Just to Pretend: Ghost Wall

The cover really sells the promise of literary horror.

Somewhere around month two of the pandemic, I started looking for new and novel ways to entertain myself. I’m not sure how I stumbled across them, but I started devouring everything that Ruth Goodman’s hands had touched. I started with Tales from the Green Valley and its earnest recreation of 17th century living, before plowing through all the ____ Farms: Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Tudor Monastery Farm, etc.

At one point, I had a YouTube algorithm that was exclusively feeding me historical farming practices. Considering the circumstances, I had zero regrets about it. And little did I know, but I was inadvertently cultivating a pretty solid knowledge-base for my interest in folk horror. 

So to say I was delighted that Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall takes place in a very slapdash Iron Age re-enactment project with questionable origins would be an understatement. It didn’t hurt that were some subtle references to the protagonist watching the very same BBC shows I had. It was almost a letdown that the professor in this novella didn’t voice any opinions about the work that Ruth, Peter, and Alex did on their series. Or Time Team for that matter.

This novella, though, is a study in dread. It starts with the sacrifice of a teen girl before transporting us to a teenage girl named Silvie arriving at an Iron Age re-enactment holiday. It’s unclear if the sacrifice we started with is something that happened thousands of years ago on this site, or something that is coming later in the week. Something that will happen to Silvie.

As the narrative progresses, the shrinking of Silvie’s world gets more and more claustrophobic. We learn first that her father is a bit eccentric and a history buff. Then it becomes clear he is more than eccentric, and perhaps a bit deranged. Then we learn of the abuse. And then we hear how he’d totally be willing to sacrifice his daughter to the bog. Hypothetically, of course. 

But don’t we want to try?

Just to pretend, of course. Just to know what it’s like, of course.

Don’t you want to see what it might be like?

This overlays the fact that everyone is completely unprepared to faithfully re-enact Iron Age living. The most competent of them are Silvie and her father. Her mum’s just along for the ride because she has no means of refusal (which goes for Silvie, too). The professor and his three undergraduate students also have no practical skills and are unwilling to commit. It’s not even clear if they realized what they were getting into when they agreed to bring Silvie’s family with them. It’s entirely possible they bit off more than they could chew on that front.

Or perhaps it’s underscoring that none of these people want to live in the Iron Age. That’s not even Silvie’s father’s bugaboo. His whole thing is trying to a seek a pure British-ness, which in his mind means no immigrants. That includes the Romans. He just wants to live in some racist power fantasy where no one can tell him what to do because he’s British, living Britishly, in unspoiled Briton. 

The professor just wants to explore how some tools may have been used, or what methods might have been employed in the effort to not starve to death. That he brought three noncommittal undergraduates suggests his work is unserious. He’s not doing real research. He’s playing. They’re all just playing.

Leave it to Silvie’s mother to call them out. She can see the men for what they are: little boys wanting to fool around at big barbarian fantasies. They’re just pretending. None of it is real.

And yet their hunger is real. The heat is real. The misery they experience is real.

And now they’re building a supposed ghost wall, just to see what it’s like. To see if it might frighten away the Romans. And talking about what they would give up to the bog to ensure their continued prosperity. Just hypothetically.

But now they’re tying Silvie’s hands behind her back.

Just to pretend.