Kevin Fleming's Blog

Last week I visited Puzzlewood in The Forest of Dean. I have to say it is one of the most magical places I have ever been to, and I can understand why J. R. R. Tolkien found such inspiration for his creation of Middle Earth.

I was mesmerised and enthralled by the rock formations, hidden caves and twisting pathways that I encountered. I could easily imagine Orcs, Elves, Wizards, Ents and all manner of creatures living in unseen crevices, hiding within trees and under rickety bridges watching as people pass by. On every tree and boulder, faces seemed to appear and disappear as light and shadow played mischievous tricks on the eye.

My trek seemed to be unending, and if I’d crossed a path I’d walked before, I wouldn’t have known as the woods seemed to have a dimension of their own. Had I emerged into a different time and place, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

It is a place to inspire any writer, whether it be one of the greats such as Tolkien, or those at the other end of the scale like myself, certainly anyone visiting Puzzlewood would be uplifted by the experience. It has undoubtedly given me the lift I need to get back into all the projects resting lazily in my mind and force them out onto paper.

For any who have been following my serialisation of 'The Chronicles of Midway’ series on my website, now that I have returned, normal service has been resumed.

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if I had a favourite character from the series, The Chronicles of Midway. Out of the dozens of characters that crop up in the four novels, Glynwidden, the Protector of the Lodge has to be my number one. He first appears in chapter 15 of The Storyteller's Book then many more times throughout the series. This prompted me to introduce him and some of my other favourites on my website www.kevinflemingbooks.com with extracts from the series. Here is Glynwidden’s first appearance in The Storyteller's Book when Mel goes to Ten Acre Lodge in search of the stolen book:

Mel stood outside the gate of Ten Acre Lodge and smiled to herself as she wondered if either of the teachers had any idea where she’d gone. Hopefully they wouldn’t check if she’d returned to Midway and even if they did, they couldn’t do anything. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to do, but her intention was to keep track of the book, and her hunch was that it would make its way back here to Ten Acre Lodge to the unknown woman, so that had to be a good place to start.

First of all she wanted to check if she was still invisible, so she looked around and saw some birds pecking in the grass. She ran quickly towards them to chase them away, but the birds were completely unaware of her presence. She smiled in the knowledge that she was still invisible, but now what would she do? If she walked through the gate, she might trigger off one of those traps that had caught Nick in Mrs Brimlington’s house and make herself visible to whoever lived there. She decided to walk around the property looking for something, anything, to give her inspiration.

Around the outside of the high sandstone wall, she had to fight her way through the overgrown weeds and bushes that stood in her path. She found, to her peril, the ground was uneven and on a number of occasions almost fell. The whole property and land within the walls was larger than she expected, and despite the age of the walls, there seemed to be no weak points for her to slip through. However, as she got around the back, she thought she saw some movement in the undergrowth. An animal perhaps, but the disturbance seemed to be too great.

Suddenly a man’s head popped up above the thick weeds causing Mel to jump back in alarm. “What you up to, girl?” the gruff voice of the strange, bearded man growled.

“Nothing,” Mel said, defensively. It seemed he could see her despite being cloaked.

“Don’t look like nothin’ to me; looks like prowlin’. Nothin’ an’ no-one stays ‘idden from me.”

“I am not prowling,” Mel said, defiantly.

“What you doin’ then if you ain’t prowlin’?”

“I’m having a private stroll in the countryside,” Mel answered. “Besides, you look a lot more suspicious hiding in the grass.”

“Don’t be givin’ me no cheek, girl,” the strange man growled angrily at her, raising a clenched fist threateningly.

“So why are you lying down in the grass?” Mel argued, standing up to the man’s verbal aggression.

“I’m not lyin’ down, you young varmint, I’m standin’ on me own two feet.”

The man clearly was on his own two feet as he ran a few paces through the long grass towards her, but he was barely three feet tall. Mel stepped back and the small, stocky man stopped.

