I was such a wuss as a kid, and hated horror movies. But one of the most disturbing was not horror movie at all: *batteries not included. It’s a family film with Jessica Tandy, for chrissakes. The decrepit building, the palpably unstable slumlord, the erratically flying aliens with glowing eyes made a very unsettling ride for little Jenny.
As for books, there are two that stand out: The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright and The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine. I still read them, that’s how much impact they had on me. The idea that dolls move about when you’re not looking and recreate scenes of an unsolved murder was unnerving enough. But Stine’s tale of a girl with a secret bedroom (an introvert’s dream!) inhabited by a spirit that can not only invade your mind, but contort reality until you’re just a shell to possess, was enough to keep me up nights.
What was your biggest fear as a child?
For some reason, fire. I was never in one, I was never burned, but I’d get anxious even going near a building in the aftermath, much less look at one on TV. I found the blackness and destruction terrifying, the gaping windows and shredded wood and plaster hanging beyond the frames monstrous.
In *batteries not included, there’s a scene in which some characters take a blissful walk home after a fun night out, only to find their apartment building ablaze. I think that’s what is so upsetting: fire is such a simple, vital element, yet it can destroy your home, kill your loved ones, erase every memento from your past.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
Now I do. I met (and eventually married) a horror movie geek (his descriptor) and I think he was secretly disappointed that I avoided the genre altogether. But little by little he introduced me to older movies like The Seventh Victim (1943), Brides of Dracula (1960) and Masque of the Red Death (1964), and now I seek them out. I begged him to take me to The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2017).
Ghosts are guaranteed to creep me out. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
No, and I’m sure if I did I would freak right out and move. But I’d like to think we’d be pals, Casper-style. As long as he’s not the chatty type.
Has a book ever really scared you?
In adulthood, no. I’ve gotten the shivers, I’ve been creeped out, but mostly, I applaud the writer for eliciting a visceral response. Ha! Perhaps writing has ruined me for raw terror!
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Certainly. My protagonist in my novel, Edge of Sundown, is an author too, and much of his motivation comes from fear. The fear he’ll be forgotten, the fear that his creative well has run dry. Turns out it’s much worse: the world moved on and didn’t leave a forwarding address, and his reality is more fiction than his book.
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
I have the same fear as my poor protagonist: that one day I’ll be out of ideas and I’ll lose my ability to write.
But also bugs. Even helpful ones, like centipedes and common spiders and crickets. There’s regular ol’ roaches, but also hissing, flying frickin’ roaches. There is no God. Yet I’m writing a picture book about a girl who’s airlifted by a horde of butterflies, or as I call them, Satan’s biplanes. Go figure.
Thanks so much for sharing – am totally with you on the cockroach front – they are pure evil. Also I really want to read some RL Stine books now, I seem to have missed those when I was growing up!
If you want to know more about Jennifer, check out her links below!
Well its Lockdown…..again….hope you had a safe and quiet – preferably cheese and prosecco fueled New Year! Im back again with some scary stuff this time joined by P.J. Mordant, author of supernatural thriller ‘When Angels Fear.’ So she knows a thing or two about what is scary – lets find out what scares her!
What movie/book scared you as a child? I’m going to choose an advertisement, seeing its the first thing that came to mind: an advert for Deep Heat, a stupid rubbing ointment. A really deep voice boomed DEEEEP HEEEET from the telly. It got so bad that I would leave the room when ANY adverts came on.
What was your biggest fear as a child? I was and still am, terrified of thunder storms. Its the combination of noise and lightening. I think it started after my dad tried to fix our old valve telly. He took a screwdriver to it and it blew up with a flash and bang! Lucky escape for all of us, but left a lasting legacy.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite? Medium scary films. I prefer supernatural rather than full-on horror movies. Very fond of ‘The Changeling’ with George C. Scott. Scary premise, musical boxes, wheelchairs, bouncing balls … a well. Great tropes.
The paranormal usually freaks me out the most when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life? Nah.
Has a book ever really scared you? The Repairman Jack series by F. Paul Wilson – anything by F. Paul Wilson, actually. There was one character – I think it was a young boy – who couldn’t die and Jack thought he’d put him out of his misery. YEARS later he pondered whether he had actually died so he returned to the burial site and dug the boy up.Turned out he’d been absolutely right: the boy was skeletal but with all his faculties and completely alive. Can’t remember names and whys and wherefores but … well, the idea’s stuck with me all these years.
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels? The fear a woman has when the love of her life turns out to be an abuser. In ‘When Angels Fear’, my first chapter is filled with dry-mouthed dread that he might discover her escape.
In real life what is your biggest fear these days? Do you use that when you write? I fear for the planet. It’s the theme of my sequel to ‘Angels’
Huge thanks to PJ for visiting! You can learn more about her and her books below!
