AI Writers

AI is coming so it seems, if it’s not already here.

Computers have been driving trains and landing planes for some time, but now it’s writing novels and drawing some stunning pictures. It’s scary stuff.

There was a particularly downbeat item in the Spectator about it the other day, the End of Writing it said. Now, have no doubt that before long we’ll be able to go to our TV and tell it that we want to watch a Batman v Iron Man movie in the style of Studio Ghibli, and it will be a great film. But I don’t think it’s the end of writing.

For a start, I write because I have something to say. I want to share my thoughts and insights with anyone that will listen. If I was the last surviving human, living in a cave on a planet at the other side of the cosmos, with zero chance of being found by another being, I would still write. AI wouldn’t. AI will fulfil a request against supplied parameters, it will make connections based on algorithms based on existing work and it will compile them in a way that satisfies a user requirement.

If you keep getting exactly what you want, you soon stop wanting it, because it’s there, and you can have it whenever, so it loses its value.

Sure, AI can answer questions and present information very effectively, but that’s not creative. I see AI, in this context, as a development of the audio visual interface. Like the difference between text based output and graphics.

For all I know, AI will set itself the task of tugging on every loose thread and unpicking the fabric of reality, thus answering all of the questions and handing us the moon on a stick, though I can’t help but think of the Nine Billion Names for God whenever computers are put to the ultimate question.

It could happen though, five years from now the AI could have figured it all out and set us on the path toward a Kardishev Type 10 civilization before the end of the decade. I’m not ruling anything out, but if that’s the case, worrying about writing career options is a little redundant.

My point is that although this is coming, I think readers will still want to connect with other humans. Humans will continue to write what they feel, and others will want to read that, and I think that will go on indefinitely.

It is impossible to predict where AI will take us, and where we will take AI. I imagine it will be misused. 1984 gave us the perfect application for such technology, and don’t think we have much defence against it. What will be will be, and I will continue to write about it all the same.

11/01/2023 0

Spooky Muse

I’m a writer but I’ve got to admit, I haven’t been writing as much as I should be. I can’t decide if its apathy or lethargy, but as the pandemic rolls on, and with working full time from home, and raising kids, and all of that TV that needs watching, its hard sometimes just to keep my feet off of the poof and the cork in the bottle. Whatever the problem might be, its absolutely not lack of inspiration. Like most writers I have a collection of high quality note books and journals stuffed from margin to edge, cover to cover, with million dollar ideas. I’m absolutely not short of ideas.

I don’t know what it is but the French have a phrase for it, that thing that we can’t describe or explain, je ne sais pas ce que c’est. I don’t know what it is that is stopping me writing. It could be Writers Block, I’ve had writers block many times before, but this different. Writers Block is what stops me writing when I’m sat at my desk with pen or keys and world enough and time, but this is different, I haven’t even wanted to sit at my desk and write. Insane as it sounds, its true. My desk is the comfiest place in the house. I have a big chair with cushions perfectly moulded to my arse. I have an ergonomically arranged keyboard, not an ergonomic keyboard, I might add, just one that I have placed on my desk in an ergonomic fashion. I am also positioned next to the heater, not that I can afford to have it on, being a writer and stuff.

By now, you’ll be wondering what I’m going on about, whether there is a point to this article. Well there is, because the literary doldrums have broken and I’m back on the keyboard. The Muse, Writer’s Santa as they call it down our way, has paid me a visit and I couldn’t be happier.

I like to think of myself as a ghost story writer, but writing ghost stories doesn’t come easy to me. To take an idea and craft it in such a way as to compel your reader to fear what words will unfurl but to read on nonetheless is a gift I don’t feel I possess, and so I have to work at it, and with Christmas just behind us, I’ve been exposed to many of the greats all over again, and some of the not so greats. Netflix has added ghost stories to its offering and I’ve been working my way through them. I quite enjoyed Ripper Untold, a view not shared by many reviewers, but I thought it captured the period quite well, except for the anachronisms.

I stopped after the first three anachronisms, but screw top wine, electric lamp, and halogen light bulbs in Victoria’s London is enough to take me right out of the story. And the less said about An English Haunting the better, with its 1960s setting and wine cellar of Aldi wines and barcode labels. But these production issues are their’s and not mine, my problem was my muse, and at last it came.

I recently had the house to myself for a few nights while the wife had surgery. When I say ‘to myself’ I mean with the kids, and the floppy eared bunny that eats doors, and all of the creepy crawly things that live in the former outbuilding that we call the bathroom. By house I mean our hundred and fifty odd year old terrace, with its winding creaky staircases, sloping floors, draughty outbuildings and the dank dank cellar. When a loved one goes in for surgery, one can’t help but be faced with our mortality and our frailty, and when left to ones own devices in a creepy old house, one can’t help but think of those hundred and fifty years and all of the lives that have been and went within these walls.

The first night that I was alone I could not settle until I had heard back from hospital that all had gone well, and it was after half past eight when they did. By that time the boys, most unusually, had gone to bed and were asleep, so I poured a glass of wine and enjoyed a few episodes of Shed and Buried, and, while listening to the sounds of the house settle for the night, I imagined what stories the house might give me.

The house is old, and predates things like indoor plumbing, so the bathroom isn’t upstairs, its in a converted outbuilding, and when it rains it leaks. We have a well developed list of repairs to complete.

Being in an outbuilding isn’t ideal after a few drinks, and midnight trips to the bathroom, after a bottle of wine, through the creaky narrow stairs, across the dark kitchen, and out in to the porch, gave me some inspiration I can use.

To get to the bathroom, you have to exit the house, entering the unlit porch that has been built to enclose the otherwise outside bathroom, and that porch has a door with a glass window. Sometimes, when the light is right, when the house is dark and the neighbour’s security lamp is on, there is a shape on that glass window, the shape of a figure silhouetted by the light outside.

This figure is a trick of the light, but it always gives me pause when I see it in the corner of my eye as I’m about to enter the bathroom, and I thought to myself, what if on one of those occasions I dismissed this shadow standing at the door as a trick of the light, it wasn’t a trick of the light. What if the shadowy figure was actually there? What if the door was unlocked? Its easy to be complacent in a sleepy little town such as ours. An unknown figures stands at the door and stares in through the glass and I just walk right by them and get in the shower. Not really my style of story, the physical threat of a live intruder, I’m more toward the other worldly supernatural horror, not least because ghosts don’t need a key.

That first night that I was home alone was unsettled and I got very little sleep, but I did get some, and I know this because of the dreams. Do the departed visit us in our dreams? I’ve heard it said before, but its impossible to know for sure, but during times of high stress, I often dream of my sister and this night was no exception. It was a silly dream, we were both roaming the streets and high rise flats of Sheffield looking for a disreputable man that could obtain a certain part for our car. A silly dream, with unrealistic locations and implausible acts, but I awoke feeling somewhat soothed and in no doubt that it was a dream, unlike the next one.

As I lay in bed trying to get back to sleep, I heard sounds from outside the bedroom, as if someone was creeping through the house. Although we haven’t been here long, enough time has elapsed for me to become familiar with all of the sounds of the house, of which there are many. Often, I am kept awake by a long slow creaking just outside the bedroom door, but I know this to be the door to the attic room. If it is left slightly ajar it will move in the draught from the roof window, creaking loudly as is rocks ever so slightly, and it will do this all night if you let it. But this new sound was different, it was like someone sneaking through the house, most likely just one of the kids going to the toilet or for a glass of milk, which was fine, they didn’t need to be sneaky about it so I decided to get out of bed and talk to them.

Immediately to the left of my bedroom is the narrow stair case to the attic behind that creaky door. I was expecting to find one of the boys on that staircase. My ears were telling me that there was someone on those stairs, but when I pulled open the door, the stairs were empty and the light was off, so the sound must have been coming from somewhere else, but before I could check I heard a new sound, voices.

Hushed voices, but it wasn’t the children, these were adult voices, with American accents. Someone was on a device and watching YouTube. I won’t name them because I’m not sure that I can, but there was a child sat on the bottom step of the stairs on the ground floor. Not the comfiest place to sit, nor the most well hidden. I was cross that they were up at this time, but I could understand why they would have difficulty sleeping, so I called them up gently and told them to turn off the device. They did so without a fuss, and once they were at the top of the stairs I gave them a kiss and sent them on to their room in the attic. I should have taken the device off of them, but I decided it was better to trust them. Before I got back in to bed myself I made another trip to bathroom and noted that shadow on the porch door was gone, and the neighbour’s security lamp that casts it must have been off.

