Stories That Go Bump in the Night

My friend and writing buddy Eeleen Lee has a great post about things that go bump in the night which I think you may enjoy :

Thought I might save this post for Halloween, but then again, Halloween is a season for carnivalesque safe scares; you pays your money, enter the ghost-train ride and emerge on the other side unscathed. The ride is easily forgotten and the memory is disposable. ... Alison Flood's article in The Guardian set me thinking about horror/supernatural fiction. Readers cite the usual horror suspects (King, Poe, Shirley Jackson...) but I remember as a reader that my literary scares came from reading short stories in old anthologies borrowed from libraries or unearthed in clearance book sales. I discovered new names and old names; wonderful tales by one-hit wonders and stories by writers that you'd normally would not associate with horror/ supernatural fiction.

And to find out what gave Eeleen goosebumps go here.

We've talked about out scariest stories before, but are there any more you would add to the list?

The Horror! The Horror!

... the deeper you venture into the dark woods of these fairytales, the more you have to wonder – are these stories really for kids?

All this week The Guardian celebrates the fairytale. Old stories are retold by modern authors who also discuss the contemporary resonances. The related articles (which you can find here) include Adam Barnett (quoted above) who looks at the horror and violence the stories contain; Alison Lurie talking about wisdom and folly in fairytales, and Adam Phillips looking at the concept of quests in fairytales.

King Disses Meyer

Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. ... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good. ... Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies. James Patterson is a terrible writer but he’s very very successful. People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet.

Stephen King on other writers in an interview for USA Weekend. [Via]

What do you think - those who've read Meyer and/or some of the others on the list?

Postscript :

For another interesting take on Meyer's book, read Why I Hate Twilight on the Vulpes Libis blog :

The girls reading this stuff are as young as eight or nine years old, I know, I’ve seen them buy it and I’ve seen their parents buying it for them… and their parents have never read the book themselves. At that young age girls have not yet formed opinions or attitudes and they’re ripe for influence. ... I won’t go into the fact that the author is a Mormon and has admitted that she has used her real-life attitudes in her writing ... but I will stress that there are some questionable motivations and opinions in this book which could be influencing a generation.

Hallowe'en Reads

Halloween is the time to curl up with a spooky tale. Peter Washington lists Ten Top Ghost Stories in the Guardian, while Justin Picardy writes about her very favourite scary reads in the Telegraph. Amanda Craig in the Times, meanwhile, recommends magic and macabre children's books.

There's also a fun quiz about literary witches in the Guardian. (I only got 6 right! Back to Hogwarts for me!)

(Spooky image from hoax-slayer.)

The Undead Danny Lim

Some of us may not believe in the supernatural world but we are always curious about it.

Malaysia is blessed with kinds of ghosts the rest of the world has never heard of (as I mentioned once before, here). And being such a multicultural land, every race has brought their own ghouls along to add to the cultural mix.

Danny Lim (left) talks to Bissme S. in the Sun about his new book The Malaysian Book of the Undead .

Here's a guide to some of the fellows you will find among the pages :

Hantu Bunyi-Bunyian
Ghosts that are only heard but not seen. They like to confuse people in the jungle. In Malay folklore, they could marry humans and even bear invisible children. Marriage with such a ghost can grant the human spouse magical powers.

Hantu Gerasi
A gigantic ghost accompanied by its spectral hounds, believed by the Ibans, to have a voracious appetite, especially for human beings. When hungry, the ghost is said to bring sickness. Whenever an Iban village experiences an epidemic of sorts, a special hut will be erected and food offered to appease it.

Hantu Balung Bidai
An evil spirit that lives in water, resembles a mat and with a mouth at each corner. It wraps itself around victims and drown them.

