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Conquering Fears in the Haunted Wood: A Candid Conversation between L. M. Montgomery and her Canadian Creation, Anne Shirley

Anne was sitting by her gable window. In all essential respects, the little gable chamber was unchanged. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant, took a visible, although unmaterial, form and tapestried the bare room with splendid, filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine.

“Oh—it’s—it’s too dark,” cried Anne.

“Too dark? Why, it’s only twilight. And goodness knows you’ve gone over often enough after dark.”

“I can’t go through the Haunted Wood,” cried Anne desperately.

“The Haunted Wood! What under the canopy is the Haunted Woods?”

“The spruce wood over the brook,” said Anne in a whisper.

“There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?”

“Nobody,” confessed Anne. “There’s a white lady who walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. Oh, I wouldn’t go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I’d be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.”

“Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?”

“Not believe,” faltered Anne. “At least, I don’t believe it in daylight. But after dark, it’s different. That is when ghosts walk.”

“There are no such things as ghosts, Anne.”

“Oh, but there are,” cried Anne eagerly. “I know people who have seen them.”

“I’ve had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along…never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again.”

Originally published by “The Paradox Literary Magazine”

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Ashes to Ashes!

The old lady’s fever worsened. Death was nearby, as if scratching lightly on the frosted windowpanes.

Agnes was a loyal retainer at the once-gracious, gabled house for decades. Her mistress was elderly, with no family.

Suddenly, the old woman’s eyes opened. She pointed toward the bedside table. “Open!” she croaked, her breath fetid, “Bible!”

Agnes followed instructions and placed the Bible in the old woman’s hands.

“Read after burning!” Mrs. Button hissed. “Ashes to ashes!”

The old woman gasped, then stopped breathing.

For the rest of her life, Agnes wondered what her mistress’s strange, garbled request meant.