For Wuthering Heights Fans Only.

(It’s unlikely you’ll understand much of the following unless you are.)

The subject of haunting came up tonight, and I remembered this:

‘Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then!’

And what do I get?

‘OK Jeff, that creeps me out, please don’t haunt me!’

You see, this is what comes of being too old to wander the moors willy-nilly or throw flower petals into somebody’s porridge. And I suppose ‘I am Jeffrey’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it, either.

But maybe being a ghost isn’t so wonderful anyway, at least not a hungry one. This is what I said about them in my novel. Call it a shameless plug, if you like:

‘They’re spirits who are constantly hungry. They’re hungry for food, but there is none. They’re permanently cold, but they have no means of warming themselves. They want to see the light, but there is only darkness. They want to commune with their own kind, but they have no language. They even retain sexual desire, but they have no gender. They are all desperate to die, but they know they’re already dead.’

That isn’t very nice, is it?