Winter writing shaped by darkness, stillness and the long nights. Ghosts, memory, weather and places where the past presses close to the present.
As a final story for The Ghosts of Winter, it seems only right that I tell you a ghost story. A personal one. It was 2010, shortly after my grandma died. Her funeral had passed and the world settled back into its ordinary rhythm. Then I had a dream. At least, I think it was a … Continue reading A February Ghost Story…
While I’ve been thinking about quiet hauntings for this month’s theme, I keep being drawn to mirrors. People once believed that mirrors could trap a soul. There was even an old superstition of covering mirrors after someone had died to allow loved ones a safe passage to whatever comes next and prevent them being trapped. This quiet horror … Continue reading Quiet Hauntings…
As we shuffle through February, we enter the closing chapter of The Ghosts of Winter. A strange, liminal stretch where the season feels neither fully alive nor truly dying. Winter’s thinning, but spring hasn’t found its voice. The light’s returning, but slowly. Somewhat reluctantly. And in this pause, this breath between seasons, something happens. The unfinished parts … Continue reading The Last Ghosts of Winter…
I had fever dreams. The kind that obliterate the border between reality and imagination. I kept waking in sharp bursts of panic, convinced there was a presence in the house. Each time I tried to explain it to my confused husband, the certainty slipped away again. The night became repetitive and exhausting. Quietly terrifying, in … Continue reading Something Passed Through…
There’s a reason winter ghost stories endure. Winter strips everything back and, due to long, unending nights, it can leave us alone with the parts of ourselves we usually outrun. It’s a season that pushes us inward towards reflection, reckoning and the quiet truths we don’t face up to in brighter months. Ghosts, whether from … Continue reading Why We Need Winter Ghosts…
January’s Wolf Moon bared its teeth, but February’s Snow Moon will firmly close its mouth, prick its ears and listen. Whether it snows tonight or not, this is the month typical for heavy snowfall – which is where the Snow Moon gets its name. This is the heart of winter, when cold feels heavy. When … Continue reading The Snow Moon…
Every winter has a presence, something beyond the cold. Something old, massive and unmistakably felt. In Scottish and Irish folklore, that presence is the Cailleach. Translated this means ‘the veiled one’, ‘the old woman’ or ‘the hag’. But who is she? She’s winter’s architect and keeper. The Cailleach is not a ghost in the traditional sense. She’s something … Continue reading The Cailleach…
Lost Delilah 6 months ago. ‘Dog camera’ is switched off. (Or so I thought). Went to bed. Woke at the usual time. Logged onto laptop. Started work. Late morning, a notification. Time stamp: 2:51am. ‘Someone arrived home.’ My quiet haunting. 🖤
January is a time of thresholds, hauntings and omens. It was once simply lumped together with February under the single banner of ‘winter’, an unnamed stretch of cold between the end and the beginning. With the year ending in December and starting in March, the unnamed ‘winter’ season must have felt like a bleak, liminal no-man’s land. No … Continue reading Winter Hauntings…
Winter is the season when the old ghosts stir. The cold settles into our bones, the nights stretch long and the past whispers. Of all my stories, Cribbins is possibly the one most tangled with whispers of buried trauma, unspoken truths and the unsettling ways the past can seep back into the present. At its core, Cribbins asks one … Continue reading Cribbins: Unravelling the Darkness…
R. H. DIXON 