Phantom Inns…

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Count Jan Potocki (pron. Yan Pototchkee) was born of an aristocratic Polish family in 1761.

In 1815, shortly after completing his masterwork, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, and suffering from a chronic illness he took his own life by shooting himself in the head with a silver bullet blessed by his Castle Chaplain.

It was a strange ending to a strange life which had resulted in an even stranger work of fiction and one that has been compared with such classics as, The Thousand and One Nights and Don Quixote… The book was shot as a black-and-white film, The Saragossa Manuscript, in 1965 and it too is quite justifiably regarded as a classic work.

Both book and film tell the story of a young army officer in the Spanish army who gets caught up in a tale of brigands, ghosts, cabbalist, smugglers, gypsies and haunted gallows…

Utilising the literary technique of ‘episodic nesting’ the story ranges wide over a whole gamut of human, religious and supernatural concerns and experiences but continually returns to the locale of a ‘Phantom Inn’ and its ghostly occupants which seems to serve as the lynch-pin of the hero’s adventures…

Strange though it may sound to say, such places do exist outside the realms of fiction…

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… Gavin Redwood brought the siren song to an end and looked sheepishly around his newly formed circle of friends who had started to warm up on their own instruments in readiness.

“We need a name,” said Redwood.

“A name for what?” said Dave.

“A name for the band, Drongo!” said Redwood.

“We gotta band do we?” said Dave with a smirk.

“I’d say so,” said Redwood.

“Any ideas,” said Paul.

“Skyward,” said Redwood.

“Why ‘Skyward’?” said Robbo.

“Because that’s the way the stone points,” said Redwood…

As Skyward began the inaugural rehearsal under their new name, a lone figure could be seen on the lip of the moor. Too far away to be noticed but close enough to hear the haunting sounds which emerged from the midst of rocks first placed over three thousand years ago, the figure’s tall, yet slightly hunched and sinewy form appeared to be mildly appreciative of what it heard…

Nothing Set in Stone

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Now  available in Paperback