This week on my hunt for horrors, I am joined by author Penny Hampson whose novel The Unquiet Spirit is a Cornwall based feast of spooks and suspense. I’m very happy that she has taken time to be my guest – take it away Penny!
Thank you for inviting me onto your blog, Anne-Marie. It’s great to talk with you about scary things!
As a child, the scariest programme I watched was Dr Who, usually from behind the sofa! I didn’t like the Daleks, but because at that time they couldn’t climb stairs I always thought they weren’t much of a threat.
The Cybermen however were something completely different – humanoid but expressionless, they terrified me. They still do, if I’m honest!
The scariest stories for me are those that are rooted in reality, when something innocuous suddenly becomes a real threat. I remember reading Jaws (before the movie was made) and being terrified. It really put me off swimming in the sea for quite some time, even though I knew how unlikely it would be for a great white shark to turn up in UK waters.
As for scary films, my favourite has to be The Shining. Those scenes where Danny, the little boy, cycles along the hotel corridors and you just know he’s going to see something around the next corner, have me cowering behind a cushion every time. Stanley Kubrick the director, certainly knew how to rack up the tension.
As to paranormal experiences, I couldn’t say for sure, but I’ve certainly experienced events that creeped me out. Some years ago, when I was pregnant, my husband, two year old son and I rented a very old cottage in the Lakes for a few weeks, while my husband was working in the area. At the same time every night our son, who slept in the next room to us, woke up screaming, but could never say what was wrong. If that wasn’t unnerving enough, one particular night, my husband went in to comfort our son and I was left in our bedroom alone. Suddenly the doors of the large walk-in cupboard at my side of the bed burst open. Well, it wasn’t just my son who was screaming!
Not long after that, I decided I couldn’t stay there any longer and my son and I returned home. Strangely enough, my parents rented the same cottage for a week (and I hadn’t told them about my experience). They too came home early, my mother complaining about strange noises she kept hearing in the middle of the night.
In my book, The Unquiet Spirit, my heroine, Kate has lots of fears, she’s nervous around dogs and doesn’t go in elevators. She also has several unnerving experiences in her new home.
Here’s an extract where Sal, the neighbour’s dog seems to sense something spooky going on:
An eerie howl cut through the house, making the hairs on the back of Kate’s neck leap to attention again. Tom pushed his chair back with a squeal on the flagstone floor and charged out of the kitchen towards the noise. Kate stumbled after him, nerves on edge and heart pounding. Her mind somehow registered that the sound was being made by Sal. Nothing supernatural, but that did not make it any the less unnerving. Kate halted at the door to the dining room and took in the sight of Sal crouched at the bottom of the separate staircase leading up to the east wing, ears flattened against her head, and a low rumbling coming from her throat.
“What’s the matter, girl? There’s nothing there, you daft dog,” Tom got a grip on Sal’s collar and pulled her away. “Never known her do that before. Is there someone else in the house?” He tugged the now quiet Sal back into the kitchen, brusquely brushing past Kate.
“No.” Not as far as I know. Kate bit her lip, and followed them back into the kitchen. She propped herself against the counter top, certain that she would slide on to the floor without support, her legs were shaking so much.
Tom must have noticed her ashen face.
“Would you like me to check? Can’t understand why Sal carried on like that.” His voice had lost its brusqueness.
“No, it’s OK. I’m sure it’s nothing… Probably a mouse or something,” Yes, that’s all it was, she told herself, not quite believing it. Tom’s expression told her she hadn’t convinced him either. She glanced at Sal, now curled up in the corner as if nothing had happened. Well, she wasn’t bothered. It can’t have been anything.
I too, like Kate, am nervous around dogs and because I don’t like enclosed spaces I rarely use lifts. It was therefore easy for me to conjure up her feelings when she was faced with both these ordeals.
My biggest fear though is of the dark. As a child I always had to have a light on at night. I’m not that bad now, but I hate it when I’m somewhere that’s totally dark, I find it suffocating. A couple of years ago I was going round a museum in Italy and there was a powercut. My husband and I were in a room with no natural light and when the lights went out it was absolutely pitch black. Fortunately, the power didn’t stay off for long, but for me it seemed like a lifetime. If you read The Unquiet Spirit, you’ll discover exactly how I felt!
Thanks so much Penny, I’m totally with you on The Shining – for me the scariest movie Ive ever seen. And also – how scary were the first Cybermen??Check out Penny’s links below to get involved her conjuring’s of fear….
Following on from my chat with Rumer Haven last week, who cited this lady as being very capable of scaring her, this week I am honored to welcome Shani Struthers, author of the bestselling Psychic Survey’s series and This Haunted World series. Her latest book ‘Cades Home Farm’ has just been released and looks pretty damn scary. I just love finding out what scares people, especially those who like to scare others….
What movie/book scared you as a child?
