Kwaidan

By: Eeleen Lee on 8:00 am

I blame my degree in Postmodernity for my delay in reading Kwaidan. Lafcadio Hearn's translation and retelling of Japanese ghost tales for a Western audience, was to me at the time, an example of 19th century Orientalism- another woodcut landscape of cherry blossoms, bamboo, monks and wandering lovely kimonoed ladies, seen through the spooky mist of a supernatural story.

But what have recent Japanese horror movies shown a global audience? A unique way of generating fear by taking on the mundane. I dare you to watch Dark Water (1999) and not get a chill every time the plughole is clogged. Or rent the DVD of The Ring and not jump if the house phone rings during the movie.

Hearn demonstrates in this engaging book that transforming everyday objects into unlikely conduits for supernatural activity appears to reach far back into Japanese literature and folklore. In Kwaidan, mirrors, bells, wells and even insects are supernaturally suspect; cherry blossoms can be inhabited by spirits of dead mid-wives, a monk encounters a corpse-eating demon that is later revealed to be the troubled spirit of another *monk* and those beautiful kimonoed ladies are really snow demons wandering around in human guise.

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Obscure Horrors

By: Eeleen Lee on 6:57 pm

I thought I might save this post for Halloween, but then again, Halloween is a season for carnivalesque safe scares; you pays your money, enter the ghost-train ride and emerge on the other side unscathed. The ride is easily forgotten and the memory is disposable, whereas a great horror story errrrmm...haunts you.

Alison Flood's article article in The Guardian set me thinking about horror/supernatural fiction. Readers cite the usual horror suspects (King, Poe, Shirley Jackson...) but I remember as a reader that my literary scares came from reading short stories in old anthologies borrowed from libraries or unearthed in clearance book sales. I discovered new names and old names; wonderful tales by one-hit wonders and stories by writers that you'd normally would not associate with horror/ supernatural fiction.

It wouldn't be useful to name some of these old anthologies because some are long out of print, but links to more available editions  are included where possible.

1)  "Not Exactly Ghosts"  Andrew Caldecott (Wordsworth Editions 2007)
Sir Andrew Caldecott is better known as a diplomat and ex-governor of Hong Kong and Singapore. His administrative legacy endures (Mediacorp, the home of Singapore Broadcasting, resides on Caldecott Hill) but his literary legacy is criminally underrated. Buy this if you want subtle early 20th-Century ghost stories, where mundane objects like a pump, a pair of trousers and a church organ are haunted .

2)"The Party" "The Partnership" William F. Nolan
What? Horror from one of the writers of "Logan's Run"? I had to struggle to put the 1976 movie out of my head, Nolan writes superb dark psychological tales and "The Party" was as chosen by Newsweek as one of the top ten most effective horror stories. "The Partnership" is an unsettling sample of American Gothic that was adapted for the anthology TV series "Darkroom" in 1980. Now I want a copy of "Logan's Run" because the book is much grittier and deserves better, before Hollywood got its mitts on it for the movie.

3)"Video Nasty" Phillip Pullman (1996). Published in "The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories" edited by Peter Haining (Mammoth Books 2007)

Yes, dear reader you read the name correctly as him of "Northern Lights" fame . Just like its title, "Video Nasty" is an unmercifully visceral short ghost story that raises more troubling questions than answers. Parallels between 'The Ring' are merely coincidental (it was written 3 years before the Japanese film version hit mainstream Western audiences)

4) The Machine Stops E.M Forster
A dystopian science-fiction story by one of the foremost critics of science-fiction. This is not a horror story but I urge you not to shudder at Forster's vision of future humans reduced to fungoid growths by their slavish dependence on technology.

5) The Lamp Agatha Christie(1933). Published in"The Hound of Death and other stories"  (Harper Collins Ltd)
The Queen of Crime also reigns supreme as a ghost story writer . Poignant and eerie, "The Lamp" has a unique atmosphere that does not disperse, even when you have switched on all the lights.

6) All But Empty Graham Greene
A murder is connected to an afternoon matinee attended by only two people. Invariably, there is a twist ending but *what* a twist it is.

7) Close Behind Him John Wyndham
In his famous novels such as 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Midwich Cuckoos', Wyndham created his own genre of 'logical fantasy' and he applies the same precise structuring and prose to this story of murder avenged.

8) The Ball Room China Mieville "Looking For Jake and Other Stories" (Pan, 2006)
Can China Mieville's prose hack it in a real-world setting? It does and you almost wish he wrote more contemporary fiction. You will never dare go near a children's play area after reading this.

9) The Dancing Partner Jerome K. Jerome
The author of the classic comic novel "Three Men In a Boat" displays a rarely-seen warped sense of humour in this tale of a toy dancing-partner that *never* wants to stop dancing.

10) The Signalman Charles Dickens
Incisive social commentary of Victorian England? Check. Effortless lucid prose from a master writer? Check. Eccentric ghosts a la "A Christmas Carol"? Absent. A disturbing ending that ensures sleeping with all the lights on? Present.

Other suggestions/ additions to this list? Comment below thank you

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The Englishman at Table 19 (excerpt)

By: Eeleen Lee on 7:16 pm

The first part of my story that was shortlisted for the MPH-Alliance Bank National Short Story Award 2009. 

