Today I’m excited to welcome Clare Dunkle, author of The House of Dead Maids with a guest post. A little background first: The House of Dead Maids is a “prequel” to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. In today’s post, Clare will describe her inspiration for this delightfully spooky read!
When I wrote my new novel, The House of Dead Maids (a “volume one” to Emily Brontë’s “volume two,” Wuthering Heights), I put into my book what I liked best about her Victorian classic: interesting and scary ghosts. I’ll never forget reading the scene in Wuthering Heights where the little ghost girl comes tapping at the window, saying, “I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!” Or the scene at the end of the book, just at twilight, where the little boy blubbers, “There’s Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’nab”—and Heathcliff has been dead for months. I wanted to bring those sorts of wonderful chills in my book, so I drew on everything I know about hauntings to create them—and I’ve been an avid reader of ghostly folklore and “true” ghost stories since I was a small child.
The inspiration for one of my novel’s big moments comes from a book called Scottish Ghost Stories, by James Robertson. (Warner Books, 1996) In that “true account,” a young woman named Jean had an encounter with the Black Lady of Broomhill House and ran away in terror, but her grandmother told her she must go back; the ghost was trying to tell her something. So she went back to the ruined house and saw the Black Lady again: “She stood in front of Jean in the same posture, and then her hand stretched out and she pointed behind Jean. When Jean turned to look she was horrified to see the figures of a further thirteen people, standing and sitting on the slope behind her. Two of them were children.” (p. 173) The thought of summoning the courage to face one ghost only to discover many more appealed to me tremendously. I knew right away that this idea belonged in my new book.
Why do my maids have no eyes? It expresses the fact that their forms have been taken over by something inhuman and are being used as a sort of disguise, but, as any “true ghost-story” reader can tell you, there are a number of eyeless ghosts. Here’s a favorite from Glen Grant’s wonderful Obake Files (Mutual Publishing, 1996): “… As [Tommy] was driving home at about 11 pm, his headlights revealed a sailor boy in his uniform hitchhiking along the road. … So he slowed down to pick him up. As he began to slowly brake and pull over to the side, he looked into the sailor’s face. The boy’s eye sockets were empty; he had no eyeballs!” (p. 97)
In one scene of my book, Tabby and the young boy she takes care of have a conversation about ghosts. She expresses the traditional Christian view that “the bad dead go to hell and roast in flames, and the good dead go to the kingdom of heaven.” But the young boy says, “Dead people creep into the house at night to hunt for crumbs under the table.” He comes from an Eastern culture with the tradition of hungry ghosts, deceased beings that have either unfulfilled desires or lazy descendants who are not taking care of their ancestors, forcing these ghosts to become beggars in the world of the spirit. Hungry ghosts are a terrifying phenomenon in Eastern tales, so Tabby is quite right to shiver at this idea.
One of my characters sees a ghost that is “a wizened horror, all teeth and hair and fingernails.” I created this ghost out of the very old superstition that hair and fingernails continue to grow on a corpse, and that in the case of evil corpses, the teeth may grow as well. None of this is true, but desiccated corpses do give this impression: the flesh dries up, revealing more of the tooth, hair shaft, or fingernail than could be seen before. This idea has stayed in the popular consciousness because there’s something particularly upsetting about a corpse continuing this kind of mindless growth underground. It calls to mind the voluptuously healthy appearance of Victorian vampires.
These are just a few of the inspirations for the hauntings in The House of Dead Maids. Other inspirations include the “Cauld Lad o’ Hylton,” a fine old Yorkshire ghost; a truly awful undead train passenger from the Southwest who gave off a horrid stench; a poltergeist who turned kitchen spills into amazing pictures; and an eyewitness account in which a little boy described a ghost as “an old man with eyes like windows.” I even drew inspiration the oral tradition, from one of my daughter’s boarding school roommates. Her mother, she said, had grown up in a house in Austria haunted by a dirty old man—when women or girls would sit down in a vacant chair, they would find themselves sitting in this ghost’s lap! That’s one of the most unpleasant specters I’ve ever heard of.
So, as you get ready for Halloween, don’t leave the Victorians off your list: Henry James, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sheridan Le Fanu, and other classic authors deliver some delicious chills. And don’t forget to ask neighbors or friends to tell you their own “true” ghost stories. Those are the best of all.
Thank you, Clare! Be sure to check out the other stops on this tour:
Now on to the giveaway!
Special Brontë-themed giveaway!
One Grand Prize winner will receive The House of Dead Maids, a gorgeous Brontë sisters pocket mirror, and the HarperTeen edition of Wuthering Heights! Two lucky runners-up will receive the two books. To enter, send an email to DeadMaidsBook@gmail.com with your name, email address, and shipping address (if you’re under 13, submit a parent’s name and email address). One entry per person and prizes will only be shipped to US or Canadian addresses. Entries must be received by midnight (PDT) on October 31. Winners will be selected in a random drawing on November 1 and notified via email.
Good luck to all! Be sure to stop by tomorrow for my review of The House of Dead Maids!
