Neil Spring's Blog - Posts Tagged "halloween"
GHOST HUNTERS: BORLEY RECTORY – THE MOST HAUNTED HOUSE IN ENGLAND
My Blog for Quercus yesterday about Borley Rectory:
On Halloween night this month, police will gather in an isolated hamlet on the Essex Suffolk border to turn away crowds of fascinated spectators.
The watchers will come in their droves and in nervous anticipation from miles away, all of them searching for the one thing that has always attracted strangers to these parts.
They will come looking for ghosts.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the construction of Borley Rectory, a rambling Victorian mansion that gained fame in 1929 as “the most haunted house in England,” when the Daily Mirror called in the famous ghost hunter and arch sceptic Harry Price, to investigate.
Price’s arrival at the Rectory on 12 June 1929 coincided with a range of unusual happenings – stones and mothballs were thrown, bells rang, a candlestick came hurtling down the stairs and a brick crashed through the verandah roof. The rector and his wife soon departed, leaving Price to write a book on the affair which fixated the nation: Borley Rectory – The Most Haunted House in England.
But was it quite right to describe the house as most haunted, or even haunted at all?
That is the question I have sought to examine in my debut novel THE GHOST HUNTERS, which is published later this month. This novel is certainly not a faithful retelling of Harry Price’s association with the house, which stood on a hill overlooking the windswept Essex marshes, but a fictional representation of what might have happened, based on historical reports and witness testimonies. I trawled newspaper archives, dug deep into Price’s private files, left no stone unturned to weave the most famous haunting of our age into a chilling historical novel.
Many will remember how the tale began. According to the legend of a Benedictine monastery built in 1362, a monk was in a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. Once their affair becomes public news, the monk is executed and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls.
Soon, stories about the spectral nun walking near the rectory started doing the rounds, as did tales of a phantom coach and horses, inexplicable footsteps, voices, touchings, smells, fires, movement of objects, written messages and poltergeist activity.
But what is it about that red-bricked monstrosity of a building that still keeps us talking about it after 150 years? Just a few months ago I met a lady who remembered visiting the place as a child. She, like many of the locals, still find something odd about Borley. As a local taxi man put it to me: “I genuinely think there is fear in the village, still -fear at whatever is up there.’
It’s a journey I have made often, retracing Harry Price’s footsteps. If you take the road from Sudbury towards Long Melford, about a mile before that town you’ll spot a turning – Rodbridge Corner; and if you take that turning, crossing an old disused railway line, you’ll come to Hall Lane. Here, taking the hill, you might glimpse the spire of Borley Church in the distance. In winter, it can appear a very austere place indeed.
An old friend who accompanied me to Borley revealed in confidence that he had heard strange noises as we approached the churchyard. In his words: “the sound of a coach and horses pounding the road.”
The odd thing was: we hadn’t seen any coach or horses. And when I mentioned this to an elderly woman living close to the site of the old Rectory, she became curiously serious and said quietly, ‘Yes, people do keep reporting that… But if strange things do still happen here, I’m hardly likely to tell you. Don’t expect anyone else here to discuss it, either.’
What’s interesting to me, isn’t what the story tells us about spirituality and life after death, but rather, what it tells us about the living. The era of Harry Price was a grieving nation, in some ways a desperate nation, that needed something to believe in. A pre war world as remote as Borley itself.
So come with me, if you will, back into the 1920s. An era where war injured servicemen stood in the cold and the fog on London streets selling bootlaces and copies of the Daily Worker; an era of longing and despair and a little hope.
It’s January 1929 and a renegade writer and researcher, has announced in the Times the gala opening of a new laboratory in South Kensington where spiritualist mediums will be put to the test. Everyone is speculating about its work, including a young woman recently returned from Paris. Sarah Grey. She is lost, without purpose, until she witnesses the marvels of the Laboratory – where the floors are made of cork, where wooden shutters keep rooms devoid of light, and where mediums are strapped into devices that resemble the electric chair.
She doesn’t know it yet, but Sarah Grey is destined to come face to face with arch sceptic, Harry Price. And her whole life is about to change…
The Ghost Hunters is published by Quercus on October 24th, you can pre-order your copy today at http://amzn.to/18am4OT
On Halloween night this month, police will gather in an isolated hamlet on the Essex Suffolk border to turn away crowds of fascinated spectators.
The watchers will come in their droves and in nervous anticipation from miles away, all of them searching for the one thing that has always attracted strangers to these parts.
They will come looking for ghosts.
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the construction of Borley Rectory, a rambling Victorian mansion that gained fame in 1929 as “the most haunted house in England,” when the Daily Mirror called in the famous ghost hunter and arch sceptic Harry Price, to investigate.
