Today is International “I love to write“ Day (apparently) and I have been tasked with putting together a little piece to cover that particular topic as well as our recent Halloween event that Taleblazers put on at Torre Abbey.
Let me start by making this very clear: I do not love to write. Well, at least not mechanically.
Being a comorbid dyspraxic has meant my life has been a constant struggle to get down the words in my head and transfer them to a physical medium, I cannot touch-type, my handwriting is almost illegible, 98% of it in block capitals and contains more misspelt words than you would expect from a gentleman with my erudition and vocabulary – sometimes the frustration and embarrassment of my condition is such that it will styme my efforts from the start and I regularly go months without writing at all.
However, occasionally the mood will take me (or a deadline approaches and I find I can procrastinate no longer) and I pick up a Red and Black A4 notebook, one of my beloved Parker Jotters (black ink, never blue) and start scribbling down my nonsense.
Whether it’s a ballad, a workshop plan, RPG scenario, a letter to a friend or just something completely silly, it all goes into my notebooks, some of it eventually gets transferred to a Word .doc but not much – mostly it stays in those A4 books, they get filled and filed into the bottom of my wardrobe and now at 45 years of age I have a small tower of them, 30 or more years of stories, ideas, poems, doodles and observations.
Now I’m here writing my first Blog post.
Blogging is one of those things that simply hasn’t ever appealed – the idea that strangers might enjoy reading my writing or be interested in what I have to say is laughable to me, having said that I hope someone does enjoy the effort – you should know that it took a lot longer than you’d imagine. Here I go…
Autumn has well and truly descended upon us and with it all the colors, smells and traditions of the season. Reluctantly I return my shorts to the back of the wardrobe and pull forward the thicker, warmer clothes for Winter. Yet I am not miserable because with the colder weather comes Halloween, Bonfire Night and off in the distance there is the Winter Solstice and Christmas soon to come.
As much as I love summer, this time of the year is my favourite, I have incredibly fond memories of bonfire nights at the Marshal’s family home as a child (I was the only one of my peers deemed sensible enough to light some of the fireworks) and Halloween has, at least in more recent years, been my preferred holiday. I enjoy the cold and crisp evenings and welcome the opportunity to sit out under a clear sky next to a flickering fire and tell ghost stories.
I vividly remember the first ghost story I was told – it is a classic from the 80’s – Young lovers in their car drive into the woods. During the evening a thick mist descends, and the radio reports the recent escape of a brutal manic from an asylum in the local area. At one point the boyfriend has to leave the car, he insists his young lady opens the car door only when he knocks on the roof three times. Much later and with the woman in a state of high anxiety she is relieved to hear a knock on the roof and is about to open the door when the knock continues, well past three consecutive times, the knocking carries on all night and all through the night she remains huddled in terror within the automobile. Until finally, daylight arrives, the women gathers her courage and exits the vehicle…to find the severed head of her beau bouncing atop the car, suspended by a rope of intestines hung from a tree above.
Hardly a subtle psychological thriller 😀 but I remember the shiver it gave me and the way it stayed with me long after the tale was told. I have enjoyed ghost stories ever since.
So when Kate at Torre Abbey asked if Taleblazers wanted to put on a guided tour of the Abbey, focusing on the more spooky and supernatural stories that have grown up around the site we jumped at the chance and “The Terrible Tales of Torre Abbey” was born (Cue flash of lightning and roll of thunder).
The remit: A 45 minute tour around the site for 2 nights tours, 3 tours per night, spooky but family friendly.
Kate and Matt provided me with a whole heap of information including accounts of ghostly goings on stretching back through the Abbey’s 800-year history. There were regular sightings of apparitions, reports of poltergeist activity, horrible tales from the past and a few observations and feelings claimed to have been experienced by psychics on the occasions where they were allowed to survey the site.
A lot of the information was very useful, I immediately saw potential in several of the accounts and fables but I found the psychic stuff left me cold – It might come as something of a surprise to hear that I am a sceptic…I don’t really believe in an afterlife, an immortal soul or the notion that the dead can communicate with the living. However, I am fascinated by the paranormal and further to that I enjoy stories, folk tales and mythology from all around the world – many of these things require you to suspend your disbelief and just roll with it for the sake of the story, something I am more than happy to do.
I decided I wanted to include as much as I could that would complement the activities we already do with the fine folks at Torre Abbey, so I made sure I wrote sections that covered the Spanish Armada of 1558 and the Siege of the Abbey in 1351 – the two workshops we currently have available running at the site – and linked those into the ghost sightings. There was a wonderfully grisly tale of a fellow called William Anning who had his leg amputated in the Cary dining room, some various other reports of ethereal figures and I ended the tour in the Undercroft with a straight up Ghost Story that I wrote many years ago called “Blood and Gold” It has no basis in fact nor does it contain anything remotely historically accurate but it’s a great yarn in my opinion and well tested as I have been telling it for more than 15 years.
I heartily enjoyed the two nights and the event bought in some lovely people (many who dressed up for extra spookiness) – we have some email addresses and hope to send out a little questionnaire later this month, all in all a great success, many thanks to the Torre Abbey crew and everyone who attended – I hope we can do it again next year, bigger and even scarier.
