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Much of Oxford's city is bathed in history, dating back to the 9th century. Including this traditional pub, not yet encapsulated by the minimalistic, modern architecture which seems to dominate British streets. Instead it offers a warm welcome in the day, and a more foreboding, draconian entrance when the sun sets. Are there haunted images from the past, which come out once the curtain of day falls?

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Oxford is arguably the education capital of the country, with grand Universities, colleges and libraries scattered amongst it. Certainly a type of place where writing comes naturally, like its supposed to happen. Natural order. I often look at the museums like the one I photographed and the streets of Logic Lane and think, pen to paper scrabbling ideas is meant to happen here. To me, place is arguably the most significant of factors when it comes to writing well.

The train to Leicester to Oxford is roughly 2 hours 45 minutes, and oh is it the perfect place to write!

Rhianna Pratchett, best known for her efforts in writing 'Tomb Raider' a video game in 2013, said that 'I’ve written quite a lot of comics on planes. You get to watch movies, people bring you food. That’s my perfect writing environment. Trains are quite good as well. But I do particularly like planes, I will assign writing times to plane journeys.'

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Field notes (St John Street, Oxford, own photo.)

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Field notes (St John Street, Oxford, own photo.)

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Most of the pavements along the river stained a luscious green, brushed by the velvet leaves hanging precariously over the shimmer. Sounds of city bustle over the street ahead, with decked busses and London style cabs bristling against old Victorian streets. In the far west side lay old water from downpours young and old, seeping from the river banks into the streets below. Its architecture lay grand and curtained, like it was brushed by old artists. A number 8 just trudged by, now fully electric. But on this same street as the clock strikes 12, these busses do not glow past, illuminating the streets with life. It will become desolate, open to the masses, both alive and dead.

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Cascading into the new century, an old fort baring all the remains of battle and in intrigue. Its walls coated in dark grey cobble, hoisted by old wooden beams prickling into splinter below. The corridors inside lay dark, cold, mysterious sights, the smell of old dust filtering through the air, indicating life which we cannot see or touch, but sense.

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After writing in Oxford and seeing its setting, it has inspired me to take up writing something more haunting, most likely involving ghosts, also inspired by our workshop on ghost stories on Tuesday week 2. After reading The Guardian's take on ghost stories, its clear to me how Oxford has inspired me quite quickly, whereby they state 'We live in brightly illuminated rooms on streets devoid of the terror of something moving just outside the lamp light. Wraiths don't tend to show up on CCTV cameras.'

Nowadays, much of our daily lives is saturated with modern ideas, including modern architecture, technology, convenience and being shielded from the past. Growing up in a swiftly growing town in the countryside, I can say that for most of my life, I have been surrounded by new buildings and complexes, now coated over old buildings and ruins. What is particularly interesting with Oxford is that much of this hasn't happened, and the old buildings which have been there for centuries still exist. Take Magdalen College, for example. It still bores the grand architecture used by the Normans and these buildings still hold grand ceilings and galleries.

This makes Oxford an amazing place to set a ghost story in, since it contains that Victorian feel towards it. Arguably the most famous 'ghost' story, Dracula, plays upon this setting, despite not being set in Oxford. Dracula's castle is embodied with old relics and segments from the past, devoid of the technology which makes us feel more at ease. Particular parts of Oxford I visited, such as Magdalen college and St Johns Street, are free from this modern oppression of white lights and glass shopping centres, offering the more rustic, yellow light atmosphere, where the best ghost stories can really come to life and scare the reader!

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While writing in the Trinity Chapel during the week 2 workshops with Sabrina, the idea of how ghost stories are written and how place is significant also helped me on both researching about ghost stories and writing them. What helped me was learning about the history of the place I am writing about, so I could have a more realistic approach to how these ghosts could haunt both the characters and the readers, if they ever visited said place. I learned how the Trinity Chapel was once a hospital, founded in 1330 by Henry Plantagenet, the 3rd Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, (quite a large area of England he had power over!). It was built to care for the poor and infirm and could house 50 patients at one given time. Despite its countless refurbishments over history, it still possesses the same model and sits on the same land as it did nearly 700 years ago. What I noticed was the tomb of Lady Mary Hervey, a generous patron to the hospital and governess to Henry IV's children. What links this to my research in Oxford is how history is very important in making ghost stories compatible with the reader and believable. Oxford Castle is a medieval fort which also holds rich history such as this, and with my studies in the Trinity Chapel, it made it much easier to explore deeper into the castle and its remnants for ghosts haunting inside its walls.

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After researching the genre of ghost stories, one which jumped straight to my mind was Dracula, perhaps my favourite book. It enhances a gothic style and arguably created the genre 'Gothic literature' and the genre of ghost story writing. It also is entirely unique how it creates this genre, with the setting being arguably the most important part of the story, in terms of 'setting a scene' when it comes to unsettling a reader successfully. Like the post from the Guardian state, it can be very difficult to create ambiguity and mystery in the modern world, due to advances in science in the real world, and most places now are lit up by those white lights, which really dampen ones' creativity when it comes to ghost stories, writing about apparitions from the past and melancholic scenes of dread and uncertainty. Stoker uses Count Dracula's castle in a way to unsettle the reader, especially since the main protagonist, Johnathan Harker, is away from London, out into the 'wild' of sinister tendencies. What i found about Oxford is that many places within the city give you this feeling of sinister past discretions. We all know that the most haunted places are filled with history, since many souls would have been lost there.

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While reading 'Rebecca' by Daphne Du Mourier, the idea of 'ghost stories' is also played out by the absence of literal ghosts, and more the hidden presence of troubled souls. Just how Joanna Briscoe says on The Guardian, 'And so it took only a small shift to see that I could take this one step further. The ghosts should not be visible.' And this is true in the case of 'Rebecca' which also made me re-evaluate how these stories should be written. What can be very unsettling is the feeling of a presence, which physically never reveals itself, weighing down on your darkest fears. In 'Rebecca', the narrator is driven to the point of suicide over this presence by Rebecca and ultimately lets her mind destroy herself over this thought, nearly to the point of death. What makes the city of Oxford, particularly around the old castle ruins, is that these places hold the history required for carrying a 'presence'. That could be a deceased prisoner along the castles corridor, or a nurse still troubled by the night. However, they do not have to reveal themselves, all that my be needed is the history to be told to the reader, and the characters to react and think about these souls, becoming weighed down by their past lives, as if they do not want to disturb them. 'Rebecca' helped me understand this much better in retrospect. After all, its much more believable to leave out the wildly supernatural; it makes the 'ghost story' have a much more rational and truthful nuance to it.

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The clock sunk into a midnight chill. All the streets now lay dormant from life, curtained by the apparition of day. The buildings edged into a dark, foreboding black, luminated by the moons shadows cast onto the tarmac streets, cold by the moonlight dim. There were no sights of green fields and wake lands, just the ever-growing presence of forgotten life, where the shutters on retail stores barred shut and the glistening glow of silence. Heaven for some people. A rough smell of burnt metal was filtering through the air which felt rough and uneasy on my pale skin, as i shivered vigorously, harmed by the idea of not being alone on this silent, urban wasteland.