#44
On ghosts and grieving
It’s in the trees! It’s coming!
The Haunting (1963) dir. Robert Wise.
In the dreary depths of October, dear reader, I’ve immersed myself in all things Gothic. Transformation by Mary Shelley rests gently by mine bedside atop The Yellow Wallpaper, well-weathered, acidic and sulphurous. Now, as I hurtle back towards Birmingham beneath the ink blue - the soft-edged carriage window being but a mirror, babe - Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sits gripped, firmly, within mine frosted palm.
When the English weather turns, unspeakable winds winding through the gaslit dark, that common urge strikes to consume horror in all its forms. A bandaged, black-and-white Claude Rains creeps along the lens, wrapped in heavy, wet snowfall as he bands into a tavern; a peculiar intruder. The barmaid shrieks in a deathly, shrill tone, desperately unwelcoming in his request for shelter. I recoil beneath the bed covers.
I feel, baby-angel, and have described to others that the English Gothic, in part, underpins all I do. When I think, write or make, I often turn to the blackletter inscriptions of gravestones for inspiration. I imagine Abbey in the Oakwood (1809 - 1810), Carrie (1976) drenched in pig’s blood, and the panicked epiphanies of William Blake. As All Hallows’ Eve falls upon us, with 28th October having marked my Father’s would-be birthday, I venture again toward the undead.
The Hands of Orlac (1924) dir. Robert Wiene.
Rain-sodded streets are lined with shrines of plastic corpses. Faux cobwebs coat brittle, red brickwork as grinning pumpkins greet trick-or-treaters - their hollowed faces turning, worming into putrid mulch.
I recall in the wake of my Father’s death, some-three-years-ago, a fervent need to see his body. Soft, waxy, velvet lined. Marilyn Monroe in the ‘Corridor of Memories’. My Mother urged me not to, proclaiming it to be “not what he would have wanted.” In the weeks following as written, reader, I recall phantom footsteps on approach to my front door - auditory hallucinations which elucidated to me that he was, somehow, still alive.
With a beautiful boy holding mine heart - fingers slithering into plush, pink ventricles - I’ve been gorging on horror in the warmth of his bedroom. Together, we’ve been watching Uncanny, a BBC documentary series which retells the paranormal experiences of strangers across the country. Figures sit in a dimly lit recording studio, its walls lined with warm, ochre wood. A simple, wooden table rests in the centre, with two antique chairs either side. The host, Danny Robins, had a background in comedy writing prior to producing the audio drama The Battersea Poltergeist. In Uncanny, Robins leans in giddily as guests profess their encounters with fearful certainty.
A particular episode, The Shadow Man (Season 2, Episode 3), illustrates the story of Julian. A shy, sullen man dressed head-to-toe in black, Julian details the paranormal dealings he’d experienced in the wake of losing his parents. Still shaken in his recounting, its apparent that the lasting trauma of grief is a wound in his heart not-yet-healed. Beginning as a generally unsettled feeling in his family home, the ‘activity’ progresses into a breath, a death rattle, a figure stood tall in the corner of the room.
I see the ways in which grief has transformed this man’s life, leading him to become reclusive, withdrawn and untrusting of others, with a latent fear that this tall figure may soon return to him. I wonder whether these experiences are caused by a force unknown - a malignant figure hidden in the dark - or, from reluctant experience, a result of the exorbitant trauma that grief sadly causes.
House by the River (1950) dir. Fritz Lang.
“I have spent my entire life wanting to see a ghost,” Robins grins.
I often replay the evening my Dad died. Sat, with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, wandering aimlessly down the staircase, my Mother sets down the phone. “He’s gone,” she tells me. Mournfully, in the knowledge of losing those final moments, we drive in silence to the hospital. My Mother’s face is hot and wet, as my Brother stands taut and tight-lipped, to prevent the tears from releasing. I hold my Father’s paper thin palm, cold and powder-soft.
I wish, at times, for him to haunt me. “Take me in any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me here in this abyss where I cannot find you!” calls Heathcliff, to the fogged and battering window pane. Uncanny speaks, too, of apparitions. Physical representations of loved ones now dead. Figures who return to their long-gone workplace, reciting the mechanical rituals which occupied their lives. It’s strange to witness interviewees who long to be rid of their dopplegangers, when all I wish is for him to return to me. Still, now, I recall with pin-sharp precision the lopsided sound of his footsteps treading heavily into the front porch - the squeaking squelch of well-worn leather bearing friction against the ceramic tiling which lines it.
I imagine his palm shuffling along the banister to the upstairs landing, the muffled thud of his grip at the bottom step. If I’d have had the foresight, reader, I would have recorded these sounds. An archive of cassette tapes, neatly packaged and labelled. Slinking in pink satin, Carrie (1976) tells me “He will always be a part of you, Leah.” I turn to the mottled blue gravel which lines the train track. Beyond, a forest, dappled with apple trees. I imagine my body gifted to that soil, fragrant and ripe.
My Mother, when younger, once used a ouija board to contact the dead. A Hasbro product of a mid-century obsession with the occult. The Exorcist, The Omen, Don’t Look Now. I’ve often wondered whether to try and reach him, or if that earnest hope would be squandered by an opportunist claiming to know all of the Great Beyond. I recall, from a man now dead to me, a medium who practiced from a tall, brick building on a hidden side street in Birmingham City Centre. In the years following, I’d route back to my University halls and head past his premises, wondering if I should ever ring the bell. I believe, reader, it’s better that I didn’t.