The next morning I mentioned the midnight videos, but neither of them would admit to it. ‘We can’t use our Switches at night, you’ve set a timer, remember’ they said in unison. They were right. I was wise to their late night games and videos and had used the parental settings on the Nintendo Switches to lock them out after 7:30pm. I had no choice but to believe them. It must have been a dream, but it was so real. Dreams usually occur in dreamy places, like the unrealistic representation of Sheffield of my previous dream. Alright, the dream city is real enough at the time, but not afterwards. If the child on the stairs was a dream it all felt very real. The layout of the house was exact, right down to the boxes at the foot of the bed that need to be stepped over because they haven’t yet found a permanent spot at the this new house. I’ve never had a dream that real before, and I remember every detail. Every detail except the child’s face, the face is blank to me now.

And if indeed it was a dream, which it most likely was, why was there a bum mark in the dust? The stairs should be swept at least once a week, but the two minute job has been low on the priorities of late so needed doing. If I had dreamed the child on the stairs, why was there the impression in the dust of a small bottom? We soon established that it wasn’t any bottom that was present in the house. The oldest was too tall to comfortably sit on the lowest step, and the youngest was too particular to sit on a step that needed to be swept.

I have to accept that this was just a very real dream, and the imprinted bottom would have some other explanation, though not necessarily supernatural, fascinated as I am with ghosts and spooky matters, I can’t say that I actually believe in them. I know that the house is old and creaky, and the light does strange things. Since I’ve been aware of the figure I have started to see other outlines in the corner of my eye, but I know these are tricks of the light. The patch of light on my bedroom wall that grows intensely, and then darts across the room and out of the window is nothing more than the headlights of a passing car cast through the lead pattern on the window glass. The strange arc of light in the porch roof is just the moonlight scattered by the glass. My office door that opens itself at random just needs a new catch, and the figure standing in the door way is just my imagination, like that time I watched the movie Ring and imagined the creature Sadoko stood at the foot of my bed and could then no longer picture the bed without her, the imagination is a powerful thing.

So I got to wondering, for my story, what if these things, these spirits that haunt our dreams and dance at the periphery of our vision, what if they need to be let in? What if, in calling for my muse I have opened the door both to and from my imagination, and what if that door cannot be closed? No. When it comes to ideas for spooky stories, I have inspiration wherever I turn my eye.

01/02/2022 0

The Tunnel

There were some weird goings on in Stanfax Tunnel, inexplicable, spooky, things. When it comes to railway maintenance and safety, weird things can’t go on being unexplained, and as I was the Electrical Engineer responsible for that patch of track, it was my job to find that explanation.

The electrification on this line was completed and energised in May this year, and within five days of going live I’d received no less than six incident reports from train crew, and all of them involved some sort of electrical fault.

At first glance, this was the depot’s responsibility, and I forwarded each incident report to the Traction Manager in the plainest English that I could politely use. My line was brand new, plain track, copper conduit throughout the tunnel, load tested, bank tested, resistance tested, you name it. The line was signed off by every expert in the region and cleared just days before the first services used it.

The trains though, they were 1980’s hand me downs with a fresh lick of purple paint. If there was a fault to be found, it could only be on the clapped out 319s they were running. In all fairness, the depot agreed with me, but they insisted that their kit checked out, but as the incidents continued, they reasoned that it must be the hardware in the tunnel itself.

Sometimes the lights would flicker, sometimes the whole tunnel would light up with the electrical blue of twenty five thousand volts arcing across the circuits, and in one instance, a train lost all power and coasted for about one hundred meters in the dark before powering up again. Either way, it was getting ridiculous, and to allay concerns I requested that the Network Management Train, Doctor Yellow, pass through the affected section of tunnel with a full diagnostic survey. As expected the line checked out immaculately and again, attention turned back to the ancient 319s, which at that time were the only electric units using the line. The diesels that operated most of the services were unaffected, which, unfortunately for me, indicated that the problem had to related to the electrics.

Things seemed to settle down though and a few weeks passed without incident; I thought that I had heard the last of the matter. The problem had been resolved maybe, or that they had just decided to suck it up until the new trains were in service, the first batch was due any day. Either way, I had enough going on to happily let this one go.

But then I received an angry phone call, all the way from the Director of Electrical Line Safety. There had been an incident in Stanfax Tunnel, no one hurt, no thanks to me, that much was made clear, and that this was now my number one priority.

Apparently, a class 333, borrowed from the neighbouring Airedale line, had been passing through the tunnel that very morning, the first of its type to do so, when it unexpectedly lost all power. The emergency brakes applied themselves, and, inexplicably, all of the doors opened, on both sides of the train; at the exact same place as the other reported problems. Had this happened on a service train, with commuters crammed in and resting against the doors, let’s just say we were bloody lucky.

