shadow people

Shadow people

My personal feeling is that there are forces resident within us,

And that they can manifest.

A poltergeist is a case in point, where during a troubled

adolescence, a physically potent agency becomes active.

It usually isn't murderous, despite makers of horror movies

trying to tell us otherwise, and most of the time,

even throwing an object at someone doesn't cause injury.

It's more of a disturbance than an act of hate.

That devolves on the demonic, which is a totally different kind of story.

I imagine that shadow people mark a transition line between 

A ghost or a poltergeist and a demon.

Maybe they represent where one of these is going to manifest,

where it is feeding on energy, our fear and other negative emotions, 

to try and  become real. It's what is described in fiction as our 

"dark side", that's pretty close to being our shadow.

It has a watching brief. The thing seen out of the corner of the eye,

Or the darkness, which walks beside you, 

if you happen to be walking alone in the wilderness,

or the gravestone, which isn't there, and looks like a human being

with head and shoulders, if you are alone in a cemetery  after dark.

It probably watches you at night, when you are a child, 

to see if you could be a suitable candidate for possession....

As they said in A Haunting, in the first few series

Before they chickened out.....

:

"In this world there is real evil......."

It's us ourselves!

black man

The Black man

I found a source, hunting about on line,  which fits the stories

of the shadow people pretty well, and is more ancient?

The Fear Dubh, a Scottish folklore figure,
Its tale is of a lone dark figure, which follows travellers.
With corollaries in Eastern Europe, this is a  dark, usually thin figure.
According to internet sites, this creature often takes on
attributes of the boogeyman, and is said to abduct children.
Its slender dark appearance might lead you to believe
that it could be an archetype for the "Black Man" and shadow people,
even, dare I say it, the Men in Black?

It does seem that the name Fear Dubh could come from Celtic folklore,
but i would prefer to see it in pre-internet written sources,
as the internet is a hotchpotch of often untestified or poorly back sourced
information. Having said that, though, the name itself simply
does seem to mean Dark man, so it fits a mythological
and archetypal image, which sits at the back of our conscoiusnesses.
The earliest i have traced so far is 1890, by the internet
To Jeremiah Curtin, "Myths and Folklore of Ireland"
relating to tales of Fin McCumhail, an Irish hero,
however it strays a little from the spirit nature
that i'm looking for, except interestingly Fear Dubh and his brothers
are apparently the children of a hag.

shadow men 4

Shadow people

Alright why do they wear hats often?

And the other commonly reportd feature are the red eyes.

The first question is harder, but the second would

appear to indicate that they are demons. Red eyes hellfire.

That's the association, i imagine.

However, when i was studying colours at art college 

I noticed that one of the strongest colour combinations for shock value

was black and red, or even more so black and orange.

The colour of the night and the colour of blood.

The sharpest contrast.

That may of course be a psychological thing.

That either means that we are primed to see the most shocking 

combination of colours possible, or that these are the first flush

of a rising demonic presence.

It could be as well that we are being fed these colours 

by horror film makers, and they have got

implanted into our psychological vocabulary.

Why should a shadow wearing a hat be scary? 

Which of you has heard of the comic book character The Shadow?

He wore a hat and had red eyes. But he was a vigilante 

fighting criminals, and i love his tales.

Maxwell Grant 30s -50s, 

That can't be the source of the effect of wearing a hat...

What's scary about a hat? Does this originate 

with horror films too? 

I can think of one, and i don't much like to,

 as i don't much like horror films.

Go back to earlier days... did the phantom of the opera wear a hat?

The point is, when did shadow people first start to be observed?

More to come.........

shadow men 3

Shadow men 3

It can't be surprising that people are afraid

Of their own shadows...

I mean they are fixed onto you for life.

So, can shadows be fixed onto a building 

If they pass on when you die?

If the Stone Tape theory of recording images from 

the past is true, what about shadows of the dead?

Could they also be recorded?

Left behing in brick and mortar?

This is the usual artists impression of reports of these shadows.

Well, if they're seen to open and close doors,  the general idea is that 

actions like those are some sort of interaction with the observer's mind.

How much interaction, on a scale between very little observer participation to 

completely in the observer's mind, that depends

upon what you believe, doesn't it?

Sorry if these entries are short. I feel like an infernal demon from the

depths of hell is throwing me around like a rag doll,

That's that demonic entity the winter bug...

