The Swan River Press - Postscripts

POSTSCRIPTS

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While working on my occult history/ghost spotters' guidebook 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool a few years ago I amassed a good deal of material which, for one reason or another, didn't make it into the final draft. Some of the information, like that concerning the Victorian parkland adjacent to my home, was fascinating but just didn't have enough of a supernatural slant to justify its inclusion. Intriguing stories, like that of the immense medieval statue of a gnarled crone unearthed when the foundations for Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral were being dug, proved too difficult to substantiate. Long after my work on the book was done however, these fragments remained; a few scribbled notes here, a stack of photocopied pages there, a muddle of half remembered ideas; a hodgepodge of under-explored scraps which somehow lost none of their fascination as the days turned to weeks turned to months.

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed the existing Haunted Histories booklets (not to mention Swan River Press proprietor Brian J. Showers's own eerie writings) I was exceedingly pleased to be given the opportunity to contribute a tale of my own to the series. Instantly I knew this would be my chance to make use of those historical and folkloric remnants which had been rattling around my head for so long. All I needed to do was find a way of connecting the disparate elements, but this in itself proved to be no mean feat. Several false starts and abortive attempts later, I was beginning to despair of ever finding that elusive angle, that missing core for my tale. Then one night I was waked from my dreams by an unearthly screeching and yelping from somewhere outside my home. Peering out of the study window into the moonlit Victorian park I saw a writhing tangle of vulpine bodies. This vociferous skulk of foxes were apparently fighting over something...

John Reppion
March 2010