There is something about the traditional, old-fashioned, round-the-fire ghost story that seems inextricably linked to Christmas. I suspect that's something to do with the dark nights, and the idea of a reunited family shutting the curtains and gathering around to share chilling tales...
In any case, I have, for the last few years, endeavoured to read a good ghost story over the Christmas period. It's usually the Victorians and Edwardians who understood the genre best (and the titles are always brilliant - who but Henry James could pen something like The Strange Romance of Certain Old Clothes?!) but the one modern writer who I think has properly inherited her predecessor's talents is the wonderful Susan Hill. This Christmas, I shall be reading her acknowledged masterpiece The Woman in Black, which is now most famous for its stage adaptation, one of the West End's most successful plays. From browsing the first few pages, I know it to be the story of a young man named Arthur Kipps who experiences something terrible in a lonely house on the moors and, years, later is compelled to relate the tale:
They had chided me with being a spoilsport, tried to encourage me to tell them the one ghost story I must surely, like any other man, have it in me to tell. And they were right. Yes, I had a story, a true story, a story of haunting and evil, fear and confusion, horror and tragedy. But it was not a story to be told for casual entertainment, around the fireside upon Christmas Eve...
I beg to differ, Mr Kipps! Tell on!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment