It was tradition to tell each other a ghost story during the Victorian age on cold, dark wintry nights. Now Liverpool based community interest company ArtsGroupie want to resurrect the tradition of the Christmas ghost story.
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00:00 He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief soliloquy and
00:04 as he passed quickly towards the sitting room to fetch them from the cupboard he
00:07 saw out of the corner of his eye the indistinct outline of a figure standing
00:13 on the stairs. A Liverpool based arts organisation are bringing Christmas past
00:18 to Christmas future with the forgotten festive Victorian tradition.
00:22 Victorians used to tell get round the fire and tell tales and I know when I
00:26 was a boy my nan would always, she'd always tell us a ghost story, a candle
00:31 light. Now we've got entertainment at our fingertips on our mobile phones with
00:36 Netflix we can go to the cinema and watch all kinds of movies with green
00:40 screen delights. There's nothing better than just getting sat down and listening
00:46 to a story because your imagination is the most disturbing thing really.
00:52 We've been hosting writing workshops in locations across the city. The idea is to
00:57 help people structure how to start to write a ghost story and by the end of
01:03 the hour you'll walk away with at least a page or two of content that you can
01:07 hopefully then shape into a ghost story. What are the key ingredients for a
01:12 spine-chilling story? A good ghost story should really come from a position of
01:17 truth from the author I think. Take for example we've just done a recent
01:23 adaption of the Signalman, one of Charles Dickens stories and the real beauty of
01:27 it is you get a real sense that Dickens was suffering from survivor's guilt from
01:33 a train crash he'd been involved in and that influenced the writing of it. So I
01:37 think a real good ghost story ties into base fears that the author has that are
01:41 then exacerbated and brought out for an audience to have and I think the thing
01:45 with a ghost story is a lot of them people take different things away from
01:50 it especially when it's in writing rather than film because people have
01:54 their own interpretations of it and I think that is what really makes it
01:57 scary people find their own individual fears in them. As well as presenting
02:01 readings at key locations in Liverpool over the coming weeks they've also
02:05 launched their ghost stories competition a spine-chilling celebration of
02:11 creativity and community spirit. The content it needs to be original not so
02:17 cliched you know thinking about the title as well good a good ghost story
02:21 has a clever title that will you'll suddenly realize when you're halfway
02:25 through it's only 500 words so the scare factor needs to be in there as well and
02:30 the winner will get to have their piece performed either they can do it
02:33 themselves or have a trained actor get up on our last performance of ghost
02:38 stories for Christmas at Shakespeare North Playhouse on the 16th of December
02:44 and that has sold out but we've reserved two seats for those for the winner and
02:48 guest. The deadline for the competition is midnight on the 12th of December. It's
02:53 difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins when the causes of the fear
02:57 are not plainly before the eyes. Impressions gather on the surface of the