Haunted Women Radio 4
Come take a walk in a deep, dark wood – can you hear the ghosts whispering in the trees?
Haunted Women is the right theme for November and this was the story of how so many women down the years have chosen to write ghost stories – even if it is under a pseudonym.
At the peak of the popularity of ghost stories in the 19th century, writer Jessica Amanda Salmondson suggested as many as 70 per cent of the stories published in British and American magazines were written by women.
Why? Perhaps in a world where women did not have the right to vote, to own property or to have custody of their children, then they really were ghosts living on the margins of their own lives.
Ghost stories served as a metaphor for the female lot.
And talking of lots, this eerie and haunting documentary – made by Eleanor McDowall and a Falling Tree production – featured a discussion of writer Shirley Jackson who once said: “I am tired of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife. I live in a dank old place with a ghost.”
Jackson’s work haunts you. Try The Lottery – a short story that feels like it was written yesterday, that grabs you by the throat and lingers long after the final lines.
McDowall’s documentary haunts you too. She has a gift for picking out the right sounds to create a certain atmosphere.
There are pipes gurgling, a violin screeches like an owl, the build-up to a silent scream and the decisive slam of a door that sets the radio rocking on its base.
Writer Susan Hill said it was the world of her grandmother that led her into ghost stories.
That generation had lost husbands, sons, brothers in World War I and had experienced mass grief.
So they turned to séances, to reading tea leaves and to table tapping just to feel that connection with those they loved and lost.
There was food for thought here and a distinct nudge towards the bookshelves to rediscover Jackson, Hill and their like.
