My Ghost Story

By Leonard Wibberley

First Published May 15, 1979

9/29/2023

Photo Credit Manfred Guttenberger Pixabay — Happy Halloween

There has been, all things considered, a paucity of ghosts in my life and not, I will submit, through any fault of my own, for I have been interested in ghosts ever since I learned that such beings exist. That was the day such beings exist.

That was the day my grandmother frightened the skin off of me with the story of a house whose walls bled once a year and that at two in the morning.

“There were five people murdered in that house – butchered is a better word,” she said. “They were chopped to bits with a fire ax, and there were pieces of them all over the place. There was a finger with a ring on it on the landing at the top of the second flight of stairs and an eye…”

“Stop this instant,” said my mother. “You are frightening the child to death.” So I never learned the rest of the story, but I did make the discovery that I rather enjoyed being frightened and ghosts are the best things to frighten yourself with.

When I was older, and my own man, I independently investigated several deliciously terrifying ghost stories, but the results were in every case disappointing. Once I spent all night in a house where every night an hour before midnight, a woman appeared carrying a candle before her and walked from room to room, weeping. But she didn’t turn up the night I was there.

Another time I stayed in a ruined church in a little village in Norfolk which was haunted by the ghost of a pirate who amused himself by bowling peoples’ heads down the aisle. He didn’t appear that night either, and after a while, I discovered that the first law of ghosts is that they never turn up if you are looking for them.

The second law of ghosts, laid down by Bergen Evans I think, is that no ghost will ever appear to more than one person at a time. It follows that if you see a ghost at all, you are bound to be alone and disbelieved.

But once, without knowing it, I ran into what people said was a terrifying local ghost, and this is how it happened. I was living at the time in the village of Roundstone (Cnoc na ron in Gaelic, which means “the rock of the seal”) and decided to drive, after sundown, to the neighboring town of Clifden. Now you can go there by a road along the coast, or you can take a shorter road over the bogs – that was the road I took. I got to a particular part of the road where there was a steep dip and bend at the bottom of it, and just as I turned the bend, the engine died.

I pressed the starter, the engine fired up and I put the car in gear. The engine immediately died again. This happened several times. The engine would, run perfectly well in idle. It would accelerate up to about 4,500 rpm without a whimper. But as soon as it was put in gear, it quit.

I got out of the car hopelessly to look the thing over and found that, although it was midsummer, the air was piercingly cold and there was a heavy smell of fish about the place. The cold and the fish smell and the watchful emptiness of the darkening land all got on my nerves. So I climbed back into the car, started the engine again and this time, on a whim, put the gearshift into reverse. The car moved backwards beautifully, and I returned to the main road in reverse which was quite a feat. Once there I put the gear nervously in forward, the engine continued running, and I got back to the village.

There was one mechanic in Roundstone who knew something about cars, so I visited him next morning and told him what had happened. He questioned me closely as to the exact part of the road I had reached when the engine stalled and said, “It’s nothing whatever to do with the gear box. It was the Fish Thing that would not let you go by.”

The Fish Thing, it turned out was some monstrous being, a man with the head of a cod, who would not let anyone pass along that road after dark. I didn’t believe a word of it, of course, though there had been that piercing cold and the curious smell of fish. Others said the Fish Thing was an old and villainous pirate who had hid out in that part of the road centuries before.

“Look,” said the mechanic. “I could make 20 quid out of you right now by tearing that gear box apart and putting the thing back again. But that was what was the matter with the car and you’ll have no trouble if you’ll just stay away from the Clifden Road through the bogs at night.”

I should, of course, have tried the same thing on the following night but I didn’t.

You may rightly ask then whether I believe in ghosts. The best answer I can give you is that I believe in avoiding unnecessary repair bills for my car.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Halloween Ghost Dogs image by nancy sticke from Pixabay.)

***** NEW ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY BOOK NOW ON KINDLE *****

THE PHOENICIAN

and the Lost Vikings of the Round Table

When a legendary Viking ship, the Black Raven, returns home to Ostmond, its captain is dead, and the crew is emaciated. The only man left standing is a stranger from a faraway land named Eusebius the Phoenician.

Eusebius is taken to the Great Hall where he convinces the Viking council to give him men and ships to go on an epic quest for the Holy Grail.

★★★★ “Many surprises, starting with the author. When I picked this up at some used book store or sale, I had no idea it was by Leonard Wibberley. Next, my assumption was that anything Phoenician would be set in ancient times—wrong! This is, in fact, a tale of Vikings. Then I thought this was a straight historical fiction—nope, it leans more to the speculative alternative history with elements from myths and legends (as well as actual history). That said, it’s quite a good book that keeps moving along. I think the tale is best experienced with a blank slate, just letting it lead on and on. It’s adventure, mystery, and even touches on philosophy and psychology. Wibberley takes on a pseudo-epic style of writing that has the ring of oral tradition—very appealing.”—Goodreads Review Find The Phoenician and the Lost Vikings of the Round Table on Amazon here.