Straight from hell !! I'm possessed by the fiend.

Who says demons don't exist?

shadow men 2

Shadow Men

Could it be that we are ourselves responsible for making

Shadow People? If the human consciousness made

them, like a writer writes stories, or an artist paints,

the very first delineation of a hologram produced by the mind.

Later to take form as a ghost, or disembodied evil, 

or a demon? It is, after all, very familiar to us, our shadow.

Do you know the Dark Matter story of the x -files, called "Soft Light"

 whereTony Shalloub (him of "Monk" fame, for all of us OCD sufferers)

Has a shadow which kills, when it touches someone, or they

step into it. The shadow is a mystery, even if optical scientists think that 

they have the phenomenon cracked. 

After all, falling under one's shadow is an English expression,

isn't it? To be affected by someone's evil eye.

The shadow is something which follows us, all of the time, but only 

appearing when the right kind of light prevails.

It's maybe got something to do with our dark ego.

That which dwells in the dark side of all human beings.

Well, frankly i prefer the idea that a first attempt at the 

manifestation of a ghost would be a shadow, rather than an "orb".

 

shadow men

Shadow men.

I think they've got at me for wanting to write about them.

Really ill today. It's crept up on me and like hammer blows,

Just winter illness. But don't know how much i'll be able to do

 for a couple of days....

I wonder about sbadow people.

I suggested yesterday that they might have something to 

do  with residue magic. They could be some kind of ghost

or demon, but they could be "shades" 

by which i mean spirits of the dead

in a slightly different sense. The ancient Greek and Roman one,

Of the spirits living in the land of the dead.

Not Hell exactly, not as we understand it, but Hades

in the old Greek sense, as the place where 

these residues of the human spirit end up, 

a subterranean waste bin of the soul.

What I was wondering, writing about witches, were tales

about the "Black Man" leading witch's Sabats.

This is traditionally ascribed to xenophobia,

The white man's view of  other races....

It's claimed that the Moor, as a non-Christian, in days after

the crusades, was seen as an enemy of the church, 

and there were coloured people in England 

during the dark ages. 

That view shows up in the film of Richard Mathieson's

scripting based on Wheatley's novel, (loosely) of 'The Devil Rides Out.'

Where a black skinned demon appears in a trap set

in the old house's observatory.

Saw it again last night, on tv, having woken coughing

and spluttering in the middle of the night.

I think that the "Black  Man" is a much more complicated 

mystery than that theory allows for.

 Although fear of what we don't understand may be a part of it.

irish witches 2

Continued.....

She was accused with her "followers" of sacrificing at the crossroads, 

using the entrails of the sacrificial animals to

make ointments, and concourse with demons. 

Nothing if not milking the idea that she was a witch to the full.

She had a spirit called Robert Artisson, who she consorted with..

..one of the denizens of Hell.

Sometimes he appeared as a black dog, a cat, or as a black man.

Are we talking about shadow people, in the days before

the concept of shadow people took off?

There was a fierce battle between Dame Alice and the bishop.

One of the Bishop's problems was that he was an Englishman, and 

not liked because of it, so local people did rally behind her.

Witch hunters didn't always have it their own way.

To rile him, presumably, she  even escaped

and fled to England.

In the meanwhile a woman called Petronilla de Meath 

confessed to all of the crimes attributed to Alice, 

claiming that Alice was a greater witch than she was.

For being a copycat, she was flogged and then burnt.

The first person to die for witchcraft in Ireland.

Alice lived a peaceful life in England, and maybe did cast a

few nice innocent spells here and there. Or maybe not?

The presence of a black man in this story really is interesting.

What exactly was the origin of the "Black Man" in 

magical lore.? Could all shadow people be the direct result 

of witchcraft? 

More on that........

magic in Ireland

Magic in Ireland

The source for the story is Christina Hole's Witchcraft in England

(1977). The edition is a favourite of mine because it 

is illustrated by Mervyn Peake.

Better known for Titus Groan and Gormenghast, 

He was an artist illustrator, of some skill as well...

That's by the way.

The story revolves around a Dame Alice Kyteler in 1324.

She  was accused of witchcraft by her husband, Sir John le Poer,

after a maidservant persuaded him that she

dabbled, and might be responsible for the wasting disease,

from which he was dying.

She had already had three  husbands before him, 

He took her keys from her, searched her coffers,

and found magical powders and unguents, 

( also a sacrimental wafer stamped with the name of the devil,

allegedly in some versions of the  story.)

He sent the evidence to the Bishop of Ossory.

Of course being Catholic, this came 

under the auspices of the inquisition.

Therefore she was accused of not only 

trying to poison her hucband 

 but of killing her previous ones.

She was also alleged to have seduced local people to follow

Witchcraft... Anything to make the charges worse, perhaps.

You remember them? , the Spanish Inquisition, looking a little like the Monty Python team?

... to be continued.

lancashire witches 4

Pendle

Well that was early in the seventeenth century

Harrison Ainsworth wrote The Lancashire Witches in 1848

Was access to all of the available records as easy 

for  Ainsworth as it would be today.

Here is the Gutenberg australia issue

The story is downloadable off the web, from Gutenberg.

Front page of first edition

He first released the story in the Sunday Times in 1848. 

I believe that his source 

was an antiquarian frind, 

James Crossley, president of the Chesham society, 

and a  source book "The wonderfull discoverie of Witches 

in the countie of Lancaster"

Written by Thomas Potts, clerk to the court, in 1613,

 so it would have been fresh in his mind.

I like to be as clear as i can on sources of these tales.

The Lancashire Witches 3

The Lancashire Witches 3

Jenny Preston didn't get her planned meeting a year hence.

During the summer Thomas Lister died.

Perhaps then she had enough powerful magic herself?

At the end, he accused her of killing him. When he was dead, 

they brought Jenny to his body, and made her touch him.

Blood flowed. That convicted her. It was believed then that a 

murdered corpse woukd bleed in the presence of its killer

She never confessed to anything,  but was sentenced

 on the corpse's evidence, and evidence from others at the sabat that

she had been present. She was executed.

Most of the witches were accused of murder or bodily harm, and 16

deaths were put down to their powers.

Several admitted to having familiars.

Ten were sentenced to death, including Janet Preston and 

Old Demdike, who were already dead.

I have no evidence that the King was involved in the trial, 

As Harrison Ainsworth suggested.

One, Margaret Pearson was only sentenced to the pillory, 

as she had only killed a horse. 

The rest were acquitted, and maybe 

Descendants of  the witches survive today.

Y ou have to wonder about any confessions or statements 

Made by the culprits or the witnesses. For one thing 

How much pressure were they put under to confess?

Lancaster witches 2

The Lancashire Witches....continued.....

The action centred around Malkin Tower, home of Old Demdike.

One Jennifer Preston of Gisborne-in-Craven had come to ask help to kill

a man called Thomas Lister.

She too was a witch but her magic was not strong enough to

accomplish her "worthy aim"

The coven met at Malkin Tower after the arrest and questioning

of four witches,In fact on Good Friday. Those arrested were:

Old Demdike herself, Anne Whittle (Chattox), Alison Device and Ann Redfearn,

and they implicated others, and were set to be sent to the Assizes. 

So it must have been a very important meet, to free the other witches, 

put their differences aside, in the face of a threat from dangerous enemies, 

and to consider Jennifer Preston's important request.

This is recorded in the trial, so it provides some evidence of 

what their witch's sabbat was like.

They feasted on stolen mutton, before their  meeting,

And no demon was present.They did not worship Satan, dance, carouse,

nor sacrifice......It was in fact what we call today

 an extraordinary general meeting!

They decided to postpone their request to kill someone for 12 months.

 By that time, most of the coven were dead.

In the end 18 witches ended up in custody. 

Old Demdike died in prison.

Alison Device confessed to using a familiar spirit

 in the form of a black dog, to lame a pedlar, who had 

refused to let her have some pins.

She told the trial that her grandmother had bewitched a child, 

which had subsequently died, and killing a sick cow, which she 

had been asked to heal.

One of Elisabeth Device's children, Jennet, who was only 14 years old,

Calmly swore away the lives of members of her own family.

And Janet Preston, what of her......?

To be continued......

The Lancashire Witches

The witches of Pendle

Perhaps the most famous witch band of them all, in England,

The Lancashire Witches.

I have read Harrison Ainsworth's novel about them.

In 1612, in Pendle Forest.

Mostly from two families, originally, 

As they say, the house became divided, and it ended up being two

enemy groups of witches opposed to each other.

Both groups were brought to trial.

Elisabeth Southerns known as Old Demdike

encountered a 'devil' near a stone-pit in the forest, 

and it demanded her soul. This spirit was named Tibb.

She agreed, and it granted her wishes, often in the form 

of a dog or a cat, hence its name presumably.

 Sounds like it was a witch's familiar.

She initiated her son, Christopher Howgate,

 and daughter Elisabeth Device, and her children.

She then persuaded Anne Whittle, aka Chattox, 

to give her soul to a spirit, 

and then this band terrorised the neighbourhood.

However, one night there was a break in at the Device's house, and 

goods were stolen. Alison Device, 

one of Elisabeth Device's children, saw Ann Redfearn,

Old Chattox's married daughter, wearing linen and a coif stolen

 from them, and the feud began.

John Device the husband, was so afraid of Anne Chattox

that he paid her blackmail, against her magics,

so she must have grown more powerful than his mother-in law.

You have to assume that her spirit assistant was a real demon,

and consequently more powerful than Tibb was.

.....to be continued......

Mother Shipton

Ursula Soothtell, (1488-1561)

was that really her name?

Here's an early image of herself

She was a witch of some notoriety, 

alleged to have been able to foretell the future,

rather like Nostradamus, of major events 

like the Great Fire of London.

and to commune with demons.

There is a cave named after her, and a statue inside

She came to be called Mother Shipton by marrying a carpenter 

called Tony Shipton.

According to her the world came to an end in 1881.

Frankly, i do believe her.... 

We are now living in a great computer program.

Did she also foresee that?

A lot of her prophecies post date her. She was one of these 

individuals, who was posthumously made into something

greater than she had originally been

She even has a moth named after her.

Can you see a witch's face in the wing patterns?

She is supposed to be hideously  ugly

So, why did Tony marry her? Was he enchanted by her,

Or.... was he a practitioner himself, who believed that

marriage to such a powerful witch would be of magical benefit to him?

witches and polts

Witches

I think people may not be interested in witches as a topic. 

I expect that is partly to do with Wicca, as we look at witching as 

practically now an acceptable religious pagan practice.

But it was not viewed that way until very recently.

If you look through the history of the poltergeist for instance,

you'll see how often the poltergeist was claimed to be connected to 

a witch's activity, in past times. When a poltergeist manifested, 

even if the poltergeist agent was guessed at,

someone was bound to shout "witch".

It's in the John Wesley story, and the case of Wilmington Mill.

And, of course, the story of the Bell Witch.

 

There is probably another factor here. when we look back at old tales

of revenants, werewolves, vampires, etc, often the dead, which rise

might be also assume to have been witches.

 

In the more religious times, any "unwarranted bad luck,"

was seen as unholy, and the "witch" was a frequent scapegoat,

 because they defied holy writ.

 A spellcaster has always been sought for.

Still in places where religion still has a strong hold, Satanism

(Loosely applied to all magic) still gets blamed if demonic events occur.

I think this view is very important and it informs my stories.

Witches and spellcasting is about a lot more than paganistic practices,

and always was.

witches

Witches.

Okay, so you don't think witches are nearly

 as interesting as zombies and vampires?

I'll teach you, my lovelies!!

Witches are vicious, murderous and devious. They don't all 

Look like Glenda, (below)

Was she the real villain?

Well, you have to judge for yourself, don't you?

But she was the one, who placed Dorothy at risk, 

by spelling the ruby slippers on her feet.

She got rid of two rivals for her magical supremacy

at one fell swoop, the other wicked witch, and the wizard of Oz

With real guile and craft. She managed to set the wicked witch

against Dorothy rather than against her real enemy.

To point out as well, how did Dorothy get to Oz in the first place?

Because she sent out a twister to wreak havoc on the plains

And use Auntie Em's house as a weapon to kill the Wicked witch of the East.

So she got rid of three rivals really at one shot!

The Rollrights.and witches

 witches

The paganness of stone circles is something to dwell on. The one close

to where I spent my childhood, Long Compton,
was a traditional meeting place for witches

In 1875 this traditional association led to the murder of 
80 year old Anne Tennant byJames Heywood, her neighbour.

