It's Hallowe'en!

Another Hallowe’en and another tale for you:

OSTENSION

 It begins with a competition.

This Halloween, create a new fear.  Major rewards.

Looks fun.

An old photograph, small part of background carefully distorted, just enough to cause discomfort, a sense of wrongness, a feel of the uncanny, the creepy.  Play with photoshop.  It’s a laugh.

An impression of hair with a glow or nimbus behind it.  Features and limbs unseen though there are hints against the dark of things that seem sharp-edged and bone-white.

Photograph not quite enough.  Needs more.  Needs a caption.

‘He said glory would be our reward.  All we had to do was give.  We gave all.  We received out reward.’

That should do it.

It’s spreading.

Some wannabe film students muck around with their mates and a digital camera camera.  Ten shaky, blurry seconds of something.  Something that gives an impression of hair and bone.

‘God, what’s that?  What is it?’

‘Get out.  Just get out.  I’m right behind you!’

Sudden blackout with electronic screech.

All very Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity.

‘Tonight we want your calls about your spooky experiences!’

‘It was like the thing in the photograph, you know, the famous one of the playground.  Well I was haunted by that thing all my childhood.  It’s real.’

Result!  Losers out there think it’s true.  Tossers.

The Website That Let’s You Tell Your True Life Paranormal stories

They’ve given it a name.  They’ve given it a gender!

gloryboy

Is it too late to copyright?

A flicker in the mirror.  That which makes you suddenly check that there’s nothing behind you.  The light patch in the dark of  the trees that is suddenly wrong.

you’ve got gloryboy on your trail

Houston we have a meme!

Pastor Caleb Gems performs exorcisms to rid you of evil

‘I know that gloryboy exists’

‘There he was, watching me from the woods, a darkness darker than that around.  A strange glow.  Hair and bone’

‘In my bedroom, in the corner, just there for a moment I saw him from the corner of my eye.  I see him still.’

‘Please God, save me from gloryboy.’

“gloryboy: He Exists” by Pastor Caleb Gems, $10 special price when you click here.

Coming through.  Coming through.

At gloryboy.com you can get your gloryboy mugs, tee shirts, mouse mats and badges.  gloryboy is here with your reward!

A focal point.  New bogeyman.  Something is hungry.  Something is ready to feed.

There’s glory for You!

Follow the new hilarious gloryboy web-strip!  You’ll get your reward!

Coming through. 

Coming through.

Reward.

Where did that come from?  Be seeing old glory himself if not careful:)

Photograph from 1912 shows that gloryboy has been with us a long time.

Oh give me strength!

Does this medieval woodcut show gloryboy?

No it doesn’t.  It can’t.  I created him, it, two years ago for a competition.

Never did get my reward.

Latest gloryboy footage and testimony.  Is he after our children?

They’ve added so much to him.  Not just a name and a gender.  They’ve given him a look, motives, an MO.

It was meant to be something odd, a bit creepy, unsettling.  Not some comic book villain with complete backstory.

It’s not mine anymore.

He’s not mine anymore.

gloryboy has escaped.

And I think he’s coming home.

Tonight’s discussion.

The unexplained disappearance of the self-proclaimed creator of gloryboy continues to cause controversy.

Did he get his reward?

With apologies to Victor Surge

‘Ostension’ copyright © 2012 Alastair Chadwin

 Or you can read it, along with some comments about the its writing, over at Spring Heeled Jack.

Meanwhile, in the run up to Samhain this year I’ve been reading up on my ghostly literature.  Best of the batch so far, Dark Matter by Michelle Paver which I read, liked, admired, but was not overly scared or unnerved by it until this morning when I was in the bath.  No I don’t know why either.  Baths don’t feature in the book at all, as far as I can recall and as I only read it a week back, if they did they weren’t major plot drivers.  Odd.

I’ve come across this delayed reaction to ghost stories before, noticeably with MR James.  A detail from the story will suddenly pop back into my mind at an unexpected moment.  It can be inconvenient.

Another read was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.  This was made into the famous 1963 film, The Haunting and the script there follows the novel very closely.  Interestingly though, the most famously scary sequence in the film is less so in the novel, while the novel’s most alarming scene comes across as somewhat melodramatic in the film. 

Disappointments have included a surprisingly clumsy and unsubtle effort by Henry James called The Romance of Certain Old Clothes.  I hope he gets his act together before I get to Turn of the Screw.

Finally, here’s a song from a film which, despite its title, has curiously little to do with Tim Burton:

And if you are out tonight, as always, be watchful for there may be things abroad which should not be.

A Tale for Hallowe'en

THE lost traveller said: ‘I must say, it’s very good of you to take me in, a complete stranger.’

His host smiled at him over the candles that stood sentry on the long dining table.

‘It is nothing, I assure you,’ he said. ‘I am grateful that I can be of service. May I press you to some more stilton?’

‘Thank you,’ the other replied, ‘you certainly may. Despite your marvellous supper I am still hungry. The fright I suppose.’

‘It is indeed highly alarming to be lost on the moors, at night and in such weather. Worse on this particular night I imagine.’

He chuckled at his guest’s nonplussed expression.

‘All Hallow’s Eve,’ he explained.

The traveller laughed.

‘I had forgotten the date,’ he confessed, ‘especially after your fine meal. Though I must confess that even in this constantly changing century I have never before dined without a scrap of meat. Vegetables only. I would not have believed it possible, yet it was one of the finest meals I have eaten in many a day.’

‘You flatter me. Doubtless your ordeal has sharpened your hunger. We do not often eat meat here. We cannot often get it you see. I think that this is perhaps right. Meat should be rare. Some more of this rather disappointing port? Or would you prefer brandy perhaps. I do not drink wine, for the gout you know.’

‘Thank you, but your port is excellent. I must say again how grateful I am that you took me in. After all I just turn up on your doorstep with some story about being thrown from my horse while taking a short-cut and this place so isolated. I expected to have the dogs set on me.’

‘That would have been a waste.’

This last was spoken in an unheard murmur. The host smiled again at his guest.

‘Again you flatter me. The pleasure is entirely mine. Here we are starved…’ he poured some brandy into his balloon glass not having tasted a drop of the port, ‘…of pleasant conversation.’

The guest took a deep draught from his glass and then felt suddenly drowsy, more drowsy than he had ever felt before. He could not speak and the remains of his port wine splashed to the floor. He could not lift his head, nor could he respond as his host, now testing the edge of the cheese knife against his thumb said pleasantly:

‘No, as I said, the pleasure is entirely mine.’

He stood and it seemed to the traveller that he loomed in darkness. As unconsciousness overcame him he just heard and just comprehended his host’s final words:

‘The thing is, I always like to have a guest for breakfast.’

With apologies to the late great Vivian Stanshall.

And then there’s what I suppose is the shortest ghost story ever. I first heard it as a young teenager. It went something like this:

THE last surviving human sat alone in the room. There was a knock at the door.

Finally have a listen and, as it is said, be careful for there may be some walking this night that should not: