Thank you for joining us – and well done for greeting through Day 1. I’m so proud of you and your battle against the drop bears was beautiful. I bet you never knew you could reach that top speed!  Next up on the FEAR programme Dr R Womble Esq will now explain today’s programme and hand out your syllabus reading material

Day 2 – Urban Exploring

Today it’s all about understanding your environment. For Saturday let’s get to know your Haunted Houses.

Everywhere has a haunted place. Even when I was a child, we had a four-hundred-year-old cottage down the road and also a recently closed hospital. Are they just because we can feel the weight of history or do, they capture the souls of the dead?

For those of a gentle distribution the why not take a night time crawl through Edinburgh’s beautiful haunted City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab which is for a younger audience but captures Schwab’s love of all things weird and still a little creepy. But perhaps you want to try a UK tour? Then Eight Ghosts edited by Rowan Routh has a variety of tales from the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Kamila Shamsie all based around English Heritage locations ancient and recent.  I like how this collection add variety and give you many types of tale.

Hauntings don’t all have to be ancient mysteries and a novel I loved as its ambiguous and spooky is The Grip of It by Jac Jemc where a young couple trying to escape it all enter a new home which seems full of surprises and guests.

And for the advanced student can I recommend what I think is the best horror novel of all time – The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Another case of ambiguity in horror a house that isn’t haunted by any one in particular but just itself seems to be alive and malevolent.  Or perhaps its all in a fragile young woman’s head.  It’s unsettling and you will want to hold my hand…no you’re not holding my hand at the moment….

If you’ve some alternatives, then let me know in the comments!