It’s been a while, but here we are back at the Hooting Owl
Inn.
You’ll recall that one of the guest rooms at the inn is
occupied by three ghosts; the Headless Horseman, the Wailing Woman and Ernie
the horse. As you know, every serious blogger does interviews, and as I am dead
serious, I can think of no more suitable subjects to interview than the
apparitions that haunt The Hooting Owl. So here goes. The first is a repeat,
the second is new and the horse I will interview shortly.
INTERVIEW WITH THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN AND THE WAILING WOMAN
Resident Ghosts at The Hooting Owl Inn
C.A.M: So, Headless Horseman, I guess the question that a
lot of people ask you is, how did you lose your head?’
HEADLESS HORSEMAN: Please, just call me Headless. And no,
apart from Ernie, my horse, nobody has asked me that. In fact, nobody’s asked
me anything since I lost my head. Mostly when they see me folk just gibber, or
wet their pants, they don’t usually start up a conversation.
So thank you for taking an interest, and in answer to your
question, it was like this. One afternoon in the winter of 1648, me and Ernie
was galloping home across Bludangore Moor. I was thinking about what to have
for my tea, when all of a sudden, there we was in the middle of this battle.
Well, you could’ve knocked me down with a pikestaff! I had no idea there was
going to be a battle on. There’d been nothing about it in the papers or
anything. But we was right in the thick of it, with blokes jabbing each other
with pikes and blasting away at each other each with muskets. Then there were
the cannons. Don’t ask me about the cannons.
WAILING WOMAN: No, don’t ask him about the cannons.
C.A.M: I won’t.
HEADLESS H: The cannons was the worst of it. Thumping great
balls whizzing around, knocking the stuffing out of folk and making this smoky
stink you wouldn’t believe.
WAILING W: Headless believes it was a cannon ball that
knocked his head off.
HEADLESS H: Well something did, that I do know. First I’m
alive, then I’m not. One minute I’ve got my head on, next minute here’s me
groping around and there’s my head watching me look for it. Lucky for me, my
horse was dead as well.
WAILING W: But perhaps not so lucky for the horse.
C.A.M: I can see that.
HEADLESS H: Well I couldn’t see nothing, not with my eyes
being in my head and my head not being on my shoulders. But having my mouth in
it as well, my head had the brains to sing out to my horse.
“Ernie! Ernie!” it went. And Ernie, dead but still with his
head on, trotted over to my head and stood over it until I’d got down and
picked it up. I tried sticking it back on, but it wouldn’t stay put, so in the
end I sat it on the saddle in front of me.
CAM: And when was it you realised you were a ghost?
HEADLESS H: Well, I could tell something was up. The battle
finished very sudden like. Both sides ran off screaming and it was hard to say
who’d won.
It was Ernie who twigged. “I think it’s us,” he said. “I
think we’re ghosts.”
That’s the first thing about being a ghost, you can have a
conversation with your horse. The second thing is that you’re supposed to spend
the rest of eternity haunting the place where you died. But the battlefield was
empty, it was perishing cold and starting to get dark.
“Blow this for a lark,” I said. “Let’s go and find somewhere
more comfortable to haunt.”
So we galloped across the moor until we came to The Hooting
Owl Inn. There was a notice that said, “No Ghosts and No Horses in the
Bedrooms”.
WAILING W: The ‘no ghosts’ bit was because of me. I’d been
haunting the place for three hundred years. They couldn’t get rid of me, but
they tried to put a stop to any more ghosts.
C.A.M: And the ‘no horses’ part?
HEADLESS H: How many inns do you know of that allow horses
in the bedrooms?
Well, what with getting caught in a battle, having my
head knocked off and missing my tea, I’d had enough for one day. And so had
Herbert. So we just jumped through an upstairs window. It wasn’t open, but that
didn’t matter. The third thing about being a ghost is that you can do all this
floating stuff; straight through solid wall and windows. It scares anybody who
sees you do it, but it’s handy for getting around.
WAILING W: Well, if I’d been alive, I would’ve died when
this oik on a horse came sailing through my window.But when we realised we were
all….thingummies…
C.A.M: Ghosts?
WAILING W: Apparitions…we decided we’d be room-mates,
including Ernie. We’ve been haunting this inn together ever since.
C.A.M: No doubt you have an interesting story yourself,
Wailing Woman. Perhaps we can talk to you next time. In the meantime, thank you
headless, for talking to us today.
HEADLESS H: Pleasure. And Ernie does interviews an’ all. You
can always talk to Ernie.
C.AM: I would love to talk to Ernie sometime soon. But for
now, thank you again, ghosts of the Hooting Owl. We look forward to talking to
you again
