Ambition achieved

 by Ashley Lister

 I’ve always been a fan of Stephen King’s writing. Ever since I first read The Dead Zone, back in the very early eighties, I admired his writing style and I wanted to do what he did. It was my ambition to write a good story that genuinely scared someone.

I have never thought it was an unachievable ambition. A good romance can touch the reader’s heart. A good thriller can make the reader’s pulse go faster. A good erotic story can affect the reader’s cheeky bits. And a good horror story can make the reader genuinely scared of things that don’t exist in the real world.

Earlier this year the Dead Good Poets contributed to the Haunted Blackpool Project. I’ve already spoken about Haunted Blackpool, and the fun I had being involved in the project. Details of the book launch associated with the project can be found here.

I wrote a story for this project entitled ‘The Headless Boggart of Whitegate Drive.’ It’s a story based on local legend. Eerily, it’s story number thirteen in the book.

One of the other contributors to the book, Anne Ward, gave a copy of the book to a friend of hers in hospital. Anyone who’s ever spent any time in hospital will probably remember the value of all reading material to help stave away the boredom. Anne’s friend read all thirteen stories and poems and she said she enjoyed them immensely.

Then she went down for her operation. After being dosed up with premeds she said, “Don’t let him near me.”  She was pointing at the surgeon. “Don’t let him near me,” she insisted. “He doesn’t have a head!”

And, when Anne told me this story on Tuesday night, I sat back in my chair, I smiled smugly and I thought: “Ambition achieved.”

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Haunted Blackpool - win a signed copy

 On Wednesday night, the Dead Good Poets' Haunted Blackpool was launched. 

Below are a series of YouTube videos explaining more about the project and relating some of the poems and stories.

To be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of the Dead Good Poets' Haunted Blackpool, please leave a comment in the box below and either follow the blog through Network Blogs or Google Friends Connect. It would be great if you could also tell a friend to visit our site but that's not a prerequisite of entry for this draw.

A winner will be selected at random and announced Saturday 10th November.

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Urgent Information for Ghost Hunters.

For ghosts and ghouls in Blackpool today, look no further than the historic Blackpool Winter Gardens. A building drenched in presence (and the setting for many a local tale) is sure to provide a fitting location for the much talked about Haunted Blackpool project. Members of the Dead Good Poets, local writers and of course, those responsible for bringing everything together will be assembling at the Pavilion Theatre from 6-7pm, with the relocation all being down to the ghastly weather.

So, with a week of the lights left it is a fond farewell to the promenade and a chance to get your fancy dress on early- with an indoor haunt sure to be more appealing to some. Thanks go out to Aunty Social whose fortunate booking of the hall has allowed this to happen- true spirits.

In honour of it being Halloween, we’ve had a trawl of the internet and found some ghostly poems for you. Here are some that struck a chord (links open in new windows).

Edgar Allan Poe - Spirits of the Dead

Esther Morgan - Bone China

Michael Donaghy - Haunts

U A Fanthorpe - Seven Types of Shadow (extract)

Linda Gregg - There She Is

Ciaran Carson - Fear

Thanks for reading, have a great Halloween whatever ghostly goings on you've got in mind. 

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This Wednesday night...

So it is almost Halloween. That means bobbing for apples, home made costumes and relatives doing the Monster Mash, right? Wrong. It means partying until 3am in full out fancy dress does it? Probably not on a Wednesday. Then it must mean having the wits scared out of you by a film on TV? Nope, you're wrong again. You'll have to sit in until 11.45pm to catch a 'scary' film on British TV, and then you're faced to pick between Hannibal and the oh so predictable Halloween 5. Seriously, this is a disgrace. There is nothing horrific on the tellybox and whilst I'm secretly hoping the BBC could pull something out of the bag and run the now famed Saville tributes in favour of Family Guy repeats, I suspect even that would be a disappointment.

This year, for something completely different, a man called Ste (with an impeccably clean record as regards children, I should note) has fixed it that some of the Dead Good Poets will be on Blackpool Promenade, positioned to perform outside the now much publicised Haunted Blackpool installation. This project is one of those opportunities I am devastated at missing but something I know so many people have worked hard on, and who am I to not join them in celebration. Find the tableaus if you're coming from the North and there should be an assembly of people slightly further on your right, head to the Old Miner's Home from the South and you'll meet us just before. One thing is for sure though, I'm looking forward to it. I even wrote a little ditty in the week, such as it is.

"There’ll be ghosts and there’ll be ghouls
There’ll be dames and there’ll be fools
There’ll be wind and there’ll be rain
There’ll be this, then ne’er again. "

I hope to see some of you there.

Thanks for reading, S

PS. Don't ask around for ghost stories when you're A: A nonbeliever and B: Pushed for time to blog. Ideas are haunting me now.

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Haunted Blackpool

Halloween came around quick this year didn’t it? I love it, the dressing up, the spooky atmosphere and the fun. I particularly like the ghost stories. I’ve always loved telling them or listening to them. I don’t believe in ghosts, but there’s a place in me which would like to, which allows me to still appreciate the delicious fear they evoke. It’s hard to find a good scary ghost story or spooky story these days, all the films seem to disappoint but there have been some great stories and poems I have heard this year thanks to Steve Stroud. Steve ran a project involving the Dead Good Poets to create the most chilling tales of Blackpool. These are free for all to see, projected on eerie dummies in the illuminations this year. It’s the ideal place to be on Halloween.

Steve also has compiled and edited these stories creating a book which we launch next week on Halloween night, where contributors will be reading their short, snappy and very scary ghost stories and poetry. I’m chuffed to be included in the contributors, with my story The Depths. I also have a few illustrations in there. 

Everyone is welcome.  How else would you want to spend Halloween? With crap so called scary films on the telly? Ignoring the doorbell every five minutes while terrors come to the door? Or a real, old school scary story evening, complete with the authors? Some of these could be true stories. This is a truly unique event, not to be missed. Come along and see us, we’ll be in fancy dress just to add to the atmosphere.  It’s at 6pm on The Cliffs at Queens Promenade. Funnily enough, it’s not far from the Promenade lift , where my story is set. Facebook event is here;

Haunted Blackpool

This will probably be my last post on Dead Good Blog for a little while, I need time to focus on my MA at the moment and my little family, but I am hoping to be back after Christmas. Goodbye for now, hope to see you on the 31st.

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Graveyards

Nine days from now, where will you be? Perhaps you’ll be indoors, trying to get on with real life whilst being constantly interrupted by children. Perhaps you’ll go out for the night, fancy dressed to the hilt for the scariest night of the year. Perhaps you’ll put a sign on the door, one side reading ‘Newborn child: No noise after six’, the other reading ‘Shift Workers: Please do not disturb’. No? Well maybe I’m just a misery guts then. I think it has something to do with the fact that, cute as young children are, I find absolutely nothing endearing about what can only be described as gangs of teenagers hammering door to door demanding sugary treats and money from old people. 

This is the reality of what happens here on All Hallows Eve and I’ve yet to meet a trick or treat yobo that can explain to me when All Saints Day is. If they can’t open a diary, check a bit of backstory or even make their own outfit (you know the ones, dressed in either a bleeding Scream mask or as a KKK ghost), then why should I. There will be no sweets on offer here.  Whilst I did used to like the idea, I have better things to do… plus I don’t really believe in ghosts.

In celebration of all the hard work put in for the Haunted Blackpool illuminations project, we’re devoting two weeks of blogging to ghosts and other such things as a lead up to the event (see post below). Understandably, this caused a bit of an issue for me- a non-believer so I’ve dredged up a poem from the notebook. I realised there have been a lot of memorable moments for me that were set in graveyards. From pilgrimages to moments of reflection, they form a landscape almost everyone can relate to. We all have access to a graveyard, we’ve all probably been in one and we’ll all end up passing through one at some point. I suppose this poem is about all of those things- the little moments, the fragments of memory and the reflecting upon it. Hope you enjoy.

Graveyards

Beside a granite slab I once remembered

Sat down and cried myself into a mess

Then left rejuvenated, full of memories

Uncovered from my mind’s seldom sought depths.

I lived another day seeking a writer

Whose time had passed so many years too soon

Beside me was the girl whose chief inspirer

Was buried by our feet that afternoon

And there were times as kids we used to laugh there

We fished and swung from ropes tied up on trees

We gathered there at night to put the frighteners

Up local kids as we told ghost stories

This solemn place we avoid all our lifetimes

The place we lay when no more days to give

Reveals the vast spectrum of man's emotion

Dares us to consider how we live.

Thanks for reading,
S.

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Ghostly Goings-On

 This is just a short message to explain what’s coming up over the next fortnight here on the Dead Good Blog. In the build up to Halloween we have two weeks on the same theme of Ghostly Goings-On.

·         As you will have noticed, the background for the blog has changed into something spooky.

·         You’ll also notice that there’s a widget to the right explaining about the weather in Blackpool.

But, to give you some backstory first:

Earlier this year former Dead Good Blogger, Mr Standard, working on behalf of the Dead Good Poets with Blackpool Council Arts Service and Blackpool Illuminations, began to collate a collection of short spooky stories and poems. These pieces of fiction were to be used in the Haunted Blackpool installation on Blackpool’s promenade. The collection of scary spoken stories has since gone on to be published as an anthology of scary shorts.

As the editor of this collection explains in the foreword to the published collection:

“The Haunted Blackpool installation is sited on The Cliffs, Queen’s Promenade, Blackpool for the duration of the Centenary Illuminations season. Local artists Carlio Juanito and Rick Thompson worked with the writers to facilitate the transition from paper to projection. Their efforts culminated in the form of two ghostly mannequins, baring the faces of the Dead Good Poets, whom regaled passers-by with their scary stories amongst crumbling gravestones and rusting iron fences.

This anthology returns the writing to its original incarnation as paper and prose and is intended as a celebration of both the project and the people involved.”

Stroud, S.G. (2012) The Dead Good Poets’ Haunted Blackpool,

Blackpool Council Arts Service, Blackpool.

The Haunted Blackpool installation is a pleasure to behold. The Haunted Blackpool anthology will be launched on Halloween. As part of the celebration, weather permitting, there will be a reading on the promenade outside the Haunted Blackpool installation. Some of the writers are threatening to turn up in fancy dress. It should be a lot of fun.

So, to make sure you know who will be there, how to get there and whether or not the event will be running on Halloween (because the weather does play an important factor in this), please keep checking back to these pages.

·         Use the weather forecast on the right of the page as a guide.

·         Heed the wise words of the current bloggers.

·         And don’t forget to tell all your friends that you know some of this town’s scariest writers.

I should also add, over the next couple of weeks we’ll be hosting some potential new members to the Dead Good Blogging team and we trust regular readers of these pages will give these new writers the warm and enthusiastic welcome they deserve.

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