Personal reflections and seasonal thoughts. These entries trace mood, memory and creative undercurrents as they surface, shift and settle.
I stayed at Langley Castle for my birthday. Fourteenth century. Moss-covered stocks on the lawn. Peacocks by the fountain. Wind finding its way through the gaps in the stone, howling its insistence to be let in. Creaking floors and staircases. Tapestries and paintings of long-dead kings and queens. Suits of armour standing guard in corridors. … Continue reading The Grey Lady…
Don’t get too excited, April’s Pink Moon rarely has anything to do with its colour. Its name comes from the North American wildflower ground phlox. It’s one of the earliest flowers to bloom, bright pink against soil that still remembers winter all too well. It’s a moon named not for what it looks like, but … Continue reading The Pink Moon…
In folklore, March winds weren’t merely empty air. Across Britain and northern Europe, the winds of early spring were believed to carry voices and warnings. People once spoke of the wind as though it was capable of listening back. Doors weren’t bolted just against cold, but against what might slip through on a sudden gust. … Continue reading When the March Wind Calls…
Day and night are in balance, neither dominant, neither defeated. For now, the scales settle evenly. Spring is testing the ground. Hesitating. Listening. Winter was a time for letting things lie undisturbed beneath frost and silence. But spring won’t allow everything to remain buried. The equinox isn’t just a celebration of light’s soon-to-be victory. It’s … Continue reading Vernal Equinox…
This is how the story introduced itself to me… Chin up, kidda, says the gaunt-faced, hollow-eyed woman reflected on the surface of the bus shelter’s rain-mottled Perspex panel. She looks like me but also doesn’t. As a fragment from the first draft, it may change. Some things should. But also, it may not. I just wanted … Continue reading Fragments from Harrow House…
In Gothic fiction truth isn’t delivered cleanly or conveniently. It’s concealed in walls, sealed in letters, drowned in wells, locked in cupboards and buried in gardens – and it waits in all those places because it must. Buried truths aren’t narrative tricks, they’re the engine of Gothic fiction. From crumbling houses to unreliable narrators, the … Continue reading Buried Truths…
March’s Worm Moon tonight marks the slow thaw of the earth. As soil softens and frost loosens its grip, worms rise again, turning and aerating the ground that’s been locked tight for months. In truth, it’s an unglamorous name, right? Earthy and faintly unsettling. But entirely appropriate, nonetheless. As the ground warms, it releases what … Continue reading The Worm Moon…
March! Here we are caught between worlds. The ground’s still cold, but something restless stirs beneath it. Buried roots, perhaps? Buried memories? Buried truths? Spring doesn’t arrive all at once with grandeur. It creeps in on stealthy cat’s paws so as not to rouse all things still sleeping. And within this space where winter and … Continue reading The Season of Secrets…
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…
R. H. DIXON 