The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales
Author’s Note
More important, though, was what lies to the south – the sea.
Not the yellow sands of West Wittering and Bognor Regis, but rather the muddy and tidal estuary of Fishbourne Creek.
My sisters and I played at the Mill Pond, hid in the reed mace and high grasses that towered over our heads.
When I was older, rather solitary by nature in those days, I’d take a book out to the old flint sea wall and sit reading in the sun.
The names of the houses and buildings around the estuary reflected the former industry of this part of the creek – Salt Mill, the Corn Mill, Paper Mill – buildings that are all gone or converted into flats, which still speak of the working landscape.
There was, however, no lending library in Fishbourne. That is a ghost of my own imagining.
When I came across the idea of a ‘revenant’ – a visible ghost, or animated corpse, believed to return from the grave to terrorise or take revenge on the living: often their murderer or someone who had done them wrong in life – the story started to take shape.
In particular, the idea that derelict or vanished buildings haunt a landscape in the way that a spirit might haunt a person.
The word ‘revenant’ comes from the Latin revenans, meaning ‘returning’.