This story is about Frankenstein’s monster and a
haunted house. It was written on 20 Sept 1975. I was ten years old and at
school. Being only 200 hundred words, will only take a moment.
My illustrations for the Haunted House showing the monster of Frankenstein, a coffin and dead spiders
Once
upon a time there was a girl called Claire Jones. She ran away from her
stepmother and father. They treated her badly. She saw a house and heard
footsteps. Suddenly Claire saw a big shadow on the outside wall of the house.
She turned and saw Frankenstein (meaning the
monster). He said, ‘Come here my
child’. He picked her up and gave her sleeping pills and then she fell
asleep. Then Frankenstein put her in a cold room and locked her up.
Claire awoke. She was freezing. She saw frozen
people like statues. Claire tried the door. It was locked. There were no
windows but lots of fans with cold air coming out. Claire put her torch on and
saw a hanging skeleton with blood dripping from it and graves with dead
tarantulas and Claire nearly turned to ice in a bowl. Frankenstein crashed the
door and grabbed Claire and put her in boiling wax. They start to fight.
Frankenstein dropped her and he tripped and Claire was dropped on the floor.
She stirred the wax with a stick and Frankenstein melted into wax and that was
the end of Frankenstein. Claire ran home and never had another walk.
The Haunted
House would appear to be the customary fiction
horror of a child’s unfettered imagination. Kids love horrible and creepy, don't they? My life seemed nothing surprising. I
was living in a little village with my parents and siblings. Our cottage was
rundown and cold in the winter. We go to church most Sundays and I do childhood
stuff like making up quizzes, plays, writing stories, painting and going on
bike rides.
This story would
remain in the dark for forty years. Only on clearing Mum’s house shortly after
her death in 2016, would I encounter it. I don’t even remember writing it.
Claire Jones was my best friend at school. Since
learning a horrific truth about my past, I have come to learn that the writer
in me had projected herself onto her characters. I am in fact writing about
myself in this story.
This is a veiled account of something terrible that
has happened to me. This story would appear to make no sense, but in fact is a
response to this terrible thing.
My diaries from 1977 to 1981
Two years after writing this story, the Silver
Jubilee of 1977 is celebrated. This is a big year for me, as I would start my
periods and begin senior school. Almost every day, my twin and I would traverse
a disused railway station to get there. I would also begin a diary which would
continue until 1988.
Soon after starting senior school, a big man
standing beside the railway track started to materialise in my head. He had
shaggy dark hair and a condition of overgrown bones called acromegaly. By then,
I had completely forgotten about Frankenstein’s monster of The Haunted House.
My book Tales from Daler Cottage reveals the
underlying meaning of The Haunted House and my other stories.
The truth about my life is fully explained in the
following articles.