For safety, all of the electric trains on the route were stopped immediately, and fortunately that was only a handful. Replacement buses were put on for the passengers where necessary, and I paid a visit to the depot where the trains are maintained to begin a thorough investigation before the press inevitably got involved.

It was good to put a name to a face, and after eight years exchanging emails and conference calls, I finally met Jon Johnson, Traction Manager at Harold’s Heath Maintenance Depot. To be honest, I was expecting a fight, but a kindlier grounded northern bloke you will not find, and not in the least bit confrontational; he was simply relieved that someone ‘upstairs’ was on the case and that the problem was been taken seriously.

‘Stripped it bare I have’ he told me, ‘you name it; I’ve had it off, cleaned it, checked it and had it replaced. These old things are a bit frayed at the edges I’ll grant you, but I can guarantee it’s absolutely one hundred percent electrically sound’.

He took me past a long line of stabled trains, all out of service while the investigation took place, and in to one of the small meeting rooms that lined the workshops. Six of the drivers and a few fitters were sat waiting for me with a desk full of diagrams and technical specifications, schematics, print outs, note pads, laptops and tablet devices. They’d done their homework, and so had I. I came well prepared to thrash this out and that’s exactly what we did.

I won’t labour the technical details, but we looked at everything and anything. If it was electrical, and even if it wasn’t, it had been tested, and they had the documents and reports to prove it. As did I; everything that could go wrong with the power supply I’d checked; every connection was brand new and working properly, the only thing left undone was to take a cab ride in to the tunnel and see the problem for myself, and as all electric trains were suspended from service, we had to make special arrangements.

It took a few phone calls and form filling and faxing, but a return trip through the tunnel was soon authorised at short notice by the Control Centre, and then the discussion turned odd.

‘Maybe you’ll see the ghost while you’re in there too’. I looked across the table to see one of the drivers grinning mischievously

‘Not this again lads, we’re all professionals in here, we don’t do ghosts’ Jon’s eyes rolled right round his belief barren head as he tried to nip the discord in the bud, but it was too late, the genie was out of the proverbial worm can

‘Sommat amiss in that bore if you ask me’ another driver piped up.

‘No one asked you Ahmed!’ Jon was doing his best, but it was too late.

‘Aye, keep an eye out for Towelly’

‘Towelly?’ I said; my interest piqued. I knew I couldn’t officially put the problem down to supernatural interference, fun as that would be. Though I wasn’t naturally prone to flights of fancy, I knew only too well the tricks the mind could play, and how in the dim light of the damp tunnels, the light and draughts could fool you; I had stories of my own to tell, but though I’d never suggest anything but a scientific explanation.

I cut my own engineering teeth on the London Underground, and for ten years I worked the night shift down there, walking the tracks with nothing but a flash light to work by. I could be down there for hours by myself, tinkering in some electrical cabinet or other to locate a fault and repair it.

There were breezes that danced across your skin, tickling your hairs, shadows stretched and shrank at the whim of the torchlight, as if elasticated, but the real scare for me wasn’t the loneliness or the dark; you were never really alone. The best word to describe this fear, in the dark, was scurry, there were rats everywhere.

I’m a rational guy, a logical guy, I can focus on the task in hand, but even I had a crazy story to tell. Down in the tunnels near Kings Cross, I had been assigned to a conduit in need of replacement. I was prepping the connectors ready for the new section when I heard a whisper; a distinctly female voice spoke my name. When you’re on your own, underground, in a deep dark, empty tunnel, and when all of your co-workers are men, you take note of something like that. I paused; my breath bated, and listened for any repeat.

The first time I heard it, it was projected, as if a hushed voiced called softly down the tunnel from some small distance, and it echoed gently against the cast iron lining.

My neck hairs stood on end, muscles tensed; I shone the torch about me. Despite the curvature of the tunnel, anyone that near to me should have been visible, lit up by the halogen rig; but all I saw was the tall shadow of a lone rat scurrying by cast against the tunnel wall.

I waited about a minute in absolute silence before I relaxed; normal breathing resumed, but as I exhaled that long held breath, there was a scrape behind me; a foot on the loose stones, and I froze again, and heard my own name whispered, this time in to my ear.

A cold rotten breath chilled my face, and an icy hand touched upon my shoulder, it was more than enough to get me running, and I sped down the track wailing like a banshee.

