Nightmare: Two Ghostly Tales
Nightmare: Two Ghostly Tales brings together in one book two of my most popular ghost stories. In Nightmare two children encounter a black horse trapped in ice on a desolate Derbyshire moor. Rab mysteriously disappears, and his friend knows she is being haunted. Ghost Galleon is set on the Fens, where Charlie finds himself caught up with the Spanish Armada. Diamond Band 17.
Available from Amazon.
Illustrated by Martin Ursell and Paul McCaffrey. Published by CollinsEducation Big Cat, September 2009. ISBN 978-0-00-730790-6. This book was also available as part of a pack from CollinsEducation.
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The background to ‘Nightmare: Two Ghostly Tales’
I saw something that was so terrifying that I’ll never get it out of my mind… It was this: a horse, trapped in ice.
The first story, Nightmare, was inspired by a very spooky, true story. Someone once told me about a cave in Wales where a horse was frozen behind a curtain of ice. The image gave me nightmares! I had to write about it!
In my story there are two children; the narrator, who is never named, and her friend Rab. Rab is a mysterious, adventurous boy who lives with his grandfather in an old hut. The two children venture onto the frozen moors one winter’s day, and see a frozen horse in a cave. From then on, the girl sees Rab and the horse from time to time, but their visits are hauntings.
The illustrations are by Martin Ursell, who has illustrated books for many other authors, including Roald Dahl and Julia Donaldson.
‘Ghost Galleon’, the second story
I never even stopped to think about the weirdness of the situation, but waded in to the sea of nearly 500 years ago, up to my knees, up to my thighs, and then plunged in.
I got the idea when I saw a ship sailing across a field in Goole. I later realised it was on a canal, but I couldn’t see the water! It really seemed to be floating through grass, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. As it grew in my imagination, it became a galleon from the Spanish Armada.
I was commissioned to write a ghost play BBC radio. It had very scary and atmospheric sound effects!
And now it’s a short story, where Charlie rescues a boy from drowning, and realises he is from that galleon. Carlos is a Spanish ship’s boy from 1588, when Spain tried to invade England. Curiously, their lives are entwined.
The illustrator, Paul McCaffrey, is now a comic illustrator (Captain Scarlet, Joe 90).
The setting for Nightmare is somewhere I know very well, the dark, bleak Pennines that rise up behind my house. Ghost Galleon happens in a very different, flat landscape that I have only visited once. Choose your landscape first, and then write a ghost story that would fit into it. Make the landscape part of the story, so you know it couldn’t possibly happen anywhere else.
If you enjoyed reading ‘Nightmare: Two Ghostly Tales’…
You may also enjoy my other ghost book The Company of Ghosts.
