Ghost Stories in a Beer Garden

No-one out here in the beer garden of Hove Place. The seats piled up on one another, pushed aainst the tables. Statues of cherubs and angels amongst the ivy. Remnans of rain. The sounds of traffic from the unseen road. A bright full moon illuminating the rushing clouds.
Sat with Em in some knd of Italian looking shelter, ignoring the no-smoking signs. No-one out here anyway. Start telling ghost stoies - well I do - same thing happened the last time we were here. Tell her again about te black cowled figure I thought I saw at my grandfather's house when I was five.At some point I look up at Em, and see a slight disquiet in her eyes.
'I'll have nightmares now!' she tells me as we walk back along Church Road.
Ghost stories on a September night.
Sometimes I think I'd like to write a horror novel. Well, a long ghost story rather than horror, but anyway. Over summer I began thinking about ideas for such a book. It would be the story of that ever fascinating archetype the haunted house. I wanted the book to be nightmarish and frightening, to imbue the kind of feeling that ghost stories gave me when I was younger. Fascinated by them in daylight, but when night fell I would regret reading them. The stories would come to seem hauntings themselves.
I used to think about ideas for this book - notes on the histories of this house. I began to come to know the interior of the house, of the locked upper floor leading to the dark attic, and the dead end stairway located in the attic itself. I could picture the photograph that would be found in the attic... The book would be a history of experiences there, different residents, different though connected tales. The book was to be written as if it was a 'true-life' paranormal book. As the book progressed it would become clear that researching the house was proving to have a less than desirable effect on the writer.
There would be almost nothing in the way of explanation, no denoument, no climax, little in the way of conventional narrative form.
I would think about ideas for the book as I fell asleep, and one night ended up frightening myself, lying there in the dark of 2:00am, waiting for a knock on my door from the empty landing...
Then I kind of forgot about the book and got a job instead.