It feels ridiculous now, and I don’t for a minute believe that whatever it was down there that night was supernatural; everyone in the Night Gang was accounted for, so there was no room for a prankster, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a physical explanation.

No matter how ridiculous these guy’s stories may have sounded to me, I know how easy it can be to believe.

‘Aye’ Another driver said, ‘Towelly’

‘Did you not hear about it last week? Young lass were in the toilet when the lights went out, said she saw someone in the mirror, a man with a towel pulled over his head’…

‘A man with a towel on his head?’ I tried not to laugh.

‘Not the first time neither,’ the same man said.

‘Come off it lads’ Jon said again, ‘that’s enough. Do you want a reputation for the place?’

‘We’ll come off it Jon’ said one of the drivers, ‘If you can say you’ve seen nowt either’

Jon blushed, but said nothing.

We took one of the old 319 units for a quick spin through the tunnel, and even at full speed, it was two minutes before we would reach the mid point.

‘Half a minute’ the driver said, and my heart began to race at the thought of what might happen. I half hoped nothing would happen and I could put the fault back with the depot, but I also hoped this ghost would show make an appearance.

25, 24, 23, I counted down our approach; adjusted my balance and stared intently at the dark track ahead. 15, 14, 13, my scalp tightened. 3, 2, 1…

Right on schedule, the lights flickered before they blacked out completely, and the motors cut out. The only sound was the train itself, rolling smoothly along the steel rails. We coasted like that for a few second only, and then the train powered up and we continued as normal.

‘See?’ The driver said

‘That shouldn’t happen’ I said. ‘Aren’t the lights powered from the battery?’

‘Yup’

‘There’s something wrong here’ I said

‘That’s what we’ve been saying’

‘I can’t explain it’

‘We’ve been saying that as well’

The depot was right; the problem had to be in the tunnel itself, not the trains. The trouble now was that I would need to inspect the equipment up close, and that would mean turning off the power, which meant the line would have to close, which meant I would have to return in the middle of the night.

At short notice, I was granted an hour’s tunnel possession that night to carry out my initial inspection, and, on account of the power being off, given one of those old diesel rail buses, and a driver, called Harry. We entered the tunnel a few minutes before 1 am of the Sunday morning. I had no idea what I was looking for, so aside from a few of my basic tools and a high intensity flash light, I was travelling light. I’d hoped something obvious would present itself on the spot; everything else we’d tried had drawn a blank.

At our reduced speed it took about fifteen minutes to reach the affected area. And during that time, a cold wind seemed to blow through the draughty gaps in the battered old doors.

About halfway in, and without any warning, Harry brought the train to a screeching halt. I found myself thrown from my seat and against the driver’s console.

‘Sorry about that’ Harry said, ‘I thought I saw someone on the track’

Those hairs of mine stood on end again, and the driver and I exchanged a worried look.

‘Gone now‘ he added

‘What did he look like?’ I said.

‘Couldn’t really see much‘ he said, ‘just an outline, a figure on the track…’

Harry and I peered out through the window on either side of the cab, and I shone my halogen light about the tunnel. There was no place in there for anyone to hide from its glare, but we saw no one, and we both returned to our seats.

‘We’re gonna have to report it’ I said, ‘potential trespasser, vandal maybe’

‘Down here though‘, Harry said, ‘at this time of night?’

‘I know, unlikely, but…’

‘Have they nothing better to do?’

‘Do you want to draw up to the affected spot‘ I said, turning our attention back to the immediate task. I pulled out my notes with the exact location ‘let’s get it over with‘

‘We are there‘ he said, ‘this is where the reports are coming from‘

‘This exact spot?’

‘To the exact chain’ he said. ‘What do you make of that?’

I didn’t want to procrastinate, there were better places to be at 1 am on Sunday morning. So, with a deep breath, I climbed down from the passenger compartment and on to the track. This was no different to any other tunnel, and I’d spent enough hours in them over the last thirty years to know.

Admittedly, I had no idea what I was looking for, but I shone my flashlight about the place, looking for anything that might have seemed out of place; everything looked fine. I walked down the length of the train, inspecting the contact wire as I went. No sign of damage, and nothing out of place. There was little more that I could do, and I turned back to face the train I arrived on.