I don’t remember being scared by a book or a movie as a child, not to the point of being disturbed by it. Rather I enjoyed the creepy goodness of an author called Ruth Manning Sanders, who is now (sadly) out of print. She wrote twisted fairy tales, and they could get very dark indeed. As a teenager, I moved onto Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Clive Barker. Of them all, Clive Barker’s books truly scared me, as did those Hellraiser films of his! I remember watching the first one in the franchise and not being able to sleep a wink for fear of those cenobites coming to get me, especially the one with the chattering teeth!
What was your biggest fear as a child?
Spiders! And it still is. I’ve had so much therapy for it, but the fear is too deep-seated. The therapists have all given up on me!
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
I love scary movies; they’re my favourite. An all-time favourite is the black and white version of The Haunting with Claire Bloom, based on Shirley Jackson’s absolutely brilliant The Haunting of Hill House. It’s a real ‘less is more’ type of movie, it leaves so much to interpretation, which, in my opinion, makes it far, far scarier!
I am usually most afraid of ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
Yes, I have and that is perhaps the reason I write about the paranormal now. To be honest, my experiences were mainly as a child, including one that took place on a beach in North Cornwall, when I was five. I’d wandered off from my mother and was playing happily in a cove. There are six of us kids and sometimes we could be hard to keep an eye on! Anyway, next thing I know, I’ve looked up from the sandcastle I’m building, and the tide has come rushing in, effectively cutting me off. I’m the only one in this cove and I can’t swim! I climb onto some rocks, climbing higher and higher as the sea rises. I remember looking out and seeing nothing but sea and being very scared. Suddenly, I turn around to see a couple more people on the rocks, a man and a woman. I remember the woman in particular, she was wearing a tweed jacket and matching tweed skirt, not exactly beach attire! They started talking to me, calming me, telling me I was going to be okay, that whatever happened, it wouldn’t hurt. They assured me they’d stay with me, that they wouldn’t leave me. I did calm right down and remembered thinking that it was true, it was going to be all right, whatever the outcome. A few minutes later, a lifeboat came tearing round the corner with my mum in it, pointing at me and screeching. I was rescued. Only me. When I asked my mum – and this was years later – why the man and woman hadn’t been rescued too, she said ‘what man and woman? There was only you there.’
Has a book ever really scared you?
The only book I’ve never been able to read at night (and I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to horror novels) is Sarah England’s Father of Lies, it kept giving me nightmares!
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Fear is a common theme in all my novels, either imagined or real. Actually, it’s the imagined fear that fascinates me, how it can completely paralyse us.
This extract is from Blakemort, a book about a very haunted house indeed. Five-year old Corinna and her brother, Ethan, have gone to explore the dark confines of the attic, but her brother – as brothers do – has left her in there, closing the door behind him…
He stepped over me – literally stepped over me – made his way to the door and banged it shut behind him. No longer open, or even ajar, it confined me within – imprisoned me. What was overhead immediately started fluttering again and in dark corners I could sense writhing. Who was it that had whispered? A boy – the same age as Ethan or thereabouts and even worse than him, if such a thing were possible. My arms were on the floor behind me, supporting my weight but I sat up straight and drew them inwards, trying to curl into a ball instead, to make myself tiny, tinier still, invisible. I had to get up, get out of there, but I couldn’t move. I swallowed, my eyes darting to the left and to the right. Who are you? Who’s here?
Something swooped – the bat, the owl, whatever creature it was, black feathers in my face and a smell so bitter it blinded me further. I screamed but worse than that I wet myself, my arms flailing in an attempt to keep the damned thing away. Even in my terror I felt shame that I couldn’t control my bladder – that urine was pouring from me – all over the photos, staining them, destroying them. I wanted them destroyed!
“Get away! Get away! Get away!”
Surely my screaming would alert Ethan and he’d come rushing back.
“Get away!”
I pushed myself upwards. If no one would save me, I had to save myself.
The thing that was beating about my head retreated – vanished, as if it had never been. Gone. Just like that. Somehow that was even more frightening – its sudden disappearance. Looking back, I’m not even sure it was real. In fact, right now, at this moment, sitting here writing, I’d bet money it wasn’t. It was simply an illusion, some kind of magic trick. Certainly, it never appeared again. But alone as I was, or more accurately not alone, I didn’t have time to contemplate it. My chest rising and falling, sobs starting to engulf me, snot pouring from my nose, my legs hot and sticky, I could only contemplate escape – but damn my feet, they wouldn’t work!
