Top Thirteen Ghost Songs

I celebrated Halloween earlier this week with my Top Twenty Horror Films, but I also wanted to do something to mark the day itself so I started collecting ghost songs with the aim of compiling a Top Ten. Then I realised there were more than 10 essential ghost songs, so I bumped it up to 13 in honour of the day. As mentioned previously, I'm a supreme triskaidekaphobic, but this is the one day of the year that such bad luck cancels itself out. You remember how on Buffy, no self-respecting vamp or ghoul would be seen dead causing trouble on Halloween? It's the same principle.

Even with 13 positions in my Top Ten, I still had to leave out a bunch of great ghost songs, including haunted offerings by Aimee Mann, Gene, Tom Waits, Prefab Sprout, the Manics, Richard Thompson, The White Stripes and others. Not to mention Cherry Ghost, the Ghosts and Phil... Spector.

If you're interested in Ghost Rider songs, I suggest you click here.




13. The Beautiful South - Woman In The Wall

A man murders his wife and plasters her into the bedroom wall... but the wife gets her revenge, driving him mad with ghostly screams and a wall that drips blood. If only all relationships were that simple.

12. Orange Juice - What Presence?

In the moth eaten gloom of his shabby room, Edwyn Collins sees the strangest manifestiation...

It may just be his imagination.

11. The Smiths - A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours

In which Morrissey becomes the Ghost of Troubled Joe, hung by his pretty white neck some 18 months ago, then travels to a mystical time zone...

There's too much caffeine in your bloodstream
And a lack of real spice in your life

Yeah, man, I know how that goes...

10. Stan Ridgway - Camouflage

In which a young soldier in Vietnam is saved from an ambush by an awfully big marine who cries "Semper Fi!" and then turns out to have died the previous evening.

He was an awfully strange marine.

9. Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost Of Tom Joad

In which Bruce calls upon the spirit of Steinbeck's classic hero to stand up for the disenfranchised of modern day America. Not so much a ghost story as a requiem for an age long gone...

8. Godley & Creme - Under Your Thumb

A man takes refuge from a storm in the last compartment of a stationary train... but someone follows him on board... the spirit of a woman whose only escape from an oppressive relationship was to take her own life...

7. Laura Marling - Ghosts

These are just ghosts that broke my heart before I met you.

6. Jellyfish - The Ghost At Number One

I will defend Jellyfish as a great 90s rock-pop institution, but on reflection the lyrics to this song are very silly.

5. Ray Parker Jr. - Ghostbusters

I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts

4. John Leyton - Johnny Remember Me

Joe Meek's finest 2 minutes 38 seconds?

One of many so-called "death discs" from the 60s (see also Leader Of The Pack, Dead Man's Curve, Last Kiss et al. ... I've got a whole album of them at home), although this is one of the few wherein the crash victim comes back, with haunting consequences.

3. R Dean Taylor - There's A Ghost In My House

Another rave from the grave by Holland Dozier Holland.

See also The Fall's version.

2. Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff - it's me, Cathy, I've come home... let me in your window...

1. The Specials - Ghost Town

Not a town full of ghosts, but a town that's a ghost of its former self... this is still one of the spookiest records you'll ever hear...

Her Fearful Symmetry

How many reviews of Her Fearful Symmetry will begin with the reviewer telling you how much they loved Audrey Niffenegger's previous book, The Time Traveller's Wife?

And how many of those reviewers will then go on to tell you that however much they enjoyed Niffenegger's latest... it's not quite as satisfying as her debut?

I'd like to buck that trend, but I'd be lying if I did. Partly it's the downbeat subject matter of this second book - a story that literally spends the majority of its time hanging round graveyards like a moody Goth. Partly it's the characters - precocious twins Julia and Valentina, weak-willed romantic Robert Fanshaw and agoraphobic OCD shut-in Martin Wells... none of whom are quite as easy to warm to as Henry DeTamble and his eponymous missus. The best character in this story actually dies in the book's opening line - though fortunately that's not the end of Elspeth Noblin. Unable to move on, she haunts her former apartment (now bequeathed to her twin nieces from the States), trying to come to terms with her spooky new status... while secretly pining for a way back to the land of the living.

The story is slow to get going, though not unpleasant reading. Niffenegger spends a long time letting us grow to like - if not ever love - her characters, so that when the plot does begin to twist in unexpected directions, we're carried along. There is however one major plot twist which takes a huge amount of swallowing, and your enjoyment and satisfaction with this novel will depend wholly on whether or not you're able to force that down. If you can, there's a lot to admire about this book. If not... you might end up quitting three-quarters of the way through. Which would be a shame. But to say any more would spoil the plot for everybody. You pays your money, you takes your chances...

Sleep No More

I first heard about LTC Rolt's Sleep No More a few years ago in an article on classic British ghost stories. Unfortunately the book was out of print and the only copies I could find on either Amazon or eBay were going for silly money. Earlier this year I noticed Rolt's anthology had been republished and added it to my wishlist, thinking I'd get round to it soon. It quickly went out of print again (a small run, perhaps, and unexpected demand) but luckily I managed to secure a copy before the prices started rising.

Tom Rolt was a writer between the 1940s and 70s who specialised in factual books about the history of British railways, canals and industry, as well as biographies of famous engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Telford. But he was also a fan of the supernatural, and wrote a number of creepy short stories that combined his various interests in macabre fashion.

Here are stories of haunted mines and foundries, tragic railway tunnel disasters, lonely moors with mysterious buildings that appear from nowhere in the fog, remote islands with eerily lit castles, and cars that break down miles from nowhere on stormy nights. Atmosphere is everything in Rolt's writing, and his detailed knowledge of the subject matter lends these short tales a chilling authenticity. Like John Wyndham, Rolt is writing of a Britain that's hardly recognisable nowadays, yet despite his rather middle-class leanings he's unafraid to venture into darker territory when the story requires.

In her introduction, Susan Hill mentions Rolt's love of MR James, which shines through in these stories. But while many of James's stories were set in towns and cities, Rolt ventures away from civilization to investigate the creepier corners of the British isles. If you've ever found yourself lost and alone on misty moorland - or stared into the darkness of an old abandoned railway tunnel - these are the stories for you.