It is Christmas Eve, and we are in our darkest hour, where light is so very essential.
It is so dark that electric lights, which stand between us and inky black oblivion, are more essential than at any other time. How did we fare before one could flick a switch, and flood a room with light?
We were far more lightless. It puts me in mind of London’s Underground: one of the great achievements of the city’s transport infrastructure. Using it, we can flit in sharp suits or theatre going gladrags from station to station, bypassing the downtrodden streets above, plummeting deep below the earth to hurtle rattling through cavernous purpose-built tunnels.
Like all tunnels, they were built in gloom, both physical and spiritual. These breathtaking feats of engineering were achieved on the backs of poor labourers burrowing in the early times, with just with picks and shovels.
Later, techniques became more effective; but that did not stop a very old entity indeed making an appearance, right in the heart of the swinging sixties.
The Victoria Line is an extremely deep-level railway tunnel which runs from the South to the North East of London. Construction began on the line in 1962 and continued for ten years. And at one point during that construction, the men downed their tools and refused to work any longer.
The reason, it seems, was a Balrog.
The Balrog, you see, predates Tolkien by centuries, probably millennia. A balrog is a mythological great lurking presence who resided deep in the earth, and its inclusion in our storytelling preceeds the arrival of Christianity on our shores.
I have heard that the workers on the Victoria Line saw and sensed a deeper darkness as they worked so far from the hubbub of he surface, down there in London’s bowels. This darkness, they might tell you, had a personality, and that personality was not a pleasant one.
And so they simply refused to work, and made all haste to the surface of the world, where all is light and sound and absence of Balrog.
I have no record of how The British Transport Commission resolved the dispute. Phil loves the story and brings it out this time of year for an airing.
I cannot claim to have met much that is supernatural and malevolent.
But there was one time: and as it is Christmas Eve, maybe it is time to indulge in a bit of regaling. This, I must tell you, is a true story. I made sure I dragged as many other staff into the incident as possible, and they will stand surety for my good character, and tell you I am not, after all, as mad as a box of frogs.
I managed a haunted mansion for three years, three nights a week. It is a theatre and arts complex with a four hundred year old, troubled history. My job was to run the place complete with cinema, recital room, restaurant, theatre and workshops.
One night we discovered a hitch: in the Recital Room, a candlelight madrigal concert was to be held: and no-one could find the programmes.
We hunted high and low, left messages with programmers and then I thought: I know, maybe there’s a copy on a computer upstairs.
Up I went, into the deserted offices housed in the attic space. The office I needed was at a deeply troubled corner of the house. I did not know it at the time, but unsettling events were the norm up there on the third floor.
I began my work, in a room right next to the cavernous roof space. The offices surround this, but it remains as a great central storage space for forty years’ worth of accumulated bohemian artistic artefacture.
It does not have a pleasant feel: one generally feels uneasy there and one never knows why. Folklore has it there is a room shut up there, inaccessible to us all. When the first director reopened it in the seventies he was overcome by inexplicable and overwhelming grief, and ordered it closed, never to be opened again.
As I searched the computer, I became aware that about once every two minutes, an unsettling, reverberating crash was coming from the roofspace. It made the floor tremble. It felt, inexplicably, furious.
That’s funny, I thought, what can that be? But I had a job to do and I continued riffling and did my best to ignore it.
I returned downstairs to find the programmes had been found at the Box Office. But that sound: it worried me. Could there be something wrong with the fabric of the building?
At times like this, a general needs his army. I grabbed a couple of security guards- lovely chaps – and another house manager off duty, who was drinking in the bar. We proceeded upstairs to investigate.
We waited in the middle of the office. I thought the sound had stopped, but that menacing crash resumed, every couple of minutes.
One of the guards opened the door to the roofspace to check the direction of the sound. For a full ten minutes, we waited, and there was not one sound.
We closed the door. And almost immediately, it resumed.
And suddenly, in the corridor outside, the lights began to flicker on and off.
We all saw it. And we shot out. The other house manager hurried obsessively from one light to another, checking the bulbs. All were perfectly fine, and all should be on.
And a pattern emerged to the behaviour of the lights. Whichever one I was standing beneath: that would go off. the rest would remain alight. If I moved to another light, it would go off, the others would return to normality.
We fled downstairs to the homely buzz of the ground floor, thankful to be away from that strange noise and those lights. We had checked boilers, electrics, anything that could be accountable, and found precisely no cause for that menacing building’s behaviour.
I messaged the Operations Manager, fearful that a fire could start or some other calamity could befall the ancient building. He met my news with a wry smile. Oh, he said, it’s nothing to worry about. It is probably not natural.
Nothing could surprise him after managing the building for twenty years.
There are lights which behave, dark places where light fears to go, and lights which seem to have an eerie life of their own.
I am staring, right now, at a diminutive Christmas tree decorated with lights by my children.
Have yourself a light-filled Christmas, won’t you?
