When I was a teenager, I was still finding out what I liked and, more importantly, what I didn’t. When The Exorcist came out in 1974, my friends and I went to see it. It was terrifying. People walked out before the end. I wanted to as well.
I had dreadful nightmares afterwards. What was under the bed? Did something lurk behind the curtains? A few more horror films followed, along with an Ouija board session where all we did was scare ourselves.
By then, I’d had enough. It had all unsettled me so much that I talked to Dad about it. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but one thing stayed with me. ‘Never be tempted to play with an Ouija board.’
I asked him why, feeling a bit nervous because I already had. He told me he’d had an experience with one when I was younger. That was all he told me. I’ve thought of it ever since as the ghost story Dad never told me.
Years later, when I started writing, I realised how much I loved ghost stories. Even Ouija boards held a fascination for me on the page. I was happy to leave it to my characters to have a go.
I began to wonder what might have happened to Dad, and that gave me the idea for It Came for Him. In the story, a young woman is invited to join an Ouija board session and ends up conjuring up the spirit of her father, who died in mysterious circumstances.
It’s one of eleven scary stories in The Black-Eyed Boy & Other Stories. A few of the others were inspired by things that really happened, too.
I am rather fond of ghost stories too. My mum told me about an experience she had as a young girl. She told me a ghost cut her hair. Sadly, I cannot ask her about it now as she passed away Christmas 2024.
My friend said she saw her grandads ghost. She wanted to try the Ouiji board. Thankfully no one she knew had one. However, when we were classroom monitors doing our duty we popped into an empty class. There was a tall flower vase on the windowsill with the tips of paintbrushes poking out the top. My friend was talking about her grandad when suddenly a paint brush rose out of the vase and into the sink. No open windows, no one around. Strange. As we grew whenever we met up we would ask each other about that day. We both saw it but was it a shared illusion? We both wanted to see ghosts, who knows.
LikeLike