'Blind Man's Buff' in The Oxford Book of 20th-Century Ghost Stories

"This one is very well known, but I included it because I think it has the classic rhythm of a ghost story: in act one, somebody transgresses – they do a forbidden thing. In this case, it’s a young man called Mr Cort, who buys a house – I think it’s called Lorn Manor – and although a local tells him not to go there after dark, he drives out to see it. He goes to the manor and opens the door, and inside it’s pitch black. He walks inside and the door slams behind him. It really does. This is almost like an Edwardian found-footage story, because we are totally in the story with him. So: the door slams behind him, and he’s in. And the interior topology of the house starts to break down. It doesn’t make any sense. He seems to be trapped in this recursive loop; he’s in the same passage, with the same chair, wherever he goes. And he can feel – something – slipping by him in the dark… And this thing in the dark gets bolder and bolder. It’s such a simple idea. And there is not a wasted word. The story is only four pages long. It’s fantastic. The great thing about it is that you are in that trap with him. I mean, he’s called Mr Cort – it couldn’t be more obvious! So you realise that you are trapped with him at the same time that he realises he might not get out, and he makes an attempt to stay calm and to control his panic. It’s so tightly controlled and so effective. I don’t think I’ve come across a ghost in all of literature as malign as this, so unknowable. It’s a creature of pure darkness. It appears also to be amorphous. At one point, two or three people seem to be present, having a whispered conversation. At another, point, Cort feels something cold and wet pressed to his forehead, like a hand. I mean – who knows? It’s the mystery of it that’s so terrifying. I’ve read a lot of H. R. Wakefield, but this seems to be the high point. Peter Ackroyd, in London: The Biography , talks about St Giles being a place whose history has always been one of sorrow and loneliness, as if the place itself ferments these emotions; there’s a similar strand in Iain Sinclair’s work, where he discusses certain places accruing bad energies. Psychic faultlines in cities, where the emotional character of a location marks it out as a bad place. And, honestly, I think that’s something you learn instinctively as a child. It may be irrational, but it doesn’t really matter. Some places have an atmosphere that’s not pleasant; they feel like they don’t want you to be there. That’s all coming from you, of course. But I like that idea: haunted space. It was so much fun to write a ghost story, because it’s territory that I love. I’ve been immersed in ghost stories my whole life, and I wanted to write one that wouldn’t disappoint, because there’s quite a high level of disappointment in ghost stories – especially in anthologies. Because if there’s a reveal when the character is a ghost, and the story is in an anthology of ghost stories, then it’s useless – you’ve just been waiting for that other shoe to drop. The best ones, like the ones we’ve talked about, appear to have something unresolvable at their heart. And so I wanted to do something where I, as the writer, knew all the answers, but people could read it and come away with their own interpretation. With thanks to Tony Way."