Dancing On Air

Ghosts and hauntings can take many forms, and spring from many sources; and while the conventional view of ghostly presences is that they are unwelcome visitants haunting unwilling victims, they are, on occasion, not only welcomed but embraced by people whose lives seem to cry out for something which is in short supply in the more ordinary world of mundane encounters.

The ten stories collected in Dancing on Air were written over a period of four decades, and while not all of them include ghosts, all of them concern hauntings. Some of these hauntings may or may not be projections springing from the obsessions of those being haunted; but they are no less real, or no less capable of doing good or ill, for all that. Does the much-loved childhood treasure in ‘The Black Mare Midnight’ exist? Do the seemingly innocent entries in ‘The Visitors’ Book’ conceal something much more sinister? Who—or what—is the occupant of ‘Cyprian’s Room’? Does a group of children really manage to conjure up Something in ‘The Monster Drawing’? And is there any truth behind the ghostly legend told in ‘Dancing on Air’; or is it merely a tale designed to entertain tourists?

In Dancing on Air things are seldom what they seem; and all are the more terrifying for it.