Hantu Langut
This hunter ghost with a dog’s head on a human body originates from Pahang. It tells of a father and son who went hunting with their dog in tow. A leech bit the father’s foot. He sliced it in two but was amazed to see the leech reattach itself and become whole again. The father thought if his own head were cut off, it could be reattached with leech blood. He asked his son to do it but alas, the head rolled into a crevice in the rocks. Panic-stricken, the son cut off the dog’s head, fixing it on his father’s body, and smearing it with leech blood. The father was revived but was so ashamed of his appearance that he remained in the depths of the jungle as the Hantu Langut.

Mohini Pisasu
A seductive female ghost in Indian folklore, this temptress dressed in white with anklets roams the night seducing unsuspecting bachelors. She leads them into the jungle and kills them.

Vellaisamy
This male counterpart of the Mohini Pisasu is fond of occupying the bodies of young female virgins who begin to display male behaviour like smoking cigarette. The Vellaisamy-possessed girls can finish a cigarette in a single, long drag without any smoke coming out of their mouths.

I think it will be fun hantu spotting at the Halloween launch this Friday.

Psst - Amir is offering some free copies to bloggers, but I'm not going to tell you about that, because I want one myself.

(Right - an illustration from the book about a ghost with big boobies called a churel .)

Stories That Go Bump in the Night

The Times is running a ghost story competition, which most of my readers here are not eligible to enter, not being UK residents. But Susan Hill's article about the essential ingredients of a ghost story is certainly worth a read for anyone interested in writing in the genre. (Susan Hill's The Woman in Black is one of the best ghost stories of all time - and if a copy hasn't found it's way into your hands, seek it out!)

A ghost story is not a tale of horror or terror; it is not about werewolves, vampires, monsters or Martians, terrifying though these may be. I doubt if even a few of the most famous stories of the form’s master, M. R. James, should actually be called ghost stories because, although they contain many unpleasant things, those things are not what you and I would call ghosts.

So, what do we call ghosts? (We must set aside the small question of belief. It is perfectly possible to know what ghosts are without believing in their existence.) I define a ghost as the remaining spirit of a person who has existed in this life, but who is known to have died. This spirit is usually seen and often recognised, but it may be heard, sensed or even smelt. So, the ghost story has to have a ghost – usually human, but possibly animal. There have been plenty of ghostly cats and dogs.

The one absolutely essential difference between a “real” ghost and a fictional one is that the ghost in the story has to have a purpose, whereas few “true” ghosts do.

Headless horseman gallop down lonely roads. Men wearing armour and carrying their heads tucked underneath their arms walk through walls. Veiled women drift intermittently down flights of stairs in old houses. Nuns glide by in gardens at dusk. This is “so what” territory. Young women are heard weeping, men shouting, dogs occasionally bark in the night, but why they do this, what they hope to achieve by their hauntings remains, like the apparitions themselves, mysterious.

If these “true” stories are told in print, they are dull, and collections of them pall after a few pages – however full of spooky atmospherics they may be, they are ultimately pointless.

Ghostly fiction is really successful only if the ghost has a reason to appear. That reason is not usually benign. The ghost may seek revenge or retribution for what happened to it in life and the presumption is that, once this is obtained, the haunting will cease. Some ghosts want to alert the living to a secret – the whereabouts of a hidden will or a letter of confession to a crime. They may want to point to the real perpetrator of some ghastly crime. They may even want to bring comfort and consolation. But they must certainly want to do, say or bring about something – or the story fails.

If the crime novel needs a strong, forward-moving narrative, the ghost story is a test of the writer’s ability to create atmosphere. What ghost story convinces if it does not have atmosphere? Traditionally, that atmosphere is, well, ghostly.

When I was planning The Woman in Black, I made a list of essential ingredients of the classic ghost story and after “a ghost” came “atmosphere” – under that heading came “weather” and “place”. Haunted houses? Yes, and for house read “mansion”, preferably old, isolated and in a dark and dismal spot. An ancient chapel, abbey ruins – haunted cloisters are especially frightening. A house with a forest behind it, or a brooding cliff, a cataract, a moor across which the night winds howl – all are a gift to the writer wanting atmosphere. But the ghost story should not be confused with the Gothic. Not all ghosts are Goths and a Gothic tale need not include a ghostly apparition.