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
Nothing terrorises me more than the sight of an eight-legged beastie! I don’t mind the small ones but the big ones, I literally quake with terror. One of my characters in my Psychic Surveys series, Theo, is also scared of spiders. She may battle with dark entities on a regular basis, but it’s an arachnid that can be the undoing of her! In Eve (A Psychic Surveys Prequel), the entity she’s dealing with is turning her own fears back on herself and yep, she’s seeing spiders everywhere, as big as dinner plates. She really has to try and come to terms with her fear, face it head on, but as we know, it’s never that easy…
Thank you so much for answering my questions Shani, I’m definitely with you on The Haunting, I love that movie, suggestion is always more terrifying. And also spiders are a big NOPE for me too, my house is full of them and I’m tempted to buy a flame thrower to deal with them.I’d never heard of Ruth Manning-Sanders but now I’ve seen her books I want them all!
Shani has an amazing back catalogue of terrifying novels, if you haven’t had the pleasure, and you like a good spooking, get yourself onto her website for more info!
Born and bred in Brighton, UK, Shani Struthers is the author of nineteen supernatural thrillers (so far), some set in various locations in England, others in more far-flung destinations such as Venice and America. Having been brought up with an understanding of the Occult and alternative views on religion, she threads this knowledge throughout her books, often drawing on real-life experiences of her own, from people she has known and from well-known Occult figures too. Please Note: her books tend to revolve more around PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR. You won’t find gore, vampires, werewolves, zombies or the like in her fiction. Her various paranormal series have proved very popular indeed, including the Psychic Surveys Series, This Haunted World, Reach for the Dead and Jessamine. She has also written a set of Psychic Surveys Companion Novels and two Christmas Ghost stories: Eve and Carfax House. All have topped the Amazon genre charts in both the UK and the US. For more information on new releases, competitions and general news, sign up to her newsletter via her website.
American actress Vera Miles stars as Lila Crane in the horror classic ‘Psycho’, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1960. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Halloween may have passed but for some of us folk, its Halloween every day! I’ve been a fan of this lady for a while and have long suspected we have a fair bit on common as far as what things we enjoy watching and reading and this chat made me want to talk even more about spooky stuff! Rumer Haven, author of several excellent books featuring the 1920’s and the dear departed, and most recently a collection of short stories – Myths, Mothers, Mystics. She’s my kinda gal!
What movie/book scared you as a child?
Poltergeist was hands down my favorite scary movie, though it truly frightened the daylights out of me (scary clowns, skeletons in pools, and, good God, that scene where the guy peels his face off? Gah!). I still say that one holds its own; I watched it more times than I could count as a child and have seen it at least a couple of times again as an adult, and…yeah. Still scary. Impressive special effects for the ’80s and actually some great acting. I’m in denial that there was ever a remake in 2015, but I’ll acknowledge it enough to say that it’s absolute rubbish, so stick with the original—ye old cathode ray tube TV as a portal to the dead (“They’re heeeeeere!”) is way scarier than a dumb drone sent into the spirit world. The 1982 Poltergeist even had me fearing the tree outside my bedroom window!
But while the original Poltergeist was (and might still be) my favorite, the film that actually terrified me even more as a kid was The Entity. Starring Barbara Hershey, this was another 1982 horror film that I probably shouldn’t have been watching when I was so young, but it was a sleepover favorite. I don’t think I could watch that one again as an adult, honestly; it frightened me that much. Felt too real, like something that could actually happen if a malevolent spirit were to attack, and while Poltergeist is filled with wonderfully scary and atmospheric visuals, it’s what you can’t see in The Entity that paralyzes me in fear even just thinking about it now.
Book-wise, I automatically think of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. Truly, I think what scared me most about those books as a kid were the illustrations. I don’t know how to describe them, but there’s just something so liminal and watery and…hairy about them…like the kind of loose hair you’d find in a drain, which isn’t to say they’re gross, just creepy AF.
What was your biggest fear as a child?
Probably that damn tree outside my window! But seriously, aside from day-to-day fears like jumping off the diving board at the local pool or hanging upside down from monkey bars, paranormal stuff was probably the most consistent fright that manifested in many ways: fear of the dark, any creaking in the house, the space underneath my bed, dolls…(I was Team Stuffed Animal, with the exception of my Cabbage Patch Kid. Animals = cuddly and love you. Dolls = creepy and want to kill you.). As much as I was afraid of ghosts, though, I couldn’t get enough of them in stories and movies. I was just asking to be scared.
I will say, though, that my early fascination with the afterlife may have, unbeknownst to me at the time, been very closely related to another fear: death. Even as a young child, while saying my prayers at night, the line “And if I die before I wake” gave me pause. I think I really did fear every night that I might die in my sleep. What a blessing it was, then, to wake in the morning to my mom whistling and throwing open the curtains, letting in the light.
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
You bet I do! Not gory slasher films (though I’ll indulge in those, too, around Halloween) but ones about spiritual hauntings. As mentioned earlier, Poltergeist has remained a firm favorite since childhood, though another one to emerge during my adult life is The Others with Nicole Kidman. Released in 2001, that film is exactly the Gothic atmosphere and subtle touch that I love in a scary story. It’s what’s left to the imagination that I personally find most frightening, which is why blood-n-guts or easy jump scares ultimately don’t do it for me.
