Pleasantly scared
As a child of the Seventies I have been thoroughly enjoying your excellent ‘Haunted Generation’ correspondence. I can relate to so much of it from the Donald Pleasence-voiced scariest public information film of all time, through Children of the Stones ,to my treasured Usborne Mysteries
of the Unknown. I first read it when I was about eight and the ghost section scared the bejesus out of me – especially the apparently ‘genuine’ ghost photos. Even though I now know it’s a fake, I pathetically still find it difficult to look at the photo of the skull-faced monk at the altar.
My childhood fascination with forteana was very much fuelled and encouraged by my dad who, at the time, was a BBC producer and in this, Richard Littler’s introduction to Borley Rectory completely resonates. From the age of five or six up until I became a ‘cool’ teenager, my dad and I would go for long winter walks in the evenings on Durdham Downs in Bristol. He would regale me with anecdotes that he had worked with some of the production team who filmed the recordings in Borley Church in the early Seventies, saying that big, burly cameramen and sound recordists were terrified by what they saw and heard, but wouldn’t discuss it. This obviously terrified me too – but I loved it! He also bought me John Sladek’s excellent and funny book The New Apocrypha when I was about nine and it’s still one of my favourite books. I think he tried to implement some critical thinking by doing this, but I was transfixed by my Usborne book at the time.
We still have a great time at Christmas watching the TV adaptations of MR James – I really enjoyed the article on that too. And on Christmas Eve, my dad with his wonderful voice always reads ‘The Night Before Christmas’ followed by an MR James story. Sidney Sager, who composed the terrifying theme music to Children of the Stones, was a family friend, and you couldn’t wish to meet a more self-effacing, lovely man – I would never have thought it possible that he could compose such scary music!
Tracey Stewart
Lydney, Gloucestershire