One of the most horrifying of all ghost story-masterpieces is Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and it succeeds so well because it is a horribly believable story of pure evil. If a ghost story can create an atmosphere of real malevolence, threatening the lives, souls and sanity of the innocent, it is likely to do its job of making the reader afraid and horrified. There is the world of difference between that and the pleasurable frisson imparted by being taken for a walk among haunted ruins as the sun is setting.

I feel the hairs on the back of my neck pricking up already!

Bashing the Reviewer

I'm probably opening up a bag of worms with this post but still ...

The most interesting thing in the Sunday papers is the letter from Tunku Halim in the Star because I think it throws up interesting questions about how local books are reviewed and what we expect from reviewers, and I hope I'm not sticking my neck out by bringing the topic up. (Both author and reviewer are my friends, and I hope they both still are after this!)

Michael Cheang's review of Tunku Halim's latest book 44, Cemetery Road appeared last Sunday. It is a compilation of previous stories from his previous collections with three new ones. I haven't read the book yet (drowning in books I have to read for review) although hope to do so soon, so this personal jury is out, for now, on the merits and demerits of the book. My argument then is a general one.

The review was largely a very positive one, but a couple of the criticisms were leveled by Cheang against the writing. He also had issues with the writing style in one story:

... words leaped out at me like a vengeful spirit. Elaborate descriptions, overdone superlatives and textbook-style plotting abound ...

But it was the charge that he had used “very similar plot devices” (similar to each other presumably) and some of his earlier stories were “predictable” that got up the author's nose.

This is a serious allegation indeed against any writer and I wish to state my case. Here it is and right to the point: the stories are NOT predictable, nor are they similar in terms of plotting.

If Cheang thinks otherwise, he should have elaborated, pointing out the offending stories and also to explain why. Such a flippant comment can easily be thrown in, particularly by a reviewer who readily admits from the start that he regards horror stories as often “cheesy”. Yet what he claims is “predictable” is extremely difficult to justify unless we do a test. After reading say 25% of the story, Cheang should then tell us what exactly is going to happen. I doubt he can. This also leads me to the question of predictability or, its opposite, the unexpected ending. It is the journey rather than the destination that matters. If you watch any Hollywood movie you more or less know the good guys are going to win. Yes, predictable. But how? The journey that gets them there is what counts. That’s what you enjoy. It’s the detail of the story, the suspense, the action, even if you know the outcome, is what makes for good entertainment. So predictability should not be an issue. Having said that, my stories are not predictable.

As a reviewer myself, I have to say that the author is not the one to make a judgment about whether his work is predictable or not (no matter how concerned he was about avoiding predictability when he was writing it). It is a judgment entirely for the reader. And in this case for the reviewer. Now a review is a personal opinion. Reviewers differ greatly on how they perceive a book. One loves it. One shreds it. But none of them has the final word.

Just look at how different the reviews of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (I take this example since I've just finished reading it) are in the New York Times "a small sullen, unsatisfying book" and in The Washington Post where Jonathan Yardly enthuses that it "reaffirms (his) conviction that no one now writing in English surpasses or even matches McEwan's accomplishment".

Who is right? Both.

And neither.

These are personal reactions to the novella, and the fact that readers can react so differently to a text is large part of our engagement with literature.

Cheang should have elaborated? Could he have included more specific examples? Perhaps so. But actually he was already 167 words over the limit (according to recent guidelines for Star reviews in which the word limit was cut from 800 words to just 500).

It's unfortunate in a sense that Cheang and Halim opened up such a bag of worms because no local publication gives space for the in-depth discussion of literature that it deserves. There is no forum for in-depth discussion or analysis of texts outside academia. And writers do need to know what they are getting right and what they aren't so that they can move forward.

It's good that an effort is being made in the Star to review local books, and I hope to see other titles on the book pages.

The reviewer doesn't like the genre? That there are so few competent people willing to review books is undoubtedly part of the issue here. Besides, does not liking a genre actually diminish the value of the review?

