Well, I've finally moved away from the television, and begin concentrating once more on the written word. Other than newspapers, I've been reading horror fiction. Not Russell Lee's "True Singapore Ghost Stories", Mr. Midnight, or any of those stories written for the general excessive TV-watching population, mind you...
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I'm reading classic ghost stories written by authors like Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, and the likes. Thus, if you haven't heard any one of these authors before, well, these stories are really too painful for you. It's not that they scare you death, but it's because the vocabulary and writing styles are really beyond reach for a large portion of Malaysian secondary school students. My cousins tried picking it up, but couldn't get past the first of the 100 stories in the collection. So, please, don't think I'm reading R. L. Stine...
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For a taste of the worst that the stories can get, here's the first line of the story "The Ghost and The Bone-Setter" from the Purcell Papers by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
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"Why, thin, 'tis is a quare story, an' as thrue as you're sittin' there; and I'd make bould to say there isn't a boy in the seven parishes could tell it better nor crickther than myself, for 'twas my father himself it happened to, an' many's the time I heerd it out iv his own mouth ; an' I can say, an' I'm proud av that same, my father's word was as incredible as any squire's oath in the counthry; and so signs an' if a poor man got into any unlucky throuble, he was the boy id go into court an' prove; but that doesn't signify - he was as honest and as sober a man, barrin' he was a little too partial to the glass, as you'd find in a day's walk; an' there wasn't the likes of him in the counthry round for nate labourin' an' baan diggin'; and he was mighty handy entirely for carpenther's work, and mendin' ould spudethrees an' the like i' that. An' so he tuck up with bone-setting, as was most nathural, for none of them could come up to him in mendin' the leg iv a stool or a table; an' sure, there never was a bone-setter got so much custom - man an' child, yound an' ould - there never was such breakin' and mendin' of bones known in the memory of man..."
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And that's only two sentences... the story goes on in this manner for another five and a half pages. Ultimately, it's about how the bone-setter ( think of him as the guy who treats sprained ankles at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Hall, only a little bigger) meets this ghost at the castle of his Squire (landlord) while he sits in to take care of it, while the Squire's off on a holiday (it's the tinants (tenants) obligation to do so), and how he (rather humourously) got rid of the ghost.
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Here's an idea of how he did it: it gives a whole new meaning of pulling someone's leg...
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and the book only costs RM 12.00. Talk about value for money... here's the trick for getting dirt cheap new books, visit book warehouse sales, you won't believe the prices you get for books. I got a couple of good books, so why don't you check those out?
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