Notes On Ghosts

001 I don’t generally like anything that starts with a dictionary definition, but I was curious to see how ‘ghost’ was described. The OED answer is –

1. An apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous being – OR –

2. A slight trace or vestige of something – OR –

3. A faint secondary image produced by a fault in an optical system.

At least one of those answers also speaks volumes when questioning what a ghost is, not just what we mean by the word. I don’t know which one is right, but I’d probably say two with a touch of three, but I’m not sure how, in this context, you could have two without one.

002 I’ve never properly seen a ghost, but then I’ve never looked very hard. I once went to the site of Borley Rectory with some friends and we all got stupidly scared at standing on a patch of grass that once apparently had a haunted house on it but it was very dark, we were quite drunk and we were expecting to be frightened, so frightened we were. I have subsequently heard the tale re-told to include a mysterious floating light which could have been a ghost, but I have no recollection of that whatsoever. I was probably peeing up a tree at that point, although you think someone would have said ‘oh, by the way, while you were urinating we saw a ghost’. On a tangential note, why do men insist on pissing up against things? If there is a single tree in an acre of bushes, you can bet that it will be singled out for a visit. Is it shame, safety or the primeval urge to mark your territory? Our animal instincts always assert themselves in intensely personal situations. I need the toilet now.

003 When I was 10, my Nan died. It was terrible, and I took it badly. My Dad tried to make sense of it for me (and perhaps for himself, she was his Mum) by saying that ‘death is just a part of life, and no-one really knows what happens next. Maybe she is in another place, and can see us now – maybe she’s here, sat over in the corner – but we just can’t see her’. It was the single most terrifying thing I had ever heard. It still is, I think. I have to say that I do sometimes believe that my house is haunted, but I think it’s more likely in need of better draught excluders. In any respect, I’m okay with the ‘ghost’ – I’ve lived there for ten years and whatever the intermittent late night presence is, it hasn’t yet tried to touch me up or take me over, so I’m not bothered. Perhaps I’m not its type.

004 Ghosts always seem to me to be figures not of fear, but intense sadness. I mean, what sort of life is that for a dead person? Tied eternally to a single spot, compulsively re-enacting the same rituals, walking the same battlements, rattling the same chains? It’s horrible. And everyone you encounter is scared of you. Perhaps ghosts are like a bad scratch on a record or a locked groove, doomed to repeat the same few seconds over and over again - or like a goldfish, by the time they realise what they are doing they forget what they are doing. I hope ghosts lack consciousness, or at least sentience: the idea that they know that they are ghosts is too awful to contemplate.

005 You may have noticed that I write about ghosts as if they are real. I think they are real. I don’t necessarily think that they are ‘an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous being’ but they are something, perhaps psychological, perhaps psychogeographical, perhaps a natural phenomenon that we haven’t discovered yet. But then I watch a lot of horror films and TV, I read a lot of horror books, so a ghost to me is like true love for a romantic novel reader, magic for a Harry Potter fan. That said, I don’t believe that vampires or werewolves exist. Mummies, yes.

006 There’s a great deal to say about ‘A Ghost Story For Christmas’, but I’ve run out of steam a bit so I’ll just say that it is one of the greatest things the BBC ever did. These Ghost Stories are not just for Christmas, they’re for life.

007 ‘Ghost Stories for Christmas’ debut at the Showroom Cinema on Tuesday 3rd December with ‘Whistle & I’ll Come To You’, ‘Lost Hearts’ and ‘Stigma’. If that doesn’t excite you, check your pulse, you may be a ghost yourself. On Tuesday 17th December it’s ‘A Warning To The Curious’ and ‘The Ash Tree’. White sheets are optional. More HERE and HERE.

A Ghost Story For Christmas: A Warning To The Curious

East Anglia is an area of great beauty, but it is not a beauty of rolling hills and lush vegetation – it is a stark, washed-out and lonely beauty, where the dividing lines between land, sea and sky are sometimes blurred and the past is ever present in a landscape that has not significantly changed for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years.

There is a myth that the eastern coast of England is protected from invasion by three crowns, buried a thousand years ago. The story runs that whilst at least one of them remains under the ground, East Anglia, and Britain, will be safe. ‘A Warning To The Curious’ starts with the premise that only one crown remains, and that its safety is guarded by tradition and superstition so strong that it can extend beyond the grave.

Paxton (the sharp faced, gimlet eyed Peter Vaughan) is an unemployed clerk and an amateur archaeologist who is both obsessed with the ancient myth and increasingly desperate for money. Spurred on by information he has found in an ancient book, he makes his way to the quiet coastal village of Seaburg to begin the search for the remaining crown. Unhappily for him, he finds it…

Filmed on videotape, and with a minimal soundtrack of the sea, seagulls, crows, the wind and some muted electronics and strings, this short (50 minutes) film is a masterful example of clever people (Lawrence Gordon Clark adapted, produced and directed) making clever television for a sophisticated audience. Yes, it is a ghost story, but there are no white-sheeted spooks here or creaking floorboards: most of the supernatural activity takes place outside, during the day, in the bleak, flat East Anglian countryside, and is all the more disturbing for it.

‘A Warning to the Curious’ is an unsettling tale of unnerving simplicity. It moves slowly and matter-of-factly and despite a few genuinely shocking moments, prefers to create its effect by presenting a disquieting atmosphere that evokes a sort of low-grade fear in the viewer that grows into an oppressive feeling of quiet panic as the story slowly unfolds. I, of course, love that feeling, and actively seek it out, and I thoroughly recommend this to anyone else that likes to feel scared and uneasy in their own home.

A Recommendation For Christmas

Last Christmas, instead of giving you my heart, I had a bit of a rant about the bloody BBC and the madness of their policy towards archive material, specifically around the unavailability of the seminal 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' series.

This year, I'm happy to announce that these incredible programmes are now all available on a number of DVD's, or as one reasonably priced box set. Can you guess what I'm getting for Christmas, apart from pissed on Martini?

A Ghost Story For Xmas: Stigma

I don't understand the BBC. In the sixties and seventies they went about wiping their archive so that they could use the tapes again, depriving licence payers of some priceless shows, now presumed lost for ever in favour of The Queen's Speech and golf.

Then, in more enlightened times, they realised their mistake and scuttled all over the world trying to buy back missing episodes sold to less short-sighted broadcasting corporations, turning up old Dr Who episodes in Hong Kong and Nigeria and making out it was some sort of triumph for Auntie, which I suppose it was in terms of revenue from video and DVD releases.

Now, despite the digital revolution, despite the growth of 'on demand' broadcasting, despite the falling production costs of DVD's, despite having not one, not two, but four television channels at their disposal, they still sit impassively on the bulk of what's left of their archive, occasionally sneaking bits out here and there in bite sized nano seasons, usually cut up into unsatisfying chunks and interspersed with inane commentary from some halfwitted talking head.

When they occasionally do happen across the right thing, like broadcasting the brilliant 'Ghost Story For Christmas' series at Christmas, and even commissioning a couple of not bad new episodes, they then have second thoughts after a couple of years and stop showing the old episodes entirely, licensing a random one for an expensive DVD release and throwing the rest back into the dark.

So arseholes to the BBC, here's an IOT-TV 'Ghost Story For Christmas' presentation, 'Stigma' by Clive Exton, originally broadcast thirty four years ago on December 28th, 1977. A rare modern day story, I think it's one of the most chilling of all the tales - no M.R James, no period costume, no ghosts, just a baleful ancient horror, a bloody comeuppance and Peter Bowles.