By Kaaron Warren
I’ve always been obsessed with ghost stories, true and imagined. I love the chill they bring, in the moments when you realise you’re in the room with dead people. Ghosts are frightening because we don’t understand them. They bring evidence of life after this one, but we don’t know why they’re still here, and not somewhere else, released. So many ghost stories focus on this; a ghost is trapped and needs to be freed.
Most ghosts, true or imagined, do not seem to be malevolent. Not quite benign, and with an underlying threat. But you can walk away from them and they won’t stop you, although you may leave with a memory that isn’t yours.
I wanted to replicate this lack of bad intent in Going to Summertime. I wanted to explore how to disturb without using the ghosts as a mechanism.
Meanwhile, writing the novella gave me the excuse of reading as many true ghost stories as I could lay my hands on. I wanted to see how others had written about ghostly movements, and sounds, and about how much they aped the living still, going over old tracks long since forgotten.
The End of Borley Rectory by Harry Price
I had my soft greylead pencil out for this one. It carries wonderful descriptions of the ghosts and objects of this old rectory, sometimes called the most haunted place in England, although usually by those who’ve written books about it.
The Haunted Pub Guide by Guy Lyon Playfair
While the ghosts lack malevolence, the people accused of creating them do not. This book is full of stories of violence and damage, such as The Caxton Gibbet pub, in Cambridgeshire, which “takes its name from a near-by gibbet”, where a murderous landlord (bodies in the well) was executed.
Haunted: the Book of Australian Ghosts by John Pinkney
John Pinkney was one of Australia’s top ghost reporters. I did a short course with him when I was a teenager and wanted to be a journalist. He was kind and encouraging, where he could have been dismissive to the young, keen writer I was.
The Ghost Guide to Australia by Richard Davis
Organised state by state, this book lays out detailed history of each haunted place, and was influential in the way I try to tell part of the history of the ghosts in Going to Summertime.
The A-Z of British Ghosts by Peter Underwood
A truly wonderful book, with detailed histories of each pub, as well as recommendations of where to stay if you are ghost hunting today!
Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She has published six multi-award winning novels: Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, The Grief Hole, Tide of Stone and The Underhistory, and seven short story collections, her most recent being Calvaria Fell, with Cat Sparks, from Meerkat Press. Her stories have been shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award and the Stoker, and appeared in both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’sYear’s Best anthologies. Her writing podcast Let the Cat In showcases ideas, objects, and inspirations
GOING TO SUMMERTIME
Kaaron Warren
Horror | Supernatural
BOOK PAGE: https://meerkatpress.com/books/going-to-summertime/
Every suburban street holds secrets and ghosts, but Summerland Place holds more than most. The team from The Red Mullet Hair Salon head to Summerland Place to explore the abandoned houses there, on a prepaid, enter at own risk, explore every nook and cranny team building exercise. They are welcomed by the charismatic Milton, who runs the tours through the cul-de-sac he grew up in. They find houses filled with malevolent ghosts and tragic ones, with memories of family trauma and family meals. All come out changed by what they see, and what it triggers in them. Some will be lost in Summertime, a euphoric state of mind. Georgia, owner of the Salon, thinks she is stronger than any of it. She has no past trauma, no secrets; some would say no heart. She didn’t expect to fall in love. Every instinct tells her not to. And yet she is drawn into the disturbing world of Milton and his mother, as she feels the seductive draw of Summertime ever stronger.
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