Guest Post: The Stain of Magical Places

The Stain of Magical Places by Jan Foster

I’ve been watching Ripper Street on TV lately. It’s a drama set in Whitechapel in the years following the reign of Jack the Ripper. I watch it because my latest book is a murder mystery with a horror twist, and because, frankly, the lyrical writing is some of the best I have ever seen. 

Watching period dramas in the genre or time-period I am writing in is just one of the ways which I try to ensure authenticity in my novels. Actors call it immersion, and in a sense, that is what I as an author do as well. I also try to visit the locations and settings if at all possible, although many are over-built, derelict or standing in ruins. 

There is definitely something to be said for standing in places where people from history once stood. If you close your eyes and open your imagination, it is easy to picture them in such places. Walking the paths you now tread. Staring at the vista before you. The noises and smells are often a reach further, but still possible.

It is even possible to get a sense of the magic of a place as well. As a child, brought up a Quaker, I trekked like a rite of passage up Pendle Hill, in Lancashire. This site was where the forefather of the Society of Friends, first dubbed ‘Quakers’, for their belief that people should tremble at the word of the Lord, first had a life altering vision which lead to the founding of the religious society. 

It is a strange and moody place, a steep rock which juts high above the fell, and almost statuesque. It looms over Pendle as a location stained forever by magic, bound up with faith, in England’s minds and hearts. For Quakers, it’s an almost holy location, along with nearby Swarthmore Hall, the home of the founders George and Margaret Fox. 

To this day, Pendle remains a source of fascination and touristic thrills. A town known for witchcraft, radicalism and rebellion. 

The sleepy countryside, with gently rolling moors all around, is not what you might think it would be like though, if you closed your eyes and imagined the events which lead to its dubious reputation. But I found, or rather felt, something magical about the rocky outcrop and the sleepy stone-built town close by, I confess. Something which stirred the soul.

But why should that be? As an adult, the impression Pendle left the child me with should surely pale into insignificance, now I have climbed far larger mountains, both physically and spiritually. I have visited many a moorland, and found or felt nothing of note there. So why did Pendle? Or the many other places I have visited in my quest for realism in my writing?

It strikes me that we, as humans, talk about place and attach personal significance to it, sometimes without ever having visited it. How many of us instantly associate towns and villages with events which have long passed into the pages of history books? Our perception thus colours the reality of these places today. Such as it is with Whitechapel and gory murder in its narrow streets, or Berwick, Biddeford, Pendle and Salem for witches. From Auscwitz to Tyburn, sometimes the very name alone conjures up deadly purpose and history. Their reputation marks them indelibly for all history. 

What happened in these places, especially if it involves the accusation of magic or the horrors of mass death, primes us to have an opinion about a place before we have even been there. If you have ever visited a concentration camp, you will know the chill I speak of. It is almost tangible. To know the history before you visit a place serves to fine tune your senses to whatever magic lingers there.

And so I ask, is it magic, then, which causes such a physical reaction to a place? Or perhaps the unsettled ghosts which linger still, just to remind you of what they once suffered? Let me know your thoughts in the comments! Where touched you spiritually?