But the reviews cannot, and should not, always be positive ones. They should be fair and authors should understand this.

Tunku Halim to his credit says that he does, and writes some further thoughts about the review on his blog. He adds that he feels:

... that local reviewers have a pre-conceived idea of local writers which is “it’s local, so it can’t be much good”. The reviewer looks through blinkers, searching for negatives, not the positives. This means the local author necessarily has an uphill battle from the start. He or she has to convince the reviewer that despite being local the work is great. But take heart, this attitude will change with time.

This is certainly something we should examine our reviewerly consciences for.

Malaysian Gothic?

One of the nice things about having this blog is that I have interesting people from across the world getting in touch to ask questions or share experiences.

Gina Wisker of Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge wrote to say that she's looking for Malaysian women writers, especially those who use post-colonial gothic in their work.

Now this had me stumped. I know what post-colonial means. I know what gothic means.

But post-colonial gothic?

Gina patiently filled in the gap in my ignorance. She reckons that the term was first coined by David Punter, and :.

.. it suggests that colonial and imperial spaces are haunted by silenced and returned ghosts of a hidden past. ... I also use it to look at how postcolonial writers use images of vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves etc etc, witches, myths, spider women and so on writing against the impacts of colonialism and imperialism through looking at power and so on which relate to ethnicity, cultural difference, gender. Usually the writers are using myths and images and writing about their own lives and hidden histories - examples would definitely be Beth Yahp's Crocodile Fury on which I've written a couple of times, and Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory but also much of Catherine Lim's work ...

So the short question is does anyone know of Malaysian women writers who supernatural elements in their work?

That Monster The Writer

Stephen King has written about zombies, vampires and the end of the world. He has imagined a killer car, a killer dog, a killer clown and killer cellphones. But when he really wants to put a scare into you, he brings on his most fearsome monster of all, that quivering mass of ego and insecurity known as ... the writer.

Very nice article about King's latest novel Lisey's Story ("about marriage, mourning and living a life of the imagination") in the New York Times, and you can also read the first chapter here.

And if you're too lazy to read it yourself, at the Times Online you can hear the man himself reading the first chapter and listen to a podcast interview. Several articles here pay tribute to the force of nature that's Stephen King.

As for the latest novel, John Sutherland writes in his appraisal of King's craft that Lisey's Story:

... looks as if it’s going to join that set of novels in which King allegorises the woes of his craft. In The Dark Half, a writer is stalked by his pseudonym. In Misery, a writer is imprisoned and made to write crap by his No 1 Fan. In Bag of Bones, a writer hits a block so solid that only a Faustian pact with the Devil can help. And Lisey’s Story — what woes of authorship will be dealt with there? I already have my first day delivery order in with Amazon.

I want to read it too.

Hardtalking Palahniuk

Was much impressed with Chuck Palahniuk on Hardtalk with Gary Esler, shown this afternoon on BBC World. He looked a little like Ralph Fiennes playing Oscar in Oscar and Lucinda, I thought. Gentle. A little geeky. Definitely fun. (The duck is so nice, I now desire the pate ... to mess about with Margaret Atwood's quote.)

Anyway, to make you happy I scribbled down some notes and here are some of the facts I learned about Palahniuk and his work:

• He writes to entertain himself and is easily bored ... so he likes to shock.
• He recalls doing public readings in bars where you had only 7 minutes to make the audience laugh and make them cry.
  