 He believed that he had been bewitched by Mistress Tennant.
As his neighbour kept toads in her garden, that was evidence for him,

But he was caught very quickly and confessed.
He said that there were 16 witches in Long Compton. 

Surely they come in groups of 13?

He said that he would like to kill them all.

He wanted to have the judge weigh Anne Tennant's body 

against the church bible.

But witchcraft by this date was not considered a punishable crime,

so he got the worst of it, and was adjudged insane.

He was detained in Warwick jail.

Still believing himself to be bewitched, he refused to eat and drink, and so 

passed a death sentence on himself.

I prefer to think of the witchkind, not as paganists

but as a human subspecies, or race. 

Like Samantha in "Bewitched" or looking a lot 

like Melissa Joan Hart as Sabrina Spellman, 

Well, who wouldn't?

Or as in The Craft, Robin Tunney as Sarah Bailey.

An "Other" Someone born with native powers, in a family line.

This association of witches with old pagan places needs exploring, 

though, with such characters as Mother Shipton,
and the old country lore of the wise woman (hedge witches,
as they seem to be called today. )

To be continued........

stone tapes II

The Stone Tapes

Most if our modern technology depends upon the idea 

of recording sound and images, and transmitting sound and images,

through a medium, and there's no difference between that 

and the storage and transmission of events years 

later than they either happened or, mark this,

 were thought, by someone else. 

Or racked by some great emotion, transfixed the pain or joy to stone or brick.

I don't see why it should be difficult to record a story 

that we imagine, so that we can bring it back to life, 

over and over again, when we wish to, or we gain a receptive

audience. After all, that is what writers have been doing since they 

were bards and oral story-tellers.

In the fabric of any building the hidden history of its inhabitants 

might be recorded in more detail, but only a fragment can be 

presented at any given time to a prospective audience.

In The Stone Tapes story something evil, infinitely darker,

lay hidden beneath the fragmentary haunting.

The secret of the house, which tells a fragmentary story,

is part of an underlying theme, which it might be better 

not to know.

 

The stone tapes

So, did our acestors know that stones held the memory 

of past lives, deep within them, 

or had they experienced the manifestations

 of living beings out of matter?

It's hard, in the case of a well attested ghost 

to quite be sure that a grey lady is 

Anne Boleyn, just because she walks where Anne Boleyn

once walked. A legend builds up around a haunting, 

but you don't know absolutely that the person

behind the apparition is the one, 

that it's popularly alleged to be.

I wonder about attributions, which are fixed by some claim 

made by a visiting medium, without any authentication at all, 

and probably no hope at verification. They

claim, standing in a haunted warehouse, that it's the spirit 

of a foreman named Harry.

Well, maybe it is or isn't but the name sticks

. Then everybody repeats it.

Under these conditions, it's more likely the working of the collective

consciousness, which is responsible.

The point of saying that is that the place that these

 visions come from, then, is our own minds picking up 

perhaps on the material produced by some more universal mind, 

or place, where those memories dwell.

Too abstract?  Isn't that what Charles Fort was hinting at?

A deep well of memories, a universal store of images
and experiences.

To be continued.....

water and stones

Water and stones

I think that i mentioned in an earlier post the theory

that stones were connected with the world of the dead.

That certain types of stone physically change, 

when dampened, makes them sacred.

I believe that there is a type of stone, which turns pink when moistened.

Maybe it is also associated with the way that stones can be

polished or worked to make crystals, which also have power.

Perhaps it goes further back into the beginnings of life itself, 

where the first living cells may have been closer to 

mineral to living. Minerals grow as well as living beings.

That our prehistoric ancestors, at least in Europe, saw

stones as signifiers in the land of the dead, 

led to our use of them as memorial markers.

Perhaps specifically from the use of them for megalithic tombs.

The stone tape theory seems to be important in the lore of the 

supernatural. Have you seen the television short called by that name,

about a team trying to learn about a haunting, 

who try to release the spirit, unleash a darker spiritual force 

lurking behind it, and get sucked in to the haunting itself?

Basically, what if images are recorded in stone? 

Or other materials? 

It could be that there is a great memory store out there somewhere,

and stone could be one of the doorways.

There could be a particular reason why playbacks would happen.

.....continuing.

the vril

The power of the Chi

I like the idea of calling it vril after Bulwer Lytton.