“Oops, sorry,” she said, staring at him in amazement. The mop of dark grey hair on his large head looked coarse and hung wildly down to his wide shoulders. His face looked red and angry with thick eyebrows and beard that matched his hair, while above his bulging nose, dark eyes stared at her. He wore a scruffy grey shirt and dark brown leather trousers with a thick belt tied around his middle as he stood aggressively in his knobbly bare feet. His muscular arms, big hands and head looked out of proportion with the rest of his body.

“What’s it you’re after ‘round ‘ere? I don’t like strangers pokin’ their noses where they’re not welcome.”

“I’m not a stranger; I live around here,” Mel said, indignantly.

The man looked around the small space where they both stood. “Not ‘round ‘ere you don’t, only me and some little critters live ‘round ‘ere.” The man spread his solid, beefy arms wide, indicating the immediate surroundings.

“I don’t mean here, here.” Mel spread her arms in the same way. “I mean …” She waved her arms high and wide and pointed back towards the village centre. “This whole area around here.”

“That’s not ‘round ‘ere, that’s way over yonder. I’ve not bin way over yonder before.”

“Are you not from around here?” Mel was becoming confused.

“I just said, I’ve lived ‘round ‘ere all me life I ‘ave.”

“So have I.”

The man gave a short cynical laugh. “All your life? All your life?” He repeated with increased cynical laughter. “Four thousand years,” he said, importantly. “That’s what I call, all me life.”

“Four thousand years?” Mel’s voice rose in pitch.

“An’ more,” added the man, proudly, seeing he’d impressed Mel. “Aye, more than four thousand years; four thousand two ‘undred and two to be precise.”

“In all that time you must have been down Partington Road. I know I’ve never seen you there but I’m only fourteen.”

“I’ve just said if you’d care to listen, I’ve bin ‘ere all me life.”

Mel looked at the man with disbelief. “You mean, literally, you’ve been here for over four thousand years?”

“Correct.” The man proudly folded his arms and held his head high. “Never once ‘ave I shirked me duties, never. Done as I were told; guarded the grounds from intruders, kept trespassers like you out.”

“What about your days off?”

“Can’t ‘ave a day off in my job, gotta be on me guard all the time.” The man raised his bushy eyebrows as he looked at Mel.

“What’s your name?” Mel asked.

“You tell me yours first,” the man answered.

“Oh I’m not getting involved in stupid, childish games,” Mel said.

“Good, so tell me your name then.”

“Ok, my name is Mel,” she said. “It’s short for Melandra.”

The man’s jaw dropped open, his eyes narrowed and he stared at her closely.

Mel spread her arms. “What?”

“Melandra?” The little man bowed his head. “Melandra from Midway? ‘Ere at last to fulfil your destiny an’ step into a mighty position.”

She shook her head in bewilderment. “What?”
“I’m Glynwidden, Protector o’ the Lodge. Forgive me insolence, Me Lady, ‘ow can I be o’ service?”

*

My website: www.kevinflemingbooks.com has this and other character introductions with more to follow over the holiday period.

That was it, whatever shred of level headedness, or systematic, methodical thinking I had left, vanished like an extinguished flame, but at least my survival instinct kicked in. My phone! Ring Angie, Brett would be driving. I fumbled in my pocket with a shaking hand, hoping I hadn’t left it next to the equipment out there. Got it!

The screen lit up the whole vestibule like a beacon calling the hordes of the undead to a feast of fresh blood. My fingers felt twice the size as I poked the contacts button, scrolled down and hit the Angie icon: a smiling, inebriated young woman holding a half full glass.

“Hello,” I whispered.

“Mickey, is that you?” She sounded shocked. “Where’d you get to?”

“Just get back here, you locked me in, there’s something going on. Now!”

From the nave, the tiny, evil voice of pure innocence called again: “Are you locked in?”

“Angie, hurry.”

Before she replied, the screen went blank as the power drained.

Then, drawing ever nearer, those clear tones spoke sweetly to me once again: “Are you locked in?”

The passing seconds felt like hours as I listened for the car returning. Then I heard tyres screeching outside and car doors opening. From the nave, the lights were flickering badly, whatever approached was casting a transparent shadow into the vestibule.

