HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Are you looking for a ghostly challenge this Halloween night? Read on to discover author Emily Randall Jones' quest for you . . .

I’ve got two challenges for you, dear readers.

Challenge the first

We don’t talk about the UK’s web of old railway lines nearly enough. I’d bet my last Rolo that we all live near one, though, and I’d like to challenge YOU to go and explore it.  

Look for places called Station Lane, Station Master’s Cottage, or even named in tribute to old locomotives and lines – Great Western Way, Stephenson Road, North Star Avenue. Piles of crumbling bricks. Dilapidated bridges, covered in graffiti. Look for long straight walks, tunnelled by trees. Or metal fences and disused buildings. My local one’s the site of a Spar shop now.

Found one?

Challenge the second

This Halloween – ideally when it’s pitch dark and freezing cold, and only if you’re able, of course - I’d like you to go and walk on the old line, or visit the spot where the station once stood. With each step think about the thousands of lives and stories that sped over that very spot, through wars and epidemics, joyful journeys and private grief. Note how nature has already clawed back what was theirs, eradicating that tiny period of transport history and swallowing it up.

Think about how many ghosts must linger in this liminal place, neither one thing or another.

Then a plume of smoke curling in the air. The monstrous groan of metal on metal. Then imagine you hear a ghostly, discordant wail, louder than thunder. The scream of a whistle.

A ghost train.

And it’s coming for you.

Who’s riding it? And where is it going?

And what does it want with you?

For more spine-tingling, spooky goodness this Halloween, check out THE WITCHSTONE GHOSTS and THE SCREAM OF THE WHISTLE by Emily Randall Jones!