A ghostly Christmas tradition of the past brought into the present

National World - LocalTV

It was tradition to tell each other a ghost story during the Victorian age on cold, dark wintry nights. Now Liverpool based community interest company ArtsGroupie want to resurrect the tradition of the Christmas ghost story.

Transcript

00:00 He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief soliloquy and

00:04 as he passed quickly towards the sitting room to fetch them from the cupboard he

00:07 saw out of the corner of his eye the indistinct outline of a figure standing

00:13 on the stairs. A Liverpool based arts organisation are bringing Christmas past

00:18 to Christmas future with the forgotten festive Victorian tradition.

00:22 Victorians used to tell get round the fire and tell tales and I know when I

00:26 was a boy my nan would always, she'd always tell us a ghost story, a candle

00:31 light. Now we've got entertainment at our fingertips on our mobile phones with

00:36 Netflix we can go to the cinema and watch all kinds of movies with green

00:40 screen delights. There's nothing better than just getting sat down and listening

00:46 to a story because your imagination is the most disturbing thing really.

00:52 We've been hosting writing workshops in locations across the city. The idea is to

00:57 help people structure how to start to write a ghost story and by the end of

01:03 the hour you'll walk away with at least a page or two of content that you can

01:07 hopefully then shape into a ghost story. What are the key ingredients for a

01:12 spine-chilling story? A good ghost story should really come from a position of

01:17 truth from the author I think. Take for example we've just done a recent

01:23 adaption of the Signalman, one of Charles Dickens stories and the real beauty of

01:27 it is you get a real sense that Dickens was suffering from survivor's guilt from

01:33 a train crash he'd been involved in and that influenced the writing of it. So I

01:37 think a real good ghost story ties into base fears that the author has that are

01:41 then exacerbated and brought out for an audience to have and I think the thing

01:45 with a ghost story is a lot of them people take different things away from

01:50 it especially when it's in writing rather than film because people have

01:54 their own interpretations of it and I think that is what really makes it

01:57 scary people find their own individual fears in them. As well as presenting

02:01 readings at key locations in Liverpool over the coming weeks they've also

02:05 launched their ghost stories competition a spine-chilling celebration of

02:11 creativity and community spirit. The content it needs to be original not so

02:17 cliched you know thinking about the title as well good a good ghost story

02:21 has a clever title that will you'll suddenly realize when you're halfway

02:25 through it's only 500 words so the scare factor needs to be in there as well and

02:30 the winner will get to have their piece performed either they can do it

02:33 themselves or have a trained actor get up on our last performance of ghost

02:38 stories for Christmas at Shakespeare North Playhouse on the 16th of December

02:44 and that has sold out but we've reserved two seats for those for the winner and

02:48 guest. The deadline for the competition is midnight on the 12th of December. It's

02:53 difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins when the causes of the fear

02:57 are not plainly before the eyes. Impressions gather on the surface of the

Category

Transcript

Recommended