The Ghosts of Travels Past
As the year ends and another begins, it’s easy to fall into sentimental ruminations. Such thoughts insidiously creep into the mind as nostalgia nudges around the edges of one’s brain. Memories are ghosts. Some are more welcome than others. Prior to the pandemic, I frequently traveled overseas. Many of those trips included sights and sites that relate to horror fiction and/or the supernatural. In Prague, for example, I saw a terrific statue of Franz Kafka, a large and unsettling skull sculpture, and a poster for a stage production of Dracula.
Theatre vampires were a part of a visit to Vienna where I saw Tanz Der Vampire, a musical version of Roman Polanski’s 1967 film The Fearless Vampire Killers. At the show’s intermission, vampy ladies offered red colored libations served in vials. Their sales pitch was a questioning “Blut?” To which I courteously replied, “Nein, danke.” There was a different sort of audience involvement in London during the play The Woman in Black. English schoolgirls who may have been plants for all I know, added to the excellent production’s eerie ambience by screaming at appropriate moments. It was all great fun and punctuated the experience without detracting from the play’s intensity. I later bought a poster of the play from a London theatre memorabilia shop and don’t mind in the least that the cast listed on the poster differs from the production I saw. The design is sufficiently arty and creepy to still give me pleasant chills each time I look at it.
Among other prized possessions associated with the travels is a Royal Doulton Toby Mug depicting Count Dracula. I coveted it while in London but wound up purchasing it later at a Doulton store at a Northern California outlet mall. From Dresden I acquired a delightful figurine depicting a creature from one of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. Two spooky masks were added over time to walls in my home: a demon from Japan and a gnarled wood visage of a Swiss crone-witch.
While the acquisitions are reminders of great times abroad, memories are the best souvenirs. During one of many visits to the United Kingdom, and my second time in England’s Lake District, there was a journey to awe inspiring Castlerigg Stone Circle. It was a magical experience to stand among the ancient stones with the backdrop of dramatic mountains and weather that threatened a downpour at any second. It was a perfect pagan atmosphere and I felt quite at home. Each year that I went to England I always spent time with renowned ghost hunter Peter Underwood. Our first meeting was when I was a university student who had not traveled overseas before. We met at a private club where he was a member and had tea and sandwiches. When the tea arrived, he asked “Will you be Mother, or should I?” Since I hadn’t a clue about what he meant, I said, “You be Mother,” and he proceeded to pour for us. During our conversation, he did an uncanny imitation of Boris Karloff which frightened me a bit. Over the course of our lengthy friendship, there were lovely lunches at his home in Bentley prepared by his dear wife Joyce and meetings of The Ghost Club (he was then President) in London. A couple of times we met in other places. Paris and a side jaunt to Versailles, and Warsaw. Our last get together was at London’s Sherlock Holmes Pub. It was fitting that a quintessential Englishman would choose to lunch at a pub dedicated to one of the most iconic figures in British literature. Peter passed away in 2014. But he’s still with me through memories that I treasure.
Whatever the future may hold for me in terms of again venturing overseas, I am eternally grateful for those experiences I had. They nourished my cravings for things that were culturally different yet made me feel comfortable in a niche reserved for those of us with an appreciation for the other-worldly.
