Island Life - April/May 2011
interview
Photos: St. Catherine's
lighthouse with ghostly
figure in the locked tower.
Below: Gay preparing for
Halloween
Photos:
the Island. The editors gave me
the letters, and one lunchtime
we were sitting in Calvert’s –
as we often used to – when
another member of the County
Press staff, Ray Anker said that
no one had ever written a book
on Isle of Wight ghosts.”
It was an idea that Gay and
Ray initially toyed with, put on
the back burner for a further
12 months before they got their heads together in 1977 and
decided ‘let’s do it!’ They put the word out, collected stories,
scanned the archives, and came up with enough material
in about eight months to publish a 72-page book entitled
‘The Original Ghosts of the Isle of Wight’. A print run of
1,000 quickly sold out, and the book has in fact proved so
successful that over 100,000 copies have subsequently been
sold worldwide.
“Before we started the research and wrote the book I
wasn’t too sure about ghosts. But I do believe now,” Gay
says without hesitation. There was a 15-year gap before
she decided to write a second book on Island ghosts, simply
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