A Christmas Ghost Story

I wrote this story for a Christmas ghost story competition. I saw that the deadline was 1st September and I busted a gut to get it finished by then. The word count was up to 5,000 words which is a bit shorter than my normal short story length, which tend to come out about the 15,000 size.  Anyway, I got it done, got it polished, got it edited and then went to submit it on 31st August. Imagine my surprise when the deadline was actually 1st September 2014 (It being now 2016)! You could have knocked me down with a feather. I was gobsmacked. My daughter, who was nearby to hear my primitive expressions of consternation, said, "That's pretty typical of you."   It was said with love. And it was true.

I have had a few small accidents recently.  Sheila and I went to a music festival last weekend and I found the tiny door to a small house in a wall. Inside they were playing deep house music (I think it's called that) and on the way out I banged my head on the ceiling. It was a small house. Here's a picture of me there:

Then I banged my elbow and it went numb and I only did that because I trapped my finger in a folding camping chair.

So, I put getting the deadline wrong down to a string of my bad luck.

But back to the story. I wanted to do a traditional ghost story and that meant I was going to use all the normal tropes - period setting (1956 when there actually was a White Christmas in London), man in homburg hat, steam trains, deserted platforms, roads blocked by snow and, of course, a ghost.

As I said, it's pretty short, but I was quite pleased with the form of it. It drives on until about 85% through when we get the culmination. It's not scary so much as traditional. Christmas, like.

Here's the link -- (Well I gotta do that, don't I?)

A Christmas Ghost Story by Tony Walker