It's a living contacting the dead
YOU don't have to believe in ghosts to realise they are always popping up these days.
Spiritualism and fortune telling are big business, with people queuing up to regress to a former life or contact the dead.
And so it was in the dim and distant corners of Victorian Preston.
A new book called Cover The Mirrors is an historical novel set in Preston in the 1850s, which follows the life of the town's most successful medium.
The debut novel by Faye L Booth may be fiction, but the macabre story brings familiar locations in Preston to life in a way they have never been before.
At the time, cotton wasn't the only industry in the town.
Spiritualism was also thriving.
The novel follows the rise of the young Molly Pinner from her childhood in the slums to wealth and a new home in Ribblesdale Place, off Winckley Square, paid for with cash earned from holding seances.
But she is a fraud and doesn't possess "the gift" any more than the people whose money she is taking.
"It is not a supernatural book," says Faye, who lives in Eccleston, near Chorley. "At the end of the day, she's a con artist.
"Around the 1850s spiritualism enjoyed a bit of a boom in popularity. It made spiritualists more in demand and, in a place like Preston, there was less competition in the business.
"Now people do it in an attempt to gain contact with loved ones they've lost. Then it was popular among the upper middle class and it was more of an entertainment. It was a parlour game."
In the book she writes: "The spirit medium – the best in the North, some said – seemed almost to glide to her place at the table. In the warm candlelight, Molly's red curls shone like fired copper and the little flames danced in her green eyes. Her skin seemed to glow, as if phosphorescent spirits flocked to her from the moment she set foot in the room. Once Molly had blown out the candles and the sitters had joined hands, the dead would begin to make their presence known.
Bells would ring; fruit and flowers would fall from the heavens, as fresh as if they had been bought that morning; furniture and ornaments would move as if they had lives of their own. Sometimes sitters would even feel the gentle caresses of spirit hands against their faces, reaching through the veil that divides the living and the dead.
"But in the end, Molly's life of deceit comes back to haunt her."
The 27-year-old said the book was not an attack on the modern business of spiritualism, although she remains sceptical.
"If it was something that stood up to scientific examination then I would be interested," she says. "I have yet to be convinced by anything I have seen. I wouldn't like to make a judgement on people I haven't actually met."
It was more her interest in writing and the Victorian era which finally made Faye give up a job as a veterinary nurse in Chorley and pursue a career in writing.
Her second book, provisionally titled Trades Of The Flesh, revolves around the dark world of Victorian medicine in Preston.
"It was a challenge trying to detail another time," she says. "It is certainly not a completely different world. There are so many differences but it is fascinating to see the similarities that exist.
"It is easy to forget that many buildings in Preston were standing there when people were going round in carriages and dressed very differently."
l On Friday, Waterstone's in Fishergate is hosting the launch of Cover The Mirrors. The evening, between 6.30pm and 8pm, will involve a brief talk and a reading by the author as well as an opportunity to chat and buy signed copies of her book. Refreshments will be served and everyone is welcome.
Cover The Mirrors is published by Macmillan New Writing on November 2.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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