For the week of Hallowe'en we have enjoyed a couple of suitably spooky events,
Our first ghostly literary experience was Robert Lloyd Parry aka Nunkie performing a couple of M R James' ghost stories, in St Mary's Church, Kirkby Lonsdale.
St Mary's is a wonderful venue for the telling of ghostly tales and it was particularly eerie and atmospheric on Tuesday evening.
Nunkie regaled us with Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad a tale of nocturnal horror on the Suffolk coast – considered by many to be author’s masterpiece. It was beautifully complemented by The Ash Tree, a story of witchcraft and vengeance down the generations.
"Parkins, who very much dislikes being questioned about it, did once describe something of it in my hearing, and I gathered that what he chiefly remembers is a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen. What expression he read upon it he could not or would not tell, but that the fear of it went nigh to maddening him is certain …"
Parry was on excellent form and the storytelling was superb, with just enough creepiness to send a delicious chill down one's spine. As the warning on the programme said "contains moments of pleasing terror" and it certainly did!