As the key was thrust into the lock and I heard it turn with a heavy clunk, the girl from the photograph floated slowly through the archway. Her gaunt, insipid face, visible between thick, hanging, oily black hair, smiled with such malice, my legs almost gave way. As she lifted the blade in a single robotic movement, the door pushed inwards, but before the gap had widened enough for me to escape, I felt the cold blade stab into my back with such force, it slammed me against the door.

Even after all this time, I can still hear the anguished cry of Angie and the shouts of horror from Brett when they saw me. But that doesn’t matter anymore, not since my situation drastically changed. I am now able to answer the question I was asked many times that night, it’s the same answer I give her every time she asks me … “Yes, I am locked in.”

When we were given permission by the church hierarchy to set up our equipment, it was on the understanding we would leave the building at least half an hour before midnight. “Mr Lawrence,” the dean had said to me with a voice so deep it seemed to send a background resonance around the office. “The reputation this church has earned is not without merit. I urge you to put aside your rational thinking as midnight approaches, and leave while you can.”

That was one week earlier in sunlit, cheery surroundings, words that did little but bring a condescending smile to my face. Now they cut through my head like a screaming laser telling me I was about to be murdered by the most evil ghost that had ever crawled from the abyss.

I was never blessed with a good memory, and yet now, of all times, it managed to churn up every detail of the photograph taken by the previous paranormal investigators who’d been here. That was a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t even Hallowe’en, as it was tonight.

Taken just twenty yards from where I stood rigidly by the thoroughly locked doors, the image of a girl floating a few feet from the floor of the church’s central aisle could be seen in the picture as clear as if she’d been standing in front of me right now. Wearing a tattered white dress, she held in her hand a long blade dripping with blood. It was her face that was really horrific …

What was that?

Something had clicked in the nave, it was a piece of equipment being activated. Temperature and motion sensors had been set in positions where the girl had been photographed, designed to trigger the visual and audio recorders. It had to be that. From my position hidden from the nave, I could see lights flickering, it was the laptop that had snapped into life probably showing what the camera was recording. Then I heard the voice. It was gentle and so crisply clear like a soprano singing her words with malevolent mischief. “Are you locked in?”

The story concludes with part 3 in a few days.

A ghost story in three parts leading up to Hallowe'en.

“Are You Locked In?” - Part 1

When I heard the resounding boom of heavy doors closing, I knew I was locked in. Moving faster than I ever had before, I dragged the headphones from my head and threw them. The sponge ear pieces and trailing wires hit, then slid along the pew, echoing like a low rippling laugh. ‘How could they have forgotten me?’ the words inside my head demanded as my throat thickened and chest tightened.

“Wait!” My croaking voice reverberated around the vast church nave, and when I crashed my hip into the end of the pew and slid on the stone floor, the childlike whimper I uttered, intensified the din. Such was my horror at the thought of being trapped overnight in this playground for the dead, I felt no relief that the trolley holding the expensive laptops had survived my panic. The cables linking the cameras and sensors positioned around the nave and altar had also somehow remained untouched.

My legs motored at the speed of a TV cartoon character, but it felt, just like them, I made no progress. Eventually, I reached the end of the dark, empty aisle, launched myself through the archway and smacked into the solid oak doors just in time to hear the muffled engine of Brett and Angie’s car as it drove away. My fist thumped the unyielding wood to no avail more than once in frustration, anger and fear.

I turned and listened. The deathly silence that hung like a thick veil was a catalyst for my mischievous imagination to start playing. It cared little that I had a calm, analytical, scientific mind that refused to accept anything other than that which could be proved. That’s why I was here, to pour cold water over the nonsense many people professed to be true, that this church was the most haunted building this side of hell.

Part 2 follows in three days.

The last in the series of mostly true stories that describe some of my unexplained experiences returns to the telephone exchange I worked in during the 1970’s. This one is called, ‘Closing Up for the Night'.

In an earlier story I described events which took place where I worked forty years ago. It was a telephone exchange built on the site of an old brewery where an ex-employee had hanged himself. All but one person believed they saw strange figures, especially on the staircase, but this story involves the one person who did not believe.

He and I were the only two left in the exchange at closing up time one evening. The upper floor lights were off and the door locked, we were in the process of doing the same on the ground floor. My colleague was at the switchboard end of the long room looking along the length of the building at the ends of the racks towards an open door which led into a small back room which had no external exit door. At the same time, I was working my way down the multitude of aisles switching off lights.

As I reached the switchboard, my colleague called down to the far end of the building: “Shut the door.” By this time, I was fairly close to him, but he wasn’t looking my way. He called again, a little more firmly: “What are you doing just standing there, shut the door.”

I looked at him quizzically from the side, but he was getting more frustrated, apparently with me. “Don’t just stand there, shut the *&%*ing door,” he yelled. “Hey, Les,” I said casually, “who are you talking to?”

He jumped out of his skin, looked at me, then looked back to the far end of the exchange. Just for a fleeting moment, we watched a shadow disappear through the open door. Sheepishly he told me he thought I’d been standing there, but then I realised what had happened and told him he’d just seen the ‘ghost’. Still not believing, he stormed off towards the open door intending to find the culprit in the back room.

There was no-one there, but he searched so diligently in the room for someone hiding, it was very obvious he’d seen something very clearly. He never argued against the ghost so much after that, but still he wouldn’t openly admit what he’d seen.

So that’s the last of my short tales describing some unexplained incidents that have occurred to me over the years. All of the stories are close to being described accurately as I remember them, and in all, there was an element of the unexplained. The supernatural? I don’t know the answers, I don’t know what I believe. All I do know is there is much we don’t understand, but perhaps science may one day explain what goes on, seen and unseen, all around us. Until then, we can enjoy our horror stories, watch horror movies and generally scare ourselves with tales of what goes bump in the night, especially during this Hallowe’en period.

On the final days approaching Hallowe’en, I will add a very short ghost story I wrote called, ‘Are You Locked In?’ in 3 even shorter parts. This, of course, is entirely fictional. Part 1 will be posted 3 days from now.

To continue with my true ghost stories during Hallowe’en month, I am going to cheat a little today as this tale isn’t an experience of mine, but my father’s. I am including it because the strange experience does involve me, even though it took place before I was born. I have called it, ‘Spooky’.

This is a tale told to me by my father and occurred when my mother was a few months into her pregnancy with me. It was at the time they were living with my grandmother that my mother became pregnant, but for reasons I’m not sure about, perhaps simply superstition, they hadn’t told anyone their news.

In the middle of the night my father woke up to see a man he described as a monk sitting on a chair in the bedroom. My father insisted he wasn’t dreaming, the man was real. He got out of bed and went over to him and it was only as he reached him, the monk disappeared.

A few days later, he was talking to a work colleague who claimed to be a spiritualist whose nickname was, Spooky. They were arguing over the existence of ghosts. He asked my father if he’d ever seen a ghost and he told him about the monk. Spooky, who had never even met my mother, confidently replied, “I will tell you about it. Your wife is expecting.” My father denied it. He continued: “Go home and tell her she is. The man you saw, visits fathers-to-be whose first born will be a son. He came to tell you, your wife will have a hard time, but also to reassure you both everything will be ok.”

He was correct, I was a boy, my mother did have a hard time during my birth, but everything turned out ok in the end.

In my Hallowe’en month series of strange experiences I’ve had over the years, this is another one that happened in the house I now live in. I have called it, The Biscuit Tin.

I am renowned for having difficulty finding simple things around the house. My wife says I must look with my eyes closed. I remember an occasion only a couple of years ago when me not finding something couldn’t be explained by, ‘looking with my eyes closed’.

It was during a morning when I was alone in the house and I made myself a cup of tea. I went to the metal biscuit tin for a biscuit and it wasn’t in the place it normally stood next to the microwave. I looked around the kitchen, it wasn’t there, so I wondered if my wife had washed it and left it to dry on the drainboard. No, it wasn’t there. I looked in the garage to see if was out there drying after a wash. No, not there. I returned to the kitchen and proceeded to look in every cupboard. It was not in any of them. I was baffled, but also a little frustrated with myself, and blaming my wife for hiding it so well.

Just in case I had completely missed it with my eyes and it had camouflaged itself amongst other kitchen items, I even placed my hands all over the work tops feeling for it. Still no success. Utterly frustrated by now, I got my mobile phone and slowly filmed along the work tops to prove to my wife when she got home there was no biscuit tin in its normal place, just in case it turned up.