I am usually scared the most by ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
The closest I’ve come to a paranormal experience was while staying at a Tudor-era holiday cottage in Herefordshire, England several years ago. By then, I had already come to realize that I can sense…something in certain places, that I’ll sometimes feel a distinct pressure on my chest that leaves me gasping for air a little. Some places are heavy with their histories, I figure. But during our first night at that cottage, I saw the fringe of my husband’s scarf sort of flutter upward from where the scarf was hanging on a coatrack. But it didn’t so much look like it had been blown upward as it was being tugged at. Just when I was about to dismiss it as my eyes deceiving me, I hear my husband say, “Did you see that, too?”
He’d witnessed the exact same thing and was actually the one staring at it more straight-on than me. That had us up on our feet and investigating the entryway around the coatrack, trying to debunk the movement as having been caused by the wind. We checked the gaps between the front door and the doorframe, the mail slot, etc., but for an old cottage, it had actually been renovated with quite modern features and was airtight. There was no breeze coming through from anywhere, and it wasn’t windy outside in the first place. We even checked the radiator, but no blowing heat was coming from that, and there weren’t any vents to be found—and, anyway, if air had blown in from any of these possibilities, the scarf was on the opposite side, facing a wall and shielded on the other side by our coats. In any case, we just dismissed it for the time being and went about our leisurely evening, watching TV and snacking.
And that’s when I heard a scraping sound right in front of me. I looked down at the floor at my feet in time to see the Doritos bag that was setting there tip over a few inches and then return to right-side up, scraping against the edge of the coffee table as it did so. Directly in front of me, with the lights on; I watched this happen plainly—the bag leaning at an impossible angle without tipping over, and not only did it not fall, it stood itself back up. My husband was on his laptop at the time, so he didn’t see it himself, but he was sitting right next to me and did hear the scraping. And once again, we immediately set about debunking what I saw. I know I had not moved my feet, but my husband had been sitting with his legs crossed and wondered if he’d been swinging his foot, causing a breeze. We tried to recreate it, with him swinging so feverishly it was funny and obviously not what had happened, and again, windows and everything were sealed tightly with no draught, and we’d have been hard-pressed to explain how one could’ve caused the bag to sway side to side the way it did anyway.
Later that night, I experienced a lucid dream in which I thought I had woken up in the same bedroom where we were staying—everything the same except for a desk by the window and an armoire against a different wall—and I met a little ghost girl who told me her name was Sarah. She had long blond hair in braids and wore an old-fashioned dress, and I clearly remember the brief conversation I had with her, asking if she minded that we were there and if there were others there, too. Fortunately, she was fine with us being there but didn’t seem as reassuring about the others, who apparently were there. At any rate, there were no occurrences beyond that first night, only that heavy pressure on my chest every time I entered the bedroom. We were intrigued by it all but not scared; it felt harmless, indeed like a curious child inspecting our things and feeling out the new strangers in a house that was probably used to sitting empty.
Has a book ever really scared you?
Automatically, I think of how American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis nearly made me vomit—literally—but that was more to do with its graphic nature. Otherwise, I’m racking my brain for one that would’ve had me leaving the light on at night… Not to say that hasn’t happened, as I certainly have gotten chills from Gothic tales like The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Woman in Black—and anything these days by Shani Struthers and Sarah England is sure to frighten!—but for being so bookish, I actually think I’m more skittish when it comes to movies. Not sure why.
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Fear creeps across all my stories, and in my paranormal ones it’s usually my main characters’ fears that render them more vulnerable to the supernatural—not in that they’re preyed upon by a malevolent entity for that reason, but that their human frailty genuinely connects them to someone in the past. That’s usually the point of any “haunting” in my stories, not really to terrify but to show the universality of the human condition across time.
Yet to cite a specific example for this question, I’ll look to my most recent story, “Revolve Her,” a novella that now features in my short story collection, Myths, Mothers, and Mystics. In this one, my main character, Ellie, immediately finds herself freaked by a murder she might have just committed, only to find it was all in her mind, which proves almost (if not just) as scary. She’s questioning whether she’s had a psychotic break or not when she begins to suspect there could be someone else’s emotional baggage that’s affecting her—a presence in her hotel room that haunts her both in dreams and her waking life. Ellie has just experienced a shocking heartbreak in her relationship with a doctor, and she’s traveled far from home, feeling alone in an unfamiliar landscape, so her sense of betrayal and sadness and loneliness all compounds to make her relatable to a ghost because of what had led to that person’s death and the ethereal existence they’ve had since. Over the course of the story, we see not just fear but the different ways people might choose to act on that fear and what the consequences could be.
