The Chapel

Chapter 5

Well, here we are, you made it to the end! If you want to know a little about me, and my inspiration for this book then read on.

As a writer, albeit a small time and pretty much unknown one, I still get asked the question that all writers get – Where do you get your ideas? Now I’m not blessed with a mind swimming with inspiration like some of the greats of our time. Honestly, I really don"t know how they do it. However, I thought, and wanted, to take a little time to explain where my idea for The Chapel came from.

Having finished the two Watchers books, I thought I was about done with writing. It"s not that I don"t enjoy it, it"s the time it takes. Time, I don"t always have with a full-time job and a young family. The thing with writing is, it"s a bit addictive. Once you know you have the commitment to write a novel, and you"ve had some good reviews you feel compelled to write more. So, being a glutton for punishment I soon found myself yearning to write again and this time I wanted to write horror. I was a big fan of horror novels growing up and still am now. My main literary diet to this day consists of books by the master of horror himself, Stephen King, and the beautifully written works of Dean Koontz, and of course the great British master of horror, the late James Herbert. The trouble with the horror genre, both literary and on the big screen, is that it’s been done, done, picked up, revived and fluffed up and done again. The point I’m trying to make is, it’s really hard to be original. That aside I was determined to have a go. I’m not sure how well I accomplished that, I will let you, the reader, be the judge.

I’ve always thought that the scariest horrors, the most disturbing works, are the ones that could be real. Ones that take a perfectly plausible scenario, (the vanishing of a brother and sister whilst on a family holiday), and then introduce the paranormal. I’ve tried to live by this rule for The Chapel and I hope you agree.

Now here is where my inspiration came from.

Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, I helped to run tech for a TAPS Family paranormal investigation team, Southern Paranormal UK. Now those of you familiar with your ghost hunting shows will know The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or Ghost Hunters as the program is called. We didn’t have the pleasure of being on the big screen like the front runners of the organisation, or like Mike, Tig and Scotty in the novel, but we did investigate some pretty cool places. Many of which feature in the book. Places such as East Drive, Jamaica Inn, Leap Castle, and Moot Hall are all places I"ve experienced first-hand, and even the “I hear you,” EVP that introduces Scotty’s character is something I really recorded. The scenario around that chapter is actually based on a real event.

Now you’d think that as a former investigator of all things that go bump in the night, I"d have a myriad of ideas spinning through my head worthy of a novel, well you"d be wrong. Annoyingly for me, those little sparks of inspiration don"t come easy, they have to be worked at, nurtured and grown. So, during my long daily commutes to work the ideas began turning over and over in my head, the cases I’d worked with the team, the things I’d experienced. One place above all the rest kept coming back to me, one location wouldn’t budge, and that place was The Old Chapel. Yes, it really exists, it’s real and I can honestly say that in the numerous places I’ve investigated, and the hours I’ve spent trying to find the answer to that unanswerable question, nowhere scared me like that place did.

I have applied a certain amount of artistic licence and changed the name of the village and the outer description of the place, however, it seemed kind of fitting for it to retain some of the original detail.

So, let me tell you a little about the real place that inspired this book. Back in 2010 it really was a holiday home, a converted chapel that had been beautifully transformed into a multi-bedroom let. The Southern Paranormal UK Team rented it out for a weekend, treated it as a busman"s holiday you might say. A little R&R and some investigating. Obviously, the majority of this book is a work of fiction, but things such as the banging on the bathroom door of the Altar Room, as experienced by Carol Harrison in the book, really happened. So did the dryer jumping off the radiator and crashing to the floor. We had a ton of other strange goings on there that we struggled to explain. Just moments prior to the radiator dryer incident I heard on my own Sonic Ear Amplifier rig someone or something in the room with us. I heard raspy breathing as they, or it, passed me by. I can say without any embarrassment that it scared me, and when you spend your nights searching for the unexplained you don’t tend to scare easy! If you do, then you need to find another hobby.

Lastly, and before I sigh off I’d like to say a big thankyou to our friend Kim, who worked her way through this manuscript, asked the questions that needed to be asked and went to work with an HB pencil and highlighter on many of the pages.

Anyway, I’ve bored you enough and this is where I will leave you. I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed the book, if you did please leave a review, if you didn’t then tell me why. We are nothing without a little honest feedback.

S.T Boston