Meet my main characters - Michael Bayliss - Since You've Been Gone

What should we know about him?

Michael Bayliss, vet, Yorkshire man, legend.

On the surface, he seems a pretty uncomplicated person. He gets on with life, living in a flat above the practice and doesn't really have a long-term plan. This easy-going nature can put him at odds with people because they think he's easy to read, likes a bit of banter and therefore unable to be hurt but he is a vulnerable as the rest of us.

Michael is the product of a broken home, his mum having run off with the local bingo caller. It has given him a wary perspective on relationships but that doesn't stop him having them or having opinions on Hal's. It's the commitment he has the problem with.

What is the main conflict?

For Michael it is keeping Hal grounded in reality. He knows that his friend has an emotional block but all the while it is kept on a low level, he's not bothered what it is. When Hal's life is thrown into confusion, Michael must be the anchor but also, he must have one eye on what the impact of going home might have on his life and the practice his shares with Hal.

What is the personal goal of the character?

For Michael it is getting through life as peacefully as possible. He's a grafter but with a slacker mentality. Not for him the mortgage and the kids. He doesn't want convention and, although he is wary of relationships because they seem to go to fast for him, he is really looking for someone just like him; someone a little unconventional.

Since You've Been Gone is available exclusively on Amazon across all markets for download onto your Kindle and Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £3.99.Paperback is available for £6.99

Meet my main character - Abigail Markham - Since You've Been Gone

What should we know about her?

Abigail Markham is a Dover girl through and through. Born and raised in the Tower Hamlets, she still lives in a tiny terraced house within a stone’s throw of her childhood home. Abigail is a fighter. She is also complex. She didn’t have the best start in her life and her prospects were patchy, to say the least but she has a good heart and is a strong woman. She married young and bore her first child in her late teens. The marriage produced one more child before it fell apart. She works at the local hairdressers and life is tough but she has her friends and her sister and they keep her going even though money is short.

What is the main conflict?

The main conflict for Abigail is reconciling herself with her past decisions. She has a secret and she has had to live with the consequences of the path she chose. Some would say she did it for the best of reasons and others might think that maybe she was crying out for attention but, the deed was done and she got on with it. There is a part of her that is angry, even though the decision was hers and hers alone, she feels let down. Only Abigail can reconcile herself to her decision and, although she doesn’t tacitly blame Hal, she feels anger towards him. Once she looks at herself and her own part in how her life turned out, she will be much more at peace.

What is the personal goal of the character?

Finding peace with her past. She is happy that Hal never came home because she doesn’t have to expose herself to having to tell the truth but she also suffers from an acute, unspoken sense of abandonment by him. It’s kind of given her a bit of a martyr complex – ‘look at me, look what I did without your help’. Once it all comes out, then she can move forward but she has to be prepared for it all to come out.

Since You've Been Gone through Amazon across all markets for download onto your Kindle or Kindle apps and Kindle Unlimited for £2.99. Paperback is available for £6.99

Meet my main character - Pol - HIGH SPIRITS

Here’s your chance to get to know the main characters in HIGH SPIRITS

So, what’s HIGH SPIRITS all about?

1944 – ALEC EDWARDS world was opened up when he fell in love with JEAN FRANCIS. From the quiet confines of his orderly museum where everything was catalogued, labelled and recorded, he had been propelled into the chaotic realms of romantic attachment. This was during the Second World War, a time of air raids, bombings and rationing. Then the ‘worst’ happened. Alec and Jean were in the museum after hours when the air raid sirens went. Alec, ever the vigilant curator, was loathed to leave his precious collections out of its case and vulnerable and insisted on finishing the job. Jean is less than impressed and a dispute ensued and just as she is in the middle of delivering a right royal ear bashing when a bomb lands…..

It’s 70 something years since the bomb fell and the museum is staging an anniversary exhibition. Part of the original bomb, which caused extensive damage to a wing of the museum is going on display, alongside objects relating to the life and work of Alec. BETHAN ANDREWS is at her wit's end. As the curator of the museum she is leading on the exhibition but there is one small problem – Alec’s life was dedicated to the curation and collection of objects and little is known in the museum about him personally. The museum’s board of trustees has insisted on the anniversary being recognized so in desperation she puts out a public plea for help via the local paper. PATRICK HARMAN, Alec’s great-great nephew, responds.

