A Proper Fright, Please

Wednesday. Halloween is coming, so I wrote to the castle asking whether the sanctum might be made a little more frightening for the season. A shriek or two. A skeleton. Me, perhaps, leaping out of a wardrobe.

They wrote back very politely. The sanctum, they said, is an adventure, not a horror room. It has candles and a grim enough story, sounds in the walls and lighting that sometimes dips to darkness or flickers, and that is plenty for a class with nine-year-olds in it. Nobody leaps out of anything.

I asked what happens to students who run out of time. In the story, something too dreadful to describe. In real life, they told me, the hour ends, a gamesmaster opens the door, and everybody has a chat about how close they came.

Too dreadful to describe. I have been trying to describe it for years. I always end up with “a bit of a shame”.