A Horror Story For Halloween...

Hope you all have your Pumpkins on the windowsill...before Pumpkins were available Turnips or Swedes were used of course, so to be authentic you really need a Turnip carved with a scary face to frighten away the un-dead who'll be roaming the highways and byways tonight...rattling their chains and holding their heads under their arms.

This is the night when the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead is at its thinnest...a time to pull the curtains tightly closed and make up the fire.

To play games perhaps...tell ghost stories while passing round peeled grapes to your blindfolded listeners...these are his eyes you'll tell them, as they suppress a shudder of delicious horror...

My favourite ghost/horror story has nothing to do with Halloween...

There was once a young man who was terribly naïve when it came to relationships with girls...he'd never had a girlfriend, they simply weren't interested in him.

One evening, his friends decided this would be the night when they introduced him to a girl...so away they went to the local 'pub. Everyone had a good time...there was music and plenty of food and more importantly, there was a girl who kept giving the young man the eye.

She was gorgeous...long blonde hair and blue eyes...she wore a short skirt and high heeled shoes and had a lovely smile.

The young man's friends were delighted that she seemed interested in their friend...one approached her and after buying her another Vodka, told her of the problem they had...she understood perfectly and said she fancied the young man to bits anyway so she'd make the first move.

And that is just what she did...by the end of the evening they were wrapped in each other's arms and quite obviously besotted...

To the young man's surprise, the girl if he'd like to go back to her flat...he dithered somewhat and then decided to go...what the harm, after all he liked her and she made it plain she liked him in return.

No sooner had she opened the door to her home, they were ripping off each other's clothes in their haste to get into bed...her bed was huge...covered in beautiful throws and with heaps of soft pillows.

There wasn't a bedside light though...the light overhead could only be switched off by a cord near the door...the young man...feeling slightly bashful now he was naked beside this lovely girl, said he'd jump out of bed to switch off the light.

No need, said the girl...she stretched out her hand and her arm grew longer and longer and longer...

Then she switched off the light and the room was dark.

I read that story years ago...it's stayed with me as a classic example of horror in it's purest form.