In the meantime, the local rag has pricked up its ears. Alerted by Bethan’s call for help, a reporter has unearthed a long forgotten tale of ghostly lights and apparitions in the museum; of dead curators seeking their lost treasure. This led to the wealthy but totally batty BASTIAN HEDGES, the producer of the global phenomenon The Ghost Doctor ©, to bribe the Trustees with a big fat cheque, in return for filming his Midsummer Special in the museum.

Patrick arrives with his grandfather, POP, a cantankerous old man, at the museum with memorabilia. Much to Bethan’s horror, she realizes that she and Patrick have crossed paths before as students, in particular at the Student Summer Ball, when Bethan threw her principles to the wind and had a drunken night of passion with Patrick. She is relieved when he appears not to recall her at all. However, she shouldn’t relax. He is just being a gentleman and not letting on! For him, rather than being a blur of alcohol and regret, he rather liked her but then the cold light of day dawn and Bethan was in denial. Now they are thrown back together.

What none of them could realise is…the ghost stories are true; the curator does haunt the museum. The day the bomb dropped, it did more than just damage the wing, it killed Alec and Jean and they’ve spent the past 70 years watching the world go by aided and abetted by a much older ghost, that of POL, an eleven-year-old girl from the Iron Age.

The stage is now set for some ghostly intervention and for love to conquer all.

In this post, we’re going to meet POL a child of the Iron Age.

What is the name of your character?

Meet Pol an eleven-year old girl and nearly two thousand year old ghost.

What should we know about her?

Pol was born to the leader of her clan and lived with her extended community just outside what became Plimpton Market in an area today known as Miller’s Field.

Her clan is part of a wider tribe under a tribal leader.

Pol saw the coming of the Roman army into her world and watched as peace broke down between her father and the local detachment of soldiers. This led to the murder of her clan and propelled her father and his warriors into a bloody ambush in which the detachments of soldiers were all executed.

Pol is a powerful spirit through age and because in life she had special abilities that marked her out for a place in the class known as Vates or seers. Sadly for her, she was used as a sacrifice to the gods in an attempt to thwart the Roman incursions.

She has greater abilities than either Jean or Alec and can manipulate and use everyday objects at will. Her favourite thing is playing games on Seth’s iPod, much to Seth’s chagrin as he can’t work out who is doing it.

What is the main conflict?

Pol has little in the way of conflicts to deal with because she has had a huge span of time to come to terms with her situation. She was on the land before the first house was built on the site and saw the rise and fall of many properties.

Pol enjoyed living in a family home and seeing the comings and goings of family life. When the last owner died and the house became a museum she felt at her lowest but the arrival of Jean and Alec put an end to her loneliness.

What are her personal relationships like and how do they shape her character?

Pol had a loving relationship with her parents even though her life was brief. With the coming of Jean and Alec, Pol has found herself a family again and they very much act as a family unit in that respect.

She often defers to Jean or Alec even though her wisdom exceeds theirs. Pol knows a dark secret about the museum and, unknown to either Alec or Jean, she is shielding them from it in order to protect them.

When the trio reveals themselves to Bethan, Pol finds herself quite comfortable with the curator and spends much time with her in the office.

How do I get a copy?

HIGH SPIRITS is now available to download from across the Amazon market to your Kindle or Kindle apps for £3.99 or in paperback for £9.99

Meet my main character - Alec Edwards - HIGH SPIRITS

Here’s your chance to get to know the main characters in HIGH SPIRITS

So, what’s HIGH SPIRITS all about?

1944 – ALEC EDWARDS world was opened up when he fell in love with JEAN FRANCIS. From the quiet confines of his orderly museum where everything was catalogued, labelled and recorded, he had been propelled into the chaotic realms of romantic attachment. This was during the Second World War, a time of air raids, bombings and rationing. Then the ‘worst’ happened. Alec and Jean were in the museum after hours when the air raid sirens went. Alec, ever the vigilant curator, was loathed to leave his precious collections out of its case and vulnerable and insisted on finishing the job. Jean is less than impressed and a dispute ensued and just as she is in the middle of delivering a right royal ear bashing when a bomb lands…..

