Haunting places - by Lu Hersey

Have you ever wondered if you haunt places by mistake? Perhaps in recurring dreams about houses or landscapes you once knew well, which change and morph each time you find yourself there? 

Rosia Bay - now derelict

At the moment I’m in a kind of limbo, having just finished writing one book and mulling over the idea for the next one. It's a conjuring process, which seems to be dredging up strange, convoluted dreams about places I once lived.

Perhaps binge reading Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co series (fabulously feisty young ghost hunters if you haven’t encountered them) and watching hours of Star Trek Discovery (which has a parallel universe theme and a generous dollop of quantum physics thrown in) isn’t helping, but it’s started me wondering about dream landscapes. Do others see us there while we're dreaming?

As a child, my family moved a lot. By the time I was 11, I’d lived in ten different places and gone to various different schools. I repeated this ingrained pattern of constantly moving in my early adulthood, and at least four of the houses I once lived in no longer exist in the real world. But they all still haunt my dreams - and I wonder if I haunt them.

My longest running recurring dreams are set in Gibraltar. My father was in the navy, and we moved there when I was seven and stayed for three years (which was the longest posting he ever had in one place). I still dream about it quite regularly - the house we lived in, the old harbour where we went swimming, and the old library.

By the house, in my favourite tree. My den was right at the top.

We lived there back in the days when parents didn’t worry so much about the whereabouts of their children. My mother hadn't a clue where I was much of the time. Her main concern was that I stayed out from under her feet as much as possible – though even she might have balked at the hours me and my friends spent in places marked MOD PROPERTY – KEEP OUT. Gibraltar is (or was) a place riddled with caves and tunnels from all periods of history. All incredibly dangerous, very scary, and a total magnet for children.

Thanks to the advent of Google Maps, it’s now possible to look up places almost anywhere in the world. Which is a good thing in some ways, bad in others. It’s easy not to revisit places you once knew if you have to make the effort to physically travel there, but with Google Maps you can simply take a peek from your writing desk. So being between books, and having a bit of time on my hands, I made the mistake of revisiting online.

The house, with its amazing view of Spain and Africa across the Straights of Gibraltar, and the garden with my favourite tree of all time next to it – gone. Completely covered by a block of luxury apartments. The den I made at the top of the tree and spent so many hours sitting in, now only exists in my memory.

Or does it? Do I still sit there, up in the ghostly branches, in someone’s luxury apartment?

Recovering from the shock of the demolished house, I searched for the harbour we swam in. Rosia Bay was where Nelson’s ship,Victory, came in with his body after the Battle of Trafalgar. A place where sailing ships once bought their victuals - and where I spent so many afternoons after school (which finished at 1pm in the summer because of the heat), swimming, lying up on the flat rooftops of the old victualers with my friends, eating penny chews. 

Rosia harbour - I'm about to topple in at the family swimming gala. 

I discovered the harbour is completely abandoned, up for development. I found a picture of the steps I used to go down every day to fish, or swim, or jump on a lilo, the concrete now crumbling into the sea. 

Yet I spent so many hours there, floating between the scary, barnacled, sea urchin covered pillars of the pier, gazing down into the scary depths with my mask and snorkel. And at night I still go there, encountering sea monsters coming up from the deep. Will the people who buy the new apartments still see a ghost me, swimming frantically to the rafts that once floated out in the bay, hoping sharks won't catch me?

So with yet another part of my history wiped out, I googled the library. How I loved that library. We went there at least once a week and it’s where I found everything I read back then, from Enid Blyton to Tom’s Midnight Garden. There was a pergola outside, covered in wisteria that bloomed in the spring, and I hoped one day I could have a pergola just like that.

At least the building still stands. It’s no longer a public lending library, but a kind of museum – and a picture I found shows the pergola, or part of it, still standing. Good. I can still walk there sometimes at nights without being in someone's apartment.

If you happen to visit Gibraltar anytime, you won't be able to go to my old house or climb the tree, or swim in Rosia harbour. But you can go to the Garrison Library. If you do, maybe you'll see me there, a shade in the shade of the wisteria.

If so, please let me know. I've been wondering.

Lu Hersey

luhersey.com

https://twitter.com/LuWrites