A Ghost, it says in the dictionary, is “The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats.”
Isn’t that spooky? Scared? I'm not, I write horror you see, it's my job to scare you, it wouldn’t be much good if it scared me, it's like going to a dentist and he not knowing about teeth, that would be very silly, I've only ever written one story that scared me, it's called Rawhead Rex* and it's terrifying, I couldn’t believe I wrote it, I showed it to my boyfriend and he did a little tiny wee in his pants, mind you he is the sponge and I'm the rock. (I mean he's the lady gay and I'm the manly one).
When I was approached to write about Ghosts I jumped at the chance, I grew up in Liverpool and in our little house we always saw ghosts, always, I suppose that’s where I got my ability to scare people from, seeing ghosts, but it doesn’t explain where I got the idea for Rawhead Rex. That was scary. I remember when I first met Stephen King, it was 1986 in London’s Forbidden Planet store; we were at a book signing. I turned to Stephen and began to discuss the inner workings of a horror writer, I mean its all well and good us making you scared, but what scares us? Stephen began to tell me that when he was a boy he saw a ghost and that terrified him, and he got a buzz from it, he liked being scared, so I leant him Rawhead Rex and I haven’t seen him since, he must have been terrified, even when I call him he hangs up, too scared to talk to me, I guess when it comes down to it, everyone is terrified of me, as soon as they read Rawhead Rex no one wants to talk to me anymore, they are THAT scared.
Anyway, I digress. Ghosts. I thought it would be a very interesting experiment to find out, who scares the “scarer”? My friend James Herbert has a farm in Yorkshire, he once told me that his dogs could talk, but I think he was joking.
So, I agreed to spend a week in the world’s most haunted house, just to see if it would scare me. The most haunted place in the world is purported to be “Borley Rectory” on the Essex/Suffolk border. I drove through the night to get there and see what would happen. I arrived around two o clock in the morning and armed with my luggage, made myself at home. I did some rudimentary masturbating and then got ready for bed. As soon as I was about to drop off to sleep I began to hear a noise, getting louder and louder. It was coming from the kitchen. I decided the best thing to do would be to check out what the noise could be. When I arrived in the kitchen I found the table upside-down and the chairs stacked in a very odd shape, suddenly cups began to be thrown from nowhere at me and fire shot out of the sink. I decided our ghost was saying hello, so to counter this I left a copy of Rawhead Rex and Cabal out for it to peruse while I went to bed.
The next morning I awoke and visited the kitchen, both books had been read. I stayed in the house for another few days, and I didn’t get another problem, I think we know now who won the battle of the scares, Me.
* Rawhead Rex, Now Available on DVD for about £3, but tread carefully.
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