• He says that reading books relies on the constant consent and effort of the consumer in a way which is not true of movies and TV.
• People faint at readings of Haunted. At almost every venue there has been at least one person hit the floor.
• At his readings people come up to him and tell him stories they have never told anyone before.
• He says the success of Fight Club changed his life only in so far as it gave him permission to be with people (giving readings and talks).
• He started writing when he joined a writer's group (for the friendship and free wine) for which the price of admission was a piece of work.
• He wroteFight Club as a kind of male version of books like The Joy Luck Club, Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt which emphasise feminine solidarity. He wanted to write a similar book about something that pulled a group of men together to tell their stories.
• He reckons a great deal of popular culture died after 9/11 as transgressional acts were no longer looked upon as being funny.
• The film of Fight Club didn't do well when it was initially screened in cinemas. It began to sell well as a DVD, when news about it spread from person to person on the internet.
• Fight Club sold to the kind of people who normally wouldn't set foot in a bookstore. A record number of copies were stolen.
• He loves readings, which he sees as an excuse for people to come together.
• He says that his narrative technique is based on oral story telling. Too many people read stories as if they are written on the page. They should learn things like timing, delivery and rhetoric from stand-up comedians.
• His sense of horror probably springs from family events. His grandfather shot his grandmother and then committed suicide. As children, he and his siblings used to sleep in the room where the murder took place. His father was murdered by the ex-husband of his girlfriend who is now on death row, threatening that he has planted anthrax bombs and they will explode if he is executed.
• When people tell me I'm extreme, Palahniuk says, they have no idea how extreme these things really are.

Scary Stuff

The Visitor tells me that the world is going to end tomorrow (06/6/06) so it might be a suitable occasion to write about some chilling reads. (I like to be topical.)

Terence Rafferty in the New York Times ponders the attraction of horror stories in The Thinking Reader's Guide to Fear and goes on to list some of the latest and best supernatural fiction.

Meanwhile, Colm Toibin in the Guardian writes about one of the most chilling stories ever written: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, which was filmed in 1961 as The Innocents (left) and utterly totally terrified me as a child.

Anyway, take comfort: the world can't end tomorrow because they're announcing the winner of the Orange Prize.


Related Posts:

Satanic Synchronicity 29/4/05)
The Comforts of Horror (31/5/06)

The Comforts of Horror

The cycle horror story is comforting the same way porno is comforting: you already know how they're going to end. The actor will achieve a loud orgasm or die ...

In the Guardian, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk talks about the comfort to be derived from the untimely deaths of characters in horror stories.

What's a cycle horror story? Palahniuk points to the example of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery:

In 1948, when the New Yorker magazine first published , that one short story drew letters from readers in 25 states and six countries outside the US. People complained of losing sleep owing to nightmares, and cancelled their subscriptions.

Oh miraculous internet! I found a link to the story so you can fright yourselves to death.

Or, if that doesn't work, Palahniuk's new book Haunted sounds deliciously gruesome. According to the blurb on the Random House website, it's a novel:

... made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter-sometimes all at once. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined "Writers' Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months," and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of "real life" that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But "here" turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world-and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell-and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight.

Here's an extract to whet your appetite. (I'm so desirous of this book my hands are shaking, delerium tremours of the bookaholic.)

Oh, and Ms. D? I've just had second thoughts about that writer's retreat we were planning!

Graveside Tribute

For fifty-seven years running, a mystery man has been placing roses and a bottle of cognac on Edgar Allan Poe's grave to mark the horror writer's birthday, the Guardian reports.

Toyols Steal the Reading Public

Interesting article in yesterdays New Straits Times about Malay reading habits. (Thanks again, Dina, for forwarding the link!)

Apparently Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said during his adjournment speech at the Umno general assembly last week that the Malays are religious but tend to resign themselves to fate and can be very superstitious.

Syed Nadzri takes up the theme and relates it to the kinds of books and magazines favoured by the Malay Community:

... it is quite disconcerting to note that the cerita hantu or cerita toyol (creepy gothic stories) are among the most popular among Malay readers.

That is why some tabloids and magazines are cashing in on this craze by sensationalising with headlines such items as Kubur berasap (Smoke on the grave) or Mayat bertukar menjadi babi (Dead turns into pig).

They are certainly worse than the News of the World-type of stories about UFO sightings, Elvis alive and women giving birth to crocodiles.

Among the best-selling Malay storybooks not too long ago was the Bercakap Dengan Jin series (conversations with the spirits) by an author called Tamar Jalis.