The force, which is conducted by water, and stone,

 a living force. Chi, which passes through everything, and needs not

to be obstructed.

Scientifically, if still on the fringe, is that what we call "resonance"?

The idea that something exists in advance of its actual 

happening, within what is simply matter, a vibration of the structure 

of existence, which maybe once resulted in life?

It persists, and still has a creative ability, at least to reawaken 

forces, or presences, that remain in an unfocussed form?

Gods, elemental energies, spirits, 

or maybe nothing more than memories?

It depends what you believe  a ghost is.

The energy flows in water, and it flows or maybe collects

would be a better word, in stones...

As in Stone circles.

If you have ever been to Stonehenge or Avebury,

Then you know what I mean?

Not far from where I was born  we have the Rollrights.

My family have roots in Long Compton.

 Generally in  Oxfordshire and Warwickshire, 

Which, like Sussex, have a pagan and mystic reputation.

The King's Men, Rollright.

There are those who believe that stones are the receptacles of energy...

More to follow..........

worms

Worms

Well, it has been remarked that they may be the Wels catfish, 

possibly resident in England once,

 and a regular problem as they do  grow to massive sizes.

There seems to be an idea that the dragon, in the orient 

Was the line of force, or energy, the Chi,

Which ran through places, like a leyline.

This energy is often assicated with flowing water.

Dragons are the spirits of the water.

If you don't believe that view, watch 

"Spirited Away" where the storyline hinges on the fact.

T.C. Lethbridge(1901-71

The spirit in the waters in the eastern view is an energy 

reminiscent of Bulwer Lytton's "vril"

T.C.Lethbridge whose book "Ghost and Ghoul"

is a classic, posited underground water as a cause 

of psychic disturbance. 

That  the presence of types of stone may be involved as well-

The Stone Tape theory, (more of which anon)

is a similar idea, but water as a conductor of electricity:
That I find interesting. Lethbridge was an innovative thinker.
Today in our scientific age we have lost those special people
who think "out of the  box"
It's a shame.Now less and less are we allowed to.

For more on Lethbridge, consult wikipedia.
Get Ghost and Ghoul, if you can find a copy.
 How exactly does flowing water and psychic energy manifest?

To be continued......

Horsham worm

I plan a trip to the Sussex country  town of Horsham,

 which brings to mind the tale of its worm

That means a local "dragon".

St Leonard's forest near Horsham had a worm.

A strange mythical beast.... now extinct?

"This serpent (or dragon, as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axeltree of a cart; a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both endes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along hist backe seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too neare it, hath already beene too dearly payd for, as you shall heare hereafter.

It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be there deceived; for some suppose that serpents have no feete, but glide upon certain ribbes and scales, which both defend them from the upper part of their throat unto the lower part of their bellie, and also cause them to move much the faster. For so this doth, and rids way (as we call it) as fast as a man can run. He is of Countenance very proud, and at the sight of men or cattel, will raise his necke upright, and seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy. there are likewise on either side of him discovered, two great bunches so big as a large foote-ball and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings; but God, I hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he shall be destroyed before he grow so fledge."

From a "harleian misscelany"

Here dragon's dwell. They even had an exhibition all about ye wurm 

In the museum there last year. 

To be continued.......

carnival of souls

Carnival of souls

The original black and white classic movie of 1962

(Not another by the same name)

got a ahowing on halloween night.

It's most noticeable for its well crafted eerieness, when the heroine 

Finds that nobody hears her, and people totally ignore her,

and that the streets and people are silent.

She phases out of this world.

The revenants rise from the lake water, 

because they want her to join in their dance of the dead.

They are very classy, with the typical Hollywood zombie

dark ringed eyes, but we assume that they are the spirits of the drowned.

She leaves our world, only returning to it, when she passes 

beneath trees, in the park, sunlight streaming down through the leaves, and

she can hear a bird twittering again. 

Living by the sea, it's easy to see the attraction of an old deserted

dance house on a pier over the water. After all, the

South Coast has piers which look like that, some derelict,

 and ruinous like the second burnt out Brighton pier.

 when i was at college someone in the dorm played a haunting, 

Disturbing tune with the refrain

"I went to the fair, 

but there was nobody there"

 

 through which i had many sleepless nights!

Or something like that, but at what is really out there?