Making Ghosts

Sue Moules

‘Do you believe in ghosts Mair?’ Sarah asks me, as we sew the sheets into ghost costumes. I usually give yes or no answers, but for this I have to prevaricate.

‘Maybe,’ I say.

I didn’t like to say that I’d never seen a ghost, especially as Sarah believes in the supernatural. The village school is old, and was supposed to be full of ghosts. Full of damp and dust more like, but we are lucky still to have the village school.

Once there had been three shops and a post office. Now the shop is also the post office, and the general store. There had been Dilly’s Wool Shop and the Sweet Shop, but both had closed due to lack of custom. Everyone went to the superstore in town or shopped online, which meant that the quiet village became busy with supermarket delivery vans. I’m old enough to remember when the shop had a delivery boy on a bike with a basket full of boxed orders.

‘‘I think the old dead folk are the ghosts in this village.’’ Sarah says. ‘Mrs Connolly’s out pruning her roses in her dressing gown, and Cyril the blacksmith is outside the pub, which is now a private house, but I can see him there. Both of them died when I was a child.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I imagine seeing several of them as I walk around, but I always think it’s because those old black and white photos are in the village hall. Those people have never left. These living children, who are enjoying being ghosts, will move away, but something of them will remain.’

‘I hope so,’ Sarah says. It seems a shame that villages just get forgotten, they become assimilated into the town’s catchment area and become districts. ‘So, do you think these “Save our School” ghosts will frighten the councillors?‘

‘No,’ I say, ‘but they will be good for publicity and the photographs in the Gazette will help make others more aware of our campaign.’

The evening was drawing in. I got up to pull the curtains. I saw a face at the window. I heard myself scream.

‘There’s someone there…’ I said. We went outside into the dusk with a torch and the dog. There was no one there, but the dog’s fur bristled, and he growled as he passed the window.

‘It’s your imagination, Mair,’ said my husband, ‘and all those ghost costumes you’ve been sewing. Come on now, we’ll take the dog for a walk. That will reassure you there’s nothing there but stars.’

He was right, just stars and the quiet of the village graveyard, where I wouldn’t walk at night because there’s something about a graveyard at night that needs to be left to its own.

*

The ghost costumes didn’t save the school. It’s been sold and is now a private home. Incomers bought it; too expensive for locals. The eight village children are now bussed to school in town. Their faces in the minibus windows are like ghosts. Their names echo the ones on the gravestones : Tomos Davies, Elwyn Jones, Siôn Thomas, Rhodri Williams, Elin Thomas, Siân Hughes, Betsan Davies, Megan ap Rhys.