It’s 70 something years since the bomb fell and the museum is staging an anniversary exhibition. Part of the original bomb, which caused extensive damage to a wing of the museum is going on display, alongside objects relating to the life and work of Alec. BETHAN ANDREWS is at her wit's end. As the curator of the museum she is leading on the exhibition but there is one small problem – Alec’s life was dedicated to the curation and collection of objects and little is known in the museum about him personally. The museum’s board of trustees has insisted on the anniversary being recognized so in desperation she puts out a public plea for help via the local paper. PATRICK HARMAN, Alec’s great-great nephew, responds.

In the meantime, the local rag has pricked up its ears. Alerted by Bethan’s call for help, a reporter has unearthed a long forgotten tale of ghostly lights and apparitions in the museum; of dead curators seeking their lost treasure. This led to the wealthy but totally batty BASTIAN HEDGES, the producer of the global phenomenon The Ghost Doctor ©, to bribe the Trustees with a big fat cheque, in return for filming his Midsummer Special in the museum.

Patrick arrives with his grandfather, POP, a cantankerous old man, at the museum with memorabilia. Much to Bethan’s horror, she realizes that she and Patrick have crossed paths before as students, in particular at the Student Summer Ball, when Bethan threw her principles to the wind and had a drunken night of passion with Patrick. She is relieved when he appears not to recall her at all. However, she shouldn’t relax. He is just being a gentleman and not letting on! For him, rather than being a blur of alcohol and regret, he rather liked her but then the cold light of day dawn and Bethan was in denial. Now they are thrown back together.

What none of them could realise is…the ghost stories are true; the curator does haunt the museum. The day the bomb dropped, it did more than just damage the wing, it killed Alec and Jean and they’ve spent the past 70 years watching the world go by aided and abetted by a much older ghost, that of POL, an eleven-year-old girl from the Iron Age.

The stage is now set for some ghostly intervention and for love to conquer all.

In this post, we’re going to meet ALEC EDWARDS, former assistant curator of Partridge Hall.

What is the name of your character?

Meet Alec Edwards. Born, lived and died in Plimpton Market, a town set in the rolling South Downs.

When and where is the story set?

The story begins during the war with the prologue to set the scene as how Alec and Jean met and fell in love before their untimely demise. It then moves onto the present day and picks up on the characters that work in the museum – Bethan, Patrick, Sal, Billy, and Seth. Unbeknown to them, their every move is being observed by three very mischievous ghosts.

What should we know about him?

Alec is fastidious to the extreme when it comes to his museum – his pride and joy. He developed his enthusiasm for the past as a boy and was fortunate enough to be taken on by the kindly curator, as a school-boy assistant. From there it was only a matter of time before he was employed full-time and spending all his waking hours in his beloved stores.

Alec’s devotion to his museum is such that he never made time for love. That all changes the day he happened to look out of his office window, tucked up in the attics of Partridge Hall, and across to the nearest building. Here, he sees the vision of loveliness that is Jean Francis. From then on, they see each other every day – she would smile and he would nod until fate finally takes a hand and they cross paths outside the local newsagents.

Of course, falling in love doesn’t alter Alec’s fundamental nature. He’s still fussy and prone to being a bit short with Jean. They bicker a lot but ultimately, he loves her with all his heart.

It’s just a shame that his parents and hers were so dead set against them marrying.

What is the main conflict?

He’s dead and having to live in his cherished museum with all the new-fangled ideas that have come along since his departure from the mortal world.

Alec is stuck in 1944 and aged 30, from a time when objects were recorded in dusty old accession registers and noted down on cards. It was an age when business was conducted over a hearty evening meal in the local coaching house and gifts of money were received from local benefactors who required deferential treatment and a bit of toadying.

Now, it’s all stakeholders and funding managers and people passing through who want to jazz it all up a bit. To top it all off, they keep re-arranging his stores and dammit, he’s just going to have to put it all back again!

What are his personal relationships like and how do they shape his character?

Alec had a very strained relationship with his own parents. We don’t learn much about his father but it seems his mother was a huge snob and this had filtered down to his sister, Rose, mother of Pop.

They seemed to have some idea that having a curator in the family gave them social standing – they had servants for heaven’s sake!

Alec got out of it all by burying himself in his work, not that it was a hardship –he was never happier than when he was in his museum. He even slept there, in a little camp bed in his office.

