Confessions of a Childhood Ghost Hunter III: Tales from Burnside

In the second part of these confessions of a childhood ghost-hunter, I outlined the all encompassing fantasy world that my friends and myself had created for ourselves over my year and a half living at Burnside. This mythology provided us with a backdrop for our ghost hunting expeditions, a set of legends we could lose ourselves in, and modify if we thought it was necessary. An early form of 'world building' perhaps, and I think it is my experiences at Burnside that informed my fascination with fictional mythologies, most notobly, Lovecraft's nebulous 'Cthulhu Mythos'.
In this post, I'll tell a few tales from the Burnside Cycle...

I had spent the Christmas of 1981 at Nanny and Grandad Mole's house. My grandfather was ill, and would pass away in the new year. Despite the fact we all knew he was dying, I remember that Christmas as my best Christmas ever. This puzzles me. Surely at 9 years old, I was old enough to understand the ramifications of death? I don't remember the grief that must have covered my grandparents house as my Grandad lay dying in hospital. All I remember is snow, action men, Adam and the Ants and the Pan Books of Horror Stories. On Christmas Day I was treated to the rather surreal sight of my aunt, who was a nun, in full habit, reading the 14th Volume of the Pan Horror Stories. It was an arresring sight. The cover showed some monstrosity with red eyes and it's lips torn off revealing a rather disturbing skull-like lower face.
We returned to Kinloss in the first few days of 1982. Craig had moved back to Southside, after his time away in the nearby town of Forres, and the golden age of ghost hunting was about to begin.

A rather ambiguous episode I remember happened early on in the year. It was probably January, as there was deep snow. One evening -nights fell early here remember- Martin and myself took the sledge up to the woods. On the edge of the woods was a tiny cinema -The Astra. Between the back of the Astra (now closed) and the woods was a concrete path, and it was this that we had bought the sledge for. There was quite a considerable slope to the path, and Martin and myself took turns sledging down the slope, bringing the sledge back up, then the next person would take over. It seems a hypnotic memory this one. The dark woods to our right, the block of the cinema to our left. Claustrophobic in the darkness. Our sledging bought us nearer and nearer to the small drop into the woods. A gathering sense of premonition. The absolute winter night. And Martin and myself, sledging in the midst of this all.
Then Martin told me a story. He said that while we had been away for Christmas in Wolverhampton, he had seen our car, the car that was down in Wolverhampton with us all winter, parked in our driveway. Martin had thought we had come back. I said no. We looked at each other, and suddenly we both felt - for no reason I can think of, as it wasn't a particularly scary story - very, very alone, and very, very isolated, on the edge of these black woods. In the snow. In the night.
We didn't need to say anything, and in an urgent terror, we ran back into the safety of Burnside.

Over the Easter of 1982, when Martin was away, Craig and myself had gone up to the Burn to play. There was a small path between the fences of the gardens of Burnside, and the Burn itself. As we were walking along this path on a bright Easter day, we were surprised to see a car coming toward us. We were surprised because this was a footpath. We had never seen a car here before, and we ducked behind a few trees for a second or two, to let the car pass. We popped back out onto the path again.
The car was gone.
It wasn't reversing back along the path it had come (no room to turn around) and neither could it be seen on the playing fields that the path eventually led out onto.
Craig and me stood by the bridge over the Burn.
'Do you think we've seen a-'
I didn't need to finish the sentence.
We looked at each other and ran.

Of course we incorporated the 'ghost car' into the Burnside Mythos, postulating the theory that the driver of the car was in fact killed by King Hairy, the woods resident werewolf.

Another time we were playing on the banks of the Burn, and we came across a fragment of what we thought was a gravestone, which led, of course, to us running back into the safety of Burnside. Another victim of King Hairy perhaps?

We seemed to spend our entire time discussing these mysteries of the woods. It would come in phases, some minor incident would spark off our interest again, and we would plan our next expedition to 'solve the mystery of Kinloss'. One time, when it was just Craig and myself, after an exhausting morning's hunting in the woods said that we should maybe forget about it for the afternoon, because, he said 'it lingers on the air'.
I remember thinking about his words that night, as I tried and failed to get to sleep. Had we talked about ghosts in my bedroom? What happens if they did indeed linger and attracted some kind of spirit?
Sleep was a long time coming that night.

