British short story author Karen Heard is one of the writers whose stories are featured in the soon-to-be-published anthology The Haunted Train: Creepy Tales from the Railways. Here she answers questions about childhood fears and writing inspiration.
Have you ever seen a ghost? Tell us about the experience.
What scared you when you were a child?
When I was a young child I found it really hard to sleep as I was convinced that when falling asleep I might never wake up. At the same time I believed there was a monster living under my bed that came out at midnight, stared closely at my face, and would murder me if it saw that I was still awake after the witching hour.
It’s no wonder I became a horror writer - yeah? I also remember telling myself stories in the dark cold room, to calm and distract myself from the fear and stop myself falling asleep.
After many many terrifying nights screwing my eyes shut, afraid of the monster but also afraid to let myself drift off into death, I realised that I couldn’t go on like this and had to work out whether my fears were true or not. I gathered up the courage to look under the bed.
I must have been very young, because I remember there was a child’s potty under the bed for night time use. I kneeled down, lifted up the blankets, and looked under my bed to prove to myself that nothing was there… But I was right - there was a monster under my bed! Staring at me inches from my face.
I can still vividly see how it looked… and in retrospect what I see is a, head-sized, giant, dead desiccated moth, leaning on one side with its dried out wings splayed out like a vintage aeroplane with a feral stare frozen on its skull. I think, after the first initial terror, and running from the room in horror, I worked out even at the time that it was a dead creature of some kind, but the fear of that first moment when I looked and realised that everything that I thought I must be imagining - it was all true - is probably where I get my love of both horror and irony.
When I wrote my story for this anthology, and realised it needed an extra element, apart from just the events on the train, to tie things together, I used this memory of that intense fear for when the protagonist looks to see what is inside their closet.
For your story ‘Out of Order’ in The Haunted Train, where did you get the inspiration?
I wanted to write a story where the protagonist's senses are restricted in some way, such as hearing noises on the other side of the door but not knowing exactly what is happening. I’m intrigued by the idea that suggestion can do a lot more than actually describing the events. The readers fill that space by imagining what they truly find frightened.
Describe your writing voice.
Psychological and gothic, balanced out with ironic humour.
Karen lives in London and writes short stories, plays, books and scripts. She works in digital marketing and content creation, and used to manage the website for Railway magazine. Some of her stories are collected in the book It’s Dark Inside.
ABOUT THE BOOK THE HAUNTED TRAIN: CREEPY TALES FROM THE RAILWAYS
Come on board for a Gothic journey in a funicular railway in Victorian England, a freight train in the Carpathian mountains, a high tech sky train in Bangkok, an underground railway in Tokyo. Visit stations which lure with the promise of safe shelter but harbour unexpected dangers. Meet the people who work on the tracks – stationmasters, porters, signal-men – and those who travel – commuters, tourists, dead bodies, murderers and ghosts. In this volume, editor Rayne Hall has collected twenty of the finest– and creepiest – railway tales. The book features the works of established writers, classic authors and fresh voices. Some stories are spooky, some downright scary, while others pose a puzzling mystery. Are you prepared to come on board this train? Already, the steam engine is huffing in impatience. Listen to the chuff-chuff-chuff from the locomotive and tarattata-tarattata of the giant wheels. Press your face against the dust-streaked window, inhale the smells of coal smoke and old textiles, watch the landscape whoosh past as you leave the familiar behind and journey into the unknown. But be careful: you can’t know the train’s real destination, nor your fellow travellers’ intentions. Once you’ve closed that door behind you and the wheels start rolling, you may not be able to get out.
The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2023. (After that date, the price will go up.) https://mybook.to/Train
The paperback edition will be available soon.