Jean opens him up, just a bit. She likes dancing and movies and drags him along to both. He feigns reluctance but he’s besotted with her. She has the biggest influence on him and, if they’d lived, she may well have reformed and softened his character. As it is, Alec is stuck with the mannerisms and idioms from life which makes him sound somewhat stuffy.

How do I get a copy?

HIGH SPIRITS is now available to download from across the Amazon market to your Kindle or Kindle apps for £3.99 or in paperback for £9.99

Meet my main characters - Bethan Andrews - HIGH SPIRITS

Here’s your chance to get to know the main characters in HIGH SPIRITS

So, what’s HIGH SPIRITS all about?

1944 – ALEC EDWARDS’ world was opened up when he fell in love with JEAN FRANCIS. From the quiet confines of his orderly museum where everything was catalogued, labelled and recorded, he had been propelled into the chaotic realms of romantic attachment. This was during the Second World War, a time of air raids, bombings and rationing. Then the ‘worst’ happened. Alec and Jean were in the museum after hours when the air raid sirens went. Alec, ever the vigilant curator, was loathed to leave his precious collections out of its case and vulnerable and insisted on finishing the job. Jean is less than impressed and a dispute ensued and just as she is in the middle of delivering a right royal ear bashing when a bomb lands…..

It’s 70 something years since the bomb fell and the museum is staging an anniversary exhibition. Part of the original bomb, which caused extensive damage to a wing of the museum is going on display, wit'sgside objects relating to the life and work of Alec. BETHAN ANDREWS is at her wits end. As the curator of the museum she is leading on the exhibition but there is one small problem – Alec’s life was dedicated to the curation and collection of objects and little is known in the museum about him personally. The museum’s board of trustees has insisted on the anniversary being recognized so in desperation she puts out a public plea for help via the local paper. PATRICK HARMAN, Alec’s great-great nephew, responds.

In the meantime, the local rag has pricked up its ears. Alerted by Bethan’s call for help, a reporter has unearthed a long forgotten tale of ghostly lights and apparitions in the museum; of dead curators seeking their lost treasure. This led to the wealthy but totally batty BASTIAN HEDGES, the producer of the global phenomenon The Ghost Doctor ©, to bribe the Trustees with a big fat cheque, in return for filming his Midsummer Special in the museum.

Patrick arrives with his grandfather, POP, a cantankerous old man, at the museum with memorabilia. Much to Bethan’s horror, she realizes that she and Patrick have crossed paths before as students, in particular at the Student Summer Ball, when Bethan threw her principles to the wind and had a drunken night of passion with Patrick. She is relieved when he appears not to recall her at all. However, she shouldn’t relax. He is just being a gentleman and not letting on! For him, rather than being a blur of alcohol and regret, he rather liked her but then the cold light of day dawn and Bethan was in denial. Now they are thrown back together.

What none of them could realise is…the ghost stories are true; the curator does haunt the museum. The day the bomb dropped, it did more than just damage the wing, it killed Alec and Jean and they’ve spent the past 70 years watching the world go by aided and abetted by a much older ghost, that of POL, an eleven-year-old girl from the Iron Age.

The stage is now set for some ghostly intervention and for love to conquer all.

In this post, we’re going to meet BETHAN ANDREWS

What should we know about her?

Bethan was born and raised in a small village in the Cotswolds that formed part of an estate belonging to the Farringdon family. Her father owned his own business and Bethan had grown up in the company of Tom Farrington the heir to Lassister Hall and estate. It seemed to the wish of both families that these two would marry and carry on the family name, however, an indiscretion on the part of Bethan put paid to all of that.

Bethan came to Partridge Hall by way of a London museum, which fell to the funding cuts and so she was let go. Plimpton Market and a small museum were not what she had in mind when she started out in the heritage sector and we find her at odds with her role.

What is the main conflict?

In the beginning we find Bethan attempting to reconcile herself with her role in a small museum. She has come from a dynamic environment to find that she is most definitely second place to the will of the Trustees which she finds most frustrating.

What are her personal relationships like and how do they shape her character?

Bethan moved to Plimpton Market and found that her accommodation plans had fallen through. Sal, the museum designer, immediately steps in and offers her a room which Bethan is at pains to point out will only be a short-term arrangement. Five years later and they are still living together in Sal’s old house. This connection is pivotal to Bethan and is more of a mother/daughter relationship than landlady and lodger. Sal is Bethan’s voice of reason and fiercest defender.