At that moment I heard a cough from behind me, a deep dry asthmatic retching, as of someone clutching onto their last breath. But in the time it took to swing round and shine my light, it had stopped, and except for the driver and me, and the diesel train, with its reassuring engine ticking over, the tunnel was empty. Harry was stood by the train; I could see him clearly in the bright red glow of the tail lamp. If Harry had coughed, I could not have heard it over the engine. It must have been my imagination.

I had seen enough though, there was nothing out of the ordinary, and I walked back toward to train. The power problem would have to be referred back to the contractors that installed the kit. There was nothing more I could do.

On the way back to the train; I noticed a large recess in the tunnel wall that I hadn’t registered before, perhaps a meter deep by three meters long. This was no surprise, most tunnels had recesses and portals built in to the sides for operational and maintenance reasons, or sometimes for construction purposes. Usually, they allowed refuge for anyone down on the track while a train passed by, though they were usually smaller than this one, and the tunnel lining looked to have been fitted with sturdy iron brackets, suggesting a wooden structure had been installed here at some point, but removed long ago.

I double checked the recessed area, in case the mystery trespasser was hiding there, but against the sheer brick wall, there simply wasn’t anywhere that someone could hide. We were most certainly alone down here.

I met with driver by the door.

‘Are we done?‘ he said.

‘Definitely‘ I said, ‘let’s get out of here, its fruitless‘

We climbed the short ladder that took us aboard and closed the door behind us. It was normal procedure to remove the door release key from the access panel and lock it out of use. The doors would not open without the key in the turned position, and it would stay in my back pocket now until we got to the depot.

‘Too right’ Harry said, ‘please tell me that was you coughing‘

‘No‘ I said, ‘you heard it too?‘

‘Yeah, right in my ear‘

I felt my stomach and knees weaken a little. ‘What’s the top speed on this thing?’

‘Not enough‘ Harry replied, and we threw ourselves in to our seats.

Harry nudged the power lever forward, but just before we could move, there was a thud, as if someone banged their fist against the outside of the cab, and the driver eased off the throttle.

It was coming from his side, to the driver’s right, beneath the cab window.

There was another thud, and we both looked over to the back corner. The position had moved.

‘Is that?’ I said, ‘someone knocking outside?’

‘Sounds like it’ and the tapping continued. Harry slid open the glass window and peered out. A blast of cold air barged in, and the rapping stopped. ‘There’s no one out there’.

But as soon he sat back in his seat, the banging started again, and now seemed to move backwards toward to the flimsy bus style passenger doors, they shook violently. Something seemed to be trying to get aboard, and the four leaf folding door offered little protection from anything determined enough to get through.

‘What are you waiting for?‘ I said, somewhat urgently, ‘step on it!’

To my surprise, Harry stood up and walked to the door. ‘Can’t go anywhere with someone on the track!‘ he said with a gulp, and that flimsy door rattled again with increased urgency as he inched his way toward it.

The flight instinct clutched me by the chest, but the driver was right. We were professionals; there was someone on the track, and we couldn’t leave until the tunnel was clear, not if we wanted to keep our jobs.

The right thing to do was to keep a cool head and thoroughly check the outside, and I stood up to join him by the door. The shaking stopped once we were by the door, and there was no sign of any one on the outside.

Somewhat reluctantly now, I took the access key from my back pocket, unlocked the panel, and inserted the turn key and give power to doors. The open button lit up with a bright green glow, and the train stalled.

With a stutter and a sputter, the sound of the engine died to nothing, and the lights blinked out. With my torch still in the cab, we were, but for a small green square of light by the doors, in absolute pitch black darkness. There was a crunching scraping sound on the ballast outside, footsteps.

‘The doors are still powered…’ Harry said, his voice failing him, as he tailed off and fumbled his way back to the cab. The engine roared back in to life, the lights flickered back on, and the vibration of the engine reassured me. We were on our way, the engine screeched as it toiled to meet its maximum speed just as we burst out of the tunnel and in to the Lancashire nightscape. Orange argon street lamps had never looked so beautiful.

I had no idea how I would write this up, and we exchanged no words until we were approaching Harold’s Heath, where I looked forward to passing this problem on to someone else, but before we arrived I had to ask the driver what he knew of the large recess in the tunnel.

‘Must have been where the old signal box was‘ he said I could sense an epiphany within him, ‘That must be it; dead centre of the tunnel, constant smoke and steam and soot, they had to wear a wet towel on their face just to breath, must have been hell down there…‘

‘There’s no such thing as Ghosts’ I said, ‘especially not ones called Towelly’.

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