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
Currently, my biggest fear is anything happening to my family while I’m overseas. I live in London, UK but am originally from Chicago, Illinois, and this separation from my family in the States during COVID is a nightmare. Aside from missing siblings, nieces, and nephews terribly, my parents are highly at risk right now, so I’m terrified of them having any contact with this virus, along with just not knowing how long it will be before I see them again, if I’m losing precious time.
I honestly think that fear is actually preventing me from writing lately. But moving away from my family in the first place did heavily influence my first novel manuscript, which was my second book to be published: What the Clocks Know. I started drafting that story while in the throes of depression, soon after relocating to London from Chicago in 2008. Since I wasn’t working for a time to follow the move, I ended up pouring my emotions into Clocks…the loneliness of missing family and friends back home and not having anyone near me besides my husband, the blank and drifting feeling I had without familiar surroundings and a sense of structure and purpose…
That big unknown about the future and not having a local network of support was incredibly frightening, and even scarier was the fact that, most days, I didn’t even really know myself anymore. I didn’t know what defined me any longer, if what I thought defined me before even had in the first place. In my early thirties, I was facing a bigger identity crisis than in adolescence, so a lot of that got dumped into poor Margot, my protagonist. I had her come to London on her own steam in an attempt to live vicariously, to feel more empowered about my own situation overseas rather than feeling like the “trailing spouse” (a horrid term, if you ask me), and I gave her my depression but with the hope that, hey, maybe it isn’t her—maybe it’s a ghost! A presence in her new flat that might be imparting its own emotions onto her, just like I pondered when I myself sat alone in my new Victorian-era space. I wished so badly that it was just residual negative energy, trapped within those walls, that would explain why I felt the way I did, why I didn’t feel like myself—because that would be less scary than the realities of my mental and emotional health. So, I explored that in the book, and, well…now it is what it is!
That’s probably the most personal example of how I’ve used fear in my writing, but even as the characters I write become less and less like myself, I still use my own fears in thinking up scenarios that would frighten me as a reader. And even if I can’t relate directly to a character’s life experience, I think fear is key to finding common ground. Ultimately, we’re all human and vulnerable and afraid of something, and even if those fears take different forms, their nature is essentially the same at the core and can topple even the giants among us.
Huge thanks Rumer, we really do have alot in common! The Entity ruined me for years, I still can’t watch it, and Poltergeist is absolute tops (and yes that remake didn’t last very long on my screen, eve with the presence of Sam Rockwell). And on the subject of American Psycho – the reason I only read it once? The Rat.
If you fancy a dip into the paranormal world of Rumer, please use the links below and get yourself some lockdown reading by stacking her books up on your shelf or virtual shelf.
“Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI Part One
So very happy to welcome Jennifer Wilson to my blog during the festive season! As you may know Jennifer loves writing about spooks as much as I do, only hers are a tad more regal than mine. Author of the Kindred Spirits series, Jennifer has raised the dead monarchy so many times she deserves a spot on Most Haunted. I think her stories are awesome so I’m very excited to have her here to talk about fear…..
Hi Anne-Marie, thanks for inviting me to your blog today. It’s fair to say I’m a naturally jumpy and easily-frightened individual, so I’m confident that of all your guests, my responses are at the coward’s end of the fear scale…
What movie/book scared you as a child?
I have really vivid memories of reading a book from the ‘upstairs’ library, for the upper juniors in primary school, which really freaked me out. I can see the cover, with two boys running, and I’m sure it was called ‘The Runaways’ or something similar. In one scene, a wall fell over, almost crushing either one or both of them. That image stuck with me for a long, long time, and gave me nightmares about being crushed. Horrific. I should have stayed in the ‘downstairs’ library, where I belonged, but I’d finished all the books it had to offer!
What was your biggest fear as a child?
Well, apart from walls… I’ve always had the most random fear of dust-bin lorries. That, and dinosaurs. Both stem from films. I watched the Turtles live-action film, where Shredder is, well, shredded, in a dust-bin lorry, and from that day, I’ve hated them. We used to have to walk up a really narrow wynd to get up to college, and on dust-bin day, I’d be petrified of accidentally slipping into the back of it. As for dinosaurs, that’s the fault of Jurassic Park. I had this terrible fear that if I opened my curtains at night, I’d see the eye of a t-rex, just staring back at me…
Do you like scary movies? Which one is your favourite?
As you can probably guess from the above, no, I do not like scary movies… I’m not really a film person anyway, but the most I can tolerate is a bit of a ‘jump scare’ which at least is over quickly!
I am usually scared the most by ghosts when I’m reading a book. Have you ever had a paranormal experience in real life?
