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Part
1: A
Brief History of QuercuS. Publishers
of books
about ghosts, hauntings and mysteries in the English Midlands
(A
modest offering from its inventor, the fabulous John Roberts, holder of
the world record for circumnavigating by bicycle the towns of Warwick,
Leamington Spa and Kenilworth carrying a biography of Lenin and a history of the
North-West Passage.)
I
was born many years ago and grew up on the Wirral. My early playgrounds were the
Cheshire fields and woods. Since then I have lived on the Lancashire coast near
Southport, near Lichfield, in Stourbridge, and in two areas of Birmingham before
moving to Warwick. All but two of my eight homes have been on the very edges of
towns so walking and the countryside have always been part of my life.
My
first job was with an insurance company from which I graduated to become a Loss
Adjuster. This was when I moved to the Midlands. Tiring of work, I decided to go
into teaching and became a lecturer in insurance and law. During this period I
started serious walking; that’s the kind where you go a long way and don’t
really stop very much. Soon I was writing and publishing walks in my spare time
under my WALKWAYS
imprint.
After
early retirement I turned to publishing full time and launched my second
imprint, QuercuS.
This was
to publish books on whatever topics I fancied about the English Midlands,
defined as the area, more or less, between the rivers Trent, Avon and Severn. If
you went to school in the UK your geography teacher probably called it “The
Midland Triangle”. At its centre is Birmingham and the Black Country, and it
reaches from the Cotswold Hills to Stoke on Trent and from Telford to Rugby.
The
region has beautiful countryside with hills and plains, ploughland and pasture,
one of the biggest industrial areas in the world, lovely old market towns and
pretty villages. It is also said to be one of the most haunted areas in Britain,
itself the most haunted country in the world. QuercuS titles have include books
about rivers, woods, history, battles, lives, castles, churches, industries,
murders, myths, legends and, of course, hauntings.
Browsers
on Brian’s “Mysterious People” website would be given a few things to
ponder by my three ghost books.
Although they are all written by Anne Bradford
and Barrie Roberts, I have been an active editor to maintain a very rational
approach to the paranormal.
We have no vague, old garbled tales and foggy
legends here, all these stories are from witnesses describing their own
experiences. We start from the assumption that they can’t all be made up (the
bogus ones are pretty easy to spot) and Barrie, who is a bit of an expert on
these things, has provided a commentary on many of them. These are not so much
explanation as analysis and an attempt to relate the experiences to others,
which seem similar.
The
opening and closing chapters of each book are thought provoking. In Midland Ghosts & Hauntings (1994) “There are no such
things as Ghosts,” and “What are Ghosts” offer some possible explanations,
while “You Too, Could Have a Ghost” gives sound and practical advice if you
find that you have.
Essentially this
advice amounts to - don’t panic. Midland Spirits & Spectres (1998) opens with “Do you
believe in Ghosts?” which goes further into the question of the range of
different phenomena lumped together under the same heading. “Running a Ghost
Watch” gives detailed and hilarious advice and accounts of three fascinating
Watches joined by Anne and Barrie.
The opening chapter of Strange
Meetings (2002) is again called “Do You believe in Ghosts?” and
describes experiments to asses the effect of electro-magnetic fields on our
brains, an area of science that may one day explain a great deal about what we
now call the paranormal. This book closes with a discussion of ghost
photography.
Not
that the ghost books are the only interesting ones. What about Coaching Days in the Midlands by B?
See my website for the fabulous, life-size-genuine hype, but Brian
laid out the whole history of our first form of public transport with its awful
roads, fatal accidents, sometimes fatal highwaymen, odd characters and the races between rival
coaches. Its amazing how exiting things can be at 12 miles per hour.
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