An ordinary name like Harry?

[balding13]

Its a longshot, but does anyone know the short ghost story about a woman who adopts an orphan from the Blitz? He is found in bombed ruins with his dead brother, whom she eventually realises wants to claim him. I believe I read it a compenium of horror stories, like a Pan compendium.

Thank you.

 

[cherryhinton]

I was absolutely convinced that this was in the Virago Book of Ghost Stories, but I've looked and it isn't. I definitely have it in a book somewhere at home though. If it helps at all, though, I'm sure the orphan was a little girl, and in my memory the brother is called Charlie.

 

[balding13]

Thanks for that. I'm also really glad to have read about the 'editing' concept of memory in FT and listened to it on 'All in the mind' on Radio4, as an explanation for Charlie/Harry!

I've also recently come to realise that I've absorbed so much of popular culture via my Mother's excellent story-telling abilities; a few years ago I realised that I knew the story of 'The Stone Tape', despite never having seen it, because my Mother told me it as a bedtime story!

Because of the recession second-hand bookshops are again thriving in Dublin and I'll check out all potential compendiums.

 

[cherryhinton]

Gah! I am a daft old bird, I have just stumbled on the very story, and the actual title of the bloody thing is "Harry". Don't know where I got "Charlie" from. It is by Rosemary Timperley, and it turned up in Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories. Hope this is all superfluous anyway, due to you having cleared the mystery up yourself long since.

 

[balding13]

Sadly I haven't! I googled lots of sites for horror compendiums and remembered even more stories I had read as a child and young man. I'm now exploring another phenomena; when I re-read 'The Golem' by Gustav Meyrink some years ago I gave up as it bored me. Reading it now I again think it's brilliant. I'm going to try 'Hawksmoor', which I gave up on second reading for exactly the same reason.

Thanks for the pointer to the book. I'll try and source it from bookshops in Dublin or Belfast.