Yes, and the most recent was in Greyfriars Kirkyard, in Edinburgh. As it’s the setting for part of my own book, Kindred Spirits: Royal Mile, and it was a lovely, quiet morning (I was early for an exhibition), I decided to pop in and get some nice photos of the blossom. There was one guy sitting having a coffee on a bench as I walked in, but that was it. Around the front of the church there was a lovely view down the graveyard of blossom, which I snapped, but as I went to put my phone away, I felt somebody touch my handbag. I panicked slightly, and put my own hand down to the zipper / strap, whilst turning to my left to confront them. Out the corner of my eye, I saw a tall gentleman in a dark suit and a white shirt, with dark hair. Later, I thought he had also been wearing a hat, but I cannot swear to that, and may have added it in my imagination afterwards. But the man himself was clear as day. Heart racing now, I turned fully around, only… Nothing. Nobody anywhere near me. Anyone who knows the site will know that if you’re in the middle of the paving in front of the church itself, there’s not enough time to get somewhere hide in the second it took me to turn around (Usain Bolt himself wouldn’t make it). The only other thing I felt was the strangest sensation of cold.
Greyfriars Kirkyard
I got out of there quicker than I’ve ever done anything in my life! Once out the gates, I did what every self-respecting thirty-something who has had a scare would do, and called my mum. She laughed initially when I told her, but then admitted she believed me, because she could hear the genuine fear in my voice. I was very glad to get away into the safety of the museum after that…
Has a book ever really scared you?
Other than the one I talked about above, not really, but that’s partly down to the fact that I can usually sense when something is about to get too much for me, and I skim / skip appropriately. It’s the same technique I use with overly-graphic crime novels!
Can you share with us an example of fear in one of your own novels?
Since the Kindred Spirits series follows the adventures of the ghostly communities inhabiting some of Britain’s most famous landmarks, fear definitely plays a part in my novels. For the most part, this is the ghosts instilling fear in the tourists who visit their homes, such as George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, rising from a barrel of malmsey in the Tower of London, or Katherine Howard haunting ‘her’ corridor at Hampton Court Palace. In one of the closes off Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, some students ready to play a trick on those taking part in one of the city’s famous ‘ghost tours’, the students themselves become the victims, terrified as Mary Queen of Scots enjoys herself in the occasional haunting. In these situations though, I think it’s fair to say that the living are almost-willing participants in the game. After all, you wouldn’t go on a ghost tour along a famously haunted street, at night, with somebody dressed as a ghoul, if you weren’t at least partially expecting to be scared witless, would you? So can the ghosts really be blamed, when they’re practically giving the tourists what they’re expecting?
In some instances though, I’ve wanted to explore things a little ‘bigger’ than just ghosts jumping out at unsuspecting visitors. I’ve talked about ghostly characters finding their ‘white light’ and moving on from their haunting, but this is by choice – if the white light appears, then a ghost can choose to move on, or stay. But I also wanted to give the ghosts something to genuinely fear, otherwise, they seemed a bit too invincible. I had this idea that if a ghost was injured too many times, they would gradually fade away to nothing. That would stop characters fighting each other – there had to be a consequence of their actions.
In Kindred Spirits: York, I pushed things a little further, and actually introduced a ‘bad guy’ into things, rather than just an unpopular character. Here, the ghosts didn’t quite know what was going on, which, for characters who can slip through walls and overhear almost any conversation without being observed, was something unknown, and for a lot of people, isn’t that one of the most frightening things?
In real life what is your biggest fear? Do you use that when you write?
If you take away dust-bin lorries and dinosaurs, then being very serious for a moment, I’m always scared of letting people down, or disappointing them. Perhaps this isn’t quite as relevant in the Kindred Spirits series, but in The Raided Heart, Meg has a strong sense of wanting to do the right thing, and not let her family down, and in the WIP I’m currently working on, loyalty and needing to work together are strong motivations for the key characters, as they try to do their best in difficult situations.
Thank you so much for joining my study of fear Jennifer. I too fell foul of Jurassic Park, had several T Rex nightmares after seeing that at the cinema! And your Greyfriars experience deserves a blog post of its own! How creepy was that? Feel free to stop by with ghost stories again please!
All of Jennifer’s books are currently in the big DarkStroke Halloween sale over on Amazon, you can get all titles for 99p/99c this weekend! Go go go!
About Jennifer C. Wilson
Jennifer C. Wilson stalks dead people (usually monarchs, mostly Mary Queen of Scots and Richard III). Inspired by childhood visits to as many castles and historical sites her parents could find, and losing herself in their stories (not to mention quite often the castles themselves!), at least now her daydreams make it onto the page.
After returning to the north-east of England for work, she joined a creative writing class, and has been filling notebooks ever since. Jennifer won North Tyneside Libraries’ Story Tyne short story competition in 2014, and in 2015, her debut novel, Kindred Spirits: Tower of London was published by Crooked Cat Books. The full series was re-released by Darkstroke in January 2020.