His books were all about grisly tales and they were told in a not-so-tasteful language.

The books also have garish covers. Yet these were so popular that most were sold out the moment they hit the shelves.

I know an avid reader of the series. He would spend nights on end reading the books to the point that he always overslept and was often late for work.

One of the books he read was about a snake god and the snake man.

He must have liked this book because he read it over and over until one day when he came to me with a horrified look.

I asked him what was wrong and he said: "Please help me, please, please. I am going to turn into a snake tonight. I can feel it in my skin. And they are calling me."

When I asked who "they" were, he said: "My snake family."

To my horror, he was indeed writhing and squirming on the floor when night came, although he looked as human as ever. Things were never the same for the poor chap ever since.

This could be dismissed as a remote case of a good mind gone wrong.

Some magazines and tabloids even stretch the reader’s imagination by suggesting a twist to sicknesses suffered by somebody — as in "Artis dijangkiti penyakit misteri" (Singer down with mysterious illness) when there must be a medical explanation for the ailment.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the best-selling Malay reading materials are those featuring either these kinds of bizarre fare or those with sexy and gossipy elements.

All well and good. Everyone to his or her own taste. But what is really worrying is what Syed Nazri says at the end of the article:

Journals on current affairs, literary magazines or special interest periodicals in Bahasa Malaysia hardly sell. Massa, a political and current affairs news magazine, had to cease publication not too long ago, while Dewan Bahasa’s Dewan Masyarakat and Dewan Sastera are struggling.

Would be interested to hear your views.

Satanic Synchronicity

Just started rereading Peter Ackroyd's chilling Hawksmoor, twenty years or so after it first terrified me.

Ackroyd moves back and forth between the eighteenth century and the present in this tale of architect Nicholas Dyer who builds churches based on satanic principles. Dyer is based on real-life architect based on Nicholas Hawksmoor who worked with Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London and constructed a number of churches in London. And there is certainly evidence of the incorporation of occult elements in the Hawksmoor churches. (If you're curious take a look at this excellent essay The Eloquence of Stone: A Long Look at Christ Church by Eduardo Zinna.)







All my own nightmares are here between the pages. Ackroyd recreates the London I search for each time I walk the oldest parts of the city, conscious of the thousands of years of history beneath my feet. Sometimes the past seems so close that you could enter it.

I am afraid of old churches too. Wake in a cold sweat dreaming of spires and the chanting of demons.

I'm leading up to a story ...

My friend Lucy taught EFL with me on Summer School at my college in Plymouth. She has a brother who is an archaeologist and has been on numerous digs, and she's always fascinated by his work. Back in the mid-80's he was involved in the first dig of a crypt of a church from the eighteenth-century. The church was Christ Church in Spitalfields, and it was one of the Hawksmoor churches.



The idea was that the crypt was to be cleared of coffins so that it could be used as a centre for the homeless of this very poor area of the East End. But there were quite a number of coffins dating from the period when the church was built and these had to be catalogued first since they would offer important insights into the life of the local population of the time.

Now at that point in time it was common to use lead-lined coffins which preserve the body from the elements.

My friend's brother and his team set about opening up the coffins to document the contents.

Maybe it was because of the build up of gases in the coffin, or maybe there was a chemical reaction when air rushed in, but as soon as the coffin lids were prised open, the bodies just ... exploded.

One woman had a corpse explode in her face and was covered with fragments of the body. She began to scream, couldn't stop. Had to be warded in a psychiatric hospital.(Apparently post traumatic stress syndrome is a very real danger for forensic anthropolgists who need to receive regular counselling).

Anyhow, Lucy heard this story from her brother when she went to visit the site of the dig in the crypt one day and she could see her brother was pretty spooked out by the incident.

Lucy later caught her bus home, decided to read on the journey and reached into her bag for the new novel she had bought that morning.

You've guessed it - Ackroyd's Hawksmoor. Set in the very same church she had just visited.

Now how's that for synchronicity?