A True Tale For Hallowe'en - Re-blogging My Own Ghost Story.

 

 

Michael James Flynn in the middle, with the moustache and waistcoat,
seated next to the man with the tar bucket.

I posted this last year, at about this time - but it has been on my mind and since it's a spooky - but nice - little story, I thought it might be worth while re-blogging it in time for Hallowe'en. I still don't quite know what to make of it even though it happened to me - but it has stayed with me ever since. I leave you to make up your own minds.

Most writers, whether of fiction or non-fiction (and I create both) will tell you that we become so absorbed in our subject matter that we feel as though the people we're writing about are not just real - as they often are - but alive. Sometimes that sense of reality even rubs off onto our nearest and dearest. When I was researching and writing a novel called The Jewel, about poet Robert Burns's wife, Jean Armour, back in 2015, I had talked about her so much that my husband swore that he saw her one night, walking through the door between our bedroom and my office - a woman in old fashioned dress, with something like a mob cap on her head.

My tale for today is quite different, very personal and not nearly so fleeting.

In 2018, I had been deep into research for a new book, about a murder in my Leeds Irish family. The book, called A Proper Person to be Detained, would be published in 2019 by Contraband. On Christmas Day, in 1881, my nana's uncle John Manley had been stabbed in the street by one John Ross and died where he fell. His younger sister, Elizabeth, watched him die. The two men had been casual friends. John Manley had refused to fight, but Ross was angry and drunk and found a tobacco cutting knife in his pocket. The murderer fled, to be apprehended a few weeks later. He was tried and sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to hard labour, a mercy that I felt was probably justified.

In writing the book, I explored the situation of this poor Irish migrant family, whose parents had fled famine, only - like so many - to be abused and exploited in the industrial cities of England and Scotland. Researching the book also gave me the opportunity to find out more about my great grandfather, Michael James Flynn from Ballinlough, County Roscommon. (He went by both christian names.) He married my great grandmother Mary, another of the murdered man's sisters, already a widow with children, in St Patrick's Church, Leeds, in 1888. The Manley family had come from Ballyhaunis in Mayo, but the two villages are only five miles apart, so there may have been family associations. At that time, he was a paviour's labourer, but later, he would describe himself simply as a paviour. He built roads and pavements.

From the accounts of those who knew him, including my own beloved nana, he was a good, kind, generous man who managed to transform the fortunes of the family. The household into which I was born, more than sixty years later, was by no means wealthy. It was still a crowded working class household, but it was warm, clean and comfortable. Nobody went hungry. There were books to read. A piano. My nana remembered Michael as the most generous of fathers. If he was wearing a winter coat and he saw a beggar on the street, he was quite likely to hand it over to the more needy man, to the occasional frustration of his wife who was always counting the pennies.

So what about my Hallowe'en story?

It happened in a supermarket car-park of all places. Not long after I had finished the book. It was one of those chilly, misty mornings, (much like today) with a low sun shining in my eyes as I walked from my parked car to the door of the building. It was early and the car-park was fairly empty. A man walked out of the mist and the sunlight and headed straight for me. I had just crossed the narrow roadway leading into the parking spaces, but halted as he approached. I remember that he put a gentle hand on my elbow and encouraged me to step up onto the pavement as another car passed by. 'Take care, madam,' he said. He was Irish. Not Northern Irish, as so many visitors to this part of Scotland, but a soft southern Irish voice.

'I was wondering,' he said, 'if you might be able to give me something to get myself a bit of breakfast.' He glanced back towards the supermarket doorway. 'They've all been ignoring me,' he said.

I looked him up and down. He was covered in grey-white dust - it looked like plaster dust - from head to toe. He wasn't dirty or drunk. Just - dusty. He wore boots and they too were dusty. He looked like a working man, a labourer.

I didn't hesitate. I looked in my purse, found a five pound note, and gave it to him. I don't carry much cash these days and it was all I had. He thanked me. 'God bless you,' he said. 'God bless you!' And off he went. I watched him walk into the misty winter sunshine, as he headed towards the steps leading up into the town. But I never saw him go up the steps.

