How much spookier can it get? (London)

Whenever I’m early for an appointment (e.g., teaching), I’d kill time by diving into the nearest charity shop and almost invariably emerge with an armful of books.  

One of those is Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James (published 1931, and with stories set in the 1800s even).  It then got left sitting around for ages (like all such purchases) — easily ten years, I’d say.

I recently returned to my reading habit, in an effort to de-clutter my flat.  

First thing I saw on the front cover picture of the Ghost Stories book is a moonlit path winding through a forest, with a female figure on it, a bit like an illustration out of Red Riding Hood.  It looked just like the route I used to take from Pymble station back to my ex-schoolmate Wilson’s house in Sydney when I was visiting in 2002.  The female figure could well have been me.

Opened to the first story, and it was set near Auch (date: 1883).  Auch is this little town 6km from the French farm that I’d been going to since 1996.  Most French people, even those from the southern half of France, have not heard of Auch.

I finished reading the book in November last year.

BBC’s Radio 4 has a long-running soap opera, The Archers, broadcast since 1 January 1951, set in a farming community somewhere in the Midlands, England.  

In the episodes running up to Christmas just gone, one of the story lines included the character Jim Lloyd, a retired academic, being asked to put on a series of ghost-story telling performances in the attic of this grand manor house hotel as a form of Xmas entertainment, to earn some income for the hotel.  We're not actually treated to the full performances.

Three of those story-telling sessions ended up being used as actual 15-minute slots (not just in the soap opera) on Radio 4, at 6pm on Monday 30 Dec, Tuesday 31 Dec, and Wednesday 1 Jan.  I’d missed the Monday one — not that I was particularly trying to catch them.  

Was home before 6pm on Tuesday, New Year’s Eve, so decided to tune in.  Within the first two lines, I had identified it as one of the stories in that Collected Ghost Stories book.  The end credits confirmed this.  The Monday and Wednesday ones were not by the same author, by the way.  

What are the odds of that, I ask you!!  

Of the three recitals on offer, I had to go and choose the Tuesday one which featured a story I'd read.  

Of all the ghost stories published out there, one of the three (a very narrow range) had to come from a book that I’d bought at random at a charity shop a decade ago and only decided to read a month before the broadcast.  What had prompted me to read that one and not some other book?!

A book published in 1931, too, which is generally too ancient to be still floating around in the market.  

My hair stood on end, not because of the ghost element but all the spookiness of the coincidences raised by this one book alone!  

(London, 2019)