Price’s arrival at the Rectory on 12 June 1929 coincided with a range of unusual happenings – stones and mothballs were thrown, bells rang, a candlestick came hurtling down the stairs and a brick crashed through the verandah roof. The rector and his wife soon departed, leaving Price to write a book on the affair which fixated the nation: Borley Rectory – The Most Haunted House in England.
But was it quite right to describe the house as most haunted, or even haunted at all?
That is the question I have sought to examine in my debut novel THE GHOST HUNTERS, which is published later this month. This novel is certainly not a faithful retelling of Harry Price’s association with the house, which stood on a hill overlooking the windswept Essex marshes, but a fictional representation of what might have happened, based on historical reports and witness testimonies. I trawled newspaper archives, dug deep into Price’s private files, left no stone unturned to weave the most famous haunting of our age into a chilling historical novel.
Many will remember how the tale began. According to the legend of a Benedictine monastery built in 1362, a monk was in a relationship with a nun from a nearby convent. Once their affair becomes public news, the monk is executed and the nun bricked up alive in the convent walls.
Soon, stories about the spectral nun walking near the rectory started doing the rounds, as did tales of a phantom coach and horses, inexplicable footsteps, voices, touchings, smells, fires, movement of objects, written messages and poltergeist activity.
But what is it about that red-bricked monstrosity of a building that still keeps us talking about it after 150 years? Just a few months ago I met a lady who remembered visiting the place as a child. She, like many of the locals, still find something odd about Borley. As a local taxi man put it to me: “I genuinely think there is fear in the village, still -fear at whatever is up there.’
It’s a journey I have made often, retracing Harry Price’s footsteps. If you take the road from Sudbury towards Long Melford, about a mile before that town you’ll spot a turning – Rodbridge Corner; and if you take that turning, crossing an old disused railway line, you’ll come to Hall Lane. Here, taking the hill, you might glimpse the spire of Borley Church in the distance. In winter, it can appear a very austere place indeed.
An old friend who accompanied me to Borley revealed in confidence that he had heard strange noises as we approached the churchyard. In his words: “the sound of a coach and horses pounding the road.”
The odd thing was: we hadn’t seen any coach or horses. And when I mentioned this to an elderly woman living close to the site of the old Rectory, she became curiously serious and said quietly, ‘Yes, people do keep reporting that… But if strange things do still happen here, I’m hardly likely to tell you. Don’t expect anyone else here to discuss it, either.’
What’s interesting to me, isn’t what the story tells us about spirituality and life after death, but rather, what it tells us about the living. The era of Harry Price was a grieving nation, in some ways a desperate nation, that needed something to believe in. A pre war world as remote as Borley itself.
So come with me, if you will, back into the 1920s. An era where war injured servicemen stood in the cold and the fog on London streets selling bootlaces and copies of the Daily Worker; an era of longing and despair and a little hope.
It’s January 1929 and a renegade writer and researcher, has announced in the Times the gala opening of a new laboratory in South Kensington where spiritualist mediums will be put to the test. Everyone is speculating about its work, including a young woman recently returned from Paris. Sarah Grey. She is lost, without purpose, until she witnesses the marvels of the Laboratory – where the floors are made of cork, where wooden shutters keep rooms devoid of light, and where mediums are strapped into devices that resemble the electric chair.
She doesn’t know it yet, but Sarah Grey is destined to come face to face with arch sceptic, Harry Price. And her whole life is about to change…
The Ghost Hunters is published by Quercus on October 24th, you can pre-order your copy today at http://amzn.to/18am4OT
TimeOut: Monsters in the closet
Featured in TimeOut London 29th October 2013
With his acclaimed debut novel, 'The Ghost Hunters', riding high in the horror chart, gay author Neil Spring picks five popular films where homosexuality and horror collide.
1. ‘The Haunting’ - 1963
Based on a novel by Shirley Jackson, this classic 1963 British film follows a team of investigators as they spend the night in a haunted house. Theodora, a fashionable clairvoyant, is an explicitly (and refreshingly) feminine lesbian character, played by Claire Bloom.
2. ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ - 1968
Mr James, the author of this much-loved ghost story was himself homosexual. And the clues are in the story, which has been adapted for film and television. ‘I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way – a gentleman from Cambridge – to come for a night or two,’ our protagonist remarks. ‘That will be all right, I suppose, won’t it?’
3. ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ - 1985
The repressed bisexuality of the male lead character, Jesse, is the driving theme of the second film in the franchise, which also features a gay leather bar and naked male showering scenes. According to Krueger actor Robert Englund, the film is symbolic of Aids paranoia, with the lead character’s sexual desires and internal struggle manifested in the danger posed by Freddy.
