Halloween? Forget October 31. My first taste of horror came in the mid-1960s at a cub camp, when I was six years old and supposed to be tucked up safely in a sleeping bag.
Our cub master had other ideas. Instead of a lullaby, he gathered us wide-eyed kids and decided bedtime was the perfect time for a ghost story — the ghost of Lord Nelson.
Picture it. A fire burning down to embers, torches coughing their last flickers, the bush pressing in around us. And then Akela’s voice dropped to a whisper. Nelson, one-armed and one-eyed, cursed to stalk the decks of his phantom warship forever. We could hear the phantom’s sails creak above us, though there were only gum trees. His wooden peg-leg echoed on the timbers — one slow, hollow clomp after another — growing louder, closer, as if he were circling us.
Six years old! I should’ve been dreaming of toy cars and cocoa. Instead, I lay rigid in my sleeping bag, sweating, convinced the old admiral’s ghost was about to barge in, cutlass raised. Every gust of wind became cannon fire. Every snapping twig was a ghost on the march. And somewhere in the dark I could swear I saw a single pale eye watching us.
That camp was memorable for another reason. There was a sandpit, and in that sandpit I lost my pride and joy: a silver Aston Martin Matchbox car. I dug till my fingers bled, but it was gone — dragged under, as though Lord Nelson’s ghostly crew had stolen it for their next broadside.
Years later, I told that story to a motoring writer. He didn’t comfort me. He told me that if the car had survived — pristine, in its little cardboard box — it would be worth ten thousand dollars today. Ten thousand! That scout camp cost me more than a few sleepless nights. It bankrupted me before I could even earn pocket money.
So there I was: haunted by Lord Nelson and financially ruined by a sandpit. If that isn’t the definition of horror, I don’t know what is.
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