Her relationships with her parents are genial and homely although she nearly caused a schism when her romantic attachment to Tom broke off. They play no part in the story but clearly, there are no domestic problems. Having experienced a comfortable upbringing without stress, Bethan has turned out to be a level-headed young woman.

Her relationship with Tom was borne more of familiarity than love and it didn’t take much to expose that truth. She has steered clear of romantic attachment but that is thrown into conflict with the arrival of Patrick – a face from the past.

How do I get a copy?

HIGH SPIRITS is now available to download from across the Amazon market to your Kindle or Kindle apps for £3.99 or in paperback for £9.99

Meet my main characters - Jean Francis - HIGH SPIRITS

Here’s your chance to get to know the main characters in HIGH SPIRITS

So, what’s HIGH SPIRITS all about?

1944 – ALEC EDWARDS’ world was opened up when he fell in love with JEAN FRANCIS. From the quiet confines of his orderly museum where everything was catalogued, labelled and recorded, he had been propelled into the chaotic realms of romantic attachment. This was during the Second World War, a time of air raids, bombings and rationing. Then the ‘worst’ happened. Alec and Jean were in the museum after hours when the air raid sirens went. Alec, ever the vigilant curator, was loathed to leave his precious collections out of its case and vulnerable and insisted on finishing the job. Jean is less than impressed and a dispute ensued and just as she is in the middle of delivering a right royal ear bashing when the bomb lands…..

It’s 70 something years since the bomb fell and the museum is staging an anniversary exhibition. Part of the original bomb, which caused extensive damage to a wing of the museum is going on display, alongside objects relating to the life and work of Alec. BETHAN ANDREWS is at her wit's end. As the curator of the museum she is leading on the exhibition but there is one small problem – Alec’s life was dedicated to the curation and collection of objects and little is known in the museum about him personally. The museum’s board of trustees has insisted on the anniversary being recognized so in desperation she puts out a public plea for help via the local paper. PATRICK HARMAN, Alec’s great-great nephew, responds.

In the meantime, the local rag has pricked up its ears. Alerted by Bethan’s call for help, a reporter has unearthed a long forgotten tale of ghostly lights and apparitions in the museum; of dead curators seeking their lost treasure. This led to the wealthy but totally batty BASTIAN HEDGES, the producer of the global phenomenon The Ghost Doctor ©, to bribe the Trustees with a big fat cheque, in return for filming his Midsummer Special in the museum.

Patrick arrives with his grandfather, POP, a cantankerous old man, at the museum with memorabilia. Much to Bethan’s horror, she realizes that she and Patrick have crossed paths before as students, in particular at the Student Summer Ball, when Bethan threw her principles to the wind and had a drunken night of passion with Patrick. She is relieved when he appears not to recall her at all. However, she shouldn’t relax. He is just being a gentleman and not letting on! For him, rather than being a blur of alcohol and regret, he rather liked her but then the cold light of day dawn and Bethan was in denial. Now they are thrown back together.

What none of them could realise is…the ghost stories are true; the curator does haunt the museum. The day the bomb dropped, it did more than just damage the wing, it killed Alec and Jean and they’ve spent the past 70 years watching the world go by aided and abetted by a much older ghost, that of POL, an eleven-year-old girl from the Iron Age.

The stage is now set for some ghostly intervention and for love to conquer all.

In this post, we’re going to meet JEAN FRANCIS

What is the name of your character?

Meet Jean Francis Born, lived and died in Plimpton Market, a town set in the rolling South Downs.

When and where is the story set?

The story begins during the war with the prologue to set the scene as to how Alec and Jean met and fell in love before their untimely demise. It then moves onto the present day and picks up on the characters that work in the museum – Bethan, Patrick, Sal, Billy, and Seth. Unbeknown to them, their every move is being observed by three very mischievous ghosts.

What should we know about her?

Jean loves life. She’s only 21 and had a job as a secretary in the law firm of Clipper, Clipper and Boughton. She likes to go to the Roxy on a Saturday night and dance, although it’s not what it was before the war! She enjoys putting on a special dress and doing her hair for a night out. She’s from one of the prominent families in Plimpton Market, although they have been somewhat snubbed due to a scandal decades before.

