I once answered a call for submissions based on ghost stories of my local area. Now, the funny thing with Caithness is: most people seem to believe in - and many people will share stories about how they've witnessed - supernatural happenings around the county. However, there aren't many well-known stories. Of course, there's the standard young-maiden-falling-out-of-castle-window story for at least two of the castles up here, and there's the eerie story of the man whose brother locked him up in Castle Sinclair Girnigoe with no food. Both characters feature in Caithness ghost stories. But it's high time someone actually explored the individual's ghost stories. In fact, that's something I might do, if I ever actually get sufficient time on my hands! Where are the stories which are connected to the "ordinary" buildings? We've been sharing our Stempster Spectres in our monthly newsletters and, believe me, there are plenty of those! A little further...
For today's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm delighted to be sharing this flash fiction piece from Judith. Set in the realm of magical realism, this is a story of Ancient Greece... The Mermaid of the Aegean Thessalonike’s sigh as she awakens becomes the wind upon the waves, spiralling over the deep. The foam is her hair: the curls she inherited from her father… she still feels the water which washed them, trickling from the flask. She had laughed at how it tickled her scalp and ran into her ears as her brother poured it onto her head, his own curls bent over hers in devoted concentration. It was that memory which had propelled her from the earth and into the sea when word came of his death, casting herself into the ocean to escape a world without him. Yet she had awoken from sleep not death, her body and soul still united in the deep… and the enduring significance of that flask excruciatingly clear. Her wrath at him for destroying her death split the sea into grey ribbons, and her s...