Paul Hodge is the author of FreakyFolk Tales, a blog featuring fictional and factual accounts of
ghosts, revenants and possessed objects that have inhabited ancestral
homes in the south of England. The stories are brought to life
through atmospheric prose, beautiful photography and artwork inspired
by the golden era of ghosts; the Victorian age.
Please introduce yourself; who are
you, and what do you do?
Paul Hodge, author, teacher, bad banjo
player, happily married with lots of lovely children, but given a long
leash to gallivant about the country to explore and write about the
seemingly inexhaustible plethora of tales of supernatural happenings
upon these shores. I begin in Hampshire and work outwards.
What is the idea behind your blog
Freaky Folk Tales?
Freaky Folk Tales is an
anthology of tales of the macabre and supernatural, from the haunting
of ancestral homes to the malignancy of inanimate objects. The tales
typically begin in the archives, from the report of a well or lesser
known haunting that took place in a southern English county, and from
here somewhat two-dimensional characters from history are given
personalities and placed upon a stage where they creep ineluctably
towards something dark calling them from the shadows.
Why a blog, though?
Choosing a blog to profile my writing
was an obvious choice because of the unrivalled exposure it offers
up-and-coming authors. I believe strongly that writing should not be
practised and performed in a vacuum; it’s important for an author
to have some sort of dialogue with his or her readers. This is
especially important in the genre of supernatural writing where
anecdotal information coming back from a readership eager to share
their tales of ghostly encounters can help to build a community of
interest. It may even help to rejuvenate the powerful art of
storytelling; I remember so vividly what it’s like to be scared by
a story told around a campfire (or, in my case, a demolished factory
on a London building site!)
Are there any places in
Hampshire or neighbouring counties that feature in your writing?
Yes! I’ve been meaning to put
together a map that pinpoints the locations of these stories because
most stem from a visit to an actual town or village, church or
stately home.
"The first is a protrusion of
timber thrusting upward from the mud, tailing off to a sharp point,
shrouded in a mass of spidery sea-mist. The second, a corpulent slab
of wood, only a boat distance from the first, but much larger and
denser, and laid flat. He flips between the two, blinking, adjusting
his vision, attempting to get the best view possible. But then
something curious takes place. From behind the hulk of wood to the
west, a tiny shape emerges. At first, it appears to be the edge of a
small craft, but as its silhouette pulls away from the jutting timber
it takes on human shape." Walk With Me (To the estuary)
"The scraping ceased, and from
above the pews, rose the figure of a man. He had his back partly
towards me, but I could see he was holding a paper in his hand, which
he appeared to compare with something on the ground, for he looked
from one to the other several times. Then, with a gesture of anger,
he crumpled the paper in his hand and turned, so that the rays of the
moon fell full upon him. He was a big man, dressed in a sort of
sleeve-waistcoat, knee-breeches, and what looked like worsted
stockings and heavy boots. His eyes were sunken, and his face deathly
pale. I could see his lips moving as though he was muttering to
himself, but I couldn’t hear a sound. Then, he moved towards me,
and I screamed with terror, for except that the eyes gleamed in their
hollow sockets, his face was as the face of a corpse. Round his
throat, exposed by the open shirt, were livid marks, such as once I
saw on the throat of a convict, who hanged himself in his cell."
The Dark Conjurer of Batcombe
What are your most notable works?
The first is based on my interest in
the Yew as a tree to be both admired and feared.
Kingley Vale, north-west of Chichester
is the largest yew woodland in Britain. One story concerning the
ancient woodland has always fascinated me. It tells of Danish
invaders who came to Sussex over a thousand years ago. They had
traveled great distances to conquer the Saxon communities of south
Britain but the locals had fought back, slaying some of the invaders
in skirmishes amongst the yew trees near Bow Hill. Legend says that
the four large barrows upon the hill, known as The Devil’s Humps,
are the graves of the dead Vikings. In late summer evenings, when the
blood-red sap of the yews spills onto the chalk hill, it is said that
their ghosts roam the dark and silent wood, tormented by defeat.
Tyneham stands as a defining example of
the term ‘ghost village’. It was once a quiet little place,
nestled on the Dorset coast; a quintessential chocolate box scene of
a church, a school house and tidy lines of cottages. However, in
1943, the residents of the village were asked to leave so that the
army could use the area for training. At the time, the folk received
a promise from the government that once the war had ended they would
be allowed to return. Sadly this did not happen; the promise was
never honoured. Years passed, and the villagers accepted, sometimes
grudgingly but always with a sense of honour in sacrifice, that they
would never return. After years of neglect the church and the school
house have been restored and are now museums. The remaining buildings
are derelict and have a distinct presence about them, serving as a
reminder of the many home sacrifices that were made for the war
effort.
Over the years, the plight of Tyneham
has continued to touch me; and the more I investigated its history,
the more I felt compelled to write about it. And so, using the
writing genre I know best – the ghost story – I wrote Return to
Tyneham and attempted to convey the sense of duty that comforted and
supported these people in their valiant efforts to help Britain win
the war.
It was these shapeless fragments of
forgotten walls and buildings, as much bound together by the dark
tangle of woodland that had encroached upon the settlement as
destroyed by it, that had an unsettling effect upon Harry. Within
this strange arrangement, there was something quite ghostly; and
Harry knew, for all his mounting apprehension, that if anything
stirred within its depths he would have to be very brave. And then,
almost at the precise moment he had some hold of his composure, it
had left him, replaced by a feeling of emptiness, and the sense of
something approaching.
How did your interest in the
paranormal and the unexplained begin?
I am indebted to an unfettered
childhood spent traipsing over fields and amongst ruins for providing
a collection of vivid imagery that has fuelled my writing.
I grew up in London in the 1970s at a
time when the city still retained the shells of crumbling post-war
factories, littered with shadows of the past. Though pretty
hazardous, they were my playground. This, together with Bunyan’s
churches and graveyards, and the covered plague pits of Bunhill Row,
was the catalyst for a life lived imagining what may lie beyond this
earthly veil.
I spent my childhood reading HG Wells,
Poe, Ray Bradbury and borrowed numerous tomes on ghostlore and
legends from my local library. Though I found it easy to get
vicarious thrills through the safe medium of fiction, I wanted to
explore the places I had read about. And so I went exploring,
typically on train journeys to the home counties. I even found myself
organising trips to visit the remains of places such as Borley
Rectory (yes, I was on a very long leash at 11 years of age — my,
how things have changed!)
Is it just books that have
influenced your work?
No, far from it, though books have been
the primary influence. I am also indebted to my father for allowing
me to watch such a rich diet of supernatural TV and film at a
relatively young age (and fortunately I’m only ever so slightly
unhinged because of it!) The 70s was a golden age for such themes of
folk horror, stories of death foretold and children’s supernatural
TV drama. So, in no particular order: Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (the
Du Maurier book being wonderful too), The Woman in Black (1989 TV
adaptation), The Signal Man (BBC TV adaptation), The Children of the
Stones, Quatermass and the Pit and nearly all of the BBC’s Ghost
Stories for Christmas, including the deliciously chilling Whistle and
I’ll Come To You.
What do you hope to achieve from
your stories?
I just hope that through my writing I
am able to spark an interest in these places, the sites that are off
the beaten track yet tantalisingly close to our doorsteps. The world
‘appears’ to be a much more threatening place than it was when I
was a child but what a redundant life it would be if we were to
always tread so carefully that our knowledge became entirely
dependent on the internet and second-hand sources of information. Not
only do these fail in delivering the first-hand practical experience
of actual physical encounter but they never tell us the whole story.
For this, we need to venture forth, brave and dare I say it, slightly
foolhardy, to gain such treasures of the imagination.
Why, specifically, ghost stories?
My partner often asks me why I write
ghost stories — and why I don’t write wholesome stories for
children! My answer is simple: there is more horror in our local
communities, on every street corner, than there is a single macabre
tale. Tales of nefarious deeds and the supernatural are often
vehicles for exploring human frailty; in telling them, we may help
society to debate and unravel the age-old moralistic dilemmas we as
humans are constantly trying to understand and define.
What are some of your favourite
ghost stories?
Oh, anything by Edgar Allan Poe and MR
James of course! But beyond these seminal tales, I am a huge fan of
gothic writing of the 19th and early 20th century , particularly the
supernatural stories written by women writers who were highly
prolific in the ghost story genre during Victorian and Edwardian
times. In my opinion there’s no one better at telling a tale of
flesh-creeping terror than Edith Nesbit, primarily associated with
fantasy novels for children, but not at all well known today as a
Gothic writer. What I love about Nesbit is that she not only places
emphasis on the impact that unexplained phenomena have upon her
characters but, most importantly, she presents the terrifying
experience as a means of unravelling whatever it is that lies within
the core of relationships. Again, the ghost story used a vehicle for
dealing with the foibles of what makes humans human!
Do you believe in ghosts?
I was wondering when you were going to
ask that!
Well, in a short answer, yes, but I
think I’ll ask one of my characters to elaborate on my behalf:
“It appears to me that it is
entirely possible that a spiritual or unearthly shape, a spectral
simulacrum, a belated reflection of life, is capable of subsisting
for some period, of releasing itself from the body, or surviving it,
of traversing vast distances in the twinkling of an eye, of
manifesting in solid form to the living and, sometimes, of
communicating with them. There is no earthly use trying to banish or
exorcise them by such a simple thing as disbelief in them. I say that
it is entirely the prerogative of the spirit, or for those who make
use of its name first to prove that it exists. In this sense, I very
much welcome their manifestations!” The
investigations of Dr Dankworth (unpublished)
Have you had an experience that
could not be explained?
No, but a number of people who I hold
in the highest regard have told me tales that have chilled my spine.
One in particular was told by my
ex-father-in-law, a well respected medical officer for the county of
Gwent. One Christmas Eve, several years ago, he had gathered with
friends at his home in Cardiff to celebrate. After a few light
drinks, the host, Mr H, bid goodbye to one of his medical team who
had to return home, a journey of several miles out of the city. It
was a particularly cold and icy night, and he reminded the young
fellow to drive carefully considering the inclement conditions. It
was no more than half an hour after he had left when Mr H and his
wife heard an almighty crash from an upstairs bedroom. When they
entered the room to check what had made such a commotion they found
that an ornament of significant size and weight had shattered into
pieces. Nothing had fallen upon it; neither was there anything or
anyone around at the time to topple it from its base. For some reason
unexplained it had simply splintered into fragments.
Later that night, Mr H received a
distressing telephone phone call from the police. It appeared that
shortly after the young medical chap had left their home, he had
encountered a patch of ice just before crossing a bridge, skidded
uncontrollably and ended up driving off the road and into the river,
where he had little chance of survival.
Well you guess how upset Mr H and his
wife were. It wasn’t until they had gotten over their initial
shock, however, when their thoughts turned to the figurine that had
broken into bits. Their conclusions were cold and unsettling. You
see, they realised that not only had the ornament been given to them
as a gift by their medical friend, the one who had been killed, but
it was likely that the figure had smashed into pieces at almost
exactly the time when the unfortunate chap had entered the river and
drowned.
What scares you?
In short, doppelgängers!
When I was a child, I had several
terribly upsetting recurring dreams. One, involved my parents and
myself sitting in our living room. In this particular dream, I would
be sitting on a chair opposite my mother and father, terrified,
waiting for the inevitable knocking on the living room to take place.
When it came, I would plead with my father not to answer it, but, as
is the futility of attempting to divert a dream, he always would. On
seeing him about to turn the handle to open the door, I would run
back to the sofa and curl up in a ball, gazing out from a gap between
my fingers. As always, a man and a woman would step in, the living
duplicates of my parents, their hands held aloft, their thumbs parted
and tips joined, as if to strangle; then, they would make their way
towards their intended victims with slow exaggerated steps. It was at
this point the dream would conclude with my screaming – something
that transferred itself beyond mere dream – and a pleading for my
parents to run. But they never did. And every time I knew that they
were to be replaced.
Which is the most memorable place
you have investigated? Why?
That would be Balcombe Viaduct which
crosses the Ouse Valley in West Sussex. The railway itself is an
engineering marvel, with its long turreted tunnels and huge,
red-bricked viaducts that took three years to build. But for every
such project of its day, there was a cost in human lives as well as
financial. It took over three thousand men to build the railway, the
workers equipped with little more than gunpowder, picks and shovels.
For a construction project of this size, accidents would have been a
fairly regular occurrence; if a tunnel or bank were to collapse, the
consequences would be extremely grim.
And where there is toil, hardship and
tragedy, the ghosts of men are sure to follow.
These ghosts are explored in my short
story,
The Viaduct.
"Peter took an anxious gulp
of air and reluctantly joined the march towards the viaduct. There
was something about the structure that made him feel quite
uncomfortable. As he walked, the sensation grew more intense until
halfway across the field he stopped suddenly and shivered; for he had
a distinct feeling that someone was watching. Drawing closer, he was
certain that whatever hid amongst the shadows of the viaduct wasn’t
at all friendly."
What are you working on now?
Three things. The first is a story
provisionally titled The Ghost Bureau. It’s based on research I’ve
completed on the life of William T. Stead, an English newspaper
editor who claimed to be in receipt of messages from the spirit
world. In 1909, he established Julia’s Bureau where inquirers could
obtain information about the spirit world from a group of resident
mediums. The story is about one of the many people he employed to
document these manifestations – his private secretaries to the
dead.
The second does not yet have a title
but it involves one of my favourite themes: the malignancy of
inanimate objects. It’s the story of a Hampshire watermill, built
from the timbers of an 18th century American warship, that’s host
to several unbidden guests.
The third, Rise of the Dolmen, is
something completely different. It’s a little reminiscent of the
1970s TV series, Children of the Stones and book by Jeremy Burnham.
In a nutshell, it’s the tale of a Victorian farmer who disturbs
fragments of a megalithic tomb and revives an ancient curse!
Do you have any published stories?
I’m excited to announce that my first
collection of stories, Ghosts, revenants and other unbidden
guests; The First Volume of supernatural stories from the
pages of Freaky Folk Tales will be published in November/December
and will be available to purchase in Kindle ebook and paperback forms
from Amazon.
Four of my short stories are currently
available in paperback and ebook:
If readers want to find out more
about you and your works, where can they go?
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