‘Truth is everything, even in a ghost story’

Maybe because I’ve always been one of those people who feel themselves on the edge of things, who struggle at times to find a solid footing in life and whose world tends to exist a lot in glimpses, my antenna has always stirred at the first suggestion of anything even vaguely supernatural, the sense that there might be something more to what we see and hear than is immediately apparent.

It’s been that way for me from as far back as I can remember. And even now, sit me in the half-dark with a glass of something nourishing to hand, a turf fire burning and the hum of a gale lapping at the eaves, have somebody who’s tucked a good few years behind them lean forward with the confession of some recollected tale that needs the late hour for its telling, and I’ll find contentment.

Such stories come in low, broken murmurs until the narrative finds its beat, swearing to the truth of that night the whole household heard the Banshee, hours ahead of the morning telegram that brought news of an uncle’s tragic sudden death in Boston, or of how the hooves of horses could on October or November nights be heard thundering up that empty country lane, and how the hounds would go into fits any time they had to walk in that direction after dark.

Growing up, the minds of old people seemed thick with such yarns, and as a small child, living with my grandmother ensured that I had a rich and ready supply. She died in her early sixties, which by today’s standards is no age, but to my young eyes she was ancient. My love of stories I owe to her, as well as whatever understanding I might have as to how they should be told. At four or five years old I’d sit enraptured at her knee while she spun yarns of fairies, deaths in the family, Jack O’Lantern and the Black and Tans, and about her own father, the kindest and most gentle man she’d ever known, who survived two wars, South Africa and France, in order to put food on the table for his family and who was broken finally by the death of his 14-year-old son, her brother, after the child had taken a bad fall from the back of a pet goat.

I got them all, in graphic, gory detail, and the things I couldn’t quite comprehend were carefully explained to me in ways that they never would be again once I finally found myself boxed into a classroom. And while the walls of my world might have been flat and grey, I quickly realised that surfaces weren’t necessarily all there was to see.

Later, of course, books played a big part. The great Greek poet, Giorgos Seferis, when once asked to be specific on his essential writers, responded: “Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.” I’ve always been a voracious reader, and certainly, at least in terms of ghost stories, the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, MR James, Sheridan le Fanu, Dickens and (for my generation, the impossible to either miss or ignore) Stephen King all stand tall among those lambs I’ve devoured. It may even be that aspects of their approaches to horror echo within my new novel, The Dead House, but I know for certain that no shadow falls as heavily across the pages as that of my grandmother’s.

This is a story that has been fermenting in one of my mind’s darker corners going on for decades. I’d even tried a few times to get it down on paper, but it resisted my best efforts. And then, in the summer of 2011, I got to spend some time exploring the Beara Peninsula with a friend of mine, a Taiwanese writer named Ying Tai Chang. That August we had everything, glorious days and torrential ones, and it was on those roads, feeling how the landscape held a kind of eternity of silence and how, within the most momentary shifting of the light, its smiles could turn so viciously to screams, that I understood what I’d all along been lacking – namely, the character of a distinct and specific place.

Within days of returning home I was neck-deep in a first proper draft of what, after the usual twists and turns and days of doubt, has since become The Dead House.

Writing this book felt, in a number of ways, like treading new ground, not only because it stands now as my first novel after three collections of short stories but also because my usual tendency is towards stark realism. That’s how I view the world, and that is what fits my mindset. Yet it’s also true that the best of my work has always pondered the currents that tear families and relationships apart, and has attempted to weigh and make sense of the things that go unseen and unsaid. Seen from such a perspective, a novel like The Dead House merely advances such considerations to their logical next level. So if the ground appears fresh and new then there is also comfort for me in knowing that it is still embedded with old stones.

Given the subject matter, it was necessary to reflect and explore a reality that had fallen more than slightly askew, but wielding the first person narrative as a weapon still made it possible to adhere to strictures of the visible world. Truth is everything, even in a ghost story. Maybe especially in a ghost story. It has to do with that sense of belief, even if it’s only the teller who is convinced.

Actually, The Dead House might be more accurately described as the story of a haunting, because whether what's happening within its pages is a genuine echoing of the distant past or just some deviant state suggested by an artistic mind suffering the trauma of a slow breakdown is, I hope, a question for the reader to consider. Even beyond its paranormal qualities, though, this is intended as a story of friendship, love, and the eroding effects of solitude – with all its suggested shadows and silences – on a fragile and wounded heart. And the ghosts, if they exist at all, are merely a bonus.
The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan is published by O'Brien Press and will be reviewed in The Irish Times on May 20th