THINGS STRANGE AND UNGUESSABLE: Write Ghost Stories in Haunted England

"He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.”  Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

Eerie inns, cursed castles, wicked woods, grey ladies, black dogs, and red rooms. Plus Dracula Town, The City of 1,000 Ghosts, Jack the Ripper's pub, and the cobbled village where Henry James wrote Turn of the Screw. Explore England's most haunted places, while reading ghost stories by the famous authors who lived there and spinning your own dark yarns inspired by their work. 

Fri. May 23 - Sat. June 7. APPLICATION LINK AVAILABLE SOON!

 

The Shambles, York, "City of 1,000 Ghosts"

 
We'll start with a train journey north to "Haunted York," which claims to have a ghost on every street, home to the Shambles (said to be the inspiration for Harry Potter's Diagon Alley). Then it's up to Whitby for two nights (the town that inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula), to visit the pirate graveyard and the looming clifftop ruin of Whitby Abbey (as well as "Jacob's Ladder," the 199 steps that lead to it, up which bounded Dracula himself, disguised as a big black dog). 

 

The clifftop ruin of Whitby Abbey

 

Then it's down to Essex for ten days, where we'll write/workshop in the cafe's and pubs of Lewes, a hilly sixth century Saxon village with half beam bookshops, medieval streets, and an imposing Norman castle, all wedged between the bone white cliffs of the dreamy South Downs, With day trips to the highly haunted Arundel Castle, the Ten Bells Pub, and the Mermaid Inn (known as "the most haunted hotel in England," with its sliding wall panels, secret passageways, and priest holes). 

 

The Mermaid Inn, Rye. "England's Most Haunted Hotel."

 Plus an intimate sea shanty "concert" by the Wellington Wailers at a haunted 200-year-old bayside pub ('Twas then I spied off the starboard side,  a strange mysterious sight; I froze with fear as it drifted near like a ghost in the dark of night."), Sherlock Holmes' retirement cottage, a ghost walk of the Lanes (Brighton's historic haunted quarter), the Long Man of Wilmington (which Neil Gaiman interpreted as the guardian of the gate to Faerie in his Sandman series), Rudyard Kipling's sprawling lichen-covered manse (with its witch marks and hag stones), and Monk's House, where Virginia Woolf lived, wrote, and ultimately drowned herself by filling her pockets with stones and jumping into the nearby River Ouse. And so much more! 

 

The Wellington Wailers at the haunted Duke of Wellington Pub

More info soon. Interested? Write Aimee Labrie at al1048@english.rutgers.edu. 

Note: "Things strange and unguessable..." is a phrase from Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

WHERE DIPS THE ROCKY HIGHLAND: Write Fantasy in the Emerald Island

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." - William Butler Yeats.  

Explore the folk and fairy tales of the Emerald Island (Dublin, Galway, Doolin) while writing a few of your own. Banshees, Pookas, Pirate Queens, Selkies, Giants, Red-Caps, and Wee Folk. Join Rutgers creative writing instructor Alex Dawson, best selling Irish fantasy author/Dr. Who scribe Dave Rudden (Knights of the Borrowed Dark, Sister Wake), and eight Irish Creative Writing students for a two week fable-fueled collaboration with Dublin City University. 

Mon. June 9 - Sun. June 23. Dublin, Galway, Doolin. APPLICATION LINK SOON!

The Book of Kells, Old Library, Trinity College

While in Dublin you'll stay in the oldest part of DCU, All Hallows (350 years old and haunted!), eat breakfast in the dining hall, attend workshops/lectures on campus, visit sites of literary interest (the Book of Kells, Dublin Writing Museum, James Joyce Centre) and have dinner discussions with celebrated local authors (incl. Sophie White, who just won the Shirley Jackson award, and Eoin Colfer, who wrote the bestselling Artemis Fowl series) in variety of evocative restaurants (like the eclectic Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest and most haunted pub, and Johnnie Fox's in the foothills of mythic Wicklow Mountains). 

 

The Brazen Head, Dublin's most haunted pub.

 

The second week, we'll travel west, across Ireland, to Galway (Ireland's cultural heart, home to Finvarra, king of the Faeries); we'll have dinner with Patricia Forde, the seventh and current Laureate na nÓg, Ireland’s Children’s Literature Laureate, and take a Dark Tour of Galways's haunted history and baleful back streets. Then it's on to the Wild Atlantic Way, with a ferry ride to Inishmore, the biggest of the Aran Islands (known for its cliff top fort of Dún Aonghasa, its seal/selkie colonies, its bounding hounds, and its mythic Dragon's Lair/Worm Hole), and a four night stay in Doolin, a tiny coastal town in County Clare, the real world setting for the video game Folklore, known as the home of traditional Irish music, where we'll explore Doonagore Castle, the stunning Cliffs of Moher (aka the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride) and the otherworldly landscape of the Burren, with its many fairy forts, said to have inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth. 

 

The Cliffs of Moher ("The Cliffs of Insanity" in The Princess Bride)

 Finally, it's back to Dublin for two nights, with a hike up Montpelier Hill, where sits a ruined hunting lodge with a supernatural history (known locally as the Hellfire Club), and a highly publicized group reading at DCU. And so much more!  

The haunted Hellfire Club atop Montpelier Hill.