hours of dark, dank, cold, mist and fog? The snow falling so that tracks can be left but then fade before an investigation can find them in the morning? Subtle screams muffled by an unseasonably rising tide? Its like a box of dark chocolates, with Evil centres.

I am quite particular in what I prefer. No evil dead films. More sneaking spooks, less fangs, more clues.

The cat stared…

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Moira had noticed her cat kept staring up in a corner of the room. She could not see anything herself but she knew cats had better senses. Keener eyesight, a more acute sense of smell, hearing that was so much more able to notice small sounds.

Each night the cat would curl up to sleep, but then become alert, aware, interested in something. It would watch the ceiling for a few minutes, then close its eyes again and relax.

Moira started checking the time of each encounter with what was going on. Ten past eleven until seventeen minutes past. A precise time every night? Very strange.

Moira suspected that someone or something was playing games? She had friends that could do tricks, they had pranked her before, could it be them? But when she contacted them they denied any involvement.

It was on the eleventh day that she finally saw something. A drip of red running down the wall, slightly hidden by a picture. Could it be mould? Some old houses had problems with fungi? She decided to ring a builder if there was anymore problems the next night.

She sat down to watch TV the next evening. At precisely eleven ten pm the cat stretched and looked up. Then it did something new, it hissed! Moira looked up too, just as a disembodied foot pierced down through the ceiling. Slightly transparent, it paddled the air, not touching anything, floating, then simply vanished. The cat settled down. Moira didn’t!

Doodled Halloween costume.

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I decided to doodle a mask for Halloween 🦇, but it ended up being more of an extravaganza! Sharp and spikey with googly eyes…. The face has half a mask, half face, but with green lipstick and yellow contact lenses… I’ve never worn anything like this. It might be a laugh to make it up, but I haven’t got a clue how to create it!