Since dinner began half an hour ago, Lauren had been spying on the Englishman.  She looked up and he was seated at a table in the corner.  She set the dessert menu upright like a folding screen on the tabletop, to hide her curious glances in his direction.  Lauren noticed the chrome-plated steel stand on his table bearing a piece of white card with the number ‘19’ printed on it in large black numbers.  An identical steel stand near her glass informed Lauren that she sat at table 32 with her elder sister Marilyn, her parents, and Mr. and Mrs. Quek. Lauren did the mental arithmetic and noted that ‘32’ subtracted from ‘19’ equals ‘negative 13’.

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Ghosts For the Early 21st Century

By: Eeleen Lee on 12:45 am

I am preparing an collection of ghost stories. I wrote down thirty possible titles and from that number, selected the ones that would most intrigue the reader. I had to discard a title called 'Digital to Analogue' because I discovered that it is also the title of a 1991 short story by Alastair Reynolds. (By coincidence, both my planned story and Reynold's story mentioned Joy Division -  does this mean that great minds plan alike, eh? One day I'll sign a huge publishing contract too.)


There is no unifying theme to my collection because I hope to include a variety, like a tin of Quality Street or Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. "Ya never know what ya gonna get!". Consistent shivers are my goal. I noticed that most of my stories so far involve children as ghosts or as protagonists. This is not a coincidence. The bogeymen and spooks of yesteryear do not scare children these days but I'm not too sure how to write the lack of Internet connection as a major fright. 

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My 'City of Shared Stories' stories

By: Eeleen Lee on 2:41 am

Suburban Guerrila

My grandfather often told me tall stories. Such as the clump of haunted banana trees at the garden wall. The trees housed the spirits of nine children who had died during a neighbourhood bout of botulism in the late ‘70s. There was a brick altar to the Earth God near the trees . At the back of our garden was a wire fence. Beyond this fence was the catchment pond. His latest yarn was of the elderly Australian corporal hiding in the thick undergrowth near the drainage pond for rainwater, still believing that the war was ongoing in Malaya. One Sunday, Grandfather left packets of imported Anzac biscuits and cans of Heinz baked beans for the soldier by the wire fence.
When the charade continued the following Sunday, I asked Grandfather, “Why doesn’t someone call social services? Surely this Australian has a family who are looking for him?”

“He has no family. He told me.”

“You spoke to him?”

“He’s not crazy.”

“Apart from the fact that he still thinks there’s a war?” I asked, “He needs to see a doctor. What if it rains? What about snakes and mosquitoes? What does he eat?”

“He’s a veteran at living off the land”

“What if he comes into our garden to attack imaginary Japanese soldiers?”
“ We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it-“

“No we won’t because he would have blown up the bridge. What if he comes into our house and scares Grandma while she’s taking a bath?”

“Anyone will surrender if they see your grandmother naked! Hahahah!” Grandfather found this image so funny that the Milo he had been drinking shot out of his nose.
 
 
Haunted House Hunting
 
"There's a haunted house nearby," I sometimes say to a friend in the car after a late night.
Depending on their spiritual beliefs or level of inebriation, most of them of scoff or make silly gibbering noises, but all of them indicate their interest, "Where is it?".
"Down a road that leads off this main road".


And we take the detour.


"Haunted? By what? Who?" my friends launch a volley of questions, fired off by sudden curiosity.
"I'm not sure, " I say, "but a friend knew one of the previous owners and that owner calls it, 'The Vampire House.'
"Really?". I always detect slight disappointment in their tone. No ephemeral ladies in white, knockings or footsteps. Just vampires. Nocturnal haemoglobin addicts watered down and romanticized by mainstream popular culture.


"Here!" I declare and slap the dashboard. My friend normally pulls over to the roadside. We're before the house. Low garden walls, empty driveway,overgrown grass and shuttered windows. The windows are the eeriest - are the shutters meant to keep something in or out? The 'For Sale' sign affixed to the front gate, and the contact number is long faded. We wait. My friend dares me to get out of the car, or I dare them. Once I'm out, I always walk up to the gate and knock. On occasion I pretend to knock and shake my fist at the gate. We scramble back inside, my friend locks the car door. Sometimes, my friend drives away, frantic and yet grateful for the free thrill.


But I've been lucky so far: one night I'll knock and I may get an answer. From the current unseen occupants.
 


Hard Labour, Tough Medicine
 
The signboard read, 'Lourdes Clinic'. But I was not looking for a miracle as I pushed the door open, I just wanted a half a day off work. I leave my company's name with the receptionist and sit down on the blue plastic seats, rubbed shiny from heavy use.
The two construction workers sat across from me. Hard hats resting in their laps and overalls streaked with paint and dust. Both coughed as if they had inhaled rusty nails and their swollen eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets. They still wore their laminated ID tags, "PJ Suites". I knew their worksite, I could see it from the window in the waiting room. In one year, men and machinery would finish scouring the section of roadside next to my office block, and assemble piles of steel rods and cement bags into a framework of metal that would resemble the oasis of urban living and retail as depicted in the artist's impressions.
I moved to the next row of seats, and looked out of the clinic's window. I frowned at the site as if I were the foreman, spotting a distant infraction. Even through the walls of the clinic, I heard the thumps of incessant piling, almost obscene in its steady rhythm. A rundown bus parked at the entrance to the site, unloading the next shift of construction workers. The door to the doctor's office opened and a nurse ushered the two workers inside. When workers are part of a relentless machinery, medicine cannot cure all of their occupational sicknesses.

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