The Great Big Horrible Rat — Jane Gordon-Cumming

When I wanted to write a ghost story for a competition, I knew exactly where to set it, - the derelict quarry at Shipton-on-Cherwell, one of the spookiest places I know. They've broken my heart by surrounding it with a high fence now, so you can no longer climb the secret staircase beside Baker's Lock, and you'll have to take my word for it that it's as unearthly and magical and extraordinary as I describe. I wanted to share my experience of this wonderful place, before they turn it into a housing estate or an eco-town or fill it with unsold cars, or worse, sanitise it into a visitor attraction with steps and nature trails and barricades to stop you getting too close, like poor old Kirtlington Quarry. And having written The Death Trap, I kept thinking of more places and events connected with the Oxford Canal which would make the perfect setting for a ghost story, - the ruined manor at Hampton Gay, the deep lock at Somerton, the Shipton Railway Disaster. In fact, I realised, I could write a whole volume of them. I have loved the Southern Oxford ever since joining my sister Katie and her husband on a cruise from Banbury to Oxford. That was back in the 70s, when the fighter jets still startled one with a sudden deafening roar as they took off from Upper Heyford, and you might still have to operate the old swing railway bridge across the Sheepwash Channel. Katie and Desmond went on to own a pair of hotel boats, and I cadged a trip whenever they had a spare berth. When I married Edwin, I insisted on a canal-based honeymoon, and he became as bitten by the bug as I was. We used to hire from Aynho, and then from College Cruisers, eventually buying one of their boats for our own. Edwin has now converted Worcester to diesel-electric drive, and we can glide through those beautiful wooded cuttings and hear nothing but the birds. In a way these stories are my tribute to the canal. I should say at once that although the places and historical background are real, none of these are accounts of genuine sightings. I'm sure there must have been a few, in a place so full of history and tragic stories, but I have not come across them. I've arranged the stories in geographical order, as one might travel north along the canal from Oxford. Edwin has drawn you a map, so you can see where each story takes place. Like their surroundings, the stories become increasingly spread out as they leave the bustle of Oxford, finally ending in that remote, bleak area of countryside between Napton and Braunston, a Landscape of Ghosts where the past seems so much more real than the present.