She doesn’t take to dying very easily (well, who does?) and feels lost and out of place in the museum – which by her own admission, she’d never stepped foot in prior to her courtship with Alec.

What is the main conflict?

It’s taken Jean some time to adjust to eternity especially as Alec revels in being in his beloved museum 24/7. Her transition has been helped by the presence of Pol and gradually she began to view the museum as her home into which she welcomed visitors –even if those visitors couldn’t see her.

She often wonders about her relationship with Alec and whether she would have managed his proclivities if they’d lived. Sometimes, she wishes she could move on.

What are her personal relationships like and how do they shape her character?

Jean had been brought up in the knowledge that her family, although with a stain on their reputation due to the affair of an ancestor, were something in the town. Her parents were of independent means, although her father expected both her and her sister, Violet, to earn a living. She’d been given the job of secretary on the back of her father being a member of the local Freemasons lodge so she’d never really experienced hardship

Her relationship with Alec came as a surprise to her friends and was frowned upon by her family who hoped that one of the daughters would marry into one of the still socially respectable families and thus restore their own reputation by association.

Alec really wasn’t the type that one would image Jean being attached to but there you go – love is blind!

Seventy-something years have not dulled her love of Alec but revealing herself to Bethan opens her world up far more than if she had lived and given her something to hold onto.

How do I get a copy?

HIGH SPIRITS is now available to download from across the Amazon market to your Kindle or Kindle apps for £3.99 or in paperback for £9.99

Blithe Spirit

My next film is the second one starring Rex Harrison and, as I said in my last post I’m not fond of him as an actor but Blithe Spirit is a joyous affair made all the better for the wonderful performance by Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati.

Directed by David Lean and adapted from the play of the same name by Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit was not a notable success. Coward objected to the changed ending – in the play Charles leaves the two bickering wives to it, taunting them with his freedom as he does.

The dialogue, in typical Coward style, is fast, witty and slightly risqué in parts (online being deemed too much for US ears).

Believing her to be a charlatan, and rather amused by her eccentricity, Charles, his wife Ruth and their guests George and Violet, can barely stop themselves laughing at Madame Arcati.

Finally, after falling into a trance, Charles becomes convinced that he can hear the voice of his dead first wife, Elvira. To bad for him then that the others can’t, and he passes it off. When Madame Arcati comes to she is convinced something occurred but the others all deny it.

After their guests have gone, Charles tries to convince Ruth that something did happen, but she doesn’t believe him and retires for the night. Elvira reveals herself to Charles but only to him.

As tension mounts between husband and wife, Charles finds himself talking to his dead wife much to the chagrin of his present one. In a last-ditch attempt to convince Ruth he’s not mad he persuades Elvira to pick up a vase and chair.

Of course, when this happens it doesn’t make Ruth feel any better!

Ruth seeks out Madame Arcati in an attempt to return Elvira back to where she came from but the medium claims she doesn’t know how.

Persuaded that Elvira is trying to be reunited with her former husband, Ruth tells Charles that the ghost is planning his demise. Of course, Charles is having none of it. Sadly, for Ruth, she was correct, but Elvira has miscalculated and instead of topping Charles, it is Ruth who dies in the car the ghost has tampered with.

Now a spirit herself, Ruth exacts revenge on Elvira by harassing her, so she wants to leave.

A now desperate Charles, being haunted by two wives, turns once more to Madame Arcati but all her conjuring fails when it is revealed that she didn’t summon the spirit at all; it was the maid!

Unable to assist, Madame Arcati suggests that Charles leaves on a long vacation however, it is not long before he too has a fateful accident and joins Elvira and Ruth as a spirit.

In my forthcoming novel HIGH SPIRITS, the ghosts of Partridge Hall are aghast to learn that their friend Billy, the night guard, is being replaced by modern sensors and CCTV. They set out to scare the men installing the equipment, in an attempt to stop it happening.

Excerpt:

Darren looked around the room as he waited for Steve to finish.

“Reckon it’s true about this place being haunted.”

“You what?”

“Straight up! Reckon it’s the old curator.”

“Blimey, must have been a saddo to want to be in here during his life let alone haunt it forever!”

“Well, the damn cheek of it!”

“Now, Alec, don’t lose your temper!”

“I’ll show him!”

“Pol! No!”

It was too late; Pol was off.

“Yeah, think they’d have better things to do in their….” Darren’s voice trailed off as something caught his eye.

As he watched, he saw a shape seem to materialise before him, but nothing defined. He stared wide-eyed as the shape moved. It was a bundle of clothing such as he’d noticed in the boxes dotted around the museum.

“Okay, mate, you stop that!”

Steve stopped what he was doing and peered down the ladder. “What’d you say?”

The shape continued to move, to grow as the clothes took on a form.

“I said, enough!” Darren could feel the hairs on the back of his head standing up, and he had the greatest desire to pee.

Steve looked over to see what Darren was seeing, and the screwdriver fell from his hand, nearly hitting the petrified Darren on the head.

“What is that?” he stuttered.

“Someone messing about!” Darren was trying to sound braver than he felt. “Oi! I said enough!”

“I don’t like this!” said Steve coming down the ladder.

The two men stood shoulder to shoulder as the clothing, seemingly devoid of a wearer danced around before them.

Alec stood beside them, unseen and unheard, laughing at Pol, who had slipped inside the clothing, and was dancing away, wildly throwing her arms and legs out.

“Alec, don’t encourage her!”

“Serves them right, I say!”

Darren and Steve began to back away as Pol stopped dancing and with deliberate steps that gave the ‘empty’ clothes an air of menace, started to walk towards them.

The two men fled into the hall outside, almost falling over themselves in their rush to get out of the room.

Alec and Jean roared with laughter as Pol stepped out of the clothing, leaving it where it fell on the floor.

Haunted Mansion - part two

In this post I'm taking a look at 50 Berkeley Square. Now, I don't know if this was the influence behind the name of 'The Ghosts of Berkeley Square' but if it's not then that's a bit coincidental, don't you think?

Berkeley Square sits in Mayfair, Central London, in a highly exclusive area. In the middle is a large green space around which is ranged the houses. Within walking distance is Hyde Park, The Mall, St James's Palace and Buckingham Palace.

It feels like a wildly unlikely place to find a haunting, amidst the bustle of life in the capital.

Charles Harper in Haunted Houses, published in 1907 stated that

“… It seems that a Something or Other, very terrible indeed, haunts or did haunt a particular room. This unnamed Raw Head and Bloody Bones, or whatever it is, has been sufficiently awful to have caused the death, in convulsions, of at least two foolhardy persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber…”

The challenge of sleeping in the haunting room was taken up by an unnamed man. A little after midnight, the bell the man had agreed to ring, to summon assistance was heard. Rushing to his aid, his friends found him rigid with terror, unable to tell them what he had seen. He died shortly afterwards.

The house remained empty for a number of years but not necessarily uninhabited. Passers-by told of flickering lights, disembodied screams, and the sound of a body being dragged down the stairs.

The source of the haunting was speculated to be the brother of a former owner, Mr Du Pre. This poor unfortunate was locked in a room for his own safety and was reputedly fed through a hole in the door.

Another contender was a gentleman by the name of Myers who was jilted at the altar and took to be a recluse. The sound of footsteps could be his as he wanders the house by candlelight.

In more recent times, people in the building have experienced the sense of something standing behind them, only finding nothing there.

An employee working in the accounts department of a firm that had the haunted room, reported seeing a column of brown mist that moved quickly across the room.

In my forthcoming novel HIGH SPIRITS, stories abound of lights seen flickering from room to room and local legend tell of a ghostly curator who prowls the Hall at night searching for his lost treasure.

Excerpt

Tommy Pearson was having a good few days off work. He had been in the pub since lunchtime and was now strolling through the park, taking a shortcut to his digs at the lower end of town.

He felt particularly mellow on this warm evening. He’d played the fruit machines and won, got a girl’s phone number, and was looking forward to a lie in tomorrow. Life was sweet.

As he passed by the mansion, he glanced up and saw a light moving from window to window, and his beer-addled brain suddenly recalled something he’d recently read. His first instinct was to run and, always being one to follow his gut; he did just that.

Official Release Date!!

Arriving this autumn

I'm pleased to say that the first draft of my next novel 'High Spirits' is now 2/3 complete and in good shape.

I'm aiming to have it on Kindle in the autumn, muse and time permitting.

To celebrate, here's a look at the artwork.