My mission for today is to finish all the outstanding reviews. I shall not leave this perch before I have achieved this!! As I only had one piece of toast for breakfast an hour ago and am already getting hungry again I had best get on with it. Oh... and I might have a coffee break. But apart from that: Full steam ahead!
Not sure this one requires a spoiler alert. Perhaps for those wishing to avoid haunted places in Warwickshire but I am pretty sure that is only a relatively small group of people and probably most of them will not be reading this blog so onwards we go.
Haunted Warwickshire - Meg Elizabeth Atkins
This one reminded me again of why I love Ghost story books! It is a lovely little collection of places in Warwickshire that are reputedly haunted.
The book lists all he towns, villages that are haunted, tells you what to look out for and how the haunting came about if known. I do not plan to go through every one of them individually. There are stories about floating lights, ghost appearing on the anniversary of their deaths, cruel knights, hard done by maidens, black dogs, battle being re-enacted, horseless coaches and... my personal favourite, wandering nuns. It seems that in Southam someone actually tried to convince a court that a ghost had committed murder. Seems like a good defence to me and I am sure that some high powered lawyer will use it in court before long. the ones that wold really freak me out are where the resident ghost goes and moves tings in your house. Imagine losing something for a number of days and then finding it again in the exact place you left it several days later... even if you have looked there previously! In short, there are lots of lovely tales and hauntings in this one. Atkins dresses it all up nicely by tying in the ghost with the local folklore or legend and it makes for some very pleasant reading. It seems that very often a haunting is shown to relate to someone who used to live at a place or near it. At times ghosts wander or appear because of unresolved issues or perhaps just to remind us of what happened to them and to ensure it does not happen again.
The only negative - my book was missing pages 161-176 so it stopped mid story... very annoying. If anyone happens to find my missing pages please let me know so I can know what happened to the bell in Whitnash.
PS: if you do not want to end up getting ritualistically slain and your murder going unsolved please be sure to avoid both Fenny Compton and Meon Hill.
Title: Haunted Warwickshire
Author: Meg Elizabeth Atkins
180 pages
Hale
ISBN# 0-7091-9131-6
Books to be read: 149
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