When my wife walked in through the front door later that afternoon, I confronted her ready to accuse her of ‘hiding’ the item. “Where have you put the biscuit tin?” I demanded. She looked at me oddly. “I haven’t touched it. It’s where it normally is.” We marched into the kitchen and there, where it normally stood, was the biscuit tin.

My bottom jaw dropped in disbelief as she looked at me with disdain. Then I remembered the film I’d taken. We both watched it, each in disbelief for different reasons, because just as I expected, there was no biscuit tin in the footage!

The next strange incident I would like to describe during Hallowe’en month occurred on a trip my wife and I made to Paris. I will admit, the previous stories, although true, do have an element of poetic licence, but this one happened exactly as written. I have called it, Marmottan.

During a few days we spent in Paris a few years ago, we visited the Musee Marmottan Monet, the art gallery that houses many of Claude Monet’s most famous paintings. I said in my original introduction to this series that I make no claims to having any psychic gifts whatsoever, I don’t really know what to believe. However, when we emerged from the Metro Station, La Muette, on this dull, heavy, afternoon, I had an overwhelming sense I had stepped into an age gone by. It felt as we walked along the Avenue Ranelagh through the small park, I had been transported to the nineteenth century, it was just a feeling, nothing more.

We went into the art gallery, which was absolutely amazing, and stayed for a couple of hours, but as we were leaving I had an experience I will never forget. As we reached the final steps down to the exit, a middle aged man behind us was in more of a hurry than us, and as my wife walked down the steps, he got between us which split us up. My wife left the building ahead of both of us and disappeared to the left onto the street, but as the man reached the final step, he stopped and turned to look at me which I thought very strange. It was as if he expected me to say something, then receiving a blank look from me, shrugged his shoulders and carried on.

Still wondering what his problem was, I stepped into the open air and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw for the briefest of moments a woman dressed in a long, puffed out, brown dress with a brown bonnet on her head standing with her back against the wall. I couldn’t see her face as she stood side on to me, and the tie on the sides of her bonnet that went under her chin, covered her cheeks. I was about to call my wife who was a few feet ahead of this apparition to point her out, but the figure disappeared.

I suddenly found my legs had become like lead and I could hardly move. My throat tightened and my eyes watered almost to the point of a tear trickling down my face.

The man had gone off down the road and I have always wondered whether he had seen something that day and had turned to me to see my reaction. At that point I hadn’t reacted, which was why I’d looked blankly at him, so of course he wasn’t going to ask me, a perfect stranger if I’d just seen a ghost.

Continuing with my series of ‘true’ experiences of unexplained events through my life, today’s anecdote happened only about twelve years ago in the house I am living in now, and is called, ‘The Drawing on the Wall’.

When we first moved into our present house twenty something years ago, our two children, a girl and a boy, were aged nine and six. There was much work required to do in the house as the previous occupants had left it in need of improvement. We rearranged a couple of internal walls and had a new kitchen and bathroom fitted. We wallpapered and painted every room, hall, stairs and landing, and had new carpets fitted throughout.

When we stripped the old wallpaper from the stairs leaving a bare wall, my daughter drew a life-sized picture of herself on the wall half way up the staircase, nothing special, it was more just a stick figure with hair. Then it was papered over and forgotten about.

About ten years after the decorating was done and our son and daughter were away at university, we once again set out to re-decorate the hall, stairs and landing. My wife and I stripped the wallpaper we had originally put up, but when we reached the patch where my daughter had drawn the picture of herself, something very strange happened.

Both my wife and I were on the stairs when the paper covering the drawing was removed. At that moment, we both heard, as clearly as if someone had been standing next to us, a single word spoken aloud: “Mum!” It was the voice of our daughter as it had sounded when she was a child. Both of us heard it and recognised it, there was no mistake, it was her voice.

That was it, we spoke to her that night on the phone in her student accommodation, she was fine, no problems. We papered over the drawing as planned, but when we decorated again a few years later, stripping the paper from the same place, we half expected the same to happen, but no such phenomenon occurred.