4. ‘The Lost Boys’ - 1987
The modern vampires of ‘True Blood’ and ‘Twilight’ have built a solid gay fan base with their buff bodies and frequent gay references. But nowhere is the homoerotic threat of vampire sexuality more evident than in the ’80s classic, ‘The Lost Boys’. Directed by Joel Schumacher, (the man who gave Batman nipples and a codpiece), the film features Corey Haim wearing a ‘Born to Shop’ T-shirt and singing falsetto in the bath, ‘Ain’t got a man!’.
5. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ - 1991
The serial killer Buffalo Bill caused outrage in the gay community in 1991, with many criticising the character as negative and homophobic. Not only does the film give us a ‘monster queer’ character, but like Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and Brian De Palma’s ‘Dressed to Kill’, it treads the well-worn path of using transgender people to terrify audiences.
Enter the Halloween giveway to win a copy here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The Ghost Hunters is published by Quercus available now: Order your copy here: http://amzn.to/14kcK3e
With his acclaimed debut novel, 'The Ghost Hunters', riding high in the horror chart, gay author Neil Spring picks five popular films where homosexuality and horror collide.
1. ‘The Haunting’ - 1963
Based on a novel by Shirley Jackson, this classic 1963 British film follows a team of investigators as they spend the night in a haunted house. Theodora, a fashionable clairvoyant, is an explicitly (and refreshingly) feminine lesbian character, played by Claire Bloom.
2. ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ - 1968
Mr James, the author of this much-loved ghost story was himself homosexual. And the clues are in the story, which has been adapted for film and television. ‘I expect a friend of mine soon, by the way – a gentleman from Cambridge – to come for a night or two,’ our protagonist remarks. ‘That will be all right, I suppose, won’t it?’
3. ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ - 1985
The repressed bisexuality of the male lead character, Jesse, is the driving theme of the second film in the franchise, which also features a gay leather bar and naked male showering scenes. According to Krueger actor Robert Englund, the film is symbolic of Aids paranoia, with the lead character’s sexual desires and internal struggle manifested in the danger posed by Freddy.
4. ‘The Lost Boys’ - 1987
The modern vampires of ‘True Blood’ and ‘Twilight’ have built a solid gay fan base with their buff bodies and frequent gay references. But nowhere is the homoerotic threat of vampire sexuality more evident than in the ’80s classic, ‘The Lost Boys’. Directed by Joel Schumacher, (the man who gave Batman nipples and a codpiece), the film features Corey Haim wearing a ‘Born to Shop’ T-shirt and singing falsetto in the bath, ‘Ain’t got a man!’.
5. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ - 1991
The serial killer Buffalo Bill caused outrage in the gay community in 1991, with many criticising the character as negative and homophobic. Not only does the film give us a ‘monster queer’ character, but like Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ and Brian De Palma’s ‘Dressed to Kill’, it treads the well-worn path of using transgender people to terrify audiences.
Enter the Halloween giveway to win a copy here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
The Ghost Hunters is published by Quercus available now: Order your copy here: http://amzn.to/14kcK3e
Is It Good to Scare Ourselves?
It's Halloween, which means that children across the country will leap enthusiastically into the darkness, transforming terror into treats and wrapping innocence in fear.
I am often asked: why do we get so excited about a night that turns on spirits, demons and monsters and is it morally acceptable that, each year, we should continue scaring ourselves and our children so enthusiastically?
The Catholic Church in Italy seems to think not for it has warned that celebrating Halloween can tempt people into worship of the occult.
Father Aldo Buonaiuto, a Catholic priest who took part in an international conference of exorcists in Rome earlier this week said: "Halloween originates from superstitions that exalt malign spirits and demons. Many people see it as a simple carnival, but it is anything but innocent, it is a subterranean world based on the occult."
Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead ancestors were said to return and were invited home. People wore costumes to ward off harmful spirits. Christianity later incorporated the honouring of the dead with All Hallows and All Souls; but for many, Halloween has become a pointless celebration, which needlessly scares our children with rediculous masks, symbols of death and bloody, plastic severed limbs, or more commonly, incites civic unrest.
Admittedly, it does seem rather absurd that a date installed on the Christian calendar should flourish with the ecstasy of fright; and even more absurd that we should encourage our children to impersonate weird werewolves and ghosts! What's the point? Where's the moral import? Is there any? Or has the occasion lost all its original depth?
I don't think so. Halloween allows us to confront our long sheltered fears about death and darkness without putting ourselves in actual danger, enabling us to make fun of our most primal anxieties.
When I was a teenager, I tested my resilience to fear by volunteering to sleep in a set of rooms purportedly haunted by the spirit of a nanny that allegedly moved babies from a cot onto the bed. The ghost walked, I was told, in the dead of night, and was a horrendous sight. This was in a remote part of South Wales, where superstitions still hold sway and, though I was sceptical, my host was at pains to warn me that sleeping in this room would not be a good idea. What was I doing? And why did it give me such an alluring thrill?
For the same reason, I think, that so many parents are happy for their children to dress up on Halloween. At it's heart, this is a festival about fear and doubt, the two emotions that drive us and protect us.
I know many who are limited by their fear of failing or losing control of their life, and when fear and doubt take control it can be crippling. These are the everyday manifestations of fear, and it's because we are confronted with them so regularly that I believe we are so fascinated by fear. Rather than pretending those fears aren't there (which can leave them haunting your dreams and nightmares), it's advisable to put them on the page and really tackle them, like characters in the scariest novels.
Halloween - scary, creepy, and comical - enables us to better distance ourselves from our darkest fears. What better way to harness that which frightens us than to diminish it into something fun and entertaining? By making fun of those fears, we confront them in a controlled environment.
But if the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, surely the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. H.P. Lovecraft through so, and i'm inclined to agree. For those who lie awake in darkness and listen, houses are rarely still; a tree branch taps at the window, a floorboard creaks. And sometimes our imagination does the rest. Sometimes the latch rises. Sometimes there's a dark figure at the foot of the bed...
I learned all this writing my first book and all those years ago during my stay in the haunted bedroom. That night, the blood was thumping in my ears as I pulled the bed clothes up to my chin and shivered. The adrenaline was coursing. There were no ghosts in that room, at least none that appeared to me. Fear was my only companion. But I left reminded that darkness can be good and that we all have something to learn from fear of the unknown.
Neil Spring is the author of The Ghost Hunters (Quercus).
Follow Neil Spring on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Neilspring
I am often asked: why do we get so excited about a night that turns on spirits, demons and monsters and is it morally acceptable that, each year, we should continue scaring ourselves and our children so enthusiastically?
The Catholic Church in Italy seems to think not for it has warned that celebrating Halloween can tempt people into worship of the occult.
Father Aldo Buonaiuto, a Catholic priest who took part in an international conference of exorcists in Rome earlier this week said: "Halloween originates from superstitions that exalt malign spirits and demons. Many people see it as a simple carnival, but it is anything but innocent, it is a subterranean world based on the occult."
Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain, when the spirits of the dead ancestors were said to return and were invited home. People wore costumes to ward off harmful spirits. Christianity later incorporated the honouring of the dead with All Hallows and All Souls; but for many, Halloween has become a pointless celebration, which needlessly scares our children with rediculous masks, symbols of death and bloody, plastic severed limbs, or more commonly, incites civic unrest.
Admittedly, it does seem rather absurd that a date installed on the Christian calendar should flourish with the ecstasy of fright; and even more absurd that we should encourage our children to impersonate weird werewolves and ghosts! What's the point? Where's the moral import? Is there any? Or has the occasion lost all its original depth?
I don't think so. Halloween allows us to confront our long sheltered fears about death and darkness without putting ourselves in actual danger, enabling us to make fun of our most primal anxieties.
When I was a teenager, I tested my resilience to fear by volunteering to sleep in a set of rooms purportedly haunted by the spirit of a nanny that allegedly moved babies from a cot onto the bed. The ghost walked, I was told, in the dead of night, and was a horrendous sight. This was in a remote part of South Wales, where superstitions still hold sway and, though I was sceptical, my host was at pains to warn me that sleeping in this room would not be a good idea. What was I doing? And why did it give me such an alluring thrill?
For the same reason, I think, that so many parents are happy for their children to dress up on Halloween. At it's heart, this is a festival about fear and doubt, the two emotions that drive us and protect us.
I know many who are limited by their fear of failing or losing control of their life, and when fear and doubt take control it can be crippling. These are the everyday manifestations of fear, and it's because we are confronted with them so regularly that I believe we are so fascinated by fear. Rather than pretending those fears aren't there (which can leave them haunting your dreams and nightmares), it's advisable to put them on the page and really tackle them, like characters in the scariest novels.
Halloween - scary, creepy, and comical - enables us to better distance ourselves from our darkest fears. What better way to harness that which frightens us than to diminish it into something fun and entertaining? By making fun of those fears, we confront them in a controlled environment.
But if the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, surely the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. H.P. Lovecraft through so, and i'm inclined to agree. For those who lie awake in darkness and listen, houses are rarely still; a tree branch taps at the window, a floorboard creaks. And sometimes our imagination does the rest. Sometimes the latch rises. Sometimes there's a dark figure at the foot of the bed...
I learned all this writing my first book and all those years ago during my stay in the haunted bedroom. That night, the blood was thumping in my ears as I pulled the bed clothes up to my chin and shivered. The adrenaline was coursing. There were no ghosts in that room, at least none that appeared to me. Fear was my only companion. But I left reminded that darkness can be good and that we all have something to learn from fear of the unknown.
Neil Spring is the author of The Ghost Hunters (Quercus).
Follow Neil Spring on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Neilspring
