Witches, wardrobes, but no lions

That beautiful, troubled, trickster of a mind

One of the facets of having a rather overactive imagination is that your stories can alter with age or the number of times you recall them. I’ve talked about that on this podcast already, and to an extent, how you can bring alive, or make real, the very things you fancifully invent within the narratives you create.

A young Barney poses, albeit briefly, post-stream swim!

When I say “bring alive”, I don’t mean bringing something physically into the real world, like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, when the children manifest objects from their dreams into reality, Freddy Krueger’s hat, for example, snatched from the nightmare as the creature attacks them in their sleep.

I saw that, by the way, for the first time the day before being admitted to hospital as a teenager for surgery. Dad probably thought it would be a nice treat, a scary movie to take my mind off things, not realising that A Nightmare on Elm Street contains a horrifying scene in which someone falls asleep in a hospital and is attacked in their dreams.

But movies are awash with this idea, aren’t they?

In The Twilight Zone: The Movie, one of the film’s scenes centres on a child with godlike psychic powers whose thoughts instantly reshape reality, forcing terrified adults to live inside whatever nightmare or fantasy enters his mind. That is a horrifying thought, all in the name of light entertainment.

Oh, by the way, not that I should necessarily need to explain it, but today’s title is, of course, a small nod to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, although in this case, there are indeed witches and wardrobes in my tale, but no lions to be found anywhere, which is probably for the best. I’m not entirely sure how I’d cope living in a country where a quick trip to buy milk or put the bins out in my slippers could suddenly leave me halfway up the food chain.

So, here’s to overactive imaginations.

I wonder how much you can actually manifest stuff that you desire or fear?

For instance, my earliest ghostly experience involves staying over at a friend’s house, with kids upstairs trying to sleep and adults downstairs playing Neil Diamond loudly, enjoying their cheese-and-wine ‘do’.

Nobody does this anymore, do they, cheese and wine? Perhaps at restaurants, and come to think of it, my favourite local coffee shop hosts one on the first Friday night of each month, but cheese and wine at a friend’s home was definitely a 70s thing. My mum and dad were always at them, and I thought they were all very innocent until a friend of mine joked about his mum and dad going dressed up to the nines in their best bib and tucker to these gigs, and coming back in somebody else’s clothes.

Closing eyes, imagining happy places to escape any thoughts about 70s cheese and wine parties now.

This particular party was in a large house on a night that honestly had all the hallmarks of a classic horror film, one where you’re left shouting at the screen, “Don’t go to the window, hide under the covers,” and other such instructions.

It backed onto quite dense woodland, this late-60s, early-70s trendy house with big windows. That is about the size of my memory: big windows, floor-to-ceiling kind, featuring natural wood frames, not a white glossy surface in sight. It happened to be a wintry night, and in my mind, embellishment allowing, I’m pretty sure there was lightning involved. That can’t be true, but let me throw it in for good measure.

I was in one of the many rooms in the house, one of three or four kids who probably would have much preferred all being in one room together.

Across from the foot of the bed, next to a line of fitted wardrobes, there was a natural wood door, and sandwiched between the wardrobes and the door itself, as I looked toward it, a long, thin, bobbly yellow window, which, because of the landing light, allowed a stream of soft light that reflected off the side of the lightly coloured wardrobe.

As the night went on, I became increasingly anxious, and the shouts between the rooms had been a little thwarted by the closing of doors by parents checking in, so that we could, I suppose, sleep more easily. Have you ever tried sleeping with Song Sung Blue belted out over and over?

“More cheese, vicar?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Why he’s turned up in this story, I don’t know, but I’m thinking big house, woodland, stormy night, lightning, and the scary thought of Neil Diamond albums over and over. All that’s missing within this light psychological horror is a vicar with a big cross on a chain.

And then it happened.

I became aware of the face at the window. Not the window onto woodland, someone had at least drawn those curtains. No, a face at the thin, bobbly, yellow window. It was my dad’s face, clear as a semi-lit landing could allow. As it moved slightly, it cast a shadow across the side of the wardrobe, which might seem like a strange thing to remember, but the shadow is the part that perhaps makes me think most about what I am about to describe.

“Dad?” I called.

The face didn’t move, but I think it smiled.

Things didn’t seem right, but this was Dad. There was something reassuring in that. Perhaps it was “scoop up the kids and head home” time, as it often was.

I couldn’t work out why he wasn’t answering, so I climbed out of bed, edged toward the smiling face through the bobbly window, opened the door and… nothing.

Dad had simply vanished.

That was the last time I ever visited that house. My screaming was enough to break even the most enthusiastic tones of Sweet Caroline, and bring to a close, for my parents at least, the cheese and wine party.

I do wonder to this day what I’d seen and whether, really, it was all just my over-imaginative, single-digit-age brain and perhaps a sleepy disposition. They say cheese makes you dream, and I think, as kids, perhaps we’d taken a little of that cheese upstairs. Maybe like Ebenezer Scrooge trying to explain away A Christmas Carol’s ghosts as “an undigested bit of beef” or “a crumb of cheese”, I was simply the victim of a late-night dairy product past its sell-by date.

Next up, witches.

I have not seen a witch, or at least I don’t think I have. I think I may have seen a witch’s hut, though, but you’ll no doubt raise your eyebrows as I recount this one, an altogether more recent story involving a walk in the woods recording my Photowalk podcast.

On a B-road somewhere between where I live and a town called Basingstoke in deepest West Berkshire, there is a place I found where you can park just a couple of cars, now marked on the car’s sat nav, and that is an important detail. It’s next to a footpath that, judging by the amount of overgrown weeds and nettles, plus a very worn stile, looks like it’s rarely used. But always looking for new paths to wander with my podcast recording buddy Barney the Cockapoo, it was a walk I took one spring day, say three years ago. Barney was much younger, not quite a year old.

The path weaved alongside hedgerows, skirting a farmer’s field, and then came to a fork, one way leading up and over a hill cutting through a barley field and a million and one critters, and one that turned left, taking us through woodland. A bright day, I remember. I took the woodland choice for a break from the sun and a little shelter.

The path took a shortish loop, and after a quarter of an hour, I found myself heading back toward the field gate that had led me into this modest woodland. Up ahead was a hut, reasonably large as it goes, enough for a small dwelling. The door on the front porch was padlocked. It had not long been painted a terracotta colour.

But with a padlock on the door, clearly nobody was at home, or were they?

As I approached this hut to make a portrait of Barney sat on the platform, there was a loud thud from within. My ears tingled, my stomach tightened, the hairs that I don’t have on my head stood on end, in a phantom way, clearly.

I would have cast the experience aside if it were not for a second thud, at which point the portrait session was over, Barns and I were out of there, quick smart, back along the path and sharply toward the car.

A year later, in the summer, searching my saved sat nav locations marked “good for dog walks and recordings”, I revisited to record on this path and in the woodland once again, my memory rather questioning the experience I’d had before. Perhaps it had been a big bird on the roof, perhaps an animal inside, perhaps… well, hang about, it was no longer there.

The hut wasn’t on the loop; it had simply vanished.

There was no sign of it.

I took a few possible turnings, but it was not to be found, and neither was any trace of foundations or the remnants of a dwelling torn down.

Heading back to the car, I saw someone walking a spaniel toward me. I wondered whether he was local and whether he could solve my mystery about the missing hut.

“No,” he said, “I’ve been walking this path for years; we only live about half a mile away. There’s never been a hut here. Never.”

He was positively positive about that fact, in gesture and tone.

It seemed pointless to remonstrate with him, so I stuttered some kind of apology and considered that I’d clearly got my paths in some kind of muddle, and started to walk off.

I hadn’t gone far along when he turned and shouted back.

“I have to say, though,” he said, “you’re not the first to have mentioned a hut. I had a lady ask me directions to it quite recently, actually, ’bout six months back.”

With that, he was off, and I assume he turned left into the woods, because I didn’t see him climbing the field where the barley had been.

If you feel it is appropriate, please share, and let’s build a community of storytellers. I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts too, to weave into tales of their own in the future here?