Jennifer is a founder and host of the award-winning North Tyneside Writers’ Circle, and has been running writing workshops in North Tyneside since 2015. She also publishes historical fiction novels with Ocelot Press. She lives in Whitley Bay, and is very proud of her two-inch view of the North Sea.
When I was fortunate enough to chat with author Jennifer Wilson about her books recently, I felt I just wanted to keep talking about what appears to be a common subject between us – ghosts!
My book is all about being dead, and her books feature some pretty famous ghosts from UK history, so I could just talk to her all day about it all! So I asked her to appear on a one off special interview on my blog about why she writes about them and how she actually feels about the afterlife.
Hi Anne-Marie, thanks for inviting me along today, to chat about a mutual topic of ours – ghosts!
You have included ghosts in several of your novels – where did your interest in ghosts come from?
It’s really odd, to be honest – I’m really not a ghost person… I’m terrified of the notion, and have even gone out of my way to avoid places known to be haunted. But when I was thinking about a ‘way in’ to write about Richard III a few years ago, I came across a competition for a poem about ghosts, and when it struck me that the ghosts of Anne Boleyn and Richard III could potentially have a fair bit in common, it seemed the perfect solution.
I suppose as well, it may not be ghosts per se, but I’ve always been interested in the spirit (pun intended!) of a place, and that connection with the people who once lived, worked or died there. I think that comes across very strongly in some buildings and sites, and so the notion of writing about ghosts came very naturally.
I’ve always been fascinated with real life ghost stories, one of my favourites is the haunting of Borley Rectory in Essex. (read about Borley here!) What’s your favourite real life ghost story?
It’s one I came across quite recently actually, set in Dunstaffnage Castle, near Oban. Apparently, the ‘Ell-maid of Dunstaffnage’ wanders the ramparts, wearing green, and is supposedly linked to key events in the lives of the Campbell family, the hereditary owners of the castle. Her mood determines luck – smiling means good, crying, well, not. A related tale is that as part of their hold on the castle, the Hereditary Captain of the castle must spend three nights a year in the castle, and some have experienced ghostly goings-on during this sleepover. There’s certainly a feel to the place; for such a stunning castle, in a beautiful setting, it has a darkness about it.
Have you spent a lot of time in your book locations? Which is your favourite?
I think it has to be Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. I’ve loved Edinburgh since I was a child, and since moving back to the north-east, it’s become a bit of a bolt-hole for me, visiting pretty regularly to see friends, or even just wander around the place. When it came to another destination for a Kindred Spirits book, and the thought of Westminster Abbey terrified me, Edinburgh was the obvious choice. It also gave me the chance to write about Mary, Queen of Scots, my second favourite monarch, in Kindred Spirits: Royal Mile, having finally included Richard III in Kindred Spirits: Tower of London.
Have you ever had any paranormal experiences?
Once, I think. My parents were gardening, whilst I was pottering about inside. After a while, I went outside to ask my dad something, and saw him at the top of the back garden. When I started speaking to him however, he completely ignored me, and the next thing I knew, I heard his voice behind me, as he came around from the front garden. Looking back at the man I’d started talking to, there was nobody there. Apparently our estate is built on the site of an old market garden, so I can only assume that first man was the ghost of a former gardener…
I loved writing about the afterlife in my own book, what so you like about writing about dead people?
For me, it’s getting an idea of what people were like, how they lived, and what they thought about things. I also love having that little bit of wiggle-room, given that my ghosts, although of historical characters, are also modern people, to the extent that they are living ‘now’, as well as throughout every moment since their birth. It’s quite nice being able to write Anne Boleyn rolling her eyes and saying ‘whatever’, because actually, I think she was always quite a ‘modern’ character, and now she can be even more so.
What do you think the afterlife is like?
I would like to think it is a combination of how we both envisage it in our writing. I suppose my ghosts are in a purgatory of sorts, but some have chosen to stay there, not taking their chance to pass onto what I’ve always assumed is heaven, but never actually gone into any great length. There’s a mix of good and bad characters there, and a sense of having to work things out in this bit of the afterlife before you get the chance to move on.
Would you ever go ghost-hunting?
I just couldn’t… I’ve become a stronger believer about the afterlife in the last few years, and the only ghosts that ghost-hunters seem to encounter are those that are less than friendly! If I could just go and natter with some (nice) dead monarchs, or lords and ladies from the various historical sites I visit, then fine, but plague victims, criminals and tortured souls would be a bit too much for me.
If you could ask any dead person about the afterlife who would you choose?
Well, if we work on the assumption that they are able to visit the realm of the living, like both of our sets of characters can, then I think I’d have to go a fair way back, just because that way, the person I ask will have seen and heard a heck of a lot over the years. So, following that logic, and my own personal preferences, I’ll have to go for Richard III. It was never really going to be anyone else…
All That Mighty Heart 