On other occasions there was a strange kind of poetic quality to our days, unexplainable really. One afternoon we were stood in the small patch of trees that stood at the entrance to Burnside. It was a bright sunny day, but the wind was blowing, a warm breeze. The wind seemed to make voices amongst the trunks, but these seemed benign spirits. 'The Guardians of Burnside' Craig said. 'It sounds like they're urging us to write evrything down, so we remember'. 'Apart from that one'. Craig pointed to the most remote tree in this small clump. 'Yes' I said, 'That one seems to want us to forget everything'.
We never spoke again of these Guardians of Burnside.

Despite the presence of a manor in the woods, there was little in the way of incident here... I know that our overactive imaginations created this fantasy world for us, the ultimate playground, and it isn't even an incident really, just some strange short circuit in my memory, but, every time I think about the manor, an image - more like a memory really - always comes to mind. I have no idea where this image comes from, but it is of a girl, dressed in Victorian attire, sat in a swing in front of the manor. She is holding a parasol to shield her face from the sun, and she is smiling, but it is a cold smile, and her eyes... I cannot place this memory, and every time I try to reach for it, I seem to be on the verge of remembering something, but I just can't quite touch it.
A dream probably.
Still gives me the chills now though.
Her cold smile, and eyes that were, very, very old.

Our ghost hunting expeditions picked up in intensity as we moved into the autumn of that year. This was probably due to the knowledge that we knew Craig would be leaving in November, and my family would be moving to Forres. It felt like the end of an era, which it was really.
The Hallowe'en of 1982 fell on a Sunday. Hallowe'en was a big deal up in Kinloss, probably the influence of the Americans on the airbase. It had been decided, so as not to cause offence, that trick or treating would take place on a Friday. On Sunday, Hallowe'en proper, of course, the three of us spent the day ghost hunting. I remember early on that day, by the woods, looking over at Craig and Martin, and seeing the sunset tinged sun, just over the tops of the trees. I don't remember much of what happened that day, just a creeping sense of strangeness. I remember the ending though. I was walking in front of the two of them, on the path from the Woods back into Burnside. I remember hearing some commotion and looking behind me I saw Craig and Martin starting to run. I heard splashing in the river, or thought I did. I ran too. That same ecstasy of terror.
Back in the safety of Burnside, Craig told us that he had seen 'things' in the river. A new, and very late addition to the mythos, that he called 'Mutoids'.
I think the name came from Blakes Seven...

There was one last incident at Burnside that I can remember. It was an early November twilight, the sky that beautiful shade of sea-blue. We were on the path that lay between Abbeylands Primary School and the farmers fenced off fields. There was some work being done in the farmers fields, necessitating the formation of a huge mound of mud on the other side of the fence. About half way up the mound was a stray chunk of mud and earth. Simulacra came into play. This stray chunk of earth had the exact features of a witch. In my mind I can see it clearly; the gaping mouth, black holes for eyes, a crooked nose. It glared malevolence at us.
We spent the next hour trying to destroy the witch's head by throwing stones over the fence. When it got too dark to continue, we admitted failure and went home. The next day, the witch's head had gone. Craig said he had come back that night and destroyed it.

Craig left Kinloss soon afterwards. The three of us had spent the day together by the Burn, reminiscing about things. As darkness fell, we stood in that path where we had tried to destroy the witch's head the week before. Halfway between Southside and Burnside. Craig said 'ah well, this is it'. He held his hand out, and Martin put his hand on Craig's, and mine on Martin's. Nobody said anything, but we knew that something was ending. Martin and myself watched him walk away, along the road that led to the school, past the first few houses of Southside. He kept turning to wave at us every now and again. Martin and myself did not turn away, just kept watching our friend disappear into his furure. He waved for one last time, and continued walking.
I remember his sillhouette, his back to us, and the plastic bag he was carrying, as he was swallowed up by the houses.
Martin and myself walked sadly home.

Burnside was over. In less than a month after Craig had left, we had moved from Burnside to Forres, where my parents had bought a house. Childhood was ending. In 1983, we left Abbeylands Primary School for the less welcoming enclave of Forres Academy, the local secondary school. At the end of the first year Martin would leave, and a year after that, I would leave too.

I spent two and a half years living in Forres, in a semi-detached house built at the base of The Black Woods, as we called them. The ghost stories from Forres had a darker tone, far from the bright fantasy world we had created at Burnside. A foreshadowing, perhaps, of a difficult adolescence.
Or maybe I knew that when I left Forres, when I was 13, I would consider my childhood to be over.