The Lost Village

[Moonraker]

I'm stretching things a little by including this book here, but bear with me. In  2013 Neil Spring published The Ghost Hunters, a paranormal novel based on the life of psychic investigator Harry Price, which was turned into an ITV drama. The Lost Village also features Price, who this time is investigating weird goings-on in Imber, now a ghost village in the middle of the Salisbury Plain army ranges.

 

(See here.)

 

For the purposes of the novel, the evacuation of the village takes place in 1914, not 1943, so the army can use it for training. There's a brief description of a soldier being ordered to shoot the village blacksmith (fictional but bringing to mind the real one who is said to have died from a broken heart) for refusing to leave his home. Most of the action is in 1932, when soldiers claim the village is haunted. The senior soldier locally is "Commander Williams" (yes, I know), who is based four miles away at Westdown Camp (in real life then just a camping-site but for the purposes of the novel it's "the base for soldiers training on the Plain").

 

There are seances, apparent manifestations, faking and so on. Not really my scene, and I skimmed through the 450 pages. Ironic in a way, because as a school-lad I enjoyed Dennis Wheatley's Black Magic novels and he was based near Imber during the Great War.

 

Another old thread. (See my post 6.)

 

(Incidentally, a quick Google reveals nothing about what the real Harry Price did in the war.)

 

Moonraker