Nightmare: Two Ghostly Tales

The first story, Nightmare, was first published in an anthology called Beware, Beware. It tells the spooky story of a traveller boy and a horse locked in ice. Here’s how it begins:

Rab isn’t a house person. He lives with his grandad in a hut near the railway lines. He doesn’t always live there; sometimes I don’t see him for weeks or even months, and then he just turns up as if he’s never been away.

Martin Ursell has done the powerful illustrations.

The second story in the book is called Ghost Galleon. It first appeared as a Radio 4 story, with really scary sound effects. I got the idea when I saw a ship sailing across a field in Goole. I later realised it was on a canal, but I couldn’t see the water!

Here’s how it starts:

My home is on famland, in the flat fens of East Anglia. They say that many years ago my farm was sea, and tides rose and fell over the fields that sway with wheat…

Very different, dramatic illustrations for this one, by Paul McCaffrey.