Kate Shrewsday 
Could it be a locked-up Mrs Rochester?
I do love a spooky tale 🙂
Merry Christmas, Kate.
If it is, someone’s given her a battering ram and a couple of deranged henchmen to add a bit of welly…
Hope Christmas has some moments of joy in store for you 🙂
Morning Kate
Just caught up with your blogging, so here’s a bundle of comments for you!
1. I enjoyed yesterday’s flume story, and also Nicky’s reply. Must dig out a copy of the photo taken at the bottom of the slide to show you – Nicky looks like a drowned rat!!!
2. Hope you’re all having a fab time in the forest hideaway – I like the little Christmas tree that you’ve taken with you, although judging by the picture you do seem to have taken more lights than tree!
3. Re the underground, I use it a fair amount these days, normally to find my way around London starting from St Pancras now that I am a convert to the fast train in from Ebbsfleet. I was at Baker Street station recently, reading a poster explaining proudly that it was the first underground station to be built. Got me to thinking that I hope there was another one following close behind in construction. Doesn’t seem much point to have just the one, does there?
4. So, with your amazing record of daily blogs, do you at least award yourself one day off per year, or can we expect another instalment tomorrow ….?
Merry Christmas xxx
Hi Miff 🙂 1.Look forward to the photo; 2. You have been most observant and yes, there are considerably more lights than our little tree needs. But it fulfils the letter of the law. 3. Lonely Baker Street: what a start for a novel! I know there are lost stations down there which lie derelict. Fascinating subject. And 4; I am more addicted to blogging than you can imagine and may well post right through Christmas. It’s a wonderful way to reflect:-)
Merry Christmas to your wonderful household, Miff xxxx
A haunted mansion, eh? You must send an employment application to my ex wife as she can scare the paint off the walls. Christmas Eve – darkest hour. Your PM Sir WC said in was in 1940 as was ours in 1777. Yes, I see you qualify that, but our very brightest day is Easter morning. Agreed? Mother, to be 87 Jan 26, has that very same phone as in your photo by her side end table. If only she could hear well enough to use the thing.
I think the mansion has no vacancies for scary entities, Carl….they have plenty…our darkest day is Dec 21st, when it gets dark at 4-ish. Before telly and wireless it was either tell ghost stories or go to bed. My countrymen always seemed to prefer spectres. And the phone belongs to the hotel, but it is very square and sensible and not one of us has managed to break it yet.
And I agree, Easter Day is definitely our finest and brightest hour 🙂
Such a wonderfully rendered post, Kate. Worthy of ghosts of Christmas pasts.
We had a doorbell in our old house that only rang when it rained, only, no one was ringing it. Any bit of dampness and ding dong, the doorbell rang. Unfortunately, it usually rained on Halloween. ha!
Enjoy and Happy Christmas.
Doesn’t stop it being unsettling, does it, Penny? With any luck our Gremlins had a similar source….have a wonderful Christmas on the Cutoff 🙂 Your visitors – and their pictures – were truly spectacular and took my breath away.
You always have the best stories. After staying up late last night to watch the 1930’s verson of the Christmas Carol, I am a little creeped out now and am looking around at my lights in a new way. I hope they continue to behave themselves.
Happy Christmas to you!
People think because we see Dickens’ Christmas Carol so much it is not frightening, but one look back at the original tale and I am quavering under the duvet…and a merry Christmas to you, your loved ones and Shiva, Kristine. Have a wonderful time.
A ghostly tale . . . worthy of Dickens.
Thanks, Kate.
Like you, I am apt to post through the holidays. Although today’s post has thus far evaded me.
They can be like eels, these posts, can’t they, Nancy? But when they’re ready to be found they are often a whole entity ready to write. May yours be just that tonight. Have a great day tomorrow 🙂
🙂
Happy Christmas, Kate! I’m so glad I found your blog this Autumn.
And to you, Pseu, and likewise….. 🙂 Hope you and the family have a great day.
happy christmas, kate!!
You too, Meli 🙂
Kate – When at Easter we used to have Midnight Mass, it was, of course, dark, and all the church lights were extinguished. We watched as a small flame was lit, which grew into a small fire. This showed how light shines in darkness. At Christmas, the darkest time of the year, the Light of the World was born, in Christian tradition. I hope the light will shine in your family all the coming year.
Happy Christmas and a good new year.
Love Dad
Thanks Dad, what a lovely reflection on light.
Very important stuff.
lovely, eerie, chlling story, ikate. thank you. And reminds me of a time in the “underground” of Seattle, when my family and I walked into an “antique” store. My son-in-law and I both emerged outside the store at almost the same moment a bit green around the gills. IWe discovered that we’d both been hit with vertigo and nausea at the same place in the crowded aisles of the store – one particular artifact seemed to carry fearsome energy.
The darkenss makes thelight that much more reassuring…
It certainly does, Deborah. I am sitting next to those Christmas lights as I type. There are more things in heaven and earth….