Almost immediately. I had one of those sudden intimations of something odd. Not in a bad way. Not frightening at all, you understand, but uncanny. And strangely uplifting. I headed for the supermarket, but had to find a seat and sit down for a moment or two. I felt quite shaky. It struck me that I have seldom, if ever, seen or heard an Irish labourer travelling alone in this part of the world. Ulster yes, but Irish? Tattie howkers used to come, but they seldom do now, and besides, it wasn't that time of year.

I can see him now, feel his gentle hand on my elbow, his warm 'God bless you!'

All through my shopping, and all the way home, I thought about my kind, generous, much loved great grandfather, a man I had never known, but who was very much on my mind. Of course the sceptics will easily explain it away. And in a strict sense, it is perfectly explicable. Isn't it?

But I know what I saw. And I know what I felt. And it's an encounter that I still treasure.

What do you think?

PS: If you would like to read a made-up supernatural tale, you'll find my strange little novella Rewilding free on Kindle, from Friday 27th until 31st October.

PPS: I've started to write a novel, or perhaps a novella - I don't know which, but it will be as long as it needs to be - about John Manley's sister, Elizabeth. She has been on my mind ever since I wrote A Proper Person to be Detained, and from time to time, I've done more research about her and the tragedy that befell her and drawn some sad conclusions. She needs a voice, and perhaps I need to give it to her.   

Real People?

 I've been watching the television version of  Uncanny, having listened to the excellent podcast of the same name. As you'll know, if you're a follower of this blog, I'm fond of a spooky story. The success of Uncanny proves I'm not alone, and reminds me of the occasion, some years ago, when I was asked to attend a meeting with people from a big Scottish media company. I'd had several successful stage plays as well as vast amounts of radio drama produced by that stage, so they wanted to find out if I might have any ideas that I could propose for TV.

Two things happened at that meeting. 

One was that I politely made it clear that - other than the basic proposal of course - I wouldn't be doing too much work without at least a modicum of development money. I'd been bitten by this kind of thing before, wasting a whole year of my writing life working on a detailed proposal that included many meetings and some sample episodes only to have it knocked on the head without even a 'kill fee' as the compensatory payment is called. This isn't unusual, incidentally. But jam tomorrow is a poor diet. 

Then I suggested something with a supernatural theme. They pulled a sort of collective face and chorused 'nobody is interested in the supernatural.' This was just before Buffy hit our screens. As William Goldman put it in his wonderful Adventures in the Screen Trade,  'Nobody knows anything.'

Anyway - good on Danny Robins for his success with the excellent Uncanny. Although the explanations of the sceptics seem to me to be much more far fetched than the accounts of the believers. The third episode of the TV version included an 'experiment' in the way infrasound can induce feelings of unease and physical discomfort in humans. I'm sure it does. But if you tell the subjects of your experiment beforehand that the place where you are going to hit them with infrasound is 'haunted' you have instantly invalidated any results! I find the sceptics irritating for more than one reason though. They just seem to be so closed minded. 

I believe that in Tibetan Buddhism, there is the concept of the Tulpa, a thought form. The Tulpa is said to be a manifestation of the unconscious mind and can assume a physical shape, even interacting with the real world. Sometimes inconveniently so. It's obvious that this is not something to be treated lightly. I find myself wondering how many of the experiences related on Uncanny might be explained by this theory. Especially those manifestations that persist and seem to pursue those who have conjured them. 

More relevant to creative writing though - when you, as a writer, create characters, they become very real to you. Or they should do. If they don't, you're doing it wrong! They persist. You can't suddenly change them, or not without difficulty. Even when a book is finished and published and you've moved on, you can, if you think about it, switch back to the world of that book, and see those characters as vividly as though they were real people - friends you've known and haven't spoken to for a while. 

They are just as real as anyone else you might meet in person or online. Perhaps more real than the people you know only online. Because you know them intimately. You can see them and hear them. And there they are - carrying on with their lives - even when you're not actually writing about them any more.

Which is a strange little thought for Hallowe'en, isn't it? 

If you want to read another strange little story, here's one I wrote earlier: